AI is deciding what your customers do, with or without you

AI is Already Reshaping How Buying Works, and most companies are unprepared:

Here’s what is already true:

53%^¹

of B2C consumers are using generative AI for purchases in 2025, up from 39% in 2024 and 28% in 2023

89%^²

of B2B customers are using genAI during the purchasing process, especially for purchases of over $1 million

34%^³

of consumers say they’d let AI make purchases on their behalf, today

400%+^⁴

AI traffic has been converting 4.4x better than every other traffic source

∞^⁵

Generative AI is being adopted at a faster rate than the smartphone

$4.4T+^⁶

Projected AI Influenced consumer spend: $4.4T by 2030



In 2024 alone,

more than 50% of buying decisions were influenced by AI.¹

Yet only 13% of companies have any strategy for AI influenced purchases.⁷

The gap between what is happening, and what most brands are doing, is the largest commercial blind spot of the decade.



The Buying Journey has Changed Forever, Too

	Old Buying Journey	AI Driven Buying Journey
Start Point	Google search, word-of-mouth, ads	Prompt to AI (e.g. “Best [X] for [Y]”)
Trust Signal	Reviews, brand reputation, referrals	AI’s internal knowledge & confidence
Navigation	Comparison shopping, clicking around	Instant, compressed answer from AI
Final Decision	Manual evaluation of websites/features	AI suggestion = default choice
Repeat Behavior	Loyalty to specific brands	Loyalty to using AI platforms

How AI Actually Makes Buying Decisions

Most companies are trying to hack a tool (“wanna show up more in ChatGPT?!?!”), which means they fail to deeply understand how AI actually operates.

At SearchTides, we’ve reverse engineered the architecture AI uses to decide which brands to route demand to.

We call it the AI Undercurrent: the 5 layer, 11 signal system shaping AI Influenced purchases in every category.

These are the hidden layers being used to judge your brand:

Layer	Core Theme	What AI Needs to Know	Substrate Signals
Identity	Be understood	Who are you, and who are you for?	Brand Fingerprint, Marketplace Clarity
Language	Be reinforced	Do others describe you the same way you do?	Message Accuracy, Message Consistency
Distribution	Be trained on	Are you showing up where AI learns from?	Model Superfeeders, Multimedia Presence
Data	Be remembered	Are your facts structured and retrievable?	Structured Recall, Semantic Extractability, Entity Interlinking
Integrity	Be credible	Can AI confidently cite and repeat you?	Grounding References, Stability Index

Want to go deeper? Learn about our full methodology →

Our Process

The AI Undercurrent Sprint

A 14 day deep dive to evaluate how your brand performs inside AI driven decision systems.

This Sprint is a focused engagement that assesses your brand across the five layers of the AI Undercurrent, the same layers AI systems use to determine which brands get customers delivered on a silver platter.

Z

You’ll get a complete evaluation of how AI interprets your brand, where you’re being reinforced or ignored, which signals need to be strengthened, and how to do it.

Z

You’ll walk away with the ability to win AI influenced commerce.

What’s Included in the
AI Undercurrent?

In two weeks, your team receives eight tightly scoped deliverables, each mapped to a specific failure point in AI influenced buying.

Deliverable	What it gives you
AI Influence Scorecard	Ranking across the 5 critical AI decision layers
Brand Fingerprint	How AI describes you today vs. how you want to be perceived
Fix-First Roadmap	Exactly what to fix, in what order, and why
Superfeeder Outreach Kit	How to get cited in the places that train the models
Review Language Seeder Guide	Get 3rd parties to describe you in ways AI adopts as truth
Prompt Testing Pack	Monitor how models interpret you over time
AI Drift Defense Checklist	Stay relevant across model updates, search shifts, and data volatility
Optional Implementation Support	SearchTides can help, lead, or completely own implementation of the AI Undercurrent