The rise of AI traffic: What it means for digital marketers

A recent article published by Search Engine Land found that web sessions referred by artificial intelligence (AI), also called "AI traffic," increased by 527% between January and May 2025 from the same period in 2024. During the previous year, there were only 17,076 sessions from Large Language Models (LLMs) like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. Then, in 2025, it jumped to 107,100 sessions. 

The significant increase in AI-driven traffic growth has a massive impact on digital marketing. It should tell your business or brand, for instance, that it must make changes when interacting with your customers. You need to adapt to these transitions to ensure your content stays relevant and accessible to your audiences. 

In this guide, we'll explore AI-related digital marketing trends and the connections between AI and consumer behavior. Read on to learn how your business can step up its game in response to the explosive growth in AI traffic.  

How AI Traffic Is Reshaping and Impacting Digital Marketing 

One way AI is impacting digital marketing is by integrating itself into search engine results pages (SERPs). You may have noticed this yourself when you perform a search query using Google. After hitting the "search" button, the results you received likely had an "AI Overview" and "featured snippets." 

Such integration has resulted in "zero-click searches." It's when a search engine provides the answers that users are looking for directly on the SERP.

With the results already at the top of the SERP, users may no longer need to click on the other links on the same page. It's convenient for consumers, but it can result in decreased organic traffic to your business's website. 

How Brands and Digital Marketers Can Stay Ahead of the AI Curve

As a brand, digital marketer, or both, you need to adjust your marketing strategies and ensure you adapt to the shifts in AI traffic. You must create content that is engaging enough to encourage users to explore it further, not just rely on AI Overviews and featured snippets. 

Here are some strategies that can help your brand or business keep up with the ever-evolving AI and its integration online. 

Incorporate Artificial Intelligence Marketing Strategies

An article published in the journal ScienceDirect cites data predicting the market for AI in marketing to reach $107.5 billion by 2028. The increasing use of AI in the marketing world is due to the technology offering powerful, robust tools. 

Such tools can help your business and marketing efforts with: 

• Task automation 
• Data management and analysis 
• Personalization of highly targeted content and search results
• Enhancing user experiences

One segment of AI-powered marketing that continues to gain traction is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Unlike traditional search engine optimization (SEO), whose focus is ranking high on SERPs for keyword-driven searches, GEO's priority lies in optimizing content to make it more visible and likely to get featured on AI-powered search engines and generative AI-powered tools like Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. With GEO, the goal is to have a website's content summarized, cited, and featured in AI-generated results and sessions. 

Integrate Machine Learning in Marketing Campaigns

Machine learning (ML) in marketing is the practice of using digital tools and algorithms to: 

• Analyze data
• Identify trends and patterns
• Make educated predictions (e.g., for enhancing marketing strategies and customer experiences)

With the help of machine learning, brands and marketers can create more tailored, effective, and efficient marketing campaigns. 

Use Chatbots 

Chatbots are computer programs engineered to simulate human conversation with users, often through text or voice interactions. Powered by AI, they can "understand" human language and respond to a user's inputs or queries. They can be simple programs that can answer basic questions or use more advanced software that makes them into "virtual assistants." 

Using chatbots can be a part of an AI-focused marketing campaign. Such programs offer many benefits, including: 

• Round-the-clock availability 
• Personalized user experience 
• Increased engagement 
• Task automation 
• Customer data gathering 
• Generating and nurturing leads 
• Enhancing customer satisfaction 

All the above benefits can then lead to a potential increase in sales and bottom line. 

Combine AI Automation With Human Creativity 

While the rise in AI traffic indicates that it has and will continue to become integral to modern marketing, brands and marketers shouldn't rely on it solely. You should be strategic when assigning tasks to AI-powered systems and tools, and ensure your content still has a human touch. You should use AI for collaboration, not as a replacement for people. 

AI may be best for the following: 

• Data-driven tasks, such as data collection and analysis 
• Email and content template generation
• Posting advertising and marketing updates 
• Responding to basic customer inquiries 

On the other hand, humans should handle tasks that require emotional intelligence and creativity. While AI can create templates for email bodies and web content, people should still edit or adjust them to give the recipients and readers a sense of human connection. 

Stay Up-to-Date With the Evolving AI Landscape

AI is evolving at a continuous, rapid pace, so it's no wonder that research and consulting firm Grand View Research estimates its market size to grow from $279.22 billion in 2024 to $1.8 trillion by 2030. As more innovative and advanced AI technologies come to light, brands and marketers must stay informed of the latest AI trends and tools. Some ways to help you keep up or even be ahead of the AI curve are: 

• Attending conferences 
• Being active with social media and updates 
• Reading industry publications 
• Experimenting by trying new AI-driven marketing approaches 

Just as crucial is to prioritize compliance with data privacy regulations. While AI can harvest and analyze vast amounts of data that your business can use to augment your marketing campaigns, you must be transparent about your AI practices and ensure your customers are aware of these. 

Use AI Traffic to Your Advantage

With the explosive growth in AI traffic, brands and digital marketers should take advantage of it by incorporating AI-driven strategies and machine learning into marketing campaigns. By combining artificial intelligence with human creativity, you can stay relevant to SERPs, increase potential traffic to your site, and enhance your bottom line. 

Check out WGN-TV's latest Business news and headlines for more practical tips and informative guides like this! 

This article was contributed by Next Net and published on cdapress.com as part of our contributed content program. Contributed content provides perspectives from businesses and organizations. These contributions help support local journalism through financial support, ensuring we can continue delivering trusted local reporting to our readers.