I bought a smartphone last month without visiting a single brand’s website. An AI assistant compared five options for me, explained why one suited my fitness style better than the others, and I jumped over to Amazon and bought it. The smartphone company may know I bought its product, but it doesn’t know what I told the AI assistant, which features I prioritized, or what other options I considered.

What catches leaders off guard isn’t that customers ask AI for recommendations. That debate is over. It’s that marketing organizations built around campaigns, calendars, and customers who do their own searching, comparing, and deciding struggle to adapt to AI-mediated customer journeys. When AI assistants influence those decisions, brands can lose visibility into the journey long before a purchase happens.

When I talk to leaders about building AI-first businesses, marketing is usually the last function they consider, almost an afterthought once they sort out technology and operations.…