The world of advertising and promotion is changing fast in the digital age now driven by artificial intelligence (AI). The way people seek information has shifted as AI integrates into the internet.
This presents opportunities and challenges for marketers, including the Florida Department of Citrus (FDOC). The FDOC’s mission is to drive more consumption of orange juice and fresh fruit. During the Florida Citrus Industry Annual Conference, Rosalie Morton of Padilla gave a presentation on how the advertising and public relations agency is staying ahead of these changes to keep Florida citrus in the consumer eye. FDOC is a client of the agency.
GENERATIVE AI SEARCH
Morton said that the way people search for information has changed in the past year or so. People began using AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok to ask questions about products and topics. These large language model platforms spit out detailed responses to questions in a conversational tone. The term for this is called generative AI search, or GenAI for short.
“Now, you don’t really have to click to another website, because all the information is right there,” Morton said. Answers to questions are being pulled from multiple sources.
For marketers of things like Florida orange juice, it is critical to be among those sources where AI is pulling information. That’s important because the trend toward GenAI is happening fast and undeniably.
“Already, 60% of searches are now ending without the user progressing to another website,” Morton said. “We expect a 50% drop in organic search traffic by 2028. That means people are not coming to our websites (like FloridaCitrus.org) to get information. They are getting those answers from GenAI search engines.”
ESTABLISHING AUTHORITY
Morton said the piece marketers need to focus on is the citations that often come with a GenAI response. These citations link back to the sources of information. Some users might click on those links while others may not. The critical point is to be among those citations. In other words, the marketer needs to be recognized as an “authoritative” source of information.
“We have to think about how we are strategically working on our website and creating content to influence these GenAI answers,” she said. “So, what does that mean? This means creating structured, machine-readable content online. We want to make it easy for these engines to come to our websites and crawl our information, so it thinks about using our information first when it is creating those summaries.
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