E-commerce brands have traditionally competed for visibility through shelf space, search rankings and paid placements. But as discovery becomes increasingly fragmented, simply being visible is no longer enough.

Brands need to be remembered by customers so that when they are retrieved by machines in AI-powered search they are most likely to be chosen. To do this and build both mental and retrieval availability, e-commerce brands need to identify the contexts, needs and situations they want to be associated with, and use distinctiveness to associate and reinforce those across every digital touchpoint.

In this session, Laura Smith, Head of Client Strategy at ICS-digital, will:

- Introduce The Human-Machine Memory Gap and use real brand examples to show how brands can be well known to humans, but invisible in AI search, or vice-versa
- Explain how distinctive brand assets and consistent messaging build stronger mental availability and support the concept of retrieval availability in AI search - therefore, closing the gap
- Show how to use different data sources to identify the customer contexts your brand can target
- Share practical e-commerce examples of how to use those contexts to develop a search strategy that creates distinctive associations across on-site content, Digital PR, influencer marketing and paid media