In my keynote presentation on answer-engine visibility at Forrester’s 2026 B2B Summit in Phoenix, I asked the audience a simple question: “What happens when we can no longer see our buyers?” Then we turned off the lights in an exhibit hall filled with nearly 2,000 people.
That moment wasn’t theater … it was a preview.
As buyers increasingly rely on answer engines to research, evaluate, and decide, marketers are facing a visibility vacuum. Most are trying to solve it by replacing traffic. That reaction is understandable given where we’ve been — traffic has been the key performance indicator of marketing. But it is also dangerously incomplete.
The Real Problem Isn’t The Decline In Traffic — It’s The Decline In Visibility
When buyers use answer engines in their buying process, you not only lose the traffic; you also lose visibility. You lose insight into what buyers are asking and what they see, whether your brand appears, and how your brand is being described. AI is turning the lights out on marketers, cutting visibility into buyer activity in half. In this new environment, the fight isn’t just to attract or influence buyers but to see them at all.
Leaders Know AI Visibility Matters — But They’re Stuck
The decline in traffic has rung the alarm bell at the executive level. In a survey of Forrester’s B2B marketing community, 70% of marketers said that AI visibility is a top priority for their CMO or CEO. But this urgency hasn’t translated into execution. The same research showed that only 30% of companies have defined a discrete owner for answer-engine visibility. Organizations agree this is critical, yet few have decided who is actually accountable. In my dozens of conversations with customers at B2B Summit, I saw the true depth of this gap. Even the most advanced organizations — those with dedicated staff/budget and engaging in action — were struggling to act in coordinated fashion.
Optimization Is Easy — Coordination Is Hard
In my research, I outline five strategies for addressing the visibility vacuum. Companies are making progress on many of them, but the one they struggle with most is working together across functions. They suffer from “random acts of AEO.” They get consensus on the importance of AEO (answer engine optimization) but can’t get edits approved, meetings accepted, or tickets filled. Many people I spoke with were hopeful they could repeat the party trick of turning out the lights inside their organization and shocking people into alignment. But hope isn’t a great strategy.
Cross-functional execution requires a clear vision, strong leadership, explicit accountability, and a collaborative culture. Setting a vision in these dark times is challenging. Marketing and executive leadership must recognize that their objective has shifted. The goal is no longer to replace lost traffic. The goal is to replace lost visibility: to gain insight into how buyers are using these new tools, understand how your brand and your competitors’ brands appear, and to use these insights to improve your ability to reach and influence the preference of your buyers. Without that shared understanding, teams will continue to pull in different directions, pursuing the optimization hack du jour.
Shine A Light On Your Buyers — Be A Beacon For Marketing
The visibility vacuum isn’t going away. If anything, it’s getting stronger every day as AI tools improve and our buyers get better at using them. To see though this growing darkness, you will need more than tools and tricks. You will need teamwork and a common purpose to regain visibility into your customers, understand what they see, and make an impact.
If you want a look at how to overcome the visibility vacuum, including the five strategies to drive answer-engine visibility, read my new report, Overcome The Visibility Vacuum, or schedule a guidance session with me.
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