Buyers now ask AI first, so make sure the answer shows your brand

Try this before your next planning meeting. Open ChatGPT, Gemini or Google and ask the question your buyers ask: “What is the best tool for [your category] for a company our size?” Read the answer. Then look at the sources underneath it.

For many mid-market software companies, that is an uncomfortable minute. The answer names two or three vendors, often the biggest ones, and cites pages you have never thought about. Your brand is missing, or it shows up last with an old description. That answer is quickly becoming the new shortlist.

How do buyers use AI to build a shortlist?

More and more, they start there. G2’s 2026 report The Answer Economy surveyed 1,076 B2B decision makers in March 2026. 51% said they start their software research with an AI chatbot more often than with Google. AI chatbots were the most cited source of influence on which vendors make the shortlist, named by 54%. And 69% said an AI chatbot had led them to pick a different vendor than the one they first planned.

This was not a surprise to everyone. Back in 2024, Gartner predicted that traditional search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026 as people turn to AI chatbots and other virtual agents. Whatever the exact number turns out to be, the direction is clear. As we wrote in an earlier post, the day-one shortlist decides most deals. More and more of that list is now written by an assistant.

What do AI answers cite?

AI answers are built from sources the assistant can find, and the sources are not always the ones you would expect. In a 2026 analysis of 30 million citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews in the US, Peec AI found Reddit was the most cited domain. YouTube was second. LinkedIn was third. In Google’s AI Overviews, YouTube came first.

For a B2B marketing team, that is good news hiding in plain sight. Two of the three most cited sites are places where your company can publish today. Most teams treat YouTube as an afterthought and LinkedIn as a distribution channel. Both are also sources that AI answers draw on.

Why recency and volume matter

An assistant can only cite what exists. If your YouTube channel holds a brand video from two years ago and a webinar recording, there is very little for it to work with. If it holds a short, clear video for every release, every customer story and every concept your buyers ask about, there is a specific answer waiting for many of their questions.

Think of each video as one more answer to a real question. The more specific and current those answers are, the more likely one of them fits the question a buyer types. That is an argument for a steady weekly rhythm, not a big annual production.

How do you make a video that AI can read?

Assistants mostly read the words around a video and the words inside it. A few habits make a big difference:

• Title it like the question. “How to track a deal’s progress” beats “Product update, September”.
• Say it plainly in the description. Name your brand, your category and the problem in the first lines.
• Add chapters. On YouTube, chapters come from timestamps in the description: the first at 00:00, at least three in order, each at least ten seconds long.
• Get the captions right. Accurate captions give the spoken words a text form that can be read and quoted.
• Give each video a home on your site. Google’s video SEO guidance recommends a dedicated watch page for each video and VideoObject structured data that describes it.
• Say your name out loud. If the narrator never says your brand, the transcript never contains it.

What to track

You cannot control what an assistant says, but you can watch it. Keep it simple:

• Write down ten questions your buyers ask. Once a month, ask them in the assistants your buyers use and note who gets named and what gets cited.
• Count how often your own pages and videos appear among the sources.
• Watch YouTube search impressions and branded search over a quarter.
• Ask sales to note when a new prospect mentions an AI assistant as where they first heard of you.

None of this needs new software on day one. A spreadsheet and a monthly reminder will tell you whether the trend is moving.

This is one reason we built Saltfish Video. It turns the blog posts, release notes and case studies you already publish into on-brand videos, then reframes them for each channel, from YouTube and LinkedIn to your website and help center. Read more on the Saltfish Video page, or see the plans on pricing.

FAQ

Want to see what one of your posts looks like as a video in your brand? Your first video is on us. Or book a demo and ask us the question your buyers ask AI.