{"id":217476,"date":"2026-02-25T13:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T18:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/25\/how-brands-can-influence-leverage\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T21:30:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T02:30:26","slug":"how-brands-can-influence-leverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/25\/how-brands-can-influence-leverage\/","title":{"rendered":"How Brands Can Influence &#038; Leverage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/daviddoty\/2026\/02\/25\/ai-is-now-marketings-gatekeeper-how-brands-can-influence--leverage\/\">How Brands Can Influence &#038; Leverage<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/daviddoty\/2026\/02\/25\/ai-is-now-marketings-gatekeeper-how-brands-can-influence--leverage\/\">https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/daviddoty\/2026\/02\/25\/ai-is-now-marketings-gatekeeper-how-brands-can-influence&#8211;leverage\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-25 13:03:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.forbes.com\">www.forbes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Despite recent minor gyrations on the Dow reacting to AI hiccups, just earlier this month the Super Bowl made AI itself more visible than ever to consumers. For marketers, the deeper shift to put into action is how AI now determines which creators and brands get surfaced\u2014and trusted.<\/p>\n<p>AI as discovery\u2019s new gatekeeper keeps coming clearer.<\/p>\n<p>It was the Super Bowl that surfaced that reality with concentrated vigor.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"-webkit-line-clamp:2\" class=\"Ccg9Ib-7 _8XF2kHYM\">AI drives how we discover, perceive brand and creators&#8217; authenticity<\/span><\/p>\n<p>getty<\/p>\n<p>Nearly one in the four national ad spots\u2014about 23%\u2014was tied directly to artificial intelligence, either as the product itself or as the technology powering the message. OpenAI and Anthropic promoted ChatGPT and Claude to mass audiences. Google and Amazon positioned Gemini and Alexa+ as embedded assistants inside everyday life. Meta showcased AI-enabled smart glasses as experiential technology.<\/p>\n<p>Enterprise platforms appeared just as prominently. Salesforce, Ramp, Rippling and Wix framed AI as operational leverage. Ring emphasized AI as an invisible intelligence layer inside consumer products. In one case, Svedka positioned its commercial as largely created using AI tools.<\/p>\n<p>AI dominated the cultural moment.<\/p>\n<p>But the real shift wasn\u2019t about ad spend\u2014it was about who\u2019s in control of discovery and authority.<\/p>\n<p>AI systems increasingly mediate discovery itself\u2014deciding which creators, publishers and brands get surfaced, cited and trusted. For marketers, the battleground has moved from winning search attention to prevailing in authority.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"subhead-embed\">Where AI Works\u2014And Where Consumers Push Back<\/h2>\n<p>That distinction came into focus in a recent conversation with Kayla Castro, Senior Manager of Affiliates and Partnerships at Zenni Optical.<\/p>\n<p>When Zenni leaned more intentionally into AI in 2024, the goal wasn\u2019t automating creativity. It was reducing friction in a category that historically depended on physical try-on.<\/p>\n<p>The first test: AI-generated model imagery.<\/p>\n<p>The response was immediate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe quickly found that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/daviddoty\/2026\/02\/25\/ai-is-now-marketings-gatekeeper-how-brands-can-influence--leverage\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Brands Can Influence &#038; Leverage https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/daviddoty\/2026\/02\/25\/ai-is-now-marketings-gatekeeper-how-brands-can-influence&#8211;leverage\/ Publish Date: 2026-02-25 13:03:00 Source Domain: www.forbes.com Despite&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":217477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/imageio.forbes.com\/specials-images\/imageserve\/699f3038e425f6425256a5d1\/0x0.jpg?format=jpg&height=900&width=1600&fit=bounds","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-217476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217478,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217476\/revisions\/217478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}