In the age of AI, what really matters for marketers? Not clicks, says Branch CEO David Karnstedt, but being the brand AI trusts to deliver instant fulfillment.
Illustration of a human brain connecting with an AI brain through a colorful data stream.
When Andrew Ng said, “AI is the new electricity,” he wasn’t exaggerating. Just as electricity transformed agriculture, transportation, communication, and manufacturing, AI is overtly reshaping the foundations of how consumers and brands interact. If electricity powered the industrial age, AI is powering the age of intent and the agentic web.
When you think about it, electricity didn’t just make lightbulbs possible; it changed the way factories ran, the way we traveled, and even the way we socialized. Similarly, AI isn’t just about chatbots or smart assistants. It’s about creating a new infrastructure where consumer intent can be fulfilled instantly, sometimes before the consumer even asks.
Today, the future-looking uses of AI are more subtle than we may have seen in the movies (I’m talking to you, HAL 9000 and Skynet), but far more powerful. AI quietly steers behind the scenes. Imagine telling your device, “Have my groceries delivered when the game ends” and watching as your phone coordinates food purchase and delivery, ride tracking, and contact notifications seamlessly. No app-hopping. Just seamless orchestration and fulfillment of multiple requests as quickly as you can speak it.
At Branch, we see this playing out similarly. Think about a future where a brand can create a QR code that links to your favorite Instacart order from your favorite show, or a personalized Instagram message that will link directly to your cart to finish an order.
Personalization is becoming contextual, ambient, and seamlessly woven into daily life. On the Business of Apps podcast, Adam Landis described a future where AI delivers hyper-specific product recommendations, and sometimes ships them instantly. Much like Amazon suggests items from your purchase history, AI could tailor suggestions from chatbot interactions. Ask for a trail race training plan, and it might also recommend the best trail shoes in your size. The entire consumer journey collapses into one moment of fulfillment.
We used to type the same query into Google and get the same list of “10 Best” results as everyone else. AI-powered systems don’t return a generic list; they generate a tailored answer based on millions of data points – your search history, purchase behavior, location, health metrics…the list goes on.
The implication is enormous. What if, as a consumer, you never need to open your app or actively visit a landing page to interact with your brand? Instead, an AI agent will surface that brand – or not – based on the quality and clarity of the data the brand has provided.
For brands, the shift is even more earth-shaking. Your beautifully designed website? Secondary. Your meticulously crafted SEO-optimized content? Potentially irrelevant. AI aggregates, interprets, and discards contradictions. The brands winning in this new world will be the ones feeding AI ecosystems the cleanest, most consistent, and most contextually relevant information.
Here’s the paradox: personalization is familiar and expected now. Omnichannel experiences that anticipate user intent are the baseline. Yet studies show 40% of consumers find hyper-targeted personalization “unnerving.” Nielsen Norman Group calls it the “creepiness factor” when personalization crosses the line from helpful to invasive.
And yet, consumers still lean into it and will continue to do so. They’ll demand frictionless shopping experiences that anticipate our needs. This tension is the tightrope brands have to walk in the AI era.
So where does that leave marketers? It means thinking less about optimizing for clicks and more about optimizing for fulfillment. It’s not about whether a consumer sees your ad; it’s about whether their AI assistant sees your brand as the best possible answer to their intent.
The future of personalization isn’t about shouting louder or following users across the internet with retargeting ads. It’s about becoming the brand that AI recognizes as the most trustworthy, contextually relevant, and seamless fit for the moment.
Electricity rewired the world. AI is doing the same, but faster. Brands that adapt will find themselves powering the next generation of consumer experiences. Those that don’t? They’ll be left in the dark.