What’s the BUZZ? — AI in Business
“What’s the BUZZ?” is a live format where leaders in the field of artificial intelligence, generative AI, agentic AI, and automation share their insights and experiences on how they have successfully turned technology hype into business outcomes.
Each episode features a different guest who shares their journey in implementing AI and automation in business. From overcoming challenges to seeing real results, our guests provide valuable insights and practical advice for those looking to leverage the power of AI, generative AI, agentic AI, and process automation.
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Whether you're just starting out or looking to take your efforts to the next level, “What’s the BUZZ?” is the perfect resource for staying up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices in the world of AI and automation in business.
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“What’s the BUZZ?” is hosted and produced by Andreas Welsch, top 10 AI advisor, thought leader, speaker, and author of the “AI Leadership Handbook”. He is the Founder & Chief AI Strategist at Intelligence Briefing, a boutique AI advisory firm.
What’s the BUZZ? — AI in Business
When AI Agents Make the Last Click (Walter Schmidli)
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Your next customer may not be a person. When a personal assistant books the flight and fills the cart, the last click belongs to an agent, and the ad you served a human on social media no longer shows up as the sale. So where does advertising go when the audience is an AI agent?
In this episode of "What's the BUZZ?", host Andreas Welsch sits down with Walter Schmidli, Leader of Paid Social Media, to work through what agent-led shopping means for paid media. Walter focuses on paid social for niche industries and on how AI is reshaping digital marketing.
Key insights from this conversation include:
- Advertising does not go away. It moves up the funnel. Walter expects the last click to be executed by an agent, but people will still browse social media and watch TV. That is where ads reach them, and reach and frequency still drive conversion.
- The impulse purchase is under pressure. Measurement gets harder too. Walter says the age of buying on the fly because the right ad reached you at the right time may be coming to an end, and conversion may take longer to show up.
- Start with SEO and GEO. Walter calls it the key short-term step for brands: make sure your SEO and GEO strategies are on point and tuned for agents. Information that is available and crawlable is what influences them.
- Agents are not moved by emotion. People are. Walter says the descriptive detail has to live on a webpage or social platform that agents and LLMs can scrape, while the emotional side of creative is where people come in.
- Social platforms feed the models, selectively. Walter says LLMs have become more precise about sources. It is not an average LinkedIn post that gets cited, but official spokespeople and key opinion leader content. Brands should find ways to get people to publish on those platforms, and test what works.
- Scale will set the default. Walter expects an arms race over who rolls out agents first, and open questions about whether every brand gets its own agent and how Meta, Amazon and Google share data. Sponsored results and integrations may become a new way to monetize.
What leaders can do now: make all of your data available in a form agents and LLMs can digest, with SEO and GEO current as the baseline; shift ad messaging from buy right now toward consider it in the future; and keep watching the growing mix of publishers and agents to find the best fit.
Walter's line to write down: "Advertising has its place potentially just a little further up in the funnel."
If an agent makes the final click, where in your funnel does your advertising need to work harder?
Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.
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Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.
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