AI is fundamentally shifting how consumers discover information online. As a result, South African brands face a critical question: How do you stay visible, or become the most visible, when search engines shift away from providing lists of web links to generating direct, conversational answers to consumer queries?
AI is already deeply embedded in people’s lives, and adoption is well advanced among the South Africans that brands most need to reach. Recent research shows that 70% of adults have used an AI chatbot (Google and Ipsos), up sharply from 45% in 2023. The country’s consumer class and white-collar workers are even more embedded: among them, the figure reaches nearly 80% (BrandMapp 2025; BCG AI at Work 2026).
What people search for, remember and talk about is increasingly shaped by these tools. This means the digital footprint AI systems draw on is already being built, whether brands are intentionally contributing to it or not.
Global media scientist Karen Nelson-Field, founder of Amplified, is being hosted by The Up&Up Group in South Africa to help businesses explore this shift. Nelson-Field partnered with The Up&Up Group’s media agency Connect last year to deliver the country’s first human data attention survey and bring attention-based benchmarks to the local digital media market.
Nelson-Field’s upcoming visit centres on a provocative perspective: what if the most effective way to ensure you are discoverable in an AI-driven search ecosystem is not by optimising for algorithms alone, but by building human attention and memory?
LLMs and AI modes in search engines have shifted the goalposts, so it is not surprising that many marketers around the world are treating AI visibility purely as a technical optimisation task. The problem with this approach, says Connect chief operating officer Scott Reinders, is that it overlooks the fuller picture of how generative AI models collect and synthesise information across the internet.
Digital footprint
“AI search tools draw from a broad digital information environment. They index online discourse and brand presence, as well as active conversations generated by people. We know that high-attention media experiences help build mental availability and brand memory in human audiences. What people remember, search for and talk about online goes on to create a digital footprint that AI systems may draw on,” explains Reinders.
Rather than presenting this perspective as a proven causal formula, Reinders says the visit and series of engagements will present the concept as an evolving point of view for marketers navigating an automated media environment to consider.
“Media budgets are under constant scrutiny, and so balancing machine discoverability with human relevance is critical. Our engagements will explore what this way of thinking could mean for modern brand strategy, creative development and effectiveness measurement.”
The Up&Up Group’s chief strategy officer, Robert Grace, says the implication for brands is clear: “As brands start showing up in more places than ever before, they need to add up to something coherent and absolutely clear, both for the algorithm and the consumer. When brands fragment their digital media across multiple highly targeted campaigns, with small budgets, weak creative and short campaign durations, they’re effectively turning their brand into digital shrapnel. That strategy isn’t going to work anymore.”
Some topics Nelson-Field and Connect may explore include:
- Rethinking viewability: Why standard viewability metrics fail to guarantee real impact, and how measuring attention provides clearer signals of brand memory.
- Balancing search and equity: How tactical digital performance and long-term brand building interact in an AI-mediated environment.
- Navigating AI discovery: How campaigns resonate with human audiences while maintaining visibility across automated platforms.
Reinders says that contextual insights from empirical measurement frameworks, including Amplified’s Attention AI technology, will enrich discussions on how attention data can help media planners evaluate channel quality and efficacy.
“It is understandable that there is a clamour to optimise for the machine. However, we believe it is critical to examine how human attention creates the underlying brand equity that AI systems ultimately encounter and reflect,” says Reinders.
About The Up&Up Group
The Up&Up Group (formerly M+C Saatchi Group South Africa) is one of the African continent’s leading independent creative group of companies and is 100% South African owned.
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