How is the customer journey changing now that people research and decide with AI before they reach a brand, and what do senior marketers perceive, measure and do about it? New research from MMA and Knotch answers both from the data.
Customers now research, compare, and decide inside AI tools before they ever reach a brand’s site, and most of that activity never shows up in analytics.
Across the brands Knotch tracks, 21.9% of visitors said AI shaped their visit. Referrer tracking tagged 0.4% of them. That gap between what is happening in the journey and what marketers can see in their data is the subject of this session.
We measured it from both sides: Knotch’s behavioral and on-site visitor data for what people actually do, and an MMA survey of senior marketers for what they see, what they can measure, and what they have changed.
We will walk the findings in full, then put them to a panel of marketers who run content, website experience and measurement.
In 60 minutes, you will get:
- The real size of AI’s influence: How far AI reaches into the journey compared with what your analytics report, and which channels AI-primed visitors arrive through
- What AI visitors do differently: How the path to conversion has shortened over five quarters, and how these visitors engage once they land
- The measurement gap: How close marketers’ instincts are to the measured reality, and why so few can find it in their own data
- What marketers are rebuilding: The changes already under way in content, pages and conversion paths, who they are built for, and what is holding the rest back
- Who’s ready, and what they did first: How the marketers who measure, fund and govern this differ from the rest, and the panel’s own first moves
Session format
The research presentation opens the hour, followed by a 30-minute panel discussion and audience Q&A.
Where the data comes from
- Knotch behavioral data: 567M page views across 19 enterprise brands, Jan 2025 to Mar 2026
- Knotch on-site visitor survey: 32,425 visitor intercepts, Jan 2025 to Mar 2026
- MMA Marketer Survey, with Knotch: 103 senior marketers, May to July 2026
