🕹️Borrowed Visibility…It’s a Risky Game to Play.

Welcome back.

This week, against the backdrop of recent controversy, we’ve got a deep dive into the new PMA industry standard for toolbars; we take a look at Reddit’s LLM visibility decline — and what the industry thinks of it — as well as how far marketers will go when delegating trust to AI, and a new AI browser offering.

Last week, we also rolled out our second PI LIVE Europe keynote investigating the question on everyone’s lips: what happens when AI starts deciding what your customers buy? 

We’re bringing industry AI expert James Bentley with Google AI strategist Heiko Hotz to delve into the rise of agentic commerce and what action brands need to take to stay visible, relevant and ready — more on that below. 

Now, let’s dive in.

In today's newsletter:

• Pick of the day: Reddit Relegated from Prime Real Estate Position in ChatGPT Citations.
• Trending: New Industry Toolbar Standard Proposed by the PMA.
• Industry Insight: What Does Reddit’s ChatGPT Relegation Mean for Strategies?

Pick of the day

Reddit Relegated from Prime Real Estate Position in ChatGPT Citations

For many in marketing, Reddit has been the flavour of the month. And, for a time, Reddit was a key source for LLM search results, too.

However, last week, data from Promptwatch revealed that the tide may have turned. On August 14th, Reddit’s citation rate fell off a cliff, falling from around 3.8% to below 1%.

Trending

What's hot on Hello Partner right now

How Far Will Marketers Go When it Comes to Delegating Trust?

AI capability does not equate to operational readiness, and autonomous decision-making lacks consensus across job roles, according to new research. 

New Industry Toolbar Standard Proposed by the PMA

From 1st September, PMA members will be invited to vote on the standard. If approved, the standard will take effect from January 1, 2027.

A New Player Enters the Chat: Firefox Launches New Features for Opt-in AI-Powered Smart Window

The launch, in partnership with Exa, offers what it calls a “privacy-first” AI browser experience. Here’s what it could mean for you.

PI LIVE Europe Investigates How Brands Win in the Age of Agents

AI is rewriting the consumer journey, and the next generation of commerce will be shaped by intelligent agents, autonomous decisions and AI-powered experiences.

So, how do brands win in the age of agents? At PI LIVE Europe, we're bringing together James Bentley, Founder of Numerical and Heiko Hotz, an author, lecturer, and leading AI strategist at Google, to delve into exactly that.

In this keynote, the two experts will explore how the world’s leading companies are preparing for an agentic future: how brands build AI-ready organisations, how customer journeys are being reinvented, and what it takes to stay visible and valuable when machines increasingly mediate decisions.

​To get your ticket to Europe’s largest gathering of the partnership economy, head over here.

Learn more

Industry Insight

Stay at the top of your game

GEO is a hot topic right now. Brands are vying for LLM visibility, and efforts have increasingly been directed towards Reddit, a platform which has witnessed both an uptick in users and LLM citations in recent years. However, with recent data, at least in citations, Reddit has seen a significant drop-off. So, what is the industry saying this means for brands and marketers, and what actions are they recommending? 

What should you pay attention to?

Ivan Slobodin recommends re-baselining before reporting, noting that a drop dated 4 August is “the platform, not your work.” Alongside this, he says put a pin in Reddit as a discovery channel, keep it for brand reputation, move effort to owned pages and keep monitoring the situation. 

Help centres, established companies and app marketplaces move up the ranks

For Jake Ward, people are focusing on the wrong part of the story, noting that “something much bigger seems to have changed in how ChatGPT searches.”

Ward notes that it began using “way more specific searches,” indicating ChatGPT is transitioning from searching the web, seeing what ranks and citing it, and instead, focusing more on choosing where to search, searching those sites and building the answer. 

He added that another dataset found that, alongside Reddit, review sites and smaller company sites have also experienced a drop, with an uptick in help centres and docs, established companies and app marketplaces. 

“…if AI search keeps proving one thing, it’s how quickly things change,” says Ward.

Borrowed visibility

Meanwhile, Chris Westmeyer notes: “Your Reddit visibility was never yours. It was borrowed from somebody else's, and it can be revoked at any time.”

Westmeyer adds that if a single afternoon at OpenAI wipes out 86% of a company’s citation footprint “that wasn't a strategy. That was a rental agreement.”

What should the play be instead? Own the asset, build the entity and “put the expertise on a domain you control,” he says. 

“...Reddit's still worth having. It's just not worth betting on.”

Emilia Möller echoes this, noting that “AI visibility isn't static.” Möller adds that the sources that LLMs rely on can change “quickly and independently.”

“Which means “get mentioned on Reddit” or “get cited by authoritative publications” isn't really an AI search strategy.”

Here, Möller says that brands need to know which sources each platform is using for the questions customers ask.

“And keep watching when that changes.”

Meanwhile, Amanda Natividad says that if a strategy is “subject to the whims of an LLM,” there are a lot more problems at work. 

“If you were focusing on Reddit because you know that's where your audience spends time — and you were learning from them, participating in the community, answering questions, building credibility — then the ChatGPT change doesn't suddenly make Reddit less valuable.”

The only constant is change 

Ali McClintock says that the “only constant is change,” and there’s opportunity in that change. 

“Reddit citations reducing has happened before and it won't be forever. It’s just good strategy from OpenAI to ensure they're not relying on too few sources. & a good reminder for us to do the same in our SEO & GEO strategies.”

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Until next time,

Madaline Dunn Community Editor Email me Connect with me on LinkedIn