How to Stay Visible When AI Kills Your Search Status
- Admin Castleview
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 55 minutes ago
Why being known matters more than being found.
Search behavior has changed dramatically over the past several years as AI summaries and zero-click results have become more common. In many cases, users receive answers directly in AI overviews and never click through to websites. This is particularly true when AI features appear above organic listings. Source
Nearly 60% of searches resulted in no clicks in 2025.
This shift fundamentally increases the value of brand presence, where the goal is to position brands as the answer within AEO results, reinforced by sustained top-of-funnel advertising.
What is going on?
Insight: Fewer people are reaching brands via traditional search because many queries now end with AI-generated summaries. Brand awareness must therefore be built before someone even types a search query.
How do Awareness Videos Improve Brand Recognition and Recall?
Brand awareness is not just about being seen once — it’s about being remembered when it counts. Research in marketing and advertising consistently shows that increased exposure improves recall. Source
Brand awareness theory demonstrates that repeated, strategic exposure moves audiences from unfamiliarity toward spontaneous recognition. Source
In creative advertising contexts, recall and saliency metrics (like ad recall and brand recall) are key indicators of whether an audience will remember a brand after exposure. Source
Insight: Awareness-level videos – especially those that use storytelling, strong visuals, and memorable hooks – are among the most effective formats for embedding a brand in memory. This increases the odds that a viewer will think of that brand later during an AI-assisted or traditional search.
Does AI Discovery Rely on Recognition and Context?
In AI-mediated discovery, search tools increasingly provide answers directly rather than merely returning links to web pages. The things that get referenced in these answers are often those that appear widely across content platforms and have strong brand associations. Source
This environment favors brands that are represented across multiple touchpoints with owned media, owned video content, citations, and entity signals.
AI Overviews and summary systems pull from diverse sources and integrate structured information about brands and entities. Source
Insight: Awareness videos serve as rich content assets that can be indexed, cited, and associated with a brand’s identity across platforms like YouTube and Wistia. These videos create multiple entry points for discovery — not just traditional search results — which increases the likelihood of appearing inside AI responses or being recommended during conversational queries.
Conversations and AI Assistants Use Recognition as Part of Discovery
AI systems are increasingly embedded into search workflows, whether that’s Google’s AI Overviews, conversational assistants, or LLM-powered search features – meaning discovery is not a single “search and click” event. Instead, users engage in iterative conversational discovery:
Users ask broader questions
They follow up with clarifications
They refine their understanding through dialogue
Research on generative search and AI summaries shows that users get what they need directly, reducing the reliance on traditional link clicks. Source
Insight: When AI systems summarize and answer questions conversationally, they pull from the entities and sources they recognize. Awareness videos published on high-visibility platforms boost the presence and credibility of the brand “entity” in the AI’s ecosystem.
Why does Video Boost Emotional Connection and Memorability?
Video is more than a static asset; it engages multiple cognitive channels (visual, auditory, narrative) that improve retention and recall. Studies on advertising memorability indicate that video content with strong emotional and visual cues tends to be more memorable. Source
While these specific academic sources explore the memorability of video content in research settings, they support the broader idea that the format itself helps brands stick in memory. This matters in today’s context because:
AI discovery often surfaces answers by synthesizing content from platforms like YouTube
Humans tend to remember brands they have seen and heard repeatedly
Conversational AI may surface brands that are already familiar
Insight: Awareness-level videos add rich associative context to a brand, which increases the chance that both AI systems and human users will recall the brand later.
Summary: How Awareness Videos Help Brands Get Found Today
1. They create repeated exposure that strengthens brand recall
so when someone asks a question, the brand is already top-of-mind.
2. They expand a brand’s presence across platforms and content ecosystems
This increases the likelihood of appearing in AI summaries or as cited entity signals.
3. They give AI discovery systems multiple signals for recognition
not just single web pages optimized for keyword clicks.
4. They provide richer narrative and emotional cues
This improves memorability compared to text or performance ads.
Conclusion
Awareness-level videos help brands get found not primarily by driving search clicks, but by increasing recognition, recall, and visibility within conversational and AI-mediated discovery systems. In an era where many searches end without a click, brands benefit most from being recognized and recommended before and during the exploratory phase of a buyer’s journey — especially when AI assistants summarize and reference content broadly.
Awareness videos published on high-visibility platforms boost the presence and credibility of the brand “entity” in the AI’s ecosystem.
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Move on to Part 2 below...
Part 2
Where Castleview Fits in the Solution
At Castleview, we’ve seen this shift play out in real time.
Marketing leaders aren’t losing performance because their teams forgot how to optimize campaigns. They’re losing it because the discovery environment changed faster than most playbooks did. The brands that continue to show up inside AI summaries, conversational research, and early buyer consideration share one thing in common: they invested in being recognized before being evaluated.
The brands that continue to show up inside AI summaries, conversational research, and early buyer consideration share one thing in common: they invested in being recognized before being evaluated.
Castleview’s work focuses specifically on this awareness layer of the funnel:
Commercials designed for recall, not clicks
Brand stories that clarify positioning before comparison begins
Top-of-funnel video built to live where discovery now happens (CTV, YouTube, social)
The goal isn’t virality or vanity metrics. It’s familiarity at scale.
From our vantage point, awareness-level video works when it does three things well:
Establishes a clear category association (“this is what we do”)
Creates a memorable narrative and visual hook
Repeats consistently across platforms buyers and AI systems already trust
That combination is what allows a brand to surface naturally later when a buyer asks an AI tool, “Who should we look at?” or “What companies do this well?”
This is why Castleview approaches brand awareness video as both infrastructure and campaign creative. In an AI-mediated discovery landscape, familiarity compounds. Once a brand is known, every future interaction – paid, organic, conversational, or AI-assisted – becomes easier and more efficient.
