Is Generative AI Creating a New Marketing Channel — or Reshaping the Funnel?

Marketing funnel is evolving.

Every major change in media has altered not only where marketers advertise, but how consumers discover, evaluate and ultimately choose products.

Generative AI could be the next significant shift.

From mass media to measurable journeys

During the traditional era, the funnel was relatively straightforward:

Mass Media → Awareness → Consideration → Purchase

Television, print, radio and outdoor advertising were designed to reach broad audiences. Marketing was heavily centred around memorable creative ideas, repetition and long-term brand building.

The goal was often simple: make the brand famous enough that when somebody eventually entered the category, they remembered you.

Then came digital.

The journey became increasingly measurable:

Impression → Click → Landing Page → Conversion

Search engines, social media, programmatic advertising and marketing automation gave marketers something previous generations could only dream about: visibility into consumer behaviour.

We could target specific audiences, measure clicks, optimise campaigns, retarget visitors and attribute conversions to particular channels.

Entire marketing organisations evolved around this model. CPC. CPA. ROAS. Conversion rates. Attribution models. Landing-page optimisation.

The funnel didn't disappear. It became more observable.

Generative AI could change the journey again

Now we are entering another era.

A simplified version of the emerging journey might look something like:

Need → Conversation → Discover → Compare → Decide → Act

Someone looking for accounting software, a holiday destination, a CRM platform or even a new laptop may increasingly begin with a conversation rather than a traditional search.

Instead of opening ten browser tabs, they might ask an AI system:

What are the best options for a company like mine?

Then:

How do these three compare?

Then:

Which one would you choose based on my requirements?

And eventually:

Help me buy it.

What feels particularly different here is that discovery, research, comparison and evaluation can increasingly happen within the same interface — and potentially within the same conversation.

That matters because those activities traditionally happened across multiple stages of the marketing ecosystem.

Discovery might happen on Instagram.

Research might happen on Google.

Validation might come from Reddit or review sites.

Comparison might happen across several vendor websites.

Conversion might happen through a landing page or ecommerce store.

Generative AI has the potential to bring several of those behaviours much closer together.

In other words, AI may not simply create another acquisition channel.

It could compress parts of the consideration journey.

Marketers may soon have two audiences

There is another change that I think deserves just as much attention.

Historically, marketers have built almost everything for humans.

Websites are written for people.

Campaigns are designed for people.

Positioning is created so people understand why one product is different from another.

But increasingly, there may be another audience sitting between the brand and the customer:

AI systems.

If AI assistants become an important layer of product discovery, marketers will need to think about how clearly those systems understand their company, product, category and differentiation.

Can an AI system accurately explain what your product does?

Does it understand who the product is designed for?

Can it identify your strongest differentiators?

Does it have enough reliable information to compare you with competitors?

This could create an interesting expansion of disciplines such as SEO, content marketing, digital PR and structured product information.

The challenge may no longer be simply:

Can customers find us?

It may increasingly become:

Can the systems helping customers make decisions understand us correctly?

What happens to media budgets?

If conversational interfaces become a meaningful part of the consideration process, the next question is inevitably economic.

Where does the budget move?

For years, marketers have distributed acquisition spend across a relatively familiar ecosystem:

Search.

Social.

Display.

Affiliate.

Influencers.

Marketplaces.

Publishers.

Retail media.

Generative AI introduces another potential participant in that mix.

But the interesting part is not simply whether marketers will allocate a percentage of budget to AI-native advertising.

The bigger question is whether AI changes the value of the channels surrounding it.

If more product comparison takes place inside an AI interface, does some high-intent search spend migrate with it?

If AI recommendations replace portions of publisher and affiliate discovery, what happens to those economics?

If AI systems increasingly influence which brands enter the consideration set in the first place, does investment in brand authority, content and third-party validation become even more important?

Those questions could eventually become much more consequential than simply asking what CPMs or CPCs look like inside an AI platform.

The transition won't happen evenly

There is, of course, a danger in assuming every category will behave the same way.

They won't.

Low-risk consumer purchases may move quickly towards conversational discovery and recommendation.

Complex B2B purchases will still involve stakeholders, demos, procurement processes and sales teams.

And regulated sectors such as financial services and crypto will naturally face additional constraints around recommendations, advertising, compliance and suitability.

Consumer behaviour will also take time to change.

Search isn't disappearing.

Social isn't disappearing.

Websites aren't disappearing.

Funnels rarely get replaced overnight.

Instead, new behaviours tend to layer themselves onto the existing ecosystem until the balance gradually shifts.

A new channel, or a new shape of the funnel?

That is why I think the most interesting question around AI advertising isn't necessarily:

“Is this the next big advertising channel?”

It might be:

“What happens when the interface helping people discover products also helps them research, compare and make the decision?”

Because if that behaviour becomes mainstream, the implications extend far beyond media buying.

They touch content strategy.

SEO.

Brand positioning.

Product information.

Reputation.

Attribution.

Website strategy.

And potentially the architecture of the marketing funnel itself.

It is still early.

But we may be watching the beginning of another transition in how consumers move from need to decision.

And for marketers, that is probably worth paying attention to.

How are other marketers thinking about it: is generative AI simply another channel, or are we beginning to see a new shape of the funnel?