AI marketing looks familiar to anyone who has run an ecommerce store for the last decade. While the technology behind these tools has changed, the fundamental tactics have not. Search engine optimization, sponsored content, email marketing, and paid advertising remain the backbone of promotional strategy. Merchants still need visibility, trust, and profitable traffic, regardless of whether they are reaching humans or bots.
Search engines and large language models use similar signals to understand a webpage, which keeps traditional SEO relevant. This was evident in May 2026, when Google published guidance on optimizing for generative AI in Search. The approach was identical to standard optimization techniques.
The French startup Smalk illustrates this continuity. The company promotes its product as Generative Engine Advertising, but its features resemble SEO. A clear structure, concise summaries, useful context, and crawlability help LLMs understand a page’s purpose. It is an old technique in a new AI way.
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Smalk’s GEA product inserts structured, relevant promotional content into articles that LLMs are likely to return in response to a specific chat query. This allows brands to influence LLM answers directly. For the advertiser, the benefit is twofold. First, the post serves as an endorsement to build trust or provide social proof. Second, sponsored posts make excellent landing pages for other types of ads.
Smalk’s offering is essentially buying ads for bots to read, but AI offers broader opportunities to advertise to humans. Advertising pre- and post-AI search is similar. AI platforms have created ad products that resemble paid search, contextual advertising, sponsored recommendations, and social ads. OpenAI has started testing ads in ChatGPT for logged-in U.S. adults on Free and Go plans. Ads appear at the bottom of answers when relevant to the current conversation and are clearly labeled. Microsoft is bringing ads to AI surfaces such as Copilot Search and Copilot Answers through its “AI Max for Search” campaigns. Perplexity began testing ads in 2024 as sponsored follow-up questions that appear beside AI-generated answers. xAI / X has discussed ads in Grok responses, with Elon Musk telling advertisers that paid suggestions could appear when users ask Grok to solve a problem.
For merchants, the opportunity looks a lot like paid search in a new interface. A shopper asks an AI assistant for the best carry-on bag, trail camera, or running shoe, and the platform inserts a relevant, labeled sponsored result. One of the oldest and most reliable promotional tools, email marketing, is experiencing a renaissance in the AI era.
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The medium is familiar, but the process is changing. Zero-click search results have reduced site traffic to most websites. Advertising can supplement, encouraging would-be customers to visit, but at a cost. Instead, some merchants and publishers are experimenting with anonymous email retargeting. The idea goes like this: use an identity resolution service, such as Retention.com, Audience Bridge, or Customers.ai, to convert an otherwise anonymous site visitor to an email address in a privacy-compliant way. Then, generate AI copy that’s optimized and personalized to the visitor. Finally, pass the content and the visitor’s email address to email advertising networks for retargeting.
The strategy is familiar. A shopper visits a product page, leaves without purchasing, and later encounters a relevant message in an email newsletter from a publisher or media partner. AI marketing, while new, relies on tried-and-true techniques. The tools are changing, but not the challenges.
