Experts share how marketers can prepare for M2M marketing in 5 steps

Marketers are just starting to familiarize themselves with machine-to-machine (M2M) marketing, where a brand AI agent and a consumer AI agent navigate decision-making. The next step is preparing for this AI-driven method of influencing consumers, by examining how agents “understand” their brands and work to improve those impressions.

“Marketers need to embrace continuous learning—it’s critical to be open to experimentation, testing, and even failing in order to drive progress in this emerging space,” said Jen Faraci, chief data officer at Digitas. “By staying curious and proactive now, marketers can position themselves to lead rather than follow as machine-to-machine marketing evolves.”

Here are five things marketers should do to stay ahead of the M2M marketing curve.

1. Understand how AI views your brand

Marketers should start analyzing how AI platforms understand and describe their brand, including their websites, platforms, or products. With AI agents communicating between consumers and brands, it’s critical to make sure machines are telling the right story.

“If I ask LLMs to describe my product, how do they do it?” asked Jason Carmel, global creative data lead at VML. “If somebody is comparing me to my three competitors, and for whatever reason the LLM thinks that I stink, I need to correct that.”

In order to correct that interpretation, brands must think beyond SEO to GEO, or generative engine optimization. “Optimize product feeds, reviews, and brand attributes for AI agents,” said Morgan Pomish, senior vice president of connections strategy and head of innovation strategy at Digitas. Marketers should:

• Test how their brand or product appears in AI-generated summaries.
• Assess how LLMs describe their products compared to those of competitors.
• Identify misinformation or negative sentiment AI may be picking up and aggregating.

2. Determine where AI info is coming from

Because most generative AI relies on publicly available data to form brand judgments, reputation management is vital. “Identify which platforms and ecosystems are training AI agents,” Pomish said. “Work to embed your brand into those learning environments.”

Marketers should monitor user-generated content in places like user-generated content, reviews, and forums like Reddit.

3. Get ahead of “zero-click” discovery

With AI reducing the need for consumers to click through to websites, marketers must optimize for a “zero-click internet,” where products are surfaced to consumers without them leaving the AI interface. Brands must make sure these summarizations are flattering, even if consumers don’t investigate further.

“This idea of zero-click internet is exactly what machine-to-machine marketing is poised to do,” Carmel said.

In order to satisfy this way of using the internet, marketers should treat AI as a new customer segment. AI is a stakeholder, rather than a tool, Pomish said. “Ask, ‘what would convince an AI to recommend us?’ and build marketing strategies around data-driven persuasion,” she said.

A zero-click internet also necessitates marketers adjust their KPIs. “Focus on the quality of your clicks, not the quantity,” said Paul Longo, general manager of AI in Ads for Microsoft Advertising. “It’s important to attract highly relevant and intent-driven queries that lead to meaningful interactions and conversions.”

4. Don’t forget about brand identity

AI agents may make advertising less effective in the consideration phase, but it will make it even more important during the awareness stage, our research shows. “Conversational AI is transforming marketing into a discipline focused on strategy and relationships,” said Longo.

“Emotional resonance will still matter,” Pomish said. “Focus on building a distinctive, consistent, values-driven brand so that when consumers do customize their agents, your brand is top of mind (and therefore top of algorithm).”

5. Experiment and explore—don’t panic

Marketers who don’t fully grasp M2M marketing are not behind, because the field is so new, Carmel said. “This is not a good time to panic... You could, with a little bit of effort, actually get a lot smarter than your competitors.”

Marketers who don’t understand what M2M marketing will look like are in the majority. “The reason why [marketers are] not sure what it's going to look like is because we haven't even set the concrete yet on this,” Carmel said. "There’s still an opportunity for machine-to-machine marketing to turn into the world’s dumbest game of telephone."

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.