Adobe has yet again made a major move. On Wednesday, the company announced its acquisition of Semrush, an SEO and brand visibility platform, for $1.9 billion. The deal definitely had a way bigger motive. Adobe wants to prove that marketing visibility doesn't have to be solely focused on Google rankings anymore. They want to stop that monopoly with the goal of staying visible inside AI.
Nowadays, finding things online doesn't have to be through a search bar. You can ask ChatGPT for restaurant recommendations. Use Perplexity to research a product. Ask Claude to help you plan a trip. You're basically scrolling through answers generated by Gemini. For brands, this shift is huge. If your product doesn't show up when someone asks an AI for help, you're invisible.
In October alone, traffic to retail websites from gen AI chatbots jumped 1,200% compared to a year earlier. This trend shows how people have changed the way they interact with the web.
