Is it worth investing in AI traffic now? Calculate how much you lose each month when your company is not included in AI responses

The classic sales funnel has changed, and modern marketing must keep up. More and more users are starting their shopping journey with research on ChatGPT rather than Google, as was previously the case. Although Google continues to grow and dominate the search market, AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity) are increasing in strength at a much faster rate, and companies should not ignore this.

A report published earlier this year by Capgemini shows that 68% of consumers want AI tools to aggregate search results and content from websites into a single, specific answer that shows them possible purchasing options. This is not surprising – from the user’s perspective, it is a huge convenience and time saver, because instead of doing research on their own and wading through dozens of pages, they get the answer served up on a plate in the form of a recommendation.

Source: Capegemini

Other data from the same report indicates that 58% of consumers have already switched from Google to AI tools for shopping or service recommendations. This suggests that shifting some searches to AI models is not a vision of the future, but a reality that must be addressed to avoid losing potential profits from this channel.

Source: Capegemini

Imagine this situation. Your potential customer turns to ChatGPT with a query about a service in your industry. In response, they receive information from the websites of three of your competitors, with a detailed comparison of the pros and cons of each offer. If ChatGPT doesn’t even mention your brand, you won’t exist in the customer’s mind. They will consider the three solutions presented, probably visit the websites, but they won’t go back to researching service providers – that step is done for them by artificial intelligence.

That is why it is so crucial to build visibility also in the new channel, which is AI Search. If AI language models are not “taught” information about your brand, you will not appear in the narrow selection basket, they will not include you in their answers, and you will lose potential customers. Usually, a year ago, you could have had traffic and leads from organic or paid channels – today, their number will decrease or they will become more expensive to acquire (higher CPC) – because these leads are “escaping” to AI models.

If you are wondering how much you can gain from visibility in AI tools, we have prepared a method below for estimating potential profits, or in the case of no presence in AI, losses.

For e-commerce businesses

1. Monthly number of queries in AI models for your product category – first, you will need the potential number of queries. Although the tools do not currently show the search volume dedicated to AI tools, you can use the search volume for Google for estimation. According to the Wall Street Journal, AI models have taken over 5.6% of the search market from Google in the US (as of June 2025)(1). So you can assume that for transactional phrases, the average search volume in AI models will be 5% of the volume for Google. Therefore, if the phrase “women’s shoes for fall” receives 20,000 searches on Google, it will likely generate around 1,000 for ChatGPT.
2. Average CTR for links provided in LLM model responses – according to tests, the average percentage of users clicking on links provided in AI responses is around 2-3%. For our example with women’s shoes for fall, this would be 1,000*0.02 = 20 clicks.
3. How often do customers convert relative to clicks – here, you will need metrics specific to your business, as this will vary depending on the store. Suppose you know your average conversion rate for organic traffic. In that case, you can assume that it will be higher for AI traffic (based on numerous tests, experts indicate similar results to our R&D department and the largest e-commerce stores in Poland and Europe, that AI traffic has a significantly higher conversion rate due to greater trust in recommendations, e.g., from ChatGPT). So if your normal conversion rate (CR) is 3%, you can assume 9-12% for AI traffic.
   So, 20 clicks x 9-12% gives you an average of 2-3 orders from that particular phrase.
4. Average cart value – if you regularly analyze your store’s conversions, you surely know what the average order value is. You can use this value and multiply it by the number of potential converting customers from AI traffic. Let’s assume that your average basket value is PLN 320, so conversions from one specific phrase generate revenue of PLN 640-960.
5. Final result – to obtain the final estimation result, repeat steps 1-3 for the top 10 best-converting phrases in your store. Multiply the total number of customers you could acquire in this way by the average basket value, and you will obtain information on how much you are losing if you are not present in AI models.
   For the fashion and automotive aftermarket industries in Poland, the losses due to the lack of presence in AI are currently PLN 15,000-20,000, and let’s remember that AI traffic and tools are growing very quickly, even by several dozen percent per year.

For businesses in the B2B sector

For B2B, the estimate will be similar, but the conversion rate will be different, which is much higher for collected leads than for clicks for B2C.

For example:

• 1,000 queries per month appear in AI about a popular service.
• An average CTR of 3% will give us 30 leads.
• With B2B customers, we also observe a trend that the quality of leads generated by AI models is higher – because ChatGPT researches the service and provides the best-suited solution to the customer’s expectations, thereby eliminating their objections.
• The average conversion rate for acquired leads is 20%. In this case, we gain 6 new real customers.
• The average value of the service will, of course, depend on the industry and the offer of a given company, but for calculation, let’s assume that it will be PLN 5,000.
• In this case, the loss caused by the lack of presence in AI for the B2B industry would amount to PLN 30,000 per month.

You already know how much it can cost you to lose visibility in AI. However, you can check your current visibility in such tools yourself in several ways.

For traffic from the most popular tools, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude, you can obtain such data directly from GA4, where data about the domains from which customers visit your website is stored. Our Senior R&D SEO Specialist, Wojciech Urban, has prepared a dedicated AI report in Looker Studio, which you can use for free. There you will find not only data on AI traffic, but also conversions, which you can use to verify your previous estimates.

Source: AI Bot Tracker and Cerber AI, Delante’s proprietary tool

When it comes to visibility in AI Overview, such modules have already appeared in the most popular monitoring tools, such as Semrush and Ahrefs, and on the Polish market, among others, in Senuto and Semstorm.

To create content that AI will quote and Google won’t forget, you need to keep a few things in mind. Make sure your texts have a clear and legible structure, remember to add statistics and your thoughts, add structured data to your content, get familiar with FAQs, and always put content chunks on the podium. This will make your content friendly to both humans and AI models.

Sources:

https://www.capgemini.com/news/press-releases/71-of-consumers-want-generative-ai-integrated-into-their-shopping-experiences/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-search-is-growing-more-quickly-than-expected-f75aa1ca