Brands Must Prepare for Era of Post-Google Discovery: Future’s Mike Peralta
CANNES, France – Perhaps somewhere inside a chatbot near you, artificial intelligence is changing how consumers discover brands.
The traditional shopping journey once moved neatly from awareness to consideration to purchase. It was a tidy little funnel that looked lovely in PowerPoint. Now AI platforms have wedged a new discovery stage into the process and nobody is entirely sure where consumers will turn next.
“As you’ve probably seen, AI has been a consistent topic and theme throughout Cannes,” Mike Peralta, chief revenue officer of publisher Future, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The funnel gets another layer
Search engines have long served as a primary starting point for product research. Peralta said brands can no longer assume that Google will control that introduction.
“It’s not confirmed that brands are going to be discovered through Google anymore,” he said. “There’s a variety of different ways and I think brands are challenged trying to figure that out.”
Kaplan asked how Future is preparing for a possible “Google Zero” world, where audience discovery no longer depends on somebody clicking a search result.
Peralta said Future’s greatest advantage is the trust and authority accumulated by its publications. The company has been operating since 1985, while some of its titles have much deeper roots. Horse & Hound dates to 1884, an era when artificial intelligence meant remembering where you had left your horse.
Future’s portfolio also includes Tom’s Guide and Who What Wear, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Those brands have built long-term relationships with readers and expertise in their subject areas.
“We’ve got many years of trust with our readers and authority around our topics,” Peralta said, describing two signals that large language models consider when generating answers.
Publishers try to avoid becoming invisible
Future is developing AI products while expanding businesses that do not depend solely on search traffic. Those areas include branded content, experiential marketing, events, email and video intellectual property.
“We’re extremely optimistic about what the future entails,” Peralta said.
Kaplan promptly noted the apparent Future pun. With a company name like that, optimism about the future is either inspired corporate messaging or an unavoidable occupational hazard.
The broader concern for publishers is that AI systems can answer a user’s question without sending that person to the original source. A recommendation may still draw upon a publisher’s reporting or product expertise, but the familiar click could go missing.
That means publishers and advertisers must find ways to remain visible inside AI-generated responses, not merely on search-results pages.
Future Optic looks through the AI lens
Peralta described Future Optic as the publisher’s answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization offering. The product examines brand mentions and citations inside AI-driven discovery environments.
It then combines those insights with the trust and authority of Future’s content to help brands improve their chances of being found.
“It’s our AEO/GEO solution that looks at brand mentions and citations and combines that with our trust and authority across all of the content that we drive,” Peralta said.
The need is becoming more urgent as consumers adopt conversational AI tools. Instead of entering a few keywords into a search box, people can describe their circumstances, preferences and needs in considerable detail. Occasionally, they may tell the chatbot enough to qualify it as a close relative.
Brands want the whole funnel
Beyond AI search, advertisers are asking media partners to connect brand-building with measurable business results.
Peralta said marketers could once concentrate mainly on broad awareness through television or focus heavily on performance channels such as paid search and affiliate marketing. Today, they are expected to do both.
“It’s super important to combine the top of the funnel with the bottom of the funnel,” he said.
That pressure is leading brands to demand evidence that their investments produced an outcome. Media partners must offer solutions that move from awareness through purchase, rather than presenting a collection of impressive metrics that become shy when revenue enters the room.
“The combined aggregate of all those solutions needs to drive outcomes for the brands,” Peralta said.
AI makes search more personal
Peralta sees an opportunity for advertisers to build deeper relationships with consumers as product discovery becomes more conversational.
A conventional Google search might consist of two or three words, such as “best iPhone.” An AI prompt can include a person’s age, location, family situation and intended use. That additional context can help a system deliver a more personalized recommendation.
Peralta said this development could revive the promise of one-to-one marketing, a concept popularized in the 1990s but constrained by the technology available at the time.
“I think there’s an opportunity to go back to one-to-one marketing,” he said.
AI, greater computing power and extensive consumer data could finally make that vision practical. For advertisers, the opportunity is to understand what an individual wants at the moment of discovery and offer a relevant response.
The challenge is making sure the AI remembers to mention the brand. Otherwise, the consumer may receive a wonderfully personal recommendation for somebody else’s product.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lions 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
CANNES, France – Perhaps somewhere inside a chatbot near you, artificial intelligence is changing how consumers discover brands.
The traditional shopping journey once moved neatly from awareness to consideration to purchase. It was a tidy little funnel that looked lovely in PowerPoint. Now AI platforms have wedged a new discovery stage into the process and nobody is entirely sure where consumers will turn next.
“As you’ve probably seen, AI has been a consistent topic and theme throughout Cannes,” Mike Peralta, chief revenue officer of publisher Future, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The funnel gets another layer
Search engines have long served as a primary starting point for product research. Peralta said brands can no longer assume that Google will control that introduction.
“It’s not confirmed that brands are going to be discovered through Google anymore,” he said. “There’s a variety of different ways and I think brands are challenged trying to figure that out.”
Kaplan asked how Future is preparing for a possible “Google Zero” world, where audience discovery no longer depends on somebody clicking a search result.
Peralta said Future’s greatest advantage is the trust and authority accumulated by its publications. The company has been operating since 1985, while some of its titles have much deeper roots. Horse & Hound dates to 1884, an era when artificial intelligence meant remembering where you had left your horse.
Future’s portfolio also includes Tom’s Guide and Who What Wear, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Those brands have built long-term relationships with readers and expertise in their subject areas.
“We’ve got many years of trust with our readers and authority around our topics,” Peralta said, describing two signals that large language models consider when generating answers.
Publishers try to avoid becoming invisible
Future is developing AI products while expanding businesses that do not depend solely on search traffic. Those areas include branded content, experiential marketing, events, email and video intellectual property.
“We’re extremely optimistic about what the future entails,” Peralta said.
Kaplan promptly noted the apparent Future pun. With a company name like that, optimism about the future is either inspired corporate messaging or an unavoidable occupational hazard.
The broader concern for publishers is that AI systems can answer a user’s question without sending that person to the original source. A recommendation may still draw upon a publisher’s reporting or product expertise, but the familiar click could go missing.
That means publishers and advertisers must find ways to remain visible inside AI-generated responses, not merely on search-results pages.
Future Optic looks through the AI lens
Peralta described Future Optic as the publisher’s answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization offering. The product examines brand mentions and citations inside AI-driven discovery environments.
It then combines those insights with the trust and authority of Future’s content to help brands improve their chances of being found.
“It’s our AEO/GEO solution that looks at brand mentions and citations and combines that with our trust and authority across all of the content that we drive,” Peralta said.
The need is becoming more urgent as consumers adopt conversational AI tools. Instead of entering a few keywords into a search box, people can describe their circumstances, preferences and needs in considerable detail. Occasionally, they may tell the chatbot enough to qualify it as a close relative.
Brands want the whole funnel
Beyond AI search, advertisers are asking media partners to connect brand-building with measurable business results.
Peralta said marketers could once concentrate mainly on broad awareness through television or focus heavily on performance channels such as paid search and affiliate marketing. Today, they are expected to do both.
“It’s super important to combine the top of the funnel with the bottom of the funnel,” he said.
That pressure is leading brands to demand evidence that their investments produced an outcome. Media partners must offer solutions that move from awareness through purchase, rather than presenting a collection of impressive metrics that become shy when revenue enters the room.
“The combined aggregate of all those solutions needs to drive outcomes for the brands,” Peralta said.
AI makes search more personal
Peralta sees an opportunity for advertisers to build deeper relationships with consumers as product discovery becomes more conversational.
A conventional Google search might consist of two or three words, such as “best iPhone.” An AI prompt can include a person’s age, location, family situation and intended use. That additional context can help a system deliver a more personalized recommendation.
Peralta said this development could revive the promise of one-to-one marketing, a concept popularized in the 1990s but constrained by the technology available at the time.
“I think there’s an opportunity to go back to one-to-one marketing,” he said.
AI, greater computing power and extensive consumer data could finally make that vision practical. For advertisers, the opportunity is to understand what an individual wants at the moment of discovery and offer a relevant response.
The challenge is making sure the AI remembers to mention the brand. Otherwise, the consumer may receive a wonderfully personal recommendation for somebody else’s product.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage from Cannes Lions 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
