When a customer types a question into ChatGPT or Perplexity, how does it decide which brand to mention — and what to say?

In this episode of The Visibility Brief, Yext Chief Data Officer Christian Ward joins SVP of Marketing Rebecca Colwell to unpack how AI engines source, summarize, cite, and speak on behalf of your brand in today’s fragmented discovery landscape. From probabilistic reasoning to prompt inversion, this is a candid look at how AI really works — and what it means for marketers trying to stay visible.

Drawing on real-world brand behavior and Yext research, Christian shares why structured data is becoming the most powerful asset in your visibility strategy — and how even small data gaps can take your brand out of the conversation entirely.

You’ll learn:

• Why AI doesn’t just search — it decides
• How structured data drives trust, visibility, and speed
• What “prompt inversion” is — and how it’s rewriting the buyer journey
• Why a clean, consistent data foundation matters more than ever
• How to reverse-engineer what AI engines see when they “look” at your website

Whether you're leading marketing, data, or digital strategy, this episode offers a practical, grounded roadmap for making your brand findable, credible, and cite-able in an AI-first world.

In the debut episode of The Visibility Brief, Yext SVP of Marketing Rebecca Colwell sits down with Chief Data Officer Christian Ward to unpack how AI is fundamentally reshaping the way consumers search — and what that means for brand visibility today.

Search isn’t just about keywords anymore. Consumers are asking more complex, personalized questions, and AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are becoming the first stop for answers. So how do you make sure your brand surfaces — and shows up accurately — when there's no traditional search result to optimize for?

Christian breaks down:

• How AI understands and interprets brand information
• The difference between structured and unstructured data
• Why citations are the new backlinks in the world of LLMs
• How location, memory, and personalization shape results
• What marketers need to do right now to stay visible in AI search

"Your AI strategy is just your data strategy. If your information isn't structured, you're invisible."

Plus, Christian shares insights from Yext’s proprietary research on over 6 million AI citations — revealing how AI platforms really decide which brands to recommend.

If you’re a marketing leader trying to future-proof your strategy for the AI era, this episode is your starting point.