Budgets Are Racing Ahead of Trust: What Kantar's Data Means for AI Assistant Marketing
This year, nearly every marketing meeting lands on the same question: "Are we being recommended in ChatGPT and Gemini?" AI assistants are becoming a new front door to discovery, and budgets are following. But Kantar's Media Reactions 2026 study, released in early October 2026, puts a gentle brake on the hype: marketers are investing far faster than consumers are learning to trust. This article unpacks the data and looks at how to approach AI assistant marketing without betting your brand on a channel people are not yet ready to believe.
The gap in numbers: a net 75% will spend more, only 23% trust
Kantar surveyed more than 800 senior marketers and 23,000 consumers across 33 markets. Put the two sides next to each other and the gap is hard to miss:
- 62% of marketers expect generative AI to play a pivotal role in brand recommendations.
- A net 75% plan to increase investment in AI assistants in 2027, including paid ads.
- Yet only 32% of consumers use AI assistants to research brands and products.
- And only 23% trust the recommendations those assistants give.
Gonca Bubani, Kantar's global media director, put it plainly: a lot of money is moving toward AI on the assumption that people will use it the way the industry expects. In other words, today's budgets are backing a hypothesis, not proven consumer behavior.
Where the AI assistant marketing trust gap comes from
Kantar doesn't offer a single explanation. It lists several possible factors: how people feel about AI itself, what they already think of a given brand, where AI answers come from, and how those answers are presented.
That is actually good news, because at least two of those factors are within a brand's control:
- Existing brand perception. If people already know and trust you, an AI mention lands more easily. An unfamiliar name surfaced by an assistant rarely turns straight into a purchase.
- The sources behind the answer. Assistants draw on websites, reviews, press coverage and creator content. The clearer and more consistent your information is across those places, the more reliable the raw material for the answer.
So an AI assistant is not a channel where you can simply buy trust. It works more like a magnifying glass, enlarging whatever you have already built elsewhere.
Don't put every egg in one basket: the channel mix still does the heavy lifting
Another number in the same study is easy to overlook. Kantar's LIFT+ database shows that between 2020 and 2025, 43% of campaign performance came from channels working together, up from 18% before 2014.
Meanwhile, marketers' own confidence is slipping. Only 50% are confident they have the right balance between brand building and performance marketing, down from 60% in 2025, and confidence in the media mix fell from 64% to 57%.
In that environment, pulling large budgets out of proven channels and pouring them into AI assistants is a real risk. A steadier approach treats AI assistants as one member of the mix, supported by video, search, social and creator content. Kantar also found that marketers planning creator investment favor micro (66%) and nano creators (61%) over big-name influencers. Those real human voices are exactly the kind of sources AI answers cite and consumers are more willing to believe.
How to invest: four ways to test with your eyes open
Kantar's advice is to test "with your eyes open" and to make your brand meaningfully different to both humans and machines. In practice, that looks like this:
1. Ring-fence a small experimental budget
Treat AI assistant spend, whether paid placements or content optimization, as a separate test budget with a clear question to answer, such as "Do visitors from AI recommendations convert close to search ad visitors?"
2. Measure visibility before scaling
Before spending more, find out how you appear in AI answers today: whether you are mentioned, how you are described and which sources are cited. Our earlier piece, Understanding AI Visibility Measurement Through IAB's Four Ps, offers a framework.
3. Keep your brand story consistent everywhere
Your website, product pages, FAQs, press coverage and creator collaborations should all say the same thing about who you are, who you serve and how you differ. When an assistant assembles an answer, consistent signals beat clever copy.
4. Keep investing in what people already trust
Genuine reviews, honest creator experiences and clear service and return promises become more valuable in the AI era, not less. AI can help people find you; credible people and content are still what make them say yes.
Conclusion: earn human trust first, and AI will speak for you
AI assistant marketing deserves investment, but it is not a shortcut around brand building. With consumer trust hovering around 23%, the smartest move right now is to test with small budgets, measure visibility properly, and organize your website and content so both machines and people understand it. That is where TitApeX works best: technology to make your brand information precise, design and storytelling to make people remember you. If you are planning next year's AI marketing budget, let's talk, or explore our services first.
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