When Storm Tussey, Chief Marketing Officer at Discover Puerto Rico, looked up her own destination on Google AI mode, here’s what she found. It won’t be a surprise to anyone observing the shifts in search and discoverability. The capabilities of LLCs are pushing marketers to think beyond rankings and followers to focus on creating content that genuinely informs and inspires.

What have you typed into search lately?

“This week, I typed a question into Google’s AI Mode: Where can a traveler experience real Puerto Rican coffee culture?

Then I did the thing almost nobody in our industry does. I ignored the answer and read the sources.

Here is why I checked.

New research landed on AI search, and one number stopped me cold. Ads now appear on nearly 30% of commercial AI Mode queries. But in 88% of the ad keywords studied, the advertiser’s domain never showed up among the sources the AI actually cited. The researchers controlled for domain strength and organic standing. Advertisers earned citations no more often than anyone else.

You can buy the ad next to the answer. You cannot buy your way into the answer.

Citations have to be earned. And what earns them is substance.

Real people in specific places, documented with enough texture that a machine trained on the whole internet recognizes the original source instead of the echo.

This is exactly why our creator strategy starts with voice and cultural curiosity, never follower counts.

When a creator visits a family farm like Dilora and Javi’s in Ciales, the brief starts with questions, never a shot list. The stories that come out of those conversations cannot be replicated by an aggregator, because the aggregator was never in the room. Pair that with editorial infrastructure that makes those stories discoverable, and a farm in the mountains at the heart of the island starts appearing when a traveler asks an AI where coffee culture actually lives.

The people are the culture. The culture is the moat. And the moat is now machine-verified.

So before your next budget meeting, run my two-minute test.

Ask an AI the question your ideal traveler would ask. Skip the answer. Read the sources. If you are not in them, your ad dollars are renting space next to a conversation you are not part of. Go earn the citation. Start with the people who were the story all along.”