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Other literature type . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: ZENODO
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Research . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
ZENODO
Research . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
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The Persona Reversal: Why AI Brand Visibility Is Not About Your Brand

Authors: Perlman, Steven;

The Persona Reversal: Why AI Brand Visibility Is Not About Your Brand

Abstract

This paper documents a structural property of AI search recommendation that we term the Persona Reversal: the brand that ChatGPT's AI search recommends most strongly changes when the audience persona shifts, even when the prompt and model are held constant. Using 3,052 brand-level and 8,811 prompt-level unpersonalized API observations across 30 brands in 4 industries from January through May 2026, we measure intra-brand Persona AiRR Drift (PAD) of up to 40.40 AiRR Score points in a single persona shift, with proportional PAD values reaching 152.8% above a brand's overall baseline. We find that aggregate AI visibility scores systematically misrepresent the recommendation behavior brands actually face from their target customers. The implication for marketing measurement, brand strategy, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is that the unit of analysis must change. AI search visibility is not a brand property. It is a property of the brand-prompt-persona triple.

Keywords

marketing measurement, recommendation systems, AEO, generative engine optimization, GEO, PAD, brand management, Persona AiRR Drift, ChatGPT, Persona Reversal, large language models, AI search, answer engine optimization, brand visibility

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average
Green