Your customers moved. Master the tools they use.

New tools change the route to a customer

Radio, television and print did not disappear when social media arrived. AI introduces another way to discover, research and compare. Your team, customers and competitors can use similar tools for very different purposes. The commercial task is to understand where your audience is making decisions.

I want a business to learn by using those tools. Try the questions a customer asks. See which explanations help and where the answers become unreliable. Then build a channel strategy with clear ownership and a measure of commercial contribution.

What the comparable evidence shows

Ofcom’s 2026 Media Nations report compares monthly use in Great Britain in 2019 and 2026, using IPA TouchPoints adults aged 16 and over. The chart shows social media and video-on-demand growing while live radio on radio sets and printed newspapers decline. This is reach, not daily time.

Ofcom also reports 4 hours 27 minutes of daily in-home video viewing in 2025. That figure covers video rather than every medium. A complete, comparable daily-hours history for radio, TV, print, social and AI was not established for this article.

AI is another destination, measured differently

Ofcom’s Online Nation summary records 368 million UK visits to ChatGPT in January–August 2024 and 1.8 billion in the same period of 2025. Visits are not people, sessions at work or hours. They show growth in activity, not that everyone uses one tool.

The chart keeps that measure separate. We should be equally careful in our own reporting: a view is not a lead, a lead is not revenue and a generated answer is not an accepted outcome.

What to do on Monday

Choose channels around the customer’s question and the decision you can help them make. Explain your offer clearly on your own site, use evidence where a claim needs it and make the next step practical. Keep the facts consistent so a customer or a search system does not find five versions of your business.

For AI discovery, that means useful initial HTML, clear headings, relevant FAQs, crawlable links and source notes. It does not guarantee a citation or replace paid-channel economics. Treat AI discovery as a channel to learn, measure and improve alongside the ones that already work.

• Use the tools your customers use and test real questions.
• Keep product, commercial and company facts consistent.
• Measure enquiries, conversion and contribution to margin.
• Improve content from evidence rather than publishing volume.