Andrew Blakeley, strategy director at The Ninety-Niners, takes a look at how share of model is increasingly important to brands in the AI era...

John Lewis recently launched its 'Gift List' vodcast, in which Angela Scanlon interviews celebrities about memorable gifts. Filmed in a new studio at its Oxford Street flagship, it reinforces the retailer’s association with finding the perfect gift while pointing to the growing importance of social media and AI discovery.

Outgoing managing director Peter Ruis said the proportion of customers searching for products through AI tools had risen from 0.3% a year ago to 2.5%, with usage accelerating. It’s still a small base, but as AI becomes embedded in phones, searches and lives, it’s hard to see this going anywhere but up.

Caring about share

Marketers of all stripes know Share of Voice, a brand’s share of advertising presence within its category. The industry has also started to embrace Les Binet’s Share of Search, which helps reveal whether people are actively seeking a brand out. His research found it could signal market-share movements up to a year ahead in automotive.

Now marketers are starting to ask: "Are we mentioned, represented accurately, and recommended when people ask AI for help?" Enter Share of Model: how often, how prominently and how favourably a brand appears in AI-generated answers to relevant category questions.

Long-term brand-building can contribute to Share of Model. AI answers draw on media coverage, reviews, conversations, and product information that established brands accumulate. Share of Model is not the new Share of Voice. The latter can actively feed the former.

How much does this matter?

AI is becoming an addition to search, rather than a replacement. A July 2026 YouGov study of 2,000 British adults found that 85% of online searchers had used a traditional search engine in the previous month, while 31% had used an AI assistant or chatbot.

But many people use AI without seeking out a chatbot or agent. In July 2025, Google said AI Overviews were reaching more than two billion monthly users. A US Pew study found users clicked a conventional result on 8% of visits with an AI summary, versus 15% without one. Featuring in the answer itself is therefore becoming more important than simply ranking beneath it.

Why what John Lewis is doing makes sense

This move will be partly driven by the need to feed the never satiated social media content machine, because feeding that machine is (and perhaps should be) the primary thought behind any modern campaign. 

Bit, like a department store, a vodcast does different things for different audiences (including non-sentient, robot ones). It offers human-led entertainment while reinforcing associations between John Lewis and gifting.

In 2025, YouTube reported more than one billion monthly active viewers of podcast content. Add Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everyone under the "wherever you get your podcasts" banner, and the audience potential is enormous.

Video also generates a ready supply of clippable moments that can be served as social media content and ads, reaching beyond – and expanding – the series’ audience. Short clips are also the primary way people discover longer form content. It’s why podcast fans will have observed many of their favourites pivoting to video for precisely this reason. 

As an aside, it’s also why in every movie now all the action happens in the centre of the screen - so it can be  served in a vertical format. Check out the comparisons between the original Harry Potter movies and the new HBO series - it’s all centred.

However, a vodcast alone isn’t enough to make a brand discoverable to AI. Searchable titles, transcripts, product links, and supporting pages help crawlers index the content and AI search systems retrieve and understand it.

Five things brands can do

1. Be genuinely recommendable
   Easy to say, difficult to do, but strong Share of Model should flow from authentic reviews and recommendations. Just as good advertising can’t fix a bad product, you can’t optimise your way out of people slating your brand.
   
2. Earn credible corroboration
   Also known as good old-fashioned PR. News coverage, independent reviews, and expert testing will never not be important. 'Best of' lists and comparison articles are useful source material for AI answers, so being featured by credible, relevant sources can go a long way.
   
3. Earn conversation in relevant communities
   AI answers can surface conversations from the more 'real' parts of the internet, including Reddit, YouTube, and specialist forums. By contributing transparently and usefully to relevant communities, brands can earn genuine warmth and help answer the questions people are asking.
   
4. Build content around real questions and needs
   When creating content, think about prompts people might use around the category, need or product. Expert-led anchor content adapted into social formats helps connect brands to category entry points for people and AI alike. Google says AI Mode queries are three times longer than traditional searches, reflecting a more detailed and conversational way of searching.
   
5. Make the brand easy for machines to understand
   Get the basics of optimisation right. Maintain crawlable product pages with clear specifications, use cases, prices, availability, reviews, and returns information. Keep structured data, product feeds, and metadata accurate. Web content needs to be as clear beneath the surface as it is on the surface.

All I want for Christmas is Share of Model

Share of Model will be a bigger battleground as we head toward Christmas, but it should sit alongside established ways of building fame and relevance. It remains a less settled metric than Share of Voice or Share of Search, varying by model, prompt, and moment. Brands should treat it as a diagnostic, tracking key prompts alongside AI referral traffic and branded search. Whether the brand appears, how prominently and accurately, and which sources are cited will help guide optimisation.

The smart brand won’t simply have a big, famous TV-led campaign with supporting radio, out-of-home, press, and branded content. It will also have content that answers: 'What do I get my know-it-all brother-in-law who I don’t really like, but still want to impress? He’s an accountant who likes cars, football, and knows a surprising amount about cheese.'