Your brand is everywhere. Why isn’t it being chosen? Key takeaways from our interview with Trustpilot Director Justin Cutroni
Our VP of Growth, Caitlin Halpert sat down with Trustpilot Director of Product Evangelism and Customer Education, Justin Cutroni to find out exactly what brands need to do to get discovered, understood and chosen in a machine-mediated world.
The old definition of marketing visibility is becoming dangerously narrow. It used to mean optimising for impressions, reach, rankings and share of search. To be visible, you needed to appear at the top of the SERP, or on your customer’s social feed.
However, being present doesn’t mean being chosen. As Justin highlighted, attention itself is fairly cheap – you can buy plenty of attention, but actually converting and creating a brand ambassador takes a lot of effort and work.
In the new era of discovery, AI introduces another layer between the brand and the customer: the machine decides what information gets surfaced, which brands get mentioned and how they’re described. This loss of control over the customer journey is what brands need to get ahead of.
Customers now increasingly discover information through platforms that mediate what they see. For example, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini take this further than search engines ever did, not just deciding where your brand appears, but even influencing how it is described.
For brands, this machine-mediated discovery is a risk. The new gatekeeper, AI, is deciding the story your customer hears.
Justin brought this back to Trustpilot. As the world’s largest open review platform, anyone can leave a review. But investing in the customer experience, listening to critical feedback and actually improving, then putting that on public display? That’s very powerful. It becomes an authentic source of visibility during the discovery process.
AI systems look at third party sources (reviews, communities, publicly available signals), not just owned content, when portraying a brand narrative. This means brands need to think beyond controlling their own channels for true discovery.
And that lack of control is something brands need to get comfortable with.
The answer isn’t to try and control every signal. It’s to make sure the signals that exist in the wild accurately reflect the brand you want to be.
So what happens once people find your brand? Interpretation is about what those signals actually tell people (and machines) about your brand.
A brand can have high visibility and still send confusing signals. Justin brought forward two examples:
Justin described AI as a new black box for marketers to understand. And while brands can’t control exactly how a model interprets them, they can control the quality and consistency of the signals they put into the world.
The closer someone gets to a purchase, the more specific their questions become.
Your own website can answer these questions. But it can’t necessarily validate the answers, which is where third-party signals become even more important.
Reviews are essentially digital word-of-mouth. They provide something a brand’s own channels can’t: an independent perspective from someone who has actually experienced the product or service.
Justin explained that review data is particularly valuable because it is relevant, recent and findable. It gives AI systems access to real customer experiences, rather than simply the story a brand tells about itself.
He discussed Trustpilot research which highlights this. Going from no review profile to just 13 reviews resulted in a 50x increase in AI citations, jumping from 1% to 53%. Increasing that to around 80 reviews pushed citation rates to 75%. For larger brands, hundreds of reviews also created an unprompted co-mention effect, making them 9.5x more likely to be mentioned alongside competitors without being directly prompted. For smaller brands, the uplift was 5x.
However, the takeaway isn’t simply ‘get more reviews’. It’s that relatively small amounts of fresh, relevant third-party evidence can materially change how often a brand appears in AI answers.
Giving customers a reason to choose you is what really drives long-term growth. Optimising for AI quickly falls through when algorithms change and tactics stop working.
As Justin put it, doing good marketing and providing valuable information to people is still a solid foundation. Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to build momentum.
So, brands need to stop asking “Which channel drove the sale?” and start asking if their brand can be found, understood and chosen in the new marketing landscape. Justin’s central message? The brands that win will ensure every interaction a customer has with a brand gives people - and machines - another reason to choose it.
Watch the full interview with Justin now on our YouTube channel here.
Your brand can be everywhere and still be invisible
The old definition of marketing visibility is becoming dangerously narrow. It used to mean optimising for impressions, reach, rankings and share of search. To be visible, you needed to appear at the top of the SERP, or on your customer’s social feed.
However, being present doesn’t mean being chosen. As Justin highlighted, attention itself is fairly cheap – you can buy plenty of attention, but actually converting and creating a brand ambassador takes a lot of effort and work.
In the new era of discovery, AI introduces another layer between the brand and the customer: the machine decides what information gets surfaced, which brands get mentioned and how they’re described. This loss of control over the customer journey is what brands need to get ahead of.
“You can buy plenty of attention, but actually converting and creating a brand ambassador takes a lot of effort and work”
The new brand challenge is getting through the gatekeeper
Customers now increasingly discover information through platforms that mediate what they see. For example, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini take this further than search engines ever did, not just deciding where your brand appears, but even influencing how it is described.
For brands, this machine-mediated discovery is a risk. The new gatekeeper, AI, is deciding the story your customer hears.
Justin brought this back to Trustpilot. As the world’s largest open review platform, anyone can leave a review. But investing in the customer experience, listening to critical feedback and actually improving, then putting that on public display? That’s very powerful. It becomes an authentic source of visibility during the discovery process.
AI systems look at third party sources (reviews, communities, publicly available signals), not just owned content, when portraying a brand narrative. This means brands need to think beyond controlling their own channels for true discovery.
And that lack of control is something brands need to get comfortable with.
“The big thing is that you now have an algorithm and a model that decides your brand voice, how your brand comes up, and the information displayed about your brand.”
The answer isn’t to try and control every signal. It’s to make sure the signals that exist in the wild accurately reflect the brand you want to be.
Being found isn’t enough, your brand needs to be understood
So what happens once people find your brand? Interpretation is about what those signals actually tell people (and machines) about your brand.
A brand can have high visibility and still send confusing signals. Justin brought forward two examples:
- A premium brand that consistently pushes deep discounts is telling customers two very different stories.
- An SEO strategy that creates content across every topic under the sun might generate traffic, but it can make it harder for machines to understand what the brand is actually an authority on.
Justin described AI as a new black box for marketers to understand. And while brands can’t control exactly how a model interprets them, they can control the quality and consistency of the signals they put into the world.
The trust signals your brand doesn’t control could be your most valuable
The closer someone gets to a purchase, the more specific their questions become.
- Will it arrive on time?
- What happens if something goes wrong?
- Is customer service any good?
Your own website can answer these questions. But it can’t necessarily validate the answers, which is where third-party signals become even more important.
Reviews are essentially digital word-of-mouth. They provide something a brand’s own channels can’t: an independent perspective from someone who has actually experienced the product or service.
Justin explained that review data is particularly valuable because it is relevant, recent and findable. It gives AI systems access to real customer experiences, rather than simply the story a brand tells about itself.
He discussed Trustpilot research which highlights this. Going from no review profile to just 13 reviews resulted in a 50x increase in AI citations, jumping from 1% to 53%. Increasing that to around 80 reviews pushed citation rates to 75%. For larger brands, hundreds of reviews also created an unprompted co-mention effect, making them 9.5x more likely to be mentioned alongside competitors without being directly prompted. For smaller brands, the uplift was 5x.
However, the takeaway isn’t simply ‘get more reviews’. It’s that relatively small amounts of fresh, relevant third-party evidence can materially change how often a brand appears in AI answers.
“Reviews are digital word-of-mouth. Now we’re transitioning into doing that with machines.”
Stop trying to game AI and start building a brand worth choosing
Giving customers a reason to choose you is what really drives long-term growth. Optimising for AI quickly falls through when algorithms change and tactics stop working.
As Justin put it, doing good marketing and providing valuable information to people is still a solid foundation. Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to build momentum.
“You don’t need to try to game the system if you do things the right way, focus on customers, and remain obsessed with their success.”
So, brands need to stop asking “Which channel drove the sale?” and start asking if their brand can be found, understood and chosen in the new marketing landscape. Justin’s central message? The brands that win will ensure every interaction a customer has with a brand gives people - and machines - another reason to choose it.
Watch the full interview with Justin now on our YouTube channel here.
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