One word ran through every session at State of Social ’26: friction. AI is removing friction from how customers search, decide and buy. Search is faster. Discovery happens with less effort. Answers arrive before a question is fully thought out.
For marketers, that same change is creating a different kind of friction: a gap between how people find and choose brands, and how those brands are currently built to be chosen.
Underneath the tools and platforms, one question kept returning: as AI takes on more of our work, what happens to the human part of marketing? Every session had a different take on the topic, but the general direction was consistent. AI is changing what human judgement needs to look like in this industry, but it isn’t removing the need for that judgement.
For the third year running, our Account Director Will Bal took to the stage.
Will Bal, Account Director, on stage at State of Social ’26.
Our Outlook: “The Best Answer Wins”
Will returned to the State of Social stage on Day 1 for ‘The Best Answer Wins’, a session on where search is heading.
As we see it, search is now friction-free for customers and friction-heavy for marketers who haven’t caught up. People increasingly ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode what to buy, where to go and who to trust. Over 70% of Australians aged 25–49 now use AI tools, and Google’s share of Australian search has dropped from 94% to 88% in a year. Few brands can currently explain what that rapid shift means for them. As Will put it: “You’re not tracking this. No one is.” (We’ve unpacked why organic traffic can fall while leads hold steady in Decoding the Algorithm: Why Your Organic Traffic Is Down but Your Leads Aren’t.)
Will’s answer came down to two levers. The first is proof points: specific, checkable claims about your business. “Perth’s leading landscapers” gives AI nothing to repeat. “Transformed over 320 residential outdoor spaces across Perth since 2015” does. The second is consensus: those same facts showing up consistently across your Google Business Profile, reviews, directories, social profiles, media mentions and awards.
The industry is still divided on what to call it. Current terms include Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). Whatever the name, it’s an opportunity to be chosen by making sure your brand is the answer AI gives, while your competitors are still coming to grips with the transition.
Where Humans Still Win
Clare Pickens, CEO of Leo Australia, opened Day 1 by challenging the instinct that we should try to remove friction entirely. As AI strips friction out of how we work, she argued, some friction is actually beneficial. It protects human taste and judgement, and it pushes teams away from tidy, formulaic outcomes.
Speed without friction doesn’t automatically save time. It can mean teams move fast without learning. Clare’s call to action was a reinvestment strategy, putting saved time back into human thinking rather than into producing more, faster.
Christina Garnett, author of Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships, picked up the idea from a different angle. People are increasingly good at detecting marketing optimised to the nth degree. That’s why, more than ever, the brands people love are the ones that are showing up authentically (and even sometimes messily). For marketers, that means resisting full automation and keeping genuine effort visible in a brand’s presence.
AI is changing what human judgement needs to look like in this industry, but it isn’t removing the need for that judgement.
Tess Palmyre, Founder of Brandable, closed the theme with a practical provocation: get out of your algorithm. Friction shows up in feeds, budgets and politics, and it’s exhausting to work against. But stepping outside our comfort zone, she argued, and away from an echo chamber, is what makes work feel real in an AI-shaped world.
The Social Pulse
James Horne, Founder of WLSD and former Art Director for Aston Martin’s F1 team, argued that in our fast-moving attention economy, brands need a clear point of view more than they need more content. To hold that point of view, it’s critical that brands have a north star and employ curated storytelling over volume. Act with intention, because people respond to brands that feel human.
Josh Bailey (Co-Founder, CoCo), Gabby Torres-Soler (Head of Growth, Sked Social) and Renée Shaw (Brand and Social, tl;dv), on a panel about social media trends, discussed how audiences are more aware than ever of what they’re consuming. Echoing Christina, they argued authenticity has to be real, not simply performed. Their advice to brands included understanding the specific audience you’re speaking to, choosing a niche and sticking to it, prioritising organic content over paid reach, and picking a content format your team can sustain.
Pamela Obeid, Social Lead at Amplify, traced the growth of the creator economy and why she believes audiences are placing more trust in creators. She sees it as a lasting change rather than a passing trend, and argued brands should build creators into the core social strategy from the outset, not as an addition once the strategy is already set.
Let’s Sum It Up
Every session this year circled back to the same idea: friction. Not as something to eliminate, but as something to understand. AI is making search, discovery and execution easier. That doesn’t remove the need for human judgement, creativity, distinctive thinking or trusted brands.
The friction hasn’t disappeared, it’s just moved. It’s no longer in the tools. It’s in the thinking, the decisions and the work that still needs a human behind it. The brands that stand out will be the ones that use AI to move faster on the work that doesn’t need that friction, so there’s more time left for the work that does.