Some brands have been around for so long that almost everyone has heard of them. A high awareness figure is usually read as a sign of strength, and a brand that most people know is assumed to be a brand that many of them would buy.

Rockstar shows how far apart the two can be. Most of the people we surveyed know it, almost as many as know Monster. Yet among the people who know each brand, one in four would consider Rockstar, against four in ten for Monster, so Monster ends up being considered by about twice as many people.

The same gap appears between Gold’s Gym and Planet Fitness, and between Paramount+ and Disney+, where one brand is known almost as widely as its rival but considered by fewer of the people who know it. Fast food is the exception, as its best-known chains are also among the most considered.

Once most people know a brand, its awareness has little room left to move, while the share of them who would consider it can still change.

Looking only at the first number, Rockstar and Monster would seem to stand in about the same place. The second number shows the difference, and following it over time shows whether a brand’s position is holding or slipping.

Much is said about how AI is changing the way people shop, and much less about what that change looks like in an actual purchase. We wanted to know at which step shoppers bring in an AI assistant, and whether it ends up choosing the brand or mainly helps them decide what to look for.

A third of the 500 Americans we surveyed (33%) say they asked an AI assistant for help with something they were thinking of buying in the past three months. Most of them brought it in at the start, and the most common use, named by 60% of them, was working out what to look for. Fewer used it at each later step, and 34% used it to confirm their final choice.

When it came to the brand they finally bought, only one in ten (10%) say the AI’s assessment is what mostly decided it, and most credit something else.

As these shoppers describe it, AI changes the beginning of a purchase more than its end. Most say it helped them find something better suited to their needs, and many say it changed what they were looking for, while the final choice of brand changes much less.

These figures cover all purchases together, so they can’t tell you how many of your own buyers start with an AI assistant, or whether what it tells them to look for matches your brand.

To see what ChatGPT tells a shopper in your category, run our free AI Brand Visibility Checker →.

The full report covers all six questions, including the categories where Americans would ask an AI assistant for help, and whether it helped them buy something they would otherwise have put off, with the charts and cross-tabs behind every figure.

We ran this study ourselves on the Standard Insights platform: six questions, put to 500 US adults from September 25 to 27, 2026, with the report ready within 24 hours of the order.

That's this month's edition. If you have a question you'd like us to put to 500 Americans, reply and let me know!

See you next month.

Florian