Pete Blackshaw Launches The Answer Economy, a New Playbook for Brands in the AI Era

New Wiley book examines how brands can earn visibility and trust as AI agents increasingly influence consumer decisions

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, September 30, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Consumers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to discover products, compare brands, and decide what to buy. According to Adobe’s 2026 holiday shopping forecast, released Sept. 28, traffic from AI-powered services to U.S. retail sites—measured by shoppers clicking on links—is expected to rise 130% year over year this holiday season.

Against this backdrop, longtime consumer advocate and BrandRank.AI co-founder and CEO Pete Blackshaw is redefining what it takes for brands to earn visibility, recommendation, and trust in the AI era. Today, Blackshaw launches The Answer Economy: How AI Agents Will Decide Your Brand’s Future before a global business audience at HUBFORUM 2026 in Paris.

Published by Wiley and now available for purchase, the book introduces a new reality for business leaders: Brands no longer compete only for search rankings, shelf space, or share of voice. They must increasingly understand whether AI platforms will name, accurately describe, trust, and recommend their brand when consumers ask for guidance.

BrandRank.AI measures this dynamic through Recommendation Share—the percentage of relevant AI recommendations a brand earns relative to its competitors.

“The shift from search to answers is fundamentally changing the relationship between brands and consumers,” said Blackshaw. “Visibility can be engineered. Trust still has to be earned. The brands that succeed in the Answer Economy will be those that make both priorities central to how they operate.”

Blackshaw will introduce the book’s central ideas on the HUB Institute’s HUBFORUM stage in a launch-day presentation about The Answer Economy. His appearance will be followed by a book signing for conference attendees. HUBFORUM is expected to bring together nearly 1,000 senior decision-makers across marketing, customer experience, commerce, growth, technology and digital transformation.

The Paris launch follows Blackshaw’s recent appearance at the 2026 ANA AI and Technology for Marketers Conference outside Washington, D.C., bringing the Answer Economy conversation from the U.S. marketing community to a global business audience. He will also speak at the ANA Masters of Marketing Conference in October.

The generative AI shift is creating new opportunities—and new risks—for companies whose products, reputations and customer experiences may be interpreted by systems they do not control. Drawing on more than three decades of experience across consumer advocacy, brand management, marketing and technology, Blackshaw offers a practical framework for leaders seeking to:

• Understand how AI agents discover, evaluate and recommend brands;
• Strengthen the signals that shape a brand’s visibility and credibility;
• Align marketing, communications, customer experience and data strategies; and
• Build trust as AI assumes a larger role in consumer decision-making.

“AI may be changing the interface, but the fundamentals of trust have not changed,” Blackshaw added. “Every claim a company makes, every customer experience it creates, and every credible third party that talks about the brand can influence the answer. This is not simply a marketing challenge. It is a leadership imperative.”

The Answer Economy: How AI Agents Will Decide Your Brand’s Future is available in hardcover and e-book formats through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other major booksellers. For more information, resources and purchase options, visit The Answer Economy book page.

About Pete Blackshaw
Pete Blackshaw is the founder and CEO of BrandRank.AI and a recognized leader in consumer trust, digital marketing, and brand reputation. He has held senior leadership roles at Procter & Gamble, Nielsen, and Nestlé and is a frequent contributor to Ad Age. He is an Advertising Research Foundation Great Minds Award winner and a two-time Cannes Lions juror. His first book, “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000” (Crown Business/Random House), mapped how the internet was shifting power from brands to consumers. Blackshaw earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

About BrandRank.AI
BrandRank.AI is a brand intelligence and verification platform for the era of AI-generated answers, with a human-in-the-loop analyzing every finding. Pairing proprietary software with dedicated brand strategists, BrandRank independently verifies what AI answer engines say about a brand, scores its Visibility, Vulnerability, and Content Readiness, measures Recommendation Share, and predicts whether trust will hold, grow, or erode. Learn more at www.brandrank.ai.

Stephanie Agresta
Ascendancy Events
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