There is a central trend among leading companies: the move toward communicating category and product leadership through richer narrative content.
One of the key trends for them is taking the opportunity to reinforce more narrative messages when round communicating their categories and product leadership.
These narratives, embedded within digital annual reports, now integrate ambient video, interactive visuals, and clear navigation to make corporate storytelling engaging and accessible. The effective use of visuals and interactivity enhances impact, turning a traditionally static document into a digital showcase of brand identity.
Structure, clarity, and interconnectedness, especially linking responsible business content and strategy, are now fundamental to successful communication. These elements not only support user experience but also influence how content is discovered and interpreted by both humans and crucially AI.
One of the most critical topics shaping 2025 is the growing impact of AI on how corporate content is found and ranked online.
60% of searches in 2025 are clickless. When people search for something on Google, they receive an AI snippet, read the information right on the results page, and leave. Therefore, the importance of having your information AI friendly is rapidly increasing.
The rise of AI-driven search results means companies can no longer rely solely on traditional web traffic. AI snippets have doubled since the start of the year. These draw directly from high-authority, well-structured content, making content visibility and tagging more critical than ever.
Google still dominates with 16 billion searches per day versus around 66 million on ChatGPT. While LLMs are growing, search engines remain the starting point, and they’re being transformed by AI.
This creates a new imperative: ensuring corporate information is both machine-readable and AI-ready. Properly structured and optimised data has driven up to a 900 percent increase in AI-driven traffic for some firms.
AI search models, such as ChatGPT and Google’s generative results, source and prioritise information.
When a user enters a query, an AI system first checks its internal dataset. If it cannot find a satisfactory answer, it expands to the open web, evaluating sources by geo-signals, content structure, relevance, and authority.
The AI system is looking at whether the content is structured, accessible, and recognisable. Then it pulls snippets from the best sources, combining its training data with verified website content.
A crucial step is corroboration. AI models cross-check facts across multiple platforms, including third-party sources and community forums, to gauge reliability. Therefore, the value of consistent messaging and multi-channel presence of your company has never been more important.
Also, there is a growing technical divide that directly affects investor relations and reporting teams: the limitations of PDFs in the AI era.
AI can identify PDFs and cite them in search results but because the content is locked, it doesn’t inform the AI’s responses effectively. You might see a link to your report, but the model won’t draw insights from it, it’ll prioritise HTML or structured data.
By contrast, companies that publish results and sustainability data in HTML formats appear far more often in AI-driven search results. HSBC, for example, publishes its results in HTML and appears in multiple top AI citations for financial queries.
Our five top tips, to ensure your company ranks high in AI search is:
Use contextual, natural language that large language models (LLMs) can understand.
Ensure authority and verification through date-stamping, data points, author citations, and schema mark-ups.
Maintain consistency across channels, reinforcing website content through social snippets.
Keep content current, with version control and clear metadata.
Structure tables and data so they are machine-readable.
Success is part content, part technical development, but the greater emphasis right now is around content.
AI chat and text-to-speech are transforming user experience.
Some predict that 60 percent of website interactions will be through chatbots, and we’re already seeing that emerge on corporate sites.
Examples include:
Informa, where users can ask questions about the company’s performance over 20 years.
Zig Up, an early adopter featuring an AI assistant for investor relations.
McKinsey, which now offers an “Ask McKinsey” AI search tool across its insights library.
We have recently launched out AI-powered Virtual Assistant built specifically for corporate websites, AIVIA.
AIVIA is more than just a chatbot, it’s a customised, intelligent assistant that transforms how users interact with the content on their website. This tool not only answers user questions but also transforms how website visitors interact with online content. Let’s take a deeper dive into how AIVIA works, its benefits, and what the future holds for AI-powered digital services.
Explore more about AIVIA here.
Beyond visibility, analytics remain essential. Organisations can track scroll depth, click-through rates, and engagement patterns to understand how investors interact with digital reports.
60 to 80 percent of clicks from online report pages lead to deeper exploration within the site, showing that integrated content journeys enhance engagement.
Companies should ensure they are monitoring AI search referrals and bot traffic.
ChatGPT and Perplexity are now among the most frequent visitors to corporate sites. In some cases, bot scraping has overtaken human visits, therefore companies must think about the audience you never see, as well as those who actually visit.
Burying key data in PDFs. Instead, surface KPIs and metrics on your website so they’re accessible to both people and machines.
Separating ESG from strategy. Embed sustainability and non-financial data into your overall narrative.
Neglecting mobile UX. Portfolio managers look at your company on their mobiles on the way to meetings.
Ignoring AI search. Failing to optimise risks losing control of your corporate story, or worse, allowing outdated information to dominate AI results.
Know your audience. Ensure each stakeholder group can quickly find the data they need.
Data equals trust. Accuracy, clarity, and consistency build confidence.
Consistency across channels. Reinforce key messages on all owned platforms.
Optimise for AI and SEO. Structured, up-to-date data is now essential currency.
Leverage alternative channels. Use social and AI-ready formats to stay front-of-mind for investors.
Visitors rarely browse aimlessly; they come with a purpose. They need information that allows them to qualify you as an investment, quickly and clearly.
The conversation around AI and corporate reporting is only just beginning.
Our upcoming webinars:
If you are interested in registering for these events, please email Abbie Dixon, Relationship Marketing Executive, adixon@blacksun-global.com.
As the discussion made clear, corporate reporting is undergoing a fundamental transformation. In an era where AI systems, not just humans, read and rank your story, success depends on how well your data, design, and narrative align.
The companies that thrive will be those that treat their digital reports not simply as archives, but as living, intelligent ecosystems, crafted for clarity, authority, and visibility in the AI-driven world of modern communications.
If you would like a copy of the full webinar recording, please contact Abbie Dixon, Relationship Marketing Executive, adixon@blacksun-global.com.
About Black Sun
Black Sun Global is a stakeholder advisory and engagement agency that's been driving transformation and positive change for ambitious brands for more than 20 years. With deep expertise in disclosure and reporting, ESG, sustainability, and digital engagement, we reshape how organisations connect with customers, investors, employees, and the wider world.
We are trusted partners to some of the most influential global organisations, sparking innovation and sustainable performance through our strategic insights, partnerships, and proprietary technologies.
As founders of the Positive Change Group, we are on a mission to create a new kind of stakeholder relations partner. Our world-class specialists work closely with executive leadership teams to protect reputations, inspire trust, and promote responsible business practices - building resilience and long-term value in a rapidly changing world.
For more information, please visit: www.blacksun-global.com
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