Brands must plan for seasonal AI search demand windows, says IDHL’s Emma Davey-Wood

Emma Davey-Wood of IDHL argues that AI search now follows its own seasonal rhythms, and that marketers need to know when demand opens up in their category so they can build visibility before it peaks.

She calls this the AI search demand window: the stretch of time when use of AI platforms climbs around a category’s busiest season. In her view it now belongs in budget discussions, in the same way media has long been planned around seasonal demand.

She cites IDHL’s State of AI Search report, which found that AI search-engaged sessions rose 392% year on year, while transactions grew 553%.

A seasonal calendar for AI search

Davey-Wood points to travel and property as the clearest examples. Travel sessions rose 168% year on year and peaked in December, as people planned winter breaks. Property peaked in January and February, as house-hunting resumed after Christmas.

Those peaks, she says, give marketers a fixed point to plan backwards from. For a January campaign, that means auditing customer questions and the sources AI assistants draw on now, then using November and December to refresh decision-stage content, improve internal links and win relevant third-party coverage. That leaves time for those signals to be picked up before reviewing the brand’s presence in AI-generated answers.

She also refers to Accenture’s 2026 holiday research, which found more than half of shoppers planned to start before October, while four in 10 anticipated using generative AI over the season. For brands, she says, that means AI visibility has to be built months before peak sales.

According to the IDHL data, the windows vary by sector: November for sports and leisure, November and December for jewellery, December for gifts, December and January for travel, January for real estate, January and February for insurance, and July for home and garden.

In data covering 1.5m AI search-engaged sessions across 175 websites, jewellery sessions in November reached nearly five times their summer level, and home and garden rose 41% in July.

Working backwards from the peak

Once a brand knows its window, Davey-Wood recommends working back across technical, content, PR and paid media, so that the necessary signals exist before the peak arrives.

IDHL starts with technical SEO and GEO foundations, she says, because AI platforms cannot surface content unless they are able to access, read and understand it. That means checking site performance, rendering, structured data, internal linking and crawlability well ahead of the season. Without that groundwork, she says, brands struggle to get full value from planning in other digital channels.

On PR, she notes that editorial demand and search demand do not necessarily peak at the same time. With travel clients, IDHL builds AI search demand around major holiday-booking periods, while travel coverage tends to pick up as the main holiday season nears and publishers look for timely advice.

Brands therefore need to leave room to produce research, expert commentary or campaign assets, pitch them to journalists and land authoritative coverage ahead of the AI search peak.

She cites Yext research showing 42.7% of consumers had turned to AI for local search over the previous month, though many still checked recommendations against cited sources, brand websites and traditional search. That, she argues, makes credible third-party coverage more valuable.

Davey-Wood also argues that seasonality in paid media is more nuanced than adding budget in peak months. Brands should start several weeks out, building familiarity through paid social, video and demand gen, then move spend into paid search, Performance Max and shopping channels as purchase intent grows.

For travel clients, that means inspiring audiences and growing them before the January booking period before increasing intent-led investment as consumers start researching and booking. She points to Expedia Group research in which 71% of travellers said video influenced their travel decisions.

“I believe the opportunity is to enter the peak with demand already warmed, rather than starting the conversation when competition is at its highest,” she writes.

Davey-Wood says AI search is already producing measurable traffic and transactions, and engagement climbs when demand is highest. Brands that put technical foundations in place, plan paid media early and pinpoint both their AI search demand windows and their editorial opportunities will, she argues, be visible when customers are ready to buy.