You’ve probably noticed that search is changing. Between Google’s AI Overviews and platforms like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, consumers are increasingly getting answers to their questions without ever clicking on a traditional search result.
For brands, that creates a new visibility problem: If people are getting answers from AI, how do you know whether your content is helping shape those answers in the first place?
That was the challenge facing Dairy Management, Inc. (DMI). As the voice of dairy farmers and importers, DMI works to build trust in the dairy industry and help consumers make informed choices about nutrition. DMI needed to know whether its evidence-based content was showing up—and helping shape the conversation—as AI-powered search became a bigger part of how people found those answers.
Finding the traffic traditional analytics missed
At Rise, we love a good measurement challenge. When traditional analytics couldn’t fully show how AI platforms were surfacing DMI’s content or what happened when people found their way to the site through AI search results, we looked somewhere else: DMI’s server logs.
Those logs capture the digital footprints AI platforms leave behind when they visit a website. Using that data, we built a custom AI referral reporting system that could identify which platforms were finding its content, what they were finding and how people engaged when they arrived.
There was a lot happening behind the scenes. Across more than 16 million interactions, nearly 150,000 were tied to AI activity. And the people arriving through AI weren’t just passing through: 87.2% of those sessions included multiple page views, more than double the industry average of 40%.
The data also gave DMI a better idea of what to do next. It showed which topics were gaining traction, where AI platforms were finding value in the content and where there was room to make that content easier to surface. Those insights helped inform updates to articles and recipes, including clearer takeaways, FAQs and metadata updates, while also shaping DMI’s broader search strategy.
The industry is taking notice
As search keeps evolving, the way brands measure visibility has to evolve with it. That’s what makes our work with DMI so important, and as it turns out, the industry thinks so, too: Rise has been named a finalist for the 2026 AdExchanger Awards in the Best Use of Data by an Agency category.
The AdExchanger Awards celebrate the work driving measurable impact across today’s advertising ecosystem, which makes this recognition especially meaningful. Helping brands turn complex data into clearer decisions is a big part of what we do at Rise, and we’re proud to see that work recognized.
Stay tuned for final results
Finalist status is worth celebrating, but we’re not done yet. Winners will be announced at the AdExchanger Awards Gala during Programmatic I/O in New York City on September 28th.
We’ll be there—and we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed!
Want to learn more and continue the conversation? Rise can help.