Cohorts, Clusters, And The Coming AI Ad System

The funnel didn’t disappear. It went invisible.

Marketers spent decades perfecting the funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion. We built personas. We mapped content to stages. We watched users click, scroll, bounce, convert. Everything was visible.

But GenAI doesn’t show its hand.

The funnel still exists, it’s just hidden inside the model. Every time someone prompts ChatGPT or Perplexity, they reveal their place in a decision journey.

Not by filling out a form or triggering a pixel, but through the prompt fingerprint embedded in their…