AI brand recommendation concentration by industry

The median buyer question names 11 recommended brands across repeated runs, and the top brand holds 33% of all the recommendations. That average hides the real story: some industries collapse to one winner, while others keep a long list of brands alive.

The industry baseline matters because a 20% share can mean dominance in one market and mediocrity in another.

Consumer Electronics is the clearest winner-take-most category: median top-brand share is 81.1%, the median question names only three brands, and 84% of questions are decisive, meaning one brand holds at least half of all the recommendations. Consumer Goods, Clothing and Apparel, and Sports follow the same pattern.

Sales and Marketing sits at the other extreme. The median top brand holds only 21.8% of all the recommendations, the median question names 15 brands, and 73% of questions are open, meaning the leader holds less than 30%. Software, AI, Professional Services, IT, and Data and Analytics cluster around the same open shape.

The difference between the most and least concentrated industries is about 3.7x on top-brand share: 81.1% in Consumer Electronics versus 21.8% in Sales and Marketing. The median list of brands differs by about 5x: three brands versus fifteen.

In winner-take-most categories, the practical target is becoming the one brand AI repeats. In open categories, the practical target is earning a durable slot across a larger list. The same measured share implies a different job.

The consumer-versus-software gap is not one engine's quirk. Consumer Electronics remains concentrated on both surfaces, with median top-brand share of 88.2% on ChatGPT and 72.7% on Google AI Overviews. Software stays open on both, at 30.6% and 28.0%.

One possible objection is that some industries have more repeated runs, giving more chances for brand variety. Restricting to questions with 9-13 runs does not erase the pattern: Consumer Electronics still has a 74.1% top-brand share and four brands; Sales and Marketing still has a 19.7% top-brand share and sixteen brands.

Consumer electronics includes some specific product questions. Removing single-brand lookups and keeping only questions where AI named at least three distinct brands still leaves Consumer Electronics at 66.7% top-brand share versus 21.6% for Sales and Marketing.

Top-brand share here is not a market-concentration index. It measures how consistently AI repeats the same recommended brand across runs for a buyer question. That distinction matters: AI can be decisive in a fragmented real-world market, and diffuse in a market with clear offline leaders.

For a Consumer Electronics brand, the question is whether AI repeats you as the answer. For a B2B software brand, the first goal may be earning a stable place in the shortlist.

This is why a universal AI visibility target is misleading. Compare against how concentrated your category is, then decide whether the work is winning the top slot or getting onto the list.