Fewer than one in five consumers can name a brand from an advertisement they saw the day before. Adobe published that finding on July 6, 2026, in a report titled The brand recall report: How AI is reshaping brand discovery and recall, based on a survey of 1,002 consumers conducted with a 95 percent confidence level and a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. According to Adobe, only 17 percent of respondents said they felt confident recalling the names of the last three ads they had seen within a 24-hour window.

The report frames that gap as more than a creative problem. It argues that brands now face what it calls a dual threat: forgettable ads lose human attention, and the same weak signals can make a brand harder for AI systems to retrieve when a consumer later tries to rediscover it through a chatbot or an AI-powered search tool. According to Adobe, brands must be "citable" by AI tools to remain visible as more people shift their research habits toward generative platforms.

Adobe's report arrives during a period in which PPC Land has tracked accelerating investment in AI search optimization tools, as marketers try to understand how large language models decide which brands to mention. It also follows Adobe's own $1.9 billion acquisition of Semrush, a deal the company said was designed to help marketers manage visibility across both traditional search engines and AI platforms.

Irrelevance tops the list of reasons ads get forgotten

According to the report, three factors account for most of the recall failure Adobe measured. Irrelevance was the most commonly cited reason ads fail to make an impression, named by 71 percent of respondents. Clickbait or misleading content followed at 56 percent, and a lack of trust in the advertiser was cited by 55 percent. Those three factors, taken together, describe an audience that is not simply overwhelmed by volume but actively screening out messages that feel opportunistic or false.

The device a shopper uses when they encounter an ad also shapes what they remember afterward, and the gap is substantial. Adobe found that shoppers were 129 percent more likely to remember product details seen on a computer than the same details seen on a mobile device. Yet a large minority did not perceive this gap at all: 44 percent of shoppers surveyed said they believed the device made no difference to their memory, a disconnect between reported behavior and reported belief that Adobe's methodology, based entirely on self-reported responses, cannot fully resolve.

Generational patterns complicate the device story further. Gen Z and baby boomers both said they favored desktop for recall, at 41 percent and 48 percent respectively, while millennials and Gen X respondents were largely indifferent to which device they used. Gen Z presented a specific contradiction Adobe highlighted directly in the report: despite stating a preference for desktop when it comes to retention, the same age group was 131 percent more likely than older generations to actually hold onto information they had seen on mobile. Whether this reflects a genuine cognitive difference or simply a mismatch between what Gen Z respondents believe about their own memory and how they actually behave, the report does not attempt to explain.

Why certain brand names fail to stick

Adobe also asked respondents what made brand names themselves hard to remember, independent of the advertising vehicle carrying them. Length was the dominant complaint: 44 percent of shoppers cited names with three or more syllables as a barrier to recall. Unique or unconventional spellings followed at 29 percent, and similarity to a competitor's name was cited by 22 percent of respondents. Puns or wordplay in a brand name bothered 10 percent, while the inclusion of numbers in a name was the least-cited complaint, at 6 percent.

Attention itself, rather than name design, may be the larger constraint. According to the survey, 51 percent of shoppers said multitasking actively hurt their ability to remember brand names, regardless of how the name was constructed. Gen Z respondents showed a distinct pattern here as well: this age group was 40 percent more likely than older generations to disengage entirely when they found the creative itself too boring to hold their attention, suggesting that for younger audiences, execution quality carries even more weight than it does for other cohorts.

Platform and format shape which ads survive in memory

The report identifies specific platforms and ad formats that correlate with longer-lasting impressions, and the rankings vary considerably depending on which audience is asked. Overall, YouTube led at 46 percent, followed by cable and streaming television at 40 percent, and Instagram at 27 percent. Instagram, TikTok, traditional search, and Facebook clustered in the middle of the rankings, at 27 percent, 25 percent, 25 percent, and 23 percent respectively, while podcasts and X trailed well behind at 8 percent and 6 percent.

Those aggregate figures obscure sharp generational splits. Gen Z respondents were 115 percent more likely than older generations to say TikTok drove the longest-lasting impressions, and 91 percent more likely to say the same about Instagram. A device-based split also emerged: Android users were 24 percent more likely than iPhone users to credit YouTube specifically with driving long-lasting impressions, a finding the report does not attempt to explain but which may reflect underlying differences in how each user base already consumes video content.

Format mattered as much as platform, according to Adobe's findings. Short-form video led decisively at 52 percent, ahead of static images or photography at 30 percent, long-form video at 27 percent, text-based search ads at 25 percent, and influencer endorsements at 24 percent. Shoppers surveyed were 73 percent more likely to remember short-form video compared with static image advertising, a gap the report says widens further among Gen Z respondents, who were 111 percent more likely than older generations to remember influencer endorsements specifically and 94 percent more likely to remember interactive ad formats. Apple device users, meanwhile, were 56 percent more likely than Android users to recall influencer content, a distinction Adobe attributes to differences in audience composition and device, in addition to format itself.

Adobe's report also references an earlier company study, which it says found that short-form video was already the top-performing format for driving engagement, at 42 percent, before this newest survey was conducted. PPC Land's coverage of YouTube's creator marketing data has documented a related pattern: audience research from GWI found in February 2025 that 45 percent of YouTube Shorts users were not also using TikTok, and 65 percent were not using Instagram Reels, indicating that short-form video platforms may be reaching genuinely distinct audiences rather than simply competing for the same viewers.

Humor and repeated exposure make messages stick

Adobe's researchers also asked what psychological factors made an advertisement memorable once it had actually registered with a consumer. Humor or entertainment value topped the list by a clear margin, cited by 56 percent of respondents. Overexposure, meaning simple repeated viewing, followed at 43 percent. A discount or exclusive offer was cited by 42 percent, an ad that solved a specific problem by 38 percent, and a memorable slogan or catchphrase by 31 percent.

The repetition finding carries a specific, quantified threshold that Adobe's report treats as central to the entire study. Respondents reported needing to encounter a given message at least four times within a 24-hour window before it became memorable. Adobe frames this as validation for high-frequency, cross-channel campaign strategies, though the figure is self-reported and reflects consumer perception of their own memory rather than an independently measured recall test.

Audience differences appeared here too. Gen Z respondents were 24 percent more likely than older generations to remember brands built around a distinct visual identity, while women were 29 percent more likely than men to cite a catchy jingle or song as the specific element that made an ad stick in memory. These splits suggest that a single creative approach optimized for maximum recall across an entire population may not exist, and that segment-specific creative testing remains necessary even within a framework built around a shared frequency threshold.

Recovery after forgetting depends on the right incentive

When a consumer forgets a brand or product they had previously searched for, Adobe's data shows a range of responses, most of which do not involve immediate reengagement. Nearly half, 48 percent, said they would simply wait for another advertisement to reach them again for the same product. A slightly smaller share said they would revisit their own search history or try experimenting with different keywords to relocate what they had forgotten.

Almost one in five respondents, roughly 20 percent, said they would turn to an AI chatbot specifically to try to recover the forgotten brand name. That behavior was more common among particular groups: Gen Z respondents were 23 percent more likely than older generations to use AI for this purpose, and men were 29 percent more likely than women to do the same. Yet the chatbot route carries its own failure rate. According to the report, while 31 percent of all consumers use AI chatbots to try to rediscover brands they have forgotten, only half of those users find the correct brand name at least 50 percent of the time when they try. That statistic sits at the center of Adobe's argument that AI discoverability now matters as much as human-facing creative quality, since a chatbot that cannot reliably retrieve a brand's name functions as a second recall failure layered on top of the first.

PPC Land's earlier reporting on Semrush's AI Visibility Index found a comparable measurement gap on the marketer side of this same problem: in a survey of 481 marketers, 45 percent said they could not properly measure their brand's visibility in AI-generated answers, and only 9 percent said they could measure the full set of metrics that study identified as relevant.

What brings a forgotten shopper back

Adobe's report ranks the incentives most likely to succeed once a shopper has forgotten a brand and needs a reason to reengage. Price drop alerts led at 54 percent, followed by a specific discount code at 52 percent, a free shipping offer at 41 percent, a five-star review or customer testimonial at 24 percent, and a video showing the product in actual use at 20 percent.

The ranking shifted for one generation. Price drop alerts led across nearly every age group with one exception: millennials ranked a specific discount code highest, at 58 percent, ahead of price alerts. Adobe also found that women were 73 percent more likely than men to say a free shipping offer was the deciding factor in a reengagement decision, a gender split not mirrored in any of the other four incentive categories measured.

Not every product category receives equal reengagement effort from shoppers who have forgotten it. The report lists eight categories ranked by how willing consumers are to search through multiple pages of results to relocate a forgotten item: apparel and accessories, travel and accommodation, home goods and furniture, electronics, books and media, beauty and personal care, health and wellness products, and groceries and food delivery, in that order. On average, Adobe found, shoppers said they would scroll through two pages of search results before abandoning the search entirely.

Methodology and its limits

Adobe surveyed 1,002 consumers for this report, achieving what the company describes as a 95 percent confidence level with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. The report states plainly that all figures reflect self-reported data, and that individual perceptions may differ from consumers' actual behavior. That caveat applies across nearly every statistic in the report, since the study measured what people believe about their own memory and habits rather than independently tracking their actual recall performance or purchase decisions.

This distinction matters for how the findings should be used. A figure such as the 129 percent gap in product-detail recall between computer and mobile users describes a difference in self-assessed memory, not a controlled experiment isolating device as the sole variable. Similarly, the four-exposure threshold for message stickiness reflects a self-reported estimate rather than a measured frequency-response curve. None of this invalidates the findings, but it does mean the report is best read as a map of consumer perception and stated preference, rather than as a behavioral audit.

Context for the marketing industry

Adobe's report lands amid a broader industry conversation about how brand visibility functions once artificial intelligence mediates a meaningful share of consumer discovery and research. PPC Land has documented how the AI visibility gap plays out for marketers trying to adapt search strategy as consumer research habits shift toward generative tools. Google's own public position, articulated by its VP of Search in June 2026, has argued that foundational search engine optimization remains sufficient for AI-era visibility, a claim that sits in some tension with the specialized generative engine optimization tooling companies including Adobe, Zeta Global, and Semrush have built and marketed over the past year.

The recall gap Adobe describes also intersects with measurement infrastructure elsewhere in the industry. PPC Land's coverage of brand and sales lift measurement has tracked vendors including Cint and Basis building tools that connect awareness metrics to purchase outcomes in closer to real time, an infrastructure response to exactly the kind of attribution uncertainty Adobe's recall data implies. If a shopper cannot recall which ad drove a purchase decision, and if the AI chatbot they eventually consult to rediscover a forgotten brand only succeeds half the time, then the connective tissue between advertising exposure and eventual purchase becomes considerably harder for marketers to trace using conventional attribution models.

Whether brands respond to this data by increasing message frequency, investing further in generative engine optimization tools, or simply improving creative relevance remains an open question the report itself does not resolve. Adobe's own recommendations point toward its GenStudio for Performance Marketing product as an infrastructure answer, though the underlying behavioral data, self-reported recall failure, generational splits in platform preference, and a persistent chatbot discovery gap, describes a problem that extends well beyond any single vendor's tooling.

Timeline

  • May 20, 2025: Adobe published a separate consumer content personalization study surveying over 1,000 Americans.
  • November 19, 2025: Adobe agreed to acquire Semrush Holdings for 1.9 billion dollars, a deal framed around brand visibility across AI platforms.
  • January 27, 2026: Adobe published a productivity study surveying 1,106 full-time US employees.
  • June 15, 2026: Adobe published a separate study finding that 86 percent of US shoppers make at least one unplanned online purchase per month.
  • July 6, 2026: Adobe published "The brand recall report: How AI is reshaping brand discovery and recall," based on a survey of 1,002 consumers.

Summary

Who: Adobe, through its Adobe for Business division, published the research, drawing on a survey of 1,002 consumers.

What: The company found that only 17 percent of shoppers are confident they can recall the names of the last three advertisements they saw within 24 hours, and identified irrelevance, misleading content, and lack of trust as the leading causes.

When: Adobe published the report on July 6, 2026.

Where: The survey covered United States consumers, and the report was published on Adobe's business blog.

Why: The findings matter because they connect two separate problems for advertisers. Ads that fail to leave an impression on human shoppers also risk becoming invisible to the AI chatbots and search tools an increasing share of consumers use to rediscover brands they have forgotten.