Will bots end social listening as we know it?

It’s hard to know what’s real these days.

For marketers, that goes beyond outlandish headlines or AI slop. Outsized reactions to brand campaigns and rebrands in online spaces have dominated headlines this year, prompting brand hand-wringing and business course-changing—but those reactions aren’t always entirely real.

This summer, Cracker Barrel rolled out a rebrand that quickly appeared like it was being disastrously received by the public, but narrative intelligence platform PeakMetrics found that the backlash to the rebrand was disproportionately driven by bots, meaning that the company’s eventual decision to backtrack could have been informed, at least in part, by artificial activity. Cracker Barrel did not respond to a request for comment.

PeakMetrics has also tracked bot attacks targeting American Eagle, McDonald’s, Boeing, and the PGA this year, finding that automated accounts often amplify organic criticism in an apparent effort to shape public opinion and, in some cases, shift geopolitical narratives about certain brands.

Molly Dwyer, director of insights at PeakMetrics, told us that generative AI has made it easier than ever to create and operate bot networks, making it likely that inauthentic activity will grow across social channels as certain bad actors seek to cause chaos, push specific narratives, or simply monetize engagement.

“More of the content that we’re seeing is not necessarily created by bots, but is being amplified by bots,” she said. “That’s messing with our sense of reality and what matters.”

As real consumer insights become muddled online, brands are looking to agencies and intelligence platforms to help filter out bot posts and parse what real consumers have to say. But with bot activity showing no signs of slowing down, social listening alone is no longer enough for brands to understand how consumers are responding.

Are you real?

To sift through posts and get to the root of customer sentiment, brands are working with narrative intelligence platforms that help them continue social listening, conduct brand sentiment studies, and run consumer polls to gut-check how people are truly feeling, Michelle Spigner, group strategy director at Mother LA, told Marketing Brew.

Avery Akkineni, CMO of VaynerX, said the agency uses a framework designed to catch and remove misinformation early while retaining some consumer signals. Despite the deluge of bots, she said, she still views social comments as a “total insights gold mine.”

“Part of this is fake, but also part of this is real, and we need to take these comments seriously,” Akkineni told us.

For marketers that don’t work with third parties to filter bot content, experts told us there are some relatively simple signs to look for that can help identify bots, including accounts that are very new, usernames with lots of numbers and letters, or accounts with a high frequency of posts in a short amount of time.

“It’s like watching birds in the sky, flying in a flock,” Chris Hackney, chief product officer at Meltwater, told us about identifying bots. “Suddenly you see a whole bunch of activity on newer accounts or less responsive accounts, typically all on one subject, picking up on something.”

Even if responses are coming from bots, though, those responses can feel real to people inside and outside the company, which can make the situation more complex. If bot-generated comments get the attention of the C-suite, CMOs may get knocks on their door from folks outside of marketing asking how the brand should respond, Rafi Mendelsohn, CMO of Cyabra, an AI-powered social intelligence platform, said.

It’s possible for a bot network organizer to fabricate a narrative, but more often than not, Dwyer said, bots tend to amplify existing sentiments because that’s easiest for them to do. That means marketers shouldn’t necessarily dismiss those insights. With Cracker Barrel, for example, Dwyer noted that much of the bot activity stemmed from a few real posts calling for a brand boycott. More recently, PeakMetrics found that bots amplified conversations about Tylenol following the Trump administration’s announcement linking pregnant people’s use of the pain reliever, without evidence, to autism in children. About 93% of bot activity came from reposting existing content in an attempt to broaden reach and push what PeakMetrics called “emotionally charged narratives.”

A flood of bot posts can make it difficult to evaluate the scale of positive reactions compared to negative ones. When American Eagle released its controversial Sydney Sweeney campaign over the summer, bot activity looks to have amplified both positive and negative posts. PeakMetrics found that nearly 44% of unfavorable posts and around 36% of favorable posts were from likely- or above-likely-to-be bot accounts. The widespread online discussion of the campaign fueled by real people and bots alike eventually led the president and VP to voice their support for it, which Dwyer said only added fuel to the fire. (For what it’s worth, the brand and actress have both defended the campaign.)

Scenario planning

So what’s a brand to do if it’s the target of a bot-driven attack? According to Dwyer, marketers may want to wait to post about the topic, as it could only prolong the news cycle.

“The thing to keep in mind,” she said, “is how are you taking down the temperature and trying to deprioritize the topic from getting algorithmically boosted?”

Brand experts advised that marketers think through risk tolerance when considering campaigns, rebrands, or other decisions that could get people—or bots—talking. While some brands might be more inclined to go for riskier work or even lean into ragebait to drive engagement, others might opt to play it safe.

Hackney said he views bots as an unavoidable part of being online these days, and recommended that brands be ready to respond with a crisis management plan, regardless of whether their campaign appears to touch on a political or hot-button issue or not.

“Are your customers listening to those narratives, and how do you react?” he said. “And at what speed can you react to put forward the narrative that you think is true and accurate for your brand?”

Other marketers agreed. “Your best defense is a good offense,” Nina Ruhe, senior digital content strategist and AI implementation architect at EP+Co, said. “Whether you’re an agency or a brand, whatever you put out there, have a team that is ready with a response for quite literally anything.”

As information becomes more muddled online, Hackney predicts consumers will “boomerang back to trusted sources,” like verified creators or brand accounts. And, of course, there are always tried-and-true methods of gathering consumer sentiment data, like focus groups and surveys.

“There’s a sense that everyone just wants to go out and touch grass,” Dwyer said. “People are craving human contact and human interaction to get a sense of what’s real, and I think that brands are going to choose to do that as well.”