The Stumble-UponAble Brand: How Ambient Discovery Drives Growth

What Is Ambient Discovery?

Historically, marketers have spent an enormous amount of time figuring out the exact thing to say in the exact moment someone is searching for what we want them to find. We build content for people who already know what they want, and we measure success by how well we convert that existing intent.

That’s still important – especially in B2B, where a lot of purchase decisions are intent-driven. But some of the most powerful brand connections happen when people aren’t looking for anything at all.

I call this Ambient Discovery.

Ambient discovery is what happens when someone comes across your brand outside of active search or intentional shopping. You’re not waiting for them to decide they need you—you’re planting subtle, well-placed signals in the spaces where their attention already lives.

And it’s not just about showing up once. The magic is in the overlap, when those signals pop up across different but connected environments. The ones that share an audience, a mood, or a moment. So even if they’re not looking for you, the familiarity builds because they keep running into you in ways that feel natural.

It’s a shift in how visibility works. We’re moving from marketing that interrupts what people are doing to marketing that blends in with it – becoming part of the experience instead of a break from it.

That Time Drax’s Laugh Led to Smart Glasses

It started with wanting to hear Dave Bautista’s laugh.

I was in the mood for Drax the Destroyer –  his oblivious, endearing delusion in Guardians of the Galaxy. So I watched Volume 2 (for the peak Drax-laugh energy), then Volume 1, then finally worked up the emotional bandwidth for Volume 3. That haunting opening to Radiohead’s “Creep.” The song went into rotation on Spotify and YouTube Music – became a top play for me and a family favorite. Then the entire Volume 3 soundtrack. Heart. Beastie Boys. Then I started shopping for all three Guardians soundtracks on vinyl.

In the midst of all that looping, I developed an affinity for Chris Pratt’s acting –  perfect background noise, like my grandfather’s perpetual baseball games. So I watched The Tomorrow War on Prime Video. Then Passengers. Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven. Jurassic World. All six films in the Jurassic franchise.

Prime kept recommending more. I watched the original 1960 version of The Magnificent Seven. I actually bought Tombstone for $4.99 when it was about to go behind a paywall. Then Interstellar for five bucks. Two movies I never intended to own.

And do you know the Jurassic World franchise is on Peacock? Yeah. So… Peacock. 

Then I broke my glasses. Bruh.

While comparing frames on Warby Parker and considering smart glasses from Lucyd, Meta’s Super Bowl ad appeared, starring Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth, two Marvel actors talking about smart glasses. I clicked.

My phone went missing. While looking for replacement options, Zoe Saldana’s T-Mobile ads started appearing. Self-aware, memorable, funny. I clicked through to check their “no trade-in needed” promo. I didn’t get T-Mobile, but my daughter did.

On Facebook, I saw Pratt in ads for Hallow, a prayer app. I downloaded it.

All from one thought: “I want to hear Drax laugh.”

I ended up streaming music, buying movies, shopping for smart glasses, and downloading an app. My daughter changed mobile carriers. I push a 30-year-old song back to the top of my playlists. I’m now shopping for vinyl records.

None of this was planned. All of it was influenced.

The New Discovery Landscape

The data confirms what that experience illustrates: discovery is no longer linear, and it’s definitely not predictable.

Modern consumer journeys revolve around four key behaviors that happen simultaneously. Google refers to them as the 4s behaviors: streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping. 

This isn’t the rigid funnel model from days of old, where every behavior was confined to specific stages (and we marketed like this was always true). Nah. These activities happen across the entire journey, often overlapping and influencing multiple stages at once.

The numbers tell the story. According to Kinsta,43% of online shoppers make purchases while in bed, 23% at the office, and 20% from the bathroom or while in the car (me before getting in any drive-thru). 

Nearly three-quarters (70%) of shoppers have spontaneously purchased online after receiving a discount offer. 62% say flash sales and limited-time discounts drive their online purchases.

But impulse isn’t just about discounts. Google’s research identifies seven distinct shopping journeys, and only one – the “quick-fire” replacement purchase – follows traditional intent-based patterns. The others are driven by curiosity, passion, visual inspiration, or the need to explore and discover.

The “impulse” journey, while rarely ending in immediate purchases, plants seeds for future intent. These journeys are “often short, curiosity-led, and inspired by something that caught the shopper’s eye on social or in-store.”

Let’s loop back to something so critical here, though: future intent. 

Dude, that part is so important.

Because intent is less about being a stage and more about being a moment preceded by a strong catalyst.

But, as demonstrated in my Drax laugh story, the strength of the catalyst doesn’t have to be in the direction of the intent that it fuels. 

So the real play is making sure your brand is present at the spark, and threaded quietly throughout interest-driven explorations. Not just waiting at the finish line.

That’s ambient discovery in action.

What makes this shift significant is that shopping has become what BCG calls a “nonlinear loop” of  browsing, considering, abandoning, and returning across platforms. Context shapes action. Discovery precedes intent. Platforms surface aligned content before a search is even made.

The influence happens in the in-between moments, when attention is already engaged elsewhere.

The Seeding Strategy: Engineering Ambient Discovery

What I’m learning is that if discovery is ambient, then visibility requires a different approach. Instead of waiting for people to look for us, we need to be findable where their attention already lives.

Here’s how I’m thinking about it and building for it:

Recognize Attention Rhythms 

Start by mapping your audience’s entertainment, information, and social cycles. Where do they stream? What do they scroll through? When are they most receptive to new ideas? Understanding these patterns helps identify the environments where ambient discovery is most likely to occur.

Seed Nuanced Signals 

Plant subtle, native-feeling content in their existing environments. This isn’t about aggressive advertising or interruption. It’s about becoming part of the ecosystem they’re already navigating. The content should feel aligned with the platform, the moment, and their current mindset.

Match Tone to the Moment 

Align your creative to audience mood and platform norms. The same message delivered in the wrong context or tone won’t achieve ambient discovery. Instead,  it’ll feel like an interruption. But when the alignment is right, the content becomes part of their natural exploration.

Let the Algorithm Amplify You 

The algorithm will find you as it’s engaging your audience. So, well-aligned content gets surfaced to soon-to-be buyers automatically. Platforms are designed to keep people engaged, which means they’re constantly looking for content that matches user behavior and interests. When your seeded content aligns with someone’s existing patterns, the algorithm does the distribution work for you.

What I’m finding is that this isn’t about scale or volume. It’s about precision and timing. We’re not trying to reach everyone — we’re trying to be discoverable by the right people at the right moments, when they’re in the right frame of mind to be influenced.

The Stumble-UponAble Advantage

We need to get really good at becoming stumble-uponable. 

What I’m seeing is that ambient discovery works because it leverages how people actually behave, not how we think they should behave.

It recognizes that most valuable discoveries happen accidentally, when someone is exploring a passion, following curiosity, or simply in the flow of their regular digital routines. These moments of receptivity can’t be forced, but they can be anticipated and seeded.

The brands I’m watching that master this approach don’t just get found when people are ready to buy. They shape the journey that leads to readiness. They become part of the story before the story becomes about shopping.

That’s the difference between being visible and being stumble-uponable. And in a world where attention is the most valuable currency, being stumble-uponable isn’t just an advantage — it’s becoming essential.

The question isn’t whether your audience will discover new things. They will. The question is whether they’ll discover you in the process.