Trust in news among Filipinos has dropped significantly to 28 percent—the steepest decline among 48 markets in the Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report. In one of the world’s most connected populations, where seven out of ten citizens get their news from social media, this finding reveals a challenge few communications plans were built for: Filipinos are more immersed online than ever, yet increasingly skeptical of what they find.
Stratworks, an all-Filipino communications agency based in Bonifacio Global City (BGC), identifies this contradiction as a central challenge in modern brand communications. When consumers stop trusting a single source, they do not stop making decisions—they check around. A brand’s claim is measured against every independent signal available, and increasingly, AI search assistants do that checking for them. AI tools synthesize answers from across the internet before a user ever clicks a link.
To address this shift, Stratworks introduced its omnisearch marketing services—an integrated approach designed to help brands remain visible, credible, and consistent across search engines, AI models, social channels, and marketplaces.
Omnisearch Marketing is an integrated search strategy that helps brands improve how they are discovered, represented, and evaluated across search engines, AI assistants, social platforms, marketplaces, review sites, and other digital channels.
“Search used to be treated mainly as a marketing function,” said Mark Christian Parlade, Managing Director of Stratworks, Inc. “It has quietly become a reputation function.”
The old digital playbook assumed a company could win attention purely on its owned channels. Today, the broader internet must back up that narrative, because that open record is what AI search algorithms read first.
Traditional execution tools—advertising, events, digital PR, and crisis response—remain essential, but the ecosystem they land on has shifted. A brand can launch a flawless campaign and still be introduced to a consumer by unmanaged signals:
This shift directly impacts consumer purchasing habits in the Philippines:
Furthermore, consumer insights from Dentsu Philippines reveal growing skepticism toward corporate messaging, reinforcing that brands must continuously earn trust rather than rely on sheer ad presence.
A campaign can capture attention, but attention alone no longer secures market share. In a low-trust environment, brand claims must be corroborated by independent online sources.
Stratworks frames its omnisearch marketing services as the discovery layer of its broader omnichannel marketing framework in the Philippines. Rather than managing SEO services, search engine marketing (SEM), and social channels in silos, omnisearch unifies them to manage a brand’s total digital footprint.
As generative search engines change how information is retrieved, traditional keyword strategies are expanding into AI search optimization.
“We look at what a brand says on its own channels, what media and other people say about it, how it appears in search, reviews, and marketplaces, and what AI tools can reasonably pick up from all of that,” explained Lori Umali, Chief of Staff at Stratworks, who specializes in AI visibility optimization. “Then we find where the signals are outdated, thin, or inconsistent, and close those gaps so the picture holds together wherever someone, or something, is looking.”
By aligning traditional search marketing services with marketplace search optimization, brands can ensure that their narrative remains cohesive whether a customer searches on Google, asks an AI assistant, or browses inside a marketplace app.
With 26 years of reputation management experience—including landmark campaigns like the First Philippine Mount Everest Expedition and long-standing accounts like Jollibee and PLDT Home—Stratworks bases its search strategy on earned authority and third-party validation.
“For 26 years our mission has not changed — to build trust and cement reputations through communications that transform,” said Donna Nievera-Conda, President and Co-CEO of Stratworks. “Omnisearch is how we keep that promise in an age when a brand’s reputation is increasingly read, and judged, by machines as well as people.”
For most organizations, the complete picture of how their brand appears across web search, AI tools, social feeds, marketplaces, and forums has never been fully audited.
Stratworks begins its engagements with an Omnisearch Visibility Audit. This process maps out where a brand’s digital footprint remains strong and identifies where conflicting signals break down trust—helping businesses align their public messaging with the broader digital record.
