Synopsis
AI search is reshaping online discovery. Brands are shifting their content strategies to ensure visibility within AI answers and recommendations. This new focus, known as Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), is becoming a significant budget item for marketers. Experts predict intensified monetisation efforts by AI search companies, with ad bids potentially exceeding traditional platforms.Listen to this article in summarized format
For brands, ranking first on Google means only so much. The new battleground for eyeballs and mindspace is the AI chat window. Brands are scrambling for visibility inside AI-generated responses.
The urgency in their approach is justified: users across OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Anthropic’s Claude have swelled to a billion according to some estimates. In step with this change, Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) has become the new buzzword in digital marketing.
Google has already started expanding brand opportunities within AI Overviews and AI Mode, and its Ads support documentation now explains how ads can appear in AI Overviews.
OpenAI has started testing ads in ChatGPT for users in the US and forecasts that its ad revenues could reach $2.5 billion in 2026 and $100 billion in 2030. Meanwhile, Perplexity has tested sponsored follow-up questions and video-style ad placements around AI answers.
Experts believe the monetisation efforts among AI-search companies will intensify over the next 6-12 months, with ad bids pricing expected to be 5-10 times higher than traditional advertising suites offered by Google and Meta.
While they are devising their ad monetisation strategies, brands have begun optimising their content for AI platforms and spending on GEO measurement tools. For chief marketing officers, GEO is emerging as a major budget line item.
The share of voice
Prashant Puri, CEO and cofounder of digital marketing firm AdLift, said AI search platforms now account for nearly 10-15% of the global search market. While the global SEO market is currently worth around $100-120 billion, GEO enterprise spending alone could grow to $10-15 billion over the next 2-3 years.
Sameer Jain, head D2C Business at Axis Max Life Insurance, said that category searches and long-tail searches on Google have declined, leading to lower traffic on informational blog articles of websites.
Info Edge reported that its educational information discovery website Shiksha’s decline in traffic due to AI search is now directly impacting billings. Its March quarter billings dropped 13% on-year, the platform’s first decline in six quarters.
“User behaviour on platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT is fundamentally different. Instead of typing short keyword searches, users are now asking nuanced and research-oriented questions such as, ‘What is the ideal life insurance plan for a salaried individual aged 30?’,” Jain said.
“We are unable to measure the lead potential on such platforms because there is no click-through,” he added. Therefore, brands are now accessing new tools which measure the share of voice (SOV) on AI platforms.
Content is the king
“AI systems are no longer evaluating content in isolation. They are looking at broader trust signals — including the credibility of the author, the authority of the publishing platform, how frequently the content is cited or referenced across the web, and the wider digital footprint of the brand or topic across authoritative sites and public platforms,” Adlift’s Puri said.
One big shift is that content now has to genuinely help consumers make decisions, said Vivek Goel, chief business officer, FirstCry.com.
“In parenting especially, mothers are not just looking for products — they are looking for reassurance, clarity and practical guidance. Content backed by experts, real parent experiences and practical use cases is becoming increasingly important in this environment,” he explained. FirstCry sees AI-originated sessions growing sharply over the last year, including 15x growth in web traffic, Goel said.
The biggest shift is from keyword-led content to answer-ready content. That changes the content playbook, said Subhashis Guha, Principal leader — Performance and SEO at WPP Media.
“Brands need clear executive summaries, direct answers to consumer questions, comparison tables, FAQs, proof points, expert authorship, product/entity clarity and structured data. The goal is not to create more content, but to create content that is more credible, machine-readable and useful at decision moments,” Guha said.
The company is winning some pure-play GEO mandates and some large SEO programs are moving towards AI visibility and GEO-led optimisation. Over the next 2-3 years, we expect GEO to become an always-on discovery workstream for categories such as auto, BFSI, healthcare, consumer goods, travel, technology and retail, Guha said.
The risks
GEO systems are also creating risks of misinformation, manipulation, or “AI answer gaming”, similar to how SEO led to keyword stuffing and spam tactics in earlier internet eras. This is especially because LLMs hallucinate and are probabilistic in nature rather than deterministic.
“Every new visibility system creates incentives for manipulation. In SEO, that showed up as keyword stuffing, link spam and thin content. In GEO, the risk could show up as synthetic reviews, fake brand mentions, manipulated forum discussions, low-quality AI-generated content, citation farming, entity confusion and attempts to influence what LLMs retrieve or trust,” WPP’s Guha said.
