Publishers Begin Selling 'AI Visibility' Services
Media publishers and marketing agencies are starting to productize and sell their expertise in "AI visibility." This new service offering aims to help brands navigate the changing landscape of AI-driven content discovery and optimization. It represents a new revenue stream for publishers and a new specialization for agencies.
- The emerging field of "AI Visibility" is also known by several other names, including Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), and AI Search Engine Optimization (AI SEO). This new discipline focuses on ensuring a brand is cited, recommended, and accurately represented in the responses of AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. - For publishers, declining referral traffic from traditional search engines is a major driver for offering AI visibility services. For instance, in September 2025, DMG Media reported an 89% decrease in click-through rates, attributing it directly to the rise of AI Overviews in search results. This has led publishers such as Future to develop their own proprietary AI visibility tools, like 'Future Optic', to increase mentions and citations within AI-generated content for both their own titles and their clients. - Agencies specializing in this new field are now using a suite of AI visibility tools to serve their clients. Platforms like Profound, SE Visible, and AIclick help agencies manage client dashboards, track visibility across different AI models like ChatGPT and Perplexity, and even audit a potential client's AI presence before a sales pitch. - The core difference between traditional SEO and AI visibility is that AI systems evaluate a brand's authority and credibility across the entire web, not just its own website content. These systems analyze reviews, expert mentions, and community discussions to determine which brands to recommend, making external validation a critical factor. - Major advertising holding companies are also investing heavily in AI, which complements the rise of AI visibility services. Stagwell, for example, is unique in its strategy to license its AI-powered tools to brands, publishers, and even other agencies, rather than using them solely for internal efficiencies. - Content licensing is becoming a significant revenue stream for publishers in the age of AI. In May 2024, News Corp signed a deal with OpenAI to incorporate its journalism into OpenAI's models, highlighting a trend of major publishers partnering with AI companies to ensure their content remains visible. Other examples include licensing deals between OpenAI and The Associated Press, Hearst, Le Monde, and The Financial Times. - The push for AI visibility is happening as AI search usage grows rapidly. Between September 2024 and September 2025, ChatGPT's web visits grew by 90.3% to 5.9 billion, while platforms like Perplexity and Claude saw even larger percentage growth in user engagement. - A key service offered by AI visibility agencies is structuring client content to be more easily understood and utilized by AI. This involves optimizing for comprehension and retrievability by machines, which is different from optimizing for search indexes and link signals in traditional SEO. This can include focusing on topics rather than just keywords and ensuring content is formatted in a way that AI can easily parse, such as with clear headlines and list-style breakdowns.
