For years, brands obsessed over one question: how do we rank higher on Google? Entire industries were built around cracking the search algorithm, mastering keywords, backlinks, and page authority in the hope of winning a coveted spot on the first page. But the rise of AI-generated answer engines is beginning to shift that equation fundamentally. Consumers are increasingly turning to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and AI Overviews not just to search, but to decide, asking these platforms what phone to buy, which restaurant to visit, or what skincare brand they should trust.
The shift matters because AI interfaces do not merely display options; they synthesise recommendations. Instead of competing for visibility on a search results page, brands are now competing to become part of the answer itself. As AI-generated responses compress discovery, consideration, and action into a single interaction, a new category of agencies is emerging around Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
The emergence of GEO has also sparked a larger industry debate. Can media planners — long accustomed to planning for impressions, clicks, and placements — adapt to a world where visibility is conversational, contextual, and increasingly invisible? And if discoverability is now shaped by AI systems pulling information from across the internet, what exactly should brands optimise for?
From ranking on pages to becoming the answer
One of the biggest shifts GEO agencies are pointing to is that AI-generated answers fundamentally change the relationship between brands and consumers. Traditional SEO focused on helping brands appear among a list of options. AI interfaces, however, increasingly collapse that choice architecture.
Rubeena Singh, MD, NP Digital India, believes the industry is underestimating how structural this transition really is.
“It is not an incremental shift. It is a structural one, and I think the industry is still in the early stages of fully absorbing what that means. SEO was, at its core, a game of signals: keywords, backlinks, page authority, technical structure. The goal was to rank, to appear in a list and let the user make a choice. GEO operates on an entirely different logic. When an AI generates an answer, it is not presenting options. It is making a recommendation. The consumer is not choosing from a list; they are receiving a conclusion.”
Singh notes that brands are increasingly shifting investment away from keyword optimisation toward credibility building, creating authoritative content ecosystems, expert-led narratives, and trusted third-party presence that AI systems are more likely to cite.
What makes this transition more significant is that it changes not just where brands appear, but how consumers encounter them.
Tamanna Gupta, Founder, Umanshi Marketing & Branding, the parent company behind Founder Vantage’s newly launched GEO service AVISHKAR, echoes this sentiment, arguing that the traditional “first-page mindset” is becoming obsolete.
“For the last two decades, marketing was about getting on the first page. You ranked, you bought a slot, you ran an ad. The user saw a list and made a choice. That layer is quietly disappearing. When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini a question, there is no list. There is 1 answer. You are either inside that answer or you are not, and most of the time the user has no idea who else was in the running. So yes, media planners have to rethink the job. We are not buying attention on a page anymore. We are trying to become part of how the AI thinks about a category.”
The implications of that shift are significant because discoverability is no longer limited to owned websites or search rankings. AI systems are increasingly synthesising information from forums, Reddit threads, LinkedIn conversations, YouTube videos, reviews, and editorial coverage. Visibility, in this environment, becomes deeply tied to credibility and contextual relevance.
Can media planners adapt to AI-led discovery?
For media agencies, the rise of AI-generated answers introduces a deeper challenge: traditional planning models were built around measurable touchpoints, clicks, impressions, traffic, and platform-based attribution. AI answer engines compress those journeys significantly.
Deepshikha Bhardwaj, National Media Strategy Lead at Schbang, believes visibility itself is evolving from being impression-led to recommendation-led.
“The definition of visibility is becoming far more personal and intent-led than ever before. Traditionally, brands competed for visibility on search result pages, but AI-generated answer layers are shifting the focus from ‘being seen’ to ‘being recommended.’ This fundamentally changes the consumer journey. Discovery, consideration, and action are increasingly collapsing into a single interaction, significantly shrinking the funnel and accelerating the possibility of conversion. For brands, visibility will no longer be defined only by impressions or rankings, but by how contextually relevant and credible they are within AI-led conversations.”
Bhardwaj highlights that AI answer engines could push the industry away from siloed planning approaches toward more integrated ecosystems where media, content, commerce, PR, and consumer experience work together.
While the industry is figuring out how disruptive this transition will ultimately be, there is growing agreement that AI interfaces are steadily altering how consumers discover and engage with brands. For media planners, the larger challenge lies in understanding how these evolving journeys can still be measured, tracked, and influenced effectively.
Smit Lodaya, Paid Media – Planning, Strategy, Measurement & Attribution Specialist, sees the change as evolutionary rather than disruptive, though he acknowledges that planners will need to adapt to shifting user behaviour and fragmented discovery journeys.
“AI Engines are pulling the traffic, user behaviour is changing, but that does not mean the clicks are reducing, they are simply starting from a different origin, sooner or later, they either land on our website / watch our videos, read our blogs or reach us phygitally one way or another. It’s not a radical change but an evolutionary shift.
In an ideal customer journey where a consumer follows AIDA, AI Platforms are simply making marketers’ work easier by being the customer’s single source for gathering info and very soon our Awareness, Interest & Decision and Action as well.”
The conversation is also forcing media planners to rethink the meaning of “share of voice.” In AI environments, brands are no longer merely competing for screen space. They are competing to influence the information ecosystems that AI models rely on while generating responses.
GEO is starting to look more like PR than SEO
As GEO agencies emerge, many industry experts believe the capability itself sits closer to editorial reputation-building than traditional technical SEO.
Gupta points out that brands cannot directly optimise AI-generated answers because those answers are dynamic and personalised. Instead, the real work happens much earlier.
“You stop trying to optimise the answer. You cannot. The answer is generated fresh every time and changes from one user to the next. What you can shape is what the model has already read about you long before anyone asks the question. That is the real shift. In SEO, you worked after the search. In GEO, all the work happens before the search. A lot of GEO right now is rebuilding the basic public record of a brand so that the machine has something accurate to read. It is closer to PR and editorial work than to traditional SEO.”
That shift is also changing who might ultimately own GEO within agencies. While standalone GEO firms are emerging rapidly, many believe the capability will eventually merge into integrated planning structures.
Bhardwaj says consumers do not experience brands through isolated channels anymore, which makes cross-functional collaboration essential.
“The future of planning lies in understanding the consumer journey holistically, not just managing individual touchpoints. GEO will therefore require close collaboration across media, content, SEO, PR, social, and even commerce teams to ensure brands remain discoverable and relevant across AI-driven ecosystems.”
The industry still cannot fully measure AI visibility
Despite the growing excitement around GEO, nobody fully knows how to measure success in AI answer layers yet.
Singh believes the industry is still borrowing outdated SEO metrics to understand a fundamentally different ecosystem. She says, “This is where the industry needs to evolve. The current measurement vocabulary is largely borrowed from SEO and it does not quite fit.”
She points to a new set of signals that could define success in AI-led discovery: share of AI-generated recommendations within a category, consistency of brand information across sources AI systems rely on, quality of third-party references, and downstream indicators such as branded search uplift and direct traffic that reflect genuine consumer intent.
Gupta highlights that brands are still too focused on clicks and citations when the larger issue is narrative control.
“When the AI is talking about you and you are not in the room, what is it saying? Is it correct? Is it current? Is it the version of you that you would actually want a buyer or an investor to hear first? The AI is now the first meeting before the meeting. It is briefing your customer before your salesperson walks in. It is briefing the journalist before the interview. It is briefing the investor before the pitch.”
That perhaps captures the central tension surrounding GEO. The industry is rushing toward a future where discoverability may no longer happen through pages, platforms, or feeds, but through synthesised answers generated in real time.While the tools, metrics, and ownership structures around GEO are still evolving, it is becoming increasingly evident that brand visibility is gradually shifting away from pages and platforms toward the AI systems quietly shaping what consumers see, trust, and choose.
