AI Search Marketing Is Bigger Than AEO

Andrew Higgins is CEO of Parsnipp, an AI search marketing company.

In the first part of this discussion, I argued that marketers need to think more soberly about GEO. It’s important, but right now, most of the market is treating GEO/AEO and AI search marketing as synonymous. They aren’t.

Strip away the new terminology, and AEO is essentially the organic-discovery piece of AI search. If consumers are increasingly using AI search as a new surface, or even a new home page of the internet, how do you show up in the answer?

Saying AI search marketing is just AEO is like saying social media marketing is just organic posting. We all know that’s not true. Social eventually became a much broader ecosystem of advertising, influencer, commerce, measurement and brand building.

AI search is headed in the same direction, with its own organic, paid, commerce and brand needs.

AI Search Owns More Of The Customer Journey

AI search differs from traditional search because it can own a much larger portion of the customer journey. Search helped with discovery. You clicked a link and entered an environment the brand controlled. AI search is different. Awareness, research, comparison, recommendation and eventually purchase can all happen inside one interaction between a consumer and an agent.

Meaning marketers need to walk and chew gum at the same time. You have to think about organic alongside paid and commerce without losing sight of what is uniquely your business.

In some ways, brand may actually become harder to communicate because the customer may never land on your website. You have to work harder on PR, editorial, messaging and genuine brand building so that what makes your company different can still soak through when AI is acting as the intermediary.

Advertising Will Become A Channel Within The Channel

I expect AI search to follow a similar path, by starting as a relatively novel, top-of-funnel activation and gradually becoming a more meaningful part of the digital advertising stack.