The news: Enterprises are focused on generative engine optimization (GEO) but struggle to execute strategies at scale.

• In 2025, US enterprises dedicated 12% of their digital marketing budgets on average toward GEO, per Conductor’s The State of AEO/GEO report, marking its growing priority status.
• Over half (56%) of the digital marketing leaders surveyed reported high or significant GEO investments in 2025, and nearly all (94%) planned to spend more in 2026.

However, there’s a growing execution gap—AI visibility is the No. 1 goal for leaders, but creating AI-optimized content at scale is their top challenge.

Why it matters: GEO is competing directly with channels like paid search and SEO, pressuring marketers to prove ROI and integrate GEO efforts with existing content strategies.

The key components of GEO have become clearer in the past year. Strategies for optimization can include:

• Frequently updating online content: Over 70% of pages cited by ChatGPT were updated within the past 12 months, per AirOps.
• Using clear, full-sentence product descriptions and metadata: Fragmented sentences and independent keywords may not be picked up by AI engines.
• Maintaining brand-owned content online: 86% of citations from genAI responses come from sources that brands either directly control or strongly influence, per Yext.

The challenge: GEO has moved from experimentation to strategic priority, but many marketing teams lack the operational maturity, tools, or workflows to scale AI-optimized content production effectively.

In addition to hurdles around creating content for AI, leaders report struggles measuring impact and ROI and being unable to monitor whether bots and LLMs are crawling content.

Recommendations for marketers: While most marketers plan to increase investment to avoid falling behind in AI-driven discovery, limited clarity on best practices and performance benchmarks remain roadblocks. To close the execution gap, teams should start by adopting tools that monitor where, how often, and in what context their brand appears in AI responses.

After establishing a baseline for visibility, pilot experiments into automatic content refreshing and AI-readable content structuring. Use KPIs like frequency of brand mentions in AI responses and referral traffic from AI sources to track outcomes.

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