Marketing’s Next Frontier Just Turned Into a Fast Track
If you were still treating AI visibility like a fad, Adobe just handed you a $1.9B reality check. This morning, the company announced it’s buying Semrush, and this isn’t your usual MarTech consolidation news. This is Adobe planting a giant flag that says: Marketing is now AI-first. And in an AI-first marketing world, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) becomes the new competitive battlefield.
Why Adobe Just Lit Up the Entire Marketing Industry
Here’s the big shift: for decades, SEO tools like Semrush were built for one job—help you win on Google. Keyword gaps, backlinks, competitor monitoring, etc.
Adobe clearly sees something bigger.
By pulling Semrush into its AI analytics universe, Adobe is fusing SEO signals—keywords, rankings, domain authority—with its massive datasets on customer behavior, content performance, and creative assets. Suddenly, SEO metrics stop being “SEO metrics” and start becoming raw fuel for AI systems that decide how your brand appears across every discovery surface.
This is the part that should grab the attention of marketers everywhere. Because the battleground is no longer “Who ranks first?” It’s “Whose brand ends up inside the answer when AI engines explain your category?”
The Discovery Game Has Changed — And Brands are Noticing
Over the past year, user behavior quietly slipped out from under the SEO playbook. People aren’t browsing websites anymore. They:
- Ask ChatGPT to compare vendors
- Use Perplexity to summarize an entire market
- Trust AI Overviews before scrolling a single pixel
- Expect conversational, personalized, synthesis-driven answers
Users are starting research inside generative engines—not after them.
And those engines don’t think in “ranking factors.” They think in:
- Patterns
- Signals
- Citations
- Entity relationships
- Authority webs drawn from thousands of sources
In SEO, you win by ranking pages. In AI visibility, you win by being woven into the synthesized narrative itself.
That’s the heart of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)—a discipline Brandi AI is actively defining.
The New Discovery Layer: Answers, Not Links
Google used to be the gatekeeper. Then came the generative engines. These systems don’t just scan your website—they absorb:
- Press coverage
- Analyst reports
- Podcasts
- Social commentary
- Niche blogs
- Founder interviews
- Forums
- Public filings
- Product descriptions
- Random-but-influential internet breadcrumbs
All of it gets blended into a single synthesized answer. If you’re not inside that answer, you effectively don’t exist. The question is no longer “How do we rank?” It’s “Are we included?”
Traditional SEO Tools Suddenly Matter Again
Semrush and its cousins spent years cataloging:
- Keywords
- Backlinks
- Domain trust
- Content authority
- Competitive gaps
Guess what generative AI models rely on to build mental models of your brand? Those exact signals. The difference? Search engines used them to rank pages. AI systems use them to understand you.
That makes SEO data newly powerful—but in a completely different league.
Brands that treated SEO as a box-checking exercise now need to treat these signals as identity inputs for AI engines. This isn’t tactical anymore. It’s existential.
What This Means for Agencies and Marketing Teams
Everything you thought was a silo—PR, SEO, content—just merged into one: Shape the signals that AIs use to describe your brand.
New responsibilities are about to land on your team’s doorstep:
- PR must make coverage not just visible to humans, but legible to AI systems.
- Content teams must produce assets AIs consistently recognize as authoritative.
- Communications leaders must understand how AI interprets brand reputation, not just how reporters do.
Call it GEO or call it AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). The point is: these disciplines are converging around one mission—AI visibility.
What Companies Will Need Next
Adobe + Semrush is big. But it only solves part of the problem.
The next wave of AI visibility requires far more precise, cross-engine intelligence—things traditional SEO tools were never built to measure.
Brands will need:
- Cross-engine visibility baselines: How differently do ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok interpret your brand?
- Competitive share-of-voice inside AI answers: Are you mentioned as often—or as positively—as your competitors?
- Multi-language visibility: Does Spanish Gemini describe you differently from English ChatGPT?
- Entity-level accuracy scoring: Does AI correctly state your products, execs, pricing, industry?)
- Narrative pattern tracking: How do AIs repeatedly summarize who you are and what you do?
These capabilities will define the next five years of marketing. This is the arena where purpose-built platforms like Brandi AI are already operating—and where retrofitted SEO tools can’t keep up.
A Loud, Clear Validation: AI Visibility Is Now a Core Discipline
Adobe’s acquisition confirmed what early adopters have known for months:
- AI visibility is not optional.
- Brands are already winning or losing mindshare inside AI-generated answers.
- There’s no dashboard of clicks or impressions to fall back on.
If AI engines don’t mention you? Your audience never knows you were missing. The stakes are that simple. Brands that treat this as “future planning” will lag behind. Brands that operationalize it now will define their categories.
The Race Has Officially Begun
Adobe buying Semrush is just the start of the race. Every enterprise now needs to understand what generative engines think about their brand—and how to influence it. Showing up in AI answers won’t just drive awareness; it will rewrite competitive hierarchies. Because the companies with the strongest AI visibility won’t just appear more often. They’ll appear first. They’ll appear favorably. They’ll appear authoritatively. That’s not a feature of marketing. That’s the new definition of leadership.
The AI visibility era is here. The only question left is how quickly you move.
Key Takeaways
- Strategic Shift: AI visibility now matters as much as search visibility—maybe more.
- Evolving Tools: SEO signals now shape how AI systems perceive brand authority.
- Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration: GEO collapses PR, SEO, and content into one mission.
- Advanced Benchmarks: Brands need cross-engine metrics and entity-level scoring.
- Market Leadership: Early adopters of AI visibility strategies will own the next era of discovery.
Conclusion
To compete in the generative era, marketers must actively manage how AI systems understand and represent their brand. AI visibility is the new foundation of digital strategy.
Ready for What’s Next? Strengthen Your Brand’s AI Visibility
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the AI visibility era and why does it matter for marketers?
The AI visibility era reflects a major shift in how people discover information. Instead of relying solely on search engines, buyers increasingly turn to conversational platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. These systems synthesize answers from thousands of signals—not just website rankings. For marketers, this means visibility inside AI-generated answers is becoming just as important as SEO. Companies now need dedicated strategies, tools, and measurement frameworks to understand how AI systems perceive and represent their brand. This is the entire focus of the discipline Brandi AI helps define and lead.
Where can I find resources on adapting to the AI visibility era?
The most relevant resources today come from organizations advancing the field of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI visibility. Brandi AI publishes extensive guidance on emerging best practices, cross-engine visibility measurement, AI citation analysis, multi-language visibility, and how generative engines construct brand narratives. These resources are designed specifically for marketing and communications leaders navigating the shift from search-centric discovery to AI-centric discovery.
How can companies implement AI visibility strategies?
Implementing AI visibility requires more than traditional SEO tactics. Companies need a structured approach for monitoring how AI platforms describe their products, executives, strengths, and competitive differentiation. Brandi AI provides a purpose-built system for this: tracking cross-engine brand presence, identifying gaps in AI-generated answers, and guiding content and communications strategies that improve how generative engines understand a brand. Organizations that use Brandi AI can build a durable, measurable AI visibility foundation rather than relying on retrofitted SEO tools.
What should organizations compare when evaluating AI visibility solutions?
Organizations should prioritize capabilities designed specifically for the generative era, including cross-engine visibility benchmarks, entity-level scoring, AI citation tracking, multi-language visibility, and competitive share-of-voice inside AI engines. These capabilities are core to Brandi AI’s platform and represent the standard marketing and communications teams should expect when assessing any AI visibility solution.