The consumer journey has changed
AI search is moving faster than most teams can respond to. Marketers’ default strategy has become check, worry, wait, repeat. Meanwhile, consumers aren’t waiting: AI is already their go-to research tool, and most brands still don’t have a plan for it.
- 86%
of marketers have manually checked how AI describes their brand, yet most have no system for what to do next.
- 94%
recognize that AI research is already part of the customer journey.
- 91%
agree consumers are using AI tools to research products before purchase.
The opportunity to control how your brand shows up across AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, is moving fast, and most teams don’t even know where to start.
The answer?
AEO. Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is the process of optimizing your brand for AI search results. And it’s already shaping up to be the next competitive divide.
What marketers are actually afraid of
Ask marketers what worries them most about AI search, and the answer isn’t being absent from the conversation. It’s showing up inaccurately.
Worry about inaccurate or outdated info
AI gets the brand’s facts, claims or timing wrong
Worry about loss of narrative control
AI cites sources the brand can’t control and reshapes its story
Worry about losing to competitors
Rivals get recommended, or the brand doesn’t appear at all
Being described incorrectly is a trust problem, and trust is harder to win back once a wrong version of a brand’s story starts getting repeated.
The four
pillars of AEO
While AEO and SEO have many similarities, AEO answers sit across a wide breadth of content that's distributed across the internet, not just concentrated on your website.
Brands need to evaluate, prioritize, and invest across these four pillars to effectively win the answer layer:
- Brand-owned content
- Creator and UGC
- Earned media and editorial coverage
- Forum and community mentions
1. Brand-owned content
2. Creator and UGC
3. Earned media and editorial coverage
4. Forum and community mentions
Why focus on creator AEO?
The consumer journey in 2026 is heavily influenced by two key areas: recommendations from LLMs and recommendations from trusted creators.
Creator content builds validation and consensus that LLMs weigh heavily. Think high-authority voices like industry specialists developing long-form content or real users sharing authentic opinions in the spaces AI cites the most.
Creator content is one of many sources that shape how AI describes a brand, alongside owned content, and earned media.
1 in 3
AI answers cite creator content1
“You should start to think of an LLM as its own form of an influencer in the purchase journey, and you can’t ignore it. You have to spend time there. Otherwise, you’re ceding to your competitive set who will probably start to take share of model away from you.”
Lyle Stevens
Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Later
01Fixing internal team alignment
Where AEO sits across marketing teams today
Ownership splits across six functions with brand marketing leading, but 25% of marketers can’t name a clear owner. Even where ownership exists, it’s marketing-owned as one of many responsibilities instead of a dedicated function.
Alignment starts with shared prompts: SEO owns the technical side of visibility while creator teams own the relationships and the content AI is actually citing.
Picking those prompts together is the hard part as creator budgets are finite in a way SEO investment often isn’t.
The fix
Start with a shared list of prompts to target, built by pairing your brand’s existing SEO keyword data with the questions its customers are actually typing into AI tools. That means thinking less like a search strategist and more like an everyday person talking to an LLM.
Build a working list of 10 to 20 prompts across four categories:
1.
Buying intentWhat’s the best [product category] for [use case]?
2.
Competitor comparisons[Brand] vs. [Competitor]: which is better for [use case]?
3.
Features and specsDoes [product] have [specific feature]?
4.
Broad category questionsWhat are the top [category] brands right now?
That list becomes the shared brief both teams build from.
SEO informs which prompts matter, while creator teams inform who and what earns citation against them.
02Rethink your creator mix
AI models weigh authority, specificity, and crawlability over reach, and they weigh third-party content over brand-owned content by a wide margin. Picking the right creator mix starts with addressing what marketers think shapes an AI answer and what actually does.
Perception vs. reality of what influences AI
1 in 3 marketers
Believe their brand website carries the most weight in shaping how AI describes them.
The reality
Less than 10% of what AI search says about a brand comes from that brand’s own content.2
If owned content isn’t doing the heavy lifting, the creators talking about your brand are.
Three creator types for your strategy
A strong AEO-ready creator mix has three parts, each doing different work.
| Pillar | Platforms | Example formats |
|---|---|---|
| Attention |    | short-form explainers • infotainment • professional video guides |
| Authority |    | expert POV posts • long-form articles • in-depth guides |
| Answers |   | reviews & comparisons • community Q&As • real world use cases |
Follower count doesn’t predict citation
Brands are used to sorting their creator roster by follower count, but that number has almost no bearing on whether a creator’s content gets picked up by an LLM.
57%
of the YouTube videos AI cites come from channels with fewer than 100K followers.1
Micro influencers and smaller creators, at scale, can also have an incredible impact. That was a game changer for us, thinking about LLMs looking for trust signals, meaning repetition and consistency. With one of our brands, whenever we searched anything related to it, one specific dermatologist kept coming up again and again, and she wasn’t even someone we were working with. Her narrative was shaping what our brand showed up as in AI search.”
Carly Baron
Chief Commercial Officer at Advantice Health
03How to activate your creator AEO strategy
Most brands don’t need to start from zero when it comes to AEO. The new playbook is to take creator content already in motion, optimize it so AI can find it, then measure whether it’s working.
Optimize
existing content
Content on Instagram Reels and TikTok can often sit behind login walls that block AI crawlers, so a great piece of content can rack up views and still never reach the models forming answers about a brand.
The fix
Pull the content transcript, upload it to YouTube, and build a landing page that links out to the original post so the content becomes discoverable on both ends.
Build AEO into creator
campaigns from the start
Once you’ve optimized existing creator content, start building AEO objectives into future campaigns. Brief creators with target prompts in mind, and treat transcription, captioning, and cross-platform distribution as a normal part of the production process.
Using your shared prompt list, track share of model monthly and optimize over time with refreshed content.
Shared prompt list example
Trail running campaign
Target prompts briefed to creators, tracked monthly
- Best trail running shoes for beginners24% ↑
- Sneakers for long runs18%
- Best waterproof trail shoes12%
- Trail shoes for wide feet6%
“The uncomfortable part of AEO is that the signals AI trusts most are the ones furthest from brand control, so the fastest way in is through human experts who already have credibility and authority on your topic. Find the creators being cited in your category’s AI answers today, partner with them on original, expert-led content, and measure performance on AI citation pickup rather than impressions.”
Kaleigh Moore
AEO Strategist + B2B Creator
Monthly prompt tracking checklist
- 1
Run each priority prompt through major AI tools
- 2
Document where your brand appears, where a competitor appears instead, and whether the mention includes a citation
- 3
Review citable authority content to make sure it’s still live and indexable
- 4
If share of model has dropped, assess whether a platform’s crawling behavior has changed or if competitor’s presence is growing
- 5
Adjust your prompt list and creator roster as needed
Your next AI citation starts here
The teams that get cited in AI search will be the ones who follow
the three-step AEO playbook:
- 1
Align SEO and creator teams around one shared prompt list
- 2
Build a creator mix around authority and specificity
- 3
Activate and measure that content so it keeps earning citations over time
Marketer’s Guide:
How to Win AI Search with Creators
Get the report
Later was one of the first to transform creator marketing campaigns into AI search optimization engines, trusted by leading brands across CPG, fashion, auto, and retail. Our creator AEO strategists have spent the past year in the room with marketers building the scorecards, prompt strategies, and creator mixes that help teams turn a creator campaign into a proven AEO system. We can help your brand get started too.
- Later campaign data, 2026
- Winning in the Age of AI Search, McKinsey, 2026
Methodology: The research used is based on an online survey of 487 qualified marketers ran by Later and sourced through a third-party research panel, who influence marketing vendors, tools, agencies, or campaign strategy. Results reflect self-reported perceptions, with an overall MoE of ±4.4% at 95% confidence.