Research study · 2026
Neither of them can measure who was right.
We have been interviewing marketing and digital leaders at large enterprises about how their brands show up in AI answers. Same questions every time. The answers have been sharp, and they have contradicted each other more often than they have agreed.
30-minute conversation · Anonymous option available
Several interviews in, one pattern keeps surfacing: there is no consensus on where to spend. Two of the sharpest examples sit at opposite ends of it.
Fortune 500 industrial brand
Every model names Reddit as its largest source, so they went after it. With a dozen product lines, showing up authentically was not workable, and the platform does not tolerate corporate presence. What actually moved their visibility was the thing they said they never would have predicted: traditional PR. Press releases. Conversations with editors. Getting articles placed.
Fortune 500 consumer brand
A deliberate move away from broad backlink tactics toward reviews, forums, recommendation engines, and user-generated content. Exactly the channels the other brand walked away from, and channels their category had never taken seriously before.
Neither of them can tell you who is right.
One built their own tracking. Hundreds of test queries across five categories, measured against four different AI models. They still cannot connect a change they made to a result they saw. Another set a baseline in Q1 and is waiting on Q3 numbers, because the feedback loop runs three to six months.
So the most measured team in the study still cannot measure the thing that matters. Which means these bets are being placed on instinct, and the instincts point in opposite directions.
Nobody can prove it is working.
Every leader we have spoken with is investing in AEO without being able to connect an action to a result. The measurement gap has been unanimous.
The team that can measure it is rarely the team that can move it.
Tracking tends to sit with one function while the levers that actually change AI visibility sit across several others.
“How are we doing in AI search” turns out to be a meaningless question.
One team found it only became answerable after breaking it into distinct query types. The answer was very different for each.
AEO, or answer engine optimization, is the question of how a brand stays visible as customers move from typing searches to asking AI assistants. Some teams call it GEO. Some just call it getting cited in ChatGPT. Almost nobody has a settled playbook for it yet.
Meridian Advisory is interviewing senior marketing, brand, and digital leaders at Fortune 2000 companies about what they are actually seeing, what they have tried, whether they can measure any of it, and what is funded for 2026. Every interview is 30 minutes and follows the same structure. Responses are aggregated and anonymized, then published as a single benchmark report.
Not vendor theory. Peer reality.
Prior to the group roundtable discussion, each participant sits for a 1:1 interview with Meridian Advisory to share your perspective on the same key themes around AEO. Once the study concludes & the interviews are finalized, everyone who contributed is invited to a closed-door virtual roundtable. Contributors only. We bring the aggregated findings to the group, anonymized, and everyone gets to compare notes directly with each other.
The roundtable is closed to anyone who did not contribute an interview. No vendors pitching, no audience.
Contributors receive the complete benchmark report ahead of public release.
Hear different perspectives, strategies, & bets to help shape your own internal AEO strategy.
How AI-driven discovery is showing up for your brand today, in your traffic and in what surfaces when someone asks about your category. Where it is real, and how much has changed in the last year.
The content, technical, and structural moves your team has made, and an honest read on what moved the needle versus what did not.
Whether you can measure your presence in AI answers yet or it is still a black box, and where this sits inside your organization.
What plays are you setting up for the back half of the year?
Meridian runs structured peer research with senior leaders and turns those conversations into published reports their peers actually read. The conferences and the analyst reports capture the polished version. What is actually being scoped, funded, and quietly killed inside Fortune 2000 marketing organizations rarely leaves the room. That is the gap we work in.
Gary is the founder of Meridian Advisory and runs every interview in this study personally. If you book a time below, you are booking it with him.
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Adobe and WPP are the joint sponsors of this study. Adobe builds the creative, content, and experience technology marketing teams use to reach and convert customers. WPP is the world's largest marketing and communications group. They sponsored this research because the question of how brands stay discoverable in AI answers is the question their clients are asking, and they want a peer-sourced view of it rather than a vendor narrative.
This follows the Forrester TEI and IDC InfoBrief model. The research is sponsored by technology partners and conducted independently by Meridian Advisory. Adobe and WPP do not attend interviews and do not direct the findings.
Nothing you share is published, quoted, or attributed without your explicit written approval before publication. You review any direct quote tied to your name or company before it appears anywhere.
If you choose anonymous participation, your name and company are removed from all materials and you appear only by role and industry descriptor, for example "VP of Marketing, Fortune 500 retailer". We do not sell, share, or repurpose your interview content beyond the published report and the anonymized findings shared with contributors.
30 minutes. A structured conversation about what is actually working in AI-driven discovery right now. Anonymous participation available.
We will send you the benchmark report when it publishes. No interview required.
Questions: garyburns@themeridianadvisory.com