For the last two decades, marketers have lived by the decisions one company has made and the experience customers have with that company’s search bar (and in many cases, browser). But what happens when Google is dethroned by an AI?
Agility requires not just adapting to new channels, but fundamentally rethinking the entire customer discovery journey when the rules are rewritten overnight. It’s about moving from optimizing for keywords to influencing AI-driven conversations.
Today, we’re going to talk about the rise of AI browsers and Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. Whether it’s using ChatGPT or Perplexity to search the web or with tools like OpenAI’s Atlas browser, we’re seeing a convergence of search, shopping, and conversation that could fundamentally change how brands are discovered, evaluated, and purchased, creating a new battleground for customer data and attention.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Imri Marcus, CEO and Co-Founder at Brandlight.
About Imri Marcus
Imri Marcus is the CEO and Co-Founder of Brandlight AI, the strategic data and influence partner for Fortune 500 enterprises navigating the shift to AI-driven consumer discovery. A serial entrepreneur with multiple successful exits in the media and AI sectors, Imri is now focused on empowering the world’s leading brands to own their narrative in this new, zero-sum marketing channel. Imri earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Reichman University and splits his time between Tel Aviv and New York.
Imri Marcus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imri-marcus-89074a79
Resources
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Transcript
[00:00:06] Greg Kihlstrom: For the last two decades now, marketers have lived by the decisions one company has made and the experience customers have with that company’s search bar and in many cases, browser. But what happens when Google is dethroned by an AI? Agility requires not just adapting to new channels, but fundamentally rethinking the entire customer discovery journey when the rules are rewritten practically overnight. It’s about moving from optimizing for keywords to influencing AI-driven conversations. Today we’re going to talk about the rise of AI browsers and generative engine optimization or GEO, whether it’s using ChatGPT or Perplexity to search the web or with tools like OpenAI’s Atlas Browser, we’re seeing a convergence of search, shopping, and conversation that could fundamentally change how brands are discovered, evaluated, and purchased, creating a new battleground for customer data and attention. Today to discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Imri Marcus, CEO and co-founder at Brandlight. Imri, welcome to the show.
[00:01:51] Imri Marcus: Thank you, Greg. It’s a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:54] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Definitely a timely topic on a lot of people’s minds right now. So, uh, before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Brandlight?
[00:02:05] Imri Marcus: Sure. So, I’m Imri Marcus. I’m the CEO and I’m one of the co-founders at Brandlight, where we help the world’s biggest brands win in this really new era of now AI-driven discovery, where you have customers that don’t just click search results. They actually ask AI engines what to buy, where to go, really which brands to trust. So, in this era, Brandlight really is the control room for AI visibility. We help the world’s biggest brands measure, influence, and monetize how they show up across all AI environments. ChatGPT, Perplexity, now AI browsers and agentic shopping experiences. So, definitely a new era in marketing and we’re trying to be the secret sauce to the CMO in that shift.
[00:02:55] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, I love it. Yeah. I mean, definitely, you know, pouring through the holiday shopping data from, you know, from end of end of 2025, you know, saw one of the things that struck me the most was just the extent, you know, I talk with a lot of marketers and obviously marketers are using AI and all that stuff, but I was struck by the extent that consumers are are using AI in this process. and that you know, that really kind of leads to the first thing I wanted to talk about, which is just redefining brand discovery, which has been traditionally rooted in search, and, you know, certainly search isn’t isn’t going away, but it’s certainly changing and the things you mentioned are certainly helping to change this. So, you know, you’ve framed this as a a battle over who owns the data. From a brand executive’s perspective, how does the power dynamic with platforms like Perplexity or OpenAI’s Atlas differ from the one they’ve had with Google for the past, you know, over 20 years at this point?
[00:03:57] Imri Marcus: Yeah, very different and from multiple facets. A, you’re not competing to be a result on page one. You’re now actually competing to be the answer. I think one of the most fundamental shifts is that the legacy marketing funnel is collapsing to an extent for 20 years the model was, you optimize for a click, that click gets you to visit a website, that’s what you measured, and then you track conversions. Now you really are starting to see that the customer journey is happening inside a black box, right? The moment of discovery is happening inside these AI engines, right? So that’s been taken away from Google. But then something much bigger starts to happen. Consideration happens within that black box, right? Google was the door to the internet, but then you got met with 25 blue links. Now you have that moment of discovery, but then you have an AI that can act as a frontline sales person for your brand or for your competitor, right? And probably by the time this errors because everything is shifting so quickly, we already are starting to see conversions happening within that environment. You can actually make purchasing decisions from within ChatGPT, definitely from within the browsers. So, a convergence of the entire marketing funnel, and it’s all happening very, very quickly.
[00:05:28] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and in order to influence those, I mean, you know, I’ve been I’ve been doing SEO since, you know, pre-Google, right? So, you know, those those platforms that probably many don’t even remember anymore, like AltaVista and Lycos and, you know, and probably many others. Obviously, it’s gotten a lot more sophisticated over the years. Google has gotten very sophisticated, but there’s still a certain set of levers, so to speak, that you use to influence search rankings and while the algorithms may evolve over over the years, it’s you know, SEO has become a rather mature practice. But in an AI native browser or an AI chat interface, what are the new levers or what are the, you know, what’s what’s the strategy for maintaining brand narrative control or gaining that influence in in kind of this new paradigm?
[00:06:23] Imri Marcus: Yeah, great question. Maybe I’ll start with the inverse because, yes, Google has matured and the algorithm, but also like you said, SEO is a very mature industry with well-defined best practices. Now, that can kill a non-agile brand right now with the shift to AI search and AI visibility, if they’re solely applying SEO tactics to an environment that really doesn’t work like traditional search. Fundamentals still matter, but the levers like you said, have completely changed. Keyword stuffing doesn’t work nearly as well when you have LLMs that really understand semantic meaning. Backlink schemas, they don’t really work when you have models that can weigh authority and consistency over just, you know, link volume, same for title tags, generic content. All of that is getting thrown out the window really. Add to that this is a changing environment and the velocity of change is really astounding, right? So when you ask ChatGPT a question, it will go out, it can read through dozens, sometimes hundreds of articles and synthesize an answer. So, the approach we’re taking and that approach allows us and then the brands we work for to completely agnostic is to be very, very data-driven, right? So, when we give a brand a recommendation, it’s after we’ve analyzed really billions of points of data about them and their vertical. When someone asks a question in your vertical, where does ChatGPT go? Where does Perplexity go, right? Then, which types of pieces of content will it choose to dive deeper into, then to synthesize into the answer? So by the time we give you a recommendation, not only on about your visibility, but about the next actions that you need to take, we have essentially reverse-engineered the parts of the internet that the AI engine and the environment are really being attracted to, right? And that allows us to again be agnostic to these changes and for the brands we work with to know that even if the industry keeps changing and it will surely keep changing for the next few years, right? Yeah. They get it each week, each cycle, essentially a data-driven answer that can propel their visibility.
[00:09:00] Greg Kihlstrom: And to your point, you know, SEO took a while to, I would say, gain any level of real sophistication. I mean, you you used to be able to put a keyword on a page and rank for something that in this day and age you have no right to to rank for. So, you know, obviously, SEO matured quite a bit. Even if even if GEO matures much faster, it’s still got we’re going to go through some changes, right? So, so to that to that point, having a having a a flexible way of being able to adapt to that seems just, you know, it it seems pragmatic.
[00:09:38] Imri Marcus: Paramount.
[00:09:39] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. and so from a from a CMO’s perspective then, you know, they’ve probably been, you know, their SEO and their paid search budgets have been whether they’ve fluctuated over the years, they they’ve been set and it’s it’s an understood thing and it’s an understood line item in in their budgets and their team structure and everything like that. What does GEO and this, you know, AI browsers and all this this this new way of brand discovery, what does it mean for budget allocation, team structures, you know, how how should CMOs be thinking?
[00:10:16] Imri Marcus: Yeah, I think that’s one by the way of the most fun fundamental and important questions for CMO to answer. So, a few things are happening and a few things will continue to happen. When I spoke to Fortune 50 CMOs 12 months ago, for most of them we needed to explain why it’s even important. And we did a big survey about it. 95 of CMOs at enterprises have already gotten asked about it by their CEO or board. So, everyone is aware. In 2025, most budgets came as they should from the SEO department. And you are starting to see an evolution of the SEO department and the content teams, which is 100% correct to do. That being said, this shift is even more foundational. We have only seen in 2025 a real impact on traffic that sits with search teams. In 2026, we’ll start seeing media budgets being impacted, right? What happens when Google Ads move to Google’s AI environment? So, now to answer your question after a very long spiel, this needs to sit with the CMO and with the VP of marketing. When we work with a brand, we are always in closed contact, even with Fortune 100s, always in closed contact to the VPs of marketing, to the CMOs. But then we deploy solutions to different teams. So, we have solutions that we deploy for GEO, for the search teams, but we have solutions that we deploy to the social teams. We have solutions that we deploy for partnerships, how do we work with publishers, right? That affects your AI visibility. So, you really need to start thinking about it, not as a singular practice, but as a marketing channel that’s on the rise. Right? And you need to allocate really intelligently and strategically towards that. Because your consumers are starting to move to this environment faster than any other marketing cycle we’ve ever seen before.
[00:12:44] Greg Kihlstrom: And you also mentioned some changes on, you know, some of those SEO best practices, backlink strategies, even creating, I would say, volume of content over quality of content in in some cases if there had to be a trade-off, kind of a a legacy of SEO days, let’s call it. What does this shift do to a content strategy?
[00:13:09] Imri Marcus: Yeah, again, great questions. So, first of all, maybe to frame it, you can think of it as if the AI result page is now almost like a new retail shelf. And when you analyze, when you have the ability to analyze all of the data, all of the different pieces of content, all of the different domains that are impacting your vertical, whether brand owned, social media, or third-party owned, you start to see almost a heat map of the internet and within that what type of content works. Right? So, I can give you high-level best practices, right? You want structured product information, you want it to be consistent, you want it to be refreshed, these are all things that will matter for sure. You want to speak at the product line level versus just the brand level, because people ask about jobs to be done in these environments, rather about brands, right? No one goes and asks, is Apple a good company? You go in and say, you know, I’m a hobbyist photographer, looking for a new smartphone, what’s the best option in the market for me? Those are extremely valid. Then there’s a deeper layer that if you have the right data, you can exercise. And that’s really understanding for your brand, exactly what type of content is already working in each of the different AI environments. So where should you be placing it, how should you be writing it, which structures, and what you should you be talk even talking about? And you can extract all of that with the right data. This is at least what uh we’ve been helping our brands to.
[00:15:04] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and then the next logical thing is how do we measure this, right? and so let’s let’s let’s go there a little bit here. and again, to the I the best parallel is seems to be SEO and it’s I because I think there there are some similarities and yet there’s there’s some fundamental differences as well. as you had mentioned, you know, we’ve been tracking things like, you know, clicks, impressions, conversions from SEO world. And in many cases, there is no click or, you know, there someone’s having a conversation with ChatGPT or or others. How do brands begin to measure influence and performance when the customer journey, that buying process, that funnel that you described earlier is happening within an interface, you know, what kind of metrics are we are we using instead?
[00:15:58] Imri Marcus: Yeah, that’s really the hardest part, right? Because traditional digital marketing really was built on clicks, then impressions, then conversion tracking. And in AI interfaces a customer may never even click, right? It’s the first time in history where as a brand you can add a piece of content that no person ever sees, but the AI engine saw it and it’s now completely affecting entire customer journeys, right? ChatGPT used it to influence 10 million people, but none of them actually saw it. So, the measurement really shifts to influence, how often are you included, when you are included, with what type of sentiment, how are you described, right? How accurate is the model about you? Does it accurately represent your brand, right? So, brands need to measure things like share of voice in these AI environments, recommendation rate, positioning within the engine, and how correctly are you being described versus your competitors. The goal really isn’t traffic, it’s being the one answer that really gets recommended. Now, this is how this is essentially the first act of the market. The market will evolve to full on attribution. This is actually work that we’re now doing with our clients. But if you take the perspective and you spoke about Google’s rise and the evolution of SEO, everything is very new, but is evolving faster than any other marketing channel that we’ve seen before.
[00:17:43] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. And so for those that are listening to this and maybe not as far along as they would like, are there early signals, are there early indicators that, okay, hey, we’re we’re on the right path, we just need a little, you know, to to nudge things in the right direction or maybe we’re way off, like how do you, are there, are there ways that someone could very quickly gauge how far they need to go and how quickly?
[00:18:10] Imri Marcus: Yeah, yeah. I I’d definitely start with two main things. You need to fully understand what your AI visibility share is. So, out of a set of high-intent questions customers are asking in your category, really how often are you included as the answer? So, that’s one. The second, representation, accuracy, and sentiment. It’s great to be included, but when you are included, does the AI describe you correctly, right? Are you differentiated? Do you come up with a negative sentiment, with a positive sentiment? So, they touch on both the unbranded visibility that you have, as well as the branded visibility. And there are many other things to measure, but I would definitely say these are the first two every CMO should know about their business.
[00:19:05] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. And looking out a little further as you mentioned and certainly we’ve all seen, you know, search if you can imagine, um, you know, search at one point didn’t have ads all throughout, right? So, um, it’s hard to even remember those days some days, but AI certainly will, there’s going to be ways that it gets monetized and and, you know, it’s it’s sort of the inevitable, right? So, how do you see AI browsers or, you know, AI chats becoming the next advertising platform and what does this mean for, you know, for CMOs that are planning down the road?
[00:19:44] Imri Marcus: Yeah, okay. great question and a few very interesting points. First of all, it’s inevitable. Media budgets are the biggest part of most budgets. And all of the major AI platforms are already fiddling with it. I think two things will happen. I think we’ll see a first version that’s somewhat akin to what we’re used to. It will be, you know, it’s easier to start with what you know. Yeah. Right. So, we’ll see a first version of, you know, sponsored answers probably. Perplexity has already uh tried that quite a bit for the past 12 months. But then because we have a new modality, right? That sits on a completely new set of axioms. I think we’ll see an evolution of what ads even look like in these environments. So, the evolution from and no one totally knows what will that look like. But we have a new material, right? We used to build houses out of wood and then you started using concrete, right? Now, in the first phase, you build the same type of house, but you use concrete and it’s just much more stable. But then you understand, oh, I can do totally different things, it’s a completely new material. So, I think we’ll kind of see something like that. It will start somewhat similar and then completely morph and change. Yeah, yeah. That’s for what will it look like. From the brand’s perspective and the commercial perspective, I think this is actually going to be one of the more violent changes CMOs will experience if they are unprepared. Google is now fiddling with AI ads. Google CEO went on stage to say they’re essentially solely focusing on their AI search. That will completely replace their legacy search sooner than later. When that happens, they’ll also flip a switch on their ads model once they think they can create a relevant and significant one in their AI environments. So that will happen very fast. Right? And that probably will happen in 2026 and CMOs definitely need to be prepared. Even though that’s not in full effect, it’s actually something we’ve been working on with the CMOs we work with just to prepare them for that moment. So even though a lot of the work is around GEO right now with them, this is definitely something that’s coming.
[00:22:27] Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well definitely have to uh talk more about that um what in a in a year or so, it’s gonna be amazing what transpires. Well, Imri, thank you so much for for joining today. Really appreciate your ideas and insights. One last question for you before we wrap up though. Uh what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:22:49] Imri Marcus: Yeah, so I think in in my role, you have to stay really close to reality. No assumption of what, you know, used to work in marketing. I think this is a time where you really have to be able to analyze from first principles what’s happening in your space and then build strategies and tactics based on that. I think that in this category, agility is a requirement now. It’s no longer, you know, a mindset that you get to choose to have. I think that uh CMOs that are agile will start to completely flourish in this in this next few years.
