#801: Brandlight CEO Imri Marcus on GEO, AI browsers, and the new search experience

Summary

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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström® – Episode #801

Guest: Imri Marcus, CEO and Co-founder of Brandlight
Topic: GEO, AI Browsers, and the New Search Experience
Date: January 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the seismic shift in digital marketing, brand discovery, and customer experience triggered by the rise of AI browsers and generative engine optimization (GEO). Greg Kihlström speaks with Imri Marcus, CEO of Brandlight, about how brands must pivot from traditional SEO strategies designed for search engines like Google to proactively influencing AI-driven conversations and recommendations. This new era challenges long-standing marketing models, requiring agility, new measurement tools, and reimagined content strategies to maintain visibility, relevance, and impact in AI-powered customer journeys.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The End of Google Dominance and Rise of AI Browsers

[00:48–02:55]

• Marketers have grown accustomed to optimizing for Google’s search algorithms, but the tectonic shift toward AI browsers (ChatGPT, Perplexity, OpenAI’s Atlas) has upended the traditional discovery, evaluation, and purchase process.
• Imri Marcus:
  • The marketing funnel is collapsing: discovery and consideration now often occur inside black-box AI systems rather than through user clicks and web visits.
  • “You are now actually competing to be the answer… the customer journey is happening inside a black box.” [03:57]
  • AI engines have replaced the familiar list of search results with synthesized, conversational responses—sometimes including actual purchasing pathways integrated into AI environments.

2. Fundamental Changes to SEO and Content Strategy

[05:23–07:48, 13:46–16:05]

• Traditional SEO levers such as keyword stuffing, backlinks, schemas, title tags, and volume-centric content strategies are losing effectiveness.
• Imri Marcus:
  • “[AI search]…doesn't work like traditional search… keyword stuffing doesn't work nearly as well when you have LLMs that really understand semantic meaning.” [06:23]
  • Content must be specifically structured, consistent, regularly refreshed, and relevant at the product-line/job-to-be-done level—not just the brand level.
  • Successful brands will employ data-driven strategies, analyzing how and where AI models source and synthesize information.
• “Think of the AI result page as a new retail shelf… analyzing all content impacting your vertical to understand what the AI ‘picks up’ as influential.” [14:11]

3. Impact on Marketing Budgets and Team Structures

[09:59–12:41]

• AI-driven discovery’s budgetary implications extend beyond SEO departments; CMOs and VPs of Marketing must coordinate cross-functional teams and reassign budget allocations.
• Solutions span across search, social, and partnerships (including how publisher relationships impact AI visibility).
• “You really need to start thinking about it not as a singular practice, but as a marketing channel that’s on the rise…allocate intelligently, because your consumers are moving to this faster than any other marketing cycle we’ve seen.” [11:46]

4. New Metrics: Measuring Influence and Visibility in AI Ecosystems

[16:05–20:06]

• Clicks, impressions, and conversions are insufficient in a world where influence frequently happens without any user ‘click’ at all.
• Imri Marcus:
  • “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.” [17:00]
  • New KPIs: Share of voice in AI environments, recommendation rate, sentiment analysis, accuracy of AI-generated brand descriptions, and position within AI recommendations.
• Early signals:
  • How often one’s brand appears as the answer to key customer questions.
  • How accurately and positively the AI describes the brand.
  • “These are the first two things every CMO should know about their business.” [19:12]

5. The Next Battleground: AI-Powered Advertising and Monetization

[20:06–23:28]

• AI platforms are experimenting with monetization, with models likely starting similar to sponsored answers but expected to evolve into novel ad formats.
• “We have a new material… the first phase, you build the same type of house, but then you understand, oh, I can do totally different things.” [21:15]
• For CMOs, the switch to AI-centric ad models (including “AI Ads” in Google, Perplexity, etc.) is coming fast—likely within the year.
• “This is going to be one of the more violent changes CMOs will experience if they are unprepared… That probably will happen in 2026.” [22:18]

6. Embracing Agility in Leadership

[23:40–24:33]

• Imri Marcus on staying agile:
  • Reject assumptions, analyze from first principles, and base decisions on current realities—not past marketing models.
  • “I think that in this category, agility is a requirement now. It's no longer a mindset that you get to choose to have.” [23:51]
  • Agile, data-driven CMOs will be the ones who thrive amid rapid industry change.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the new power dynamic:
  “You are now actually competing to be the answer… the customer journey is happening inside a black box.” — Imri Marcus [03:57]

• On traditional SEO’s obsolescence:
  “Keyword stuffing doesn’t work nearly as well when you have LLMs that really understand semantic meaning.” — Imri Marcus [06:23]

• On content strategy:
  “Think of the AI result page as a new retail shelf… you start to see almost a heat map of the Internet and within that, what type of content works.” — Imri Marcus [14:11]

• On measuring influence:
  “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.” — Imri Marcus [17:00]

• On the evolution of AI advertising:
  “The first phase, you build the same type of house, but then you understand, oh, I can do totally different things [with new materials].” — Imri Marcus [21:15]

• On agility as necessity:
  "I think that in this category, agility is a requirement now. It's no longer a mindset that you get to choose to have." — Imri Marcus [23:51]

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Important Timestamps

• [00:48–02:55]: Setting the stage – Google’s past dominance, AI browser disruption
• [05:23–07:48]: Why old SEO tactics now fail, and the GEO paradigm
• [09:59–12:41]: Budget & team structure implications for CMOs
• [14:11–16:05]: Rethinking content for AI-driven visibility
• [16:05–20:06]: New measurement tools and early signals for success
• [20:06–23:28]: The road ahead: AI-native advertising
• [23:40–24:33]: Leadership, agility, and staying ahead of change

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Summary prepared for: Listeners seeking a comprehensive, practical distillation of Episode #801 of The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström, featuring actionable insights into the future of AI-powered marketing, SEO/GEO, and the evolving customer journey.

Transcript

[A]

The agile brand.

[B]

Welcome to Season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast. This season we're going all in on Expert Mode, MarTech, AI and Customer Experience, talking with the people and platforms behind.

[C]

The brands you know and love.

[B]

I'm Greg Kilstrom, your host and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of martech, AI and marketing ops. Hit subscribe or Follow to make sure you always get the latest episodes and leave us a rating so others can.

[C]

Find us as well.

[B]

And make sure you check out our sponsor Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world applications. For more information, go to teksystems.com now let's dive in.

[D]

For the last two decades now, marketers.

[E]

Have lived by the decisions one company.

[D]

Has made and the experience customers have.

[C]

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. 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 Imrie Markus, CEO and co founder at Brand Light. Imre, welcome to the show.

[E]

Thank you Greg. It's a pleasure to be here.

[C]

Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you.

[D]

Definitely a timely topic on a lot.

[C]

Of people's minds right now.

[D]

So before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on.

[C]

Yourself and your role at Brand Light.

[E]

Sure. So I am Remarkus, I'm the CEO and I'm one of the co founders of Brand Light where we help the world's biggest brand 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, Brand Light 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.

[F]

Yeah, I love it.

[D]

Yeah. And I mean, definitely, you know, pouring through the holiday shopping data from end of 2025, one of the things that.

[G]

Struck me the most was just the.

[D]

Extent, you know, I talk with a lot of marketers and obviously marketers are using AI and all that stuff.

[G]

But I was struck by the extent that consumers are using AI in this process.

[D]

And 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 certainly search isn't going away, but.

[G]

It'S certainly changing and the things you mentioned are certainly helping to change this.

[D]

So you framed this as a battle.

[G]

Over who owns the data. From a brand executive's perspective, how does.

[D]

The power dynamic with platforms like Perplexity.

[G]

Or OpenAI's Atlas differ from the one.

[D]

They'Ve had with Google for the past over 20 years?

[G]

At this point?

[E]

Yeah, very different. And from multiple facets, A, you're not competing to be a result on page one. You are now actually competing to be the answer. I think one of the most fundamental shifts is that the legacy market in 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 salesperson 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 via very, very quickly.

[H]

Yeah, yeah.

[G]

Well, and in order to influence those.

[D]

I mean, you know, I've been, I've been doing SEO since, you know, pre. 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.

[G]

To speak, that you use to influence search rankings.

[D]

And, and while the algorithms may evolve over, over the years, it's, you know.

[G]

SEO has become a rather mature practice.

[D]

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.

[G]

And kind of this new paradigm.

[E]

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 delivers, 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 link volume. Same for title tags, generic content, all of that is getting thrown out the window. Really add to that 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 be 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 than to synthesize into the answer? So by the time we give you a recommendation, not only about your visibility, but about the next actions that you need to take, we have essentially reversed engineered the parts of the Internet that the AI engines and 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. They get it each week, each cycle, essentially a data driven answer that can.

[D]

Propel the revisibility and to your Point SEO took a while to, I would say, gain any level of real sophistication.

[G]

I mean, you used to be able.

[D]

To put a keyword on a page and, and rank for something that in this day and age you have no right to rank for. So, you know, obviously SEO matured quite a bit. Even, even if Geo matures much faster, it's still got, we're going to go through some changes.

[G]

Right?

[D]

So, so to that, to that point, having a, having a, a flexible way of, of being able to adapt to that seems just, you know, it seems pragmatic.

[E]

Fair amount.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And, and so from, from a CMOS 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.

[G]

Their budgets and their team structure and everything like that.

[D]

What is GEO and AI browsers and.

[G]

All this new way of brand discovery?

[D]

What does it mean for budget allocation, team structures?

[G]

How should CMOs be thinking?

[E]

Yeah, I think that's one, by the way, of the most 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 inducted, right? What happens when Google Ads move to Google's AI environments? So now to answer your question, after a very long drilling, this needs to sit with the CMO and with the VP of marketing. When we work with a brand, we, we are always in close contact, even with Fortune 100, always in closed contacts 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 you 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.

[F]

You know, that moment when marketing wants a landing page, design mocks it up.

[D]

And engineering says, yeah, we'll get to it.

[F]

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[C]

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[F]

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[G]

And you also mentioned some changes, you.

[D]

Know, some of those SEO best practices, backlink strategies, even creating, I would say volume of content over quality of content in some cases, if there had to be a trade off, kind of a legacy of SEO days, let's call it. What does this shift do to a content strategy?

[E]

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 all 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 even talking about? And you can extract all of that with the right data. This is at least what we've been helping our brands do.

[H]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

Well, and then the next logical thing is how do we measure this? Right. And so let's go there a little bit here. And again, the best parallel seems to be SEO, because I think there are.

[G]

Some similarities and yet there's some fundamental differences as well.

[D]

As you had mentioned, we've been tracking things like clicks, impressions, conversions from SEO world. In many cases there is no click or someone's having a conversation with ChatGPT or others. How do brands begin to measure influence and performance when the customer journey, that.

[G]

Buying process, that funnel that you described.

[D]

Earlier, is happening within an interface? You know, what kind of metrics are we using instead?

[E]

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 been the one answer that really gets recommended. Now 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.

[H]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

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 nudge things in the right direction or maybe we're way off. Like, how do you. Are there ways that someone could very quickly gauge how far they need to go and how quickly?

[E]

Yeah, I 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 the 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. But I would definitely say these are the first two. Every CMO should know about their business.

[H]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

And looking out a little further, as, as you mentioned, and certainly we've all seen, you know, search, if you can imagine, you know, search at one point didn't have ads all throughout. Right. So 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 it's sort of the inevitable.

[G]

Right.

[D]

So how do you see AI browsers or AI chats becoming the next advertising platform?

[G]

And what does this mean for CMOs that are planning down the road?

[E]

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.

[H]

Yeah.

[E]

Right. So. So we'll see a first version of Sponsored Answers. Probably Perplexity has already 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. Now, 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.

[H]

Yeah, yeah.

[E]

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 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.

[H]

Yeah.

[D]

Yeah. Well, we'll definitely have to talk more about that in a year or so. It's gonna be amazing what transpires. Well, Emory, thank you so much for joining today.

[G]

Really appreciate your ideas and insights.

[D]

One last question for you before we wrap up though. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you.

[G]

Find a way to do it consistently?

[E]

Yeah, so I think in my role you have to stay really close to reality. No assumption of what 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 CMOs that are agile will start to completely flourish in these next few years.

[H]

Yeah, Love it.

[D]

Well, again, I'd like to thank Imre Marcus, CEO and co founder at Brandlight.

[B]

For joining the show.

[D]

You can learn more about Emory and.

[E]

Brand Light by following the links in the show notes.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack tech services, talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn [e-mail] and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you like the episode hit, subscribe and drop a rating so others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just visit GregKillstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.

[A]

The Agile Brand.