FROM CX TO AX

Digital Advertising Just Crossed Its Inflection Point.

For 20 years, growth was driven by keywords, bids, and clicks. Now AI is collapsing discovery, comparison, and purchase into a single experience — often before a customer ever sees your site.

This isn’t the end of advertising.
It’s the end of advertising as you’ve known it.

Explore the Timeline

Strategic Evolution Timeline

2000 - 2026+
01

The Keyword Era

2000 – 2021
2000 Overture Launches

Birth of intent-based ads. Overture pioneers bidding on keywords, shifting ads from interruption to discovery.

2002 Google AdWords Scales

Relevance scoring and auction dynamics arrive. Advertising becomes measurable, ROI-driven, and accessible.

2007 Facebook Ads

From "what you search" to "who you are." Social identity targeting shapes precision segmentation.

2010 Programmatic Display

Real-time bidding replaces manual buying. Audience data becomes as valuable as ad placement.

2012 Mobile First

Mobile overtakes desktop. Location data and always-on usage reshape ad formats.

2016–2020 AI Optimization

Automated bidding and algorithmic targeting become default. Strategy shifts to machine-led execution.

02

Conversational Discovery

2022 – 2024
Nov 2022ChatGPT Launch

Discovery shifts to LLMs. Birth of AEO (Answer Engine Optimization).

Nov 2023Microsoft Copilot

Shopping in browser sidebars. Instant gift guides bypass affiliate listicles.

May 2024AI Overviews

AI summaries dominate results. Visibility shifts to being the "recommended" entity.

03

The Transactional Pivot

2025 – Early 2026
Apr 2025ChatGPT Shopping

LLMs become primary research destination for high-ticket items.

Sept 2025Stripe & Instant Checkout

Purchases completed via ChatGPT without ever visiting the merchant's website.

Jan 2026AI Ad Monetization

Intent-matched "Direct Offers" appear at the bottom of AI answers.

Jan 2026Affiliate Fee Shift

~4% fee on sales via ChatGPT checkout establishes new agentic revenue model.

04

The Agentic Horizon

Late 2026+
Mid 2026"Clean Feed" Standard

Move to Agent-Ready Feeds (UCP) providing real-time stock/specs directly to models.

Late 2026Agentic Autonomy

User: "Buy me the most durable pan under $100." Agent compares and executes via ACP.

How AI Determines What to Recommend

The Visibility
Framework

Answer engines don't just read your content—they verify it. "Good content" that ranks organically isn't enough if AI can't corroborate your claims or parse your information correctly.

Visibility depends on three synchronized elements working together. Weak execution in any area limits your ability to appear in AI-generated answers.

The Three Core Elements

1. On-Site Structure

Properly formatted content with schema markup that allows AI to accurately extract product details, specifications, and key information from your pages.

2. External Validation

Third-party corroboration through reviews, industry mentions, and citations that confirm your claims and establish credibility.

3. Technical Infrastructure

Structured data feeds and technical foundations that enable AI systems to access and interpret your inventory, pricing, and offerings without ambiguity.

Institutional Frameworks

Industry Driven Strategy

We deploy specific playbooks to defend and capture market share in the AI era.

01

Retail & Ecommerce

AI Visibility & Commerce Readiness

The Reality

Answer engines are replacing search results. When customers ask "best running shoes for flat feet" or "most durable cookware under $200," AI provides the answer—and your products are either in that recommendation or they're not.

Visibility requires the same fundamentals that have always mattered: authoritative content, verified citations, and proper technical structure. The difference now is AI reads your site differently than Google did.

What We Do
  • Content & Authority: Restructure product content and secure third-party validation (reviews, mentions, comparisons) that AI can verify
  • Technical Foundation: Implement schema markup and structured data so AI can accurately parse your inventory, specs, and pricing
  • Feed Optimization: Prepare product feeds for emerging commerce protocols as agent-based shopping evolves
Outcomes
  • → Products appear in AI-generated recommendations
  • → Accurate representation of specs, pricing, and availability
  • → Foundation for future agentic commerce capabilities
02

B2B & Enterprise

Authority & Citation Architecture

The Reality

B2B buyers are asking AI to compare vendors, evaluate solutions, and synthesize technical documentation. Your expertise is either being cited as authoritative evidence—or it's being overlooked.

AI models prioritize sources they can verify through third-party validation. Without proper structure and external corroboration, even strong content remains invisible in AI-generated answers.

What We Do
  • Content Optimization: Transform white papers and technical documentation into structured, AI-readable formats with proper schema markup
  • Strategic Placement: Secure authoritative mentions in industry publications and technical resources that validate your expertise
  • Citation Infrastructure: Build verifiable connections between your brand, solutions, and third-party validation sources
Outcomes
  • → Your brand cited in AI-generated vendor comparisons
  • → Technical content surfaces in solution research queries
  • → Defensible expertise positioning through verified authority
Execution Framework

Our 4-Phase Methodology

A proven, step-by-step approach to conquering AI search. We believe in data, transparency, and results.

Baseline & Opportunity

We audit your current AI visibility across the major LLMs and Google Search AI. Where does your brand appear? What's blocking you? Where are competitors winning?

Key Deliverable

Detailed AI Visibility Audit Report highlighting technical blockers and competitive answer gaps.

Blueprint & Validation

We reverse-engineer why certain brands dominate AI answers in your category, then build a tactical blueprint ranked by impact, difficulty, and time-to-results. Before full implementation, we test 2-3 hypotheses to validate the approach works for your specific vertical.

Key Deliverable

Strategic Blueprint with validated hypotheses for your vertical.

Foundation & Authority

We execute across two workstreams: Technical Foundation (schema markup, content restructuring, structured data feeds) and Authority Building (strategic PR placements, citation sources, third-party validation).

Key Deliverable

Transformed digital presence with active schema and authority placements.

Measure & Iterate

We track share of voice in AI answers, citation frequency, and recommendation rates through custom dashboards. Monthly reporting shows visibility trends, competitive movement, and optimization opportunities. Develop and execute an iterative content, site and advertising strategy.

Key Deliverable

Monthly Visibility Reporting & Iterative Strategy.

The Intelligence Suite

Executive visualization monitoring brand authority within live retrieved intelligence layers. Replicating the AthenaHQ framework for actionable insights.

Share of Voice
Live Index: Jan 2026
Answer Share
31.6%
Market Leader
Competitor Gap
+2.7%
vs. Next Competitor
Executive Insight

Your brand holds 31.6% SOV in high-intent queries, but "Webstaurant" is closing the gap (28.9%). Citation velocity must increase in Q2.

The Authority Layer

Strategic Placement
& Verification

The Reality

AI models cross-reference your claims against external sources before citing you. Without third-party validation from authoritative publications, even accurate information gets deprioritized or ignored.

The content that trains and informs AI models comes from specific sources: industry journals, technical publications, reputable review sites, and established news outlets. If your brand isn't present in these validation layers, you risk not being found.

The Result

Your brand becomes verifiable. When AI needs to confirm expertise, validate a claim, or cite an authority in your space, the evidence exists—and points to you.

What We Do

Source Identification

Map the authoritative publications and data sources AI models use to verify claims in your industry—then secure strategic placement within them.

Narrative Alignment

Ensure your external mentions reinforce your core positioning and key claims, creating consistent signals that AI can corroborate across multiple sources.

Structured Markup & Distribution

Format and distribute content in ways that feed knowledge graphs and citation databases, making your brand easily referenceable by AI systems.

Institutional Alignment

The New Terminology

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

Optimizing for the answer box. Ensuring your brand is the definitive solution provided in a ChatGPT or Gemini summary, rather than just a blue link.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Optimizing for the model's training data. Ensuring your content is vectorized and indexed correctly in the underlying LLM to influence future outputs.

UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol)

The machine-readable catalog standard. Allows shopping agents to "read" your inventory, pricing, and specs without visiting your site.

ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol)

The checkout handshake. A standardized protocol that allows an AI agent to securely complete a purchase on behalf of the user.

RankBrain, BERT & MUM

RankBrain (2015): Google's first AI for interpreting search intent.
BERT (2019): AI for understanding the context of full sentences.
MUM (2021): Multimodal AI that connects text, images, and video to solve complex tasks.

Entity Authority

The degree to which a brand or organization is recognized as a trusted, verified source of truth within a specific domain by the Knowledge Graph.

Knowledge Graph

A structured data model that maps entities (people, places, organizations) and their relationships to one another. It is the "brain" that allows AI to understand context rather than just keywords.

founderOf offers industry Brand Person Service Sector

Figure 1: Simplified Entity Relationship Map

Conversion Insights

Jeremy Vlcan

About the Founder: Jeremy Vlcan is a digital marketing leader and entrepreneur. Over 25 years, he’s led and scaled the digital marketing operations for companies ranging from venture-backed startups (Hayneedle, Bonobos) to Berkshire portfolio companies, consistently focusing on one thing: turning data into a competitive advantage to fuel profit and growth.

He built the keyword data models, attribution systems, and performance frameworks that became industry standard, optimizing hundreds of millions in ad spend along the way.

Now, he's applying that same systems-thinking to the most significant shift in digital marketing since the launch of AdWords. The transition from search engines to answer engines, from the SERP to agentic commerce.

Conversion Insights helps organizations navigate this transition—applying decades of performance marketing experience to the new discipline of Answer Engine Optimization as AI fundamentally reshapes how customers discover and buy.

When he's not in front of a computer, you can find Jeremy out in nature, camping with his family and painting landscapes.

Connect on LinkedIn View Artwork
Partner with CI

Start a
Conversation

Secure your brand's future revenue streams. By optimizing for the AI transition now, you ensure visibility, build unshakeable trust, and capture the market share that others will lose to the algorithms.

Advisory Availability: Q2 2026