Marketers question expensive AI visibility tools as inconsistent results fuel skepticism

By Kimeko McCoy • May 1, 2026 •

Ivy Liu

The latest industry phrase keeping marketers awake at night is AI visibility.

The so-called zero-click reality has ushered in a slew of tools promising insight as to when and where a brand is referenced in AI chatbots. Google users are less likely to click through links when an AI summary appears in the results, according to Pew Research Center. Those who were met with an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits, per the research. In contrast, those who didn’t encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often.

As site traffic wanes and more people turn to LLMs, the industry is grappling with whether the tools are a strategic necessity or the latest ad tech grift.

Is it just another profitable guessing game for the ad industry?

There’s a growing appetite to understand brand visibility (and fear of being invisible in AI environments) and tech vendors know it. It’s unclear just how many AI visibility, brand visibility, generative engine optimization or answer engine optimization tools exist on the market today. However, platforms like Profound, Peec AI and Ahrefs Brand Radar have become notable market leaders, per agency execs.

“In the days of Google, it was easier for a brand to understand exactly how you were ranking and why you were ranking in a certain way, and all of a sudden that information is opaque,” said Lauren Wang, founder and CEO of Flex, a feminine hygiene product company, referring to a brand’s placement in Google search results.

But these so-called GEO wins are leading marketers to have inconsistent results. In addition, the platforms are unable to fully prevent AI hallucinations or misattributions. Given AI visibility is in nascent stages, differentiating between the tools hinges more on trustworthiness and reliability of the data, or a platform’s ability to interpret a brand’s content, execs say.

Agency execs agree the tools serve more as a benchmark than a source of truth.

Booming GEO business

There’s a long list of AI and brand visibility tools — including Profound, Otterly.AI and AthenaHQ. Enterprise platforms have incorporated similar offerings, like SEMRush AI SEO Toolkit, or Ahrefs Brand Radar.

Then there’s the tech giants.

On Tuesday, Adobe acquired Semrush brand visibility platform for $1.9 billion to strengthen its AI discoverability offerings. Microsoft recently expanded Microsoft Clarity to help users understand which web pages are referenced in AI-driven answers, and how often.

Meanwhile, some agencies and brands are building internal AI visibility tracking tools to curb costs. For example, “social-first” marketing agency Noise Media Group helps brands measure their GEO visibility by tracking how often a brand is mentored in LLM responses via its Voodoo.ai tool. Flex is leveraging existing tools, like Semrush, but simultaneously developing their own internal mechanisms for the sake of costs, Wang said.

It leaves marketers to rely on predictions.

At a basic level, AI visibility platforms run millions of queries in LLMs like ChatPGT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity to pull in cited sources. From there, the platform analyzes how often a brand is mentioned in comparison to competitors.

More advanced AI visibility and GEO tools can provide detailed reporting down to device type, location and what prompt or keyword was used to trigger the citation. At present, many tools only provide “point in time” results rather than ongoing measurement, per Heather Physioc, chief discoverability officer at VML. A holistic look at trended brand discoverability across channels isn’t yet feasible.

“The same thing that bedeviled SEO analytics, like Semrush and social media listening, is now bedeviling GEO,” said Paul Dyer, CEO of /prompt, an AI native services agency. He added, “If you use three different tools and give them the same prompts, you get three different answers.”

Footing the bill

As far as costs, at least one agency exec who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Profound services can run up to $1,000 per month. According to the company website, prices start at $99 for the starter pack with ChatGPT tracking only and 50 prompts tracked. For $399 per month, marketers get three answer engines tracked, 100 prompts tracked and six optimized articles per month. Enterprise pricing is custom, per the site.

Ahrefs’ lite plan starts at $129 per month for 750 tracked keywords, five tracked prompts, and six months of historical data. For $249 per month, users get two years of historical data, 2,000 tracked keywords and 10 tracked prompts. The advanced package runs marketing teams $449 per month with five years of historical data, 5,000 tracked keywords and 20 tracked prompts.

Benchmark or source of truth?

In some cases, clients are footing the bill in paying for these tools, relying on agency partners to help determine what’s worth the money.

“We don’t know enough of these companies to be charging what they’re charging. But it’s extremely early days,” said Joseph Levi, CEO at Noise Media Group. “The only thing really, which seems to be consistent and genuinely useful is seeing how often your brand appears within different types of queries.”

VML is actively testing and tracking about 17 different emerging AI tools, like Profound, Adobe LLM Optimizer and Evertune, Physioc said. Meanwhile, Markacy performance marketing team prefers niche tools that specialize in specific AI visibility jobs, like tracking, analytics or prompt coverage, over single, big platforms that try to handle every part of AI SEO visibility.

Lack of benchmarks, inconsistent results, attribution difficulties aren’t helping, but spending on the tools almost seems to be a necessary evil for marketers. AI chatbots have cannibalized website referral traffic and marketers are desperate for insights. AI visibility isn’t clicked and tracked in a way that allows for direct sales attribution, but marketers suspect there’s a correlation between increased AI visibility and improvements in brand awareness and site traffic.

“There’s really not much an AI tool can do or tell you to do. It’s just a benchmarker in my mind,” said Ryan Mason, president and COO at Markacy.