The Daily Mail tests GEO with brands ahead of AI visibility product

“We look at this as actually quite an exciting new potential revenue opportunity – not just a defensive play, but [we’re] actually starting to think there is a new area for the business,” said Steven. “Brands are coming to us already and saying, ‘we want to be in these spaces [AI surfaces]. We know that our customers are here. How can you help us?,” she added.

The tests start by identifying the prompts consumers might use when researching a brand’s product or service. The Daily Mail team tracks those prompts across AI platforms over time, looks at which sources are cited and, where there’s an opportunity, creates bespoke branded content to improve the brand’s visibility.

“We know LLMs are probabilistic,” said Steven. “So if I do the same search today and I do it a few hours later, maybe I’ll get different results. So we tracked that over a very long period of time to try to get a really solid benchmark to understand where that brand sits within this topic, and crucially, what are the types of sources that are being cited,” she added. 

In one early test for an unnamed personal finance brand, Steven said visibility across the target prompts rose from about 50% to nearly 75%. The content was cited for most of the prompts the team tracked.

That opportunity isn’t universal, Steven stressed. They will assess which sources AI platforms cite for a topic. For example, where government or medical sites dominate, there may be less room for publisher-led branded content to influence results. But when publishers make up a significant share of citations and a brand has little visibility, the team sees an opening to create tailored content and track whether it improves the brand’s presence in AI answers.

Proving the commercial impact is harder. 

AI recommendations don’t necessarily lead to direct clicks: someone may see a brand mentioned, then search for it later. Steven said the team is working with brands to look beyond referral analytics and build a fuller picture of how AI visibility affects conversions. “There’s a lot of awareness that there is a gap in the attribution model. It’s a bit like putting an advert on a billboard or in a print newspaper. It’s how do we measure those things?” stressed Steven.

She listed tracking visibility and citations as important metrics to follow and added that some brands are returning to trusty and simple measures like adding forms to their sites asking customers how they heard about them.  She cited one brand that found Claude accounted for just 0.1% of referrals in its analytics, but a much larger share of conversions – around 11% – after reviewing customer responses via this type of form. The example, she said, showed why referral data alone may not capture AI’s impact.

Steven said the idea of selling GEO packages to brands took time to gain traction internally, partly because the team was still working out how to explain the proposition. Interest grew as brands began approaching the commercial team about the opportunity. Developing the offer has meant closer collaboration across commercial, commerce, native advertising, product and editorial teams. Any new commercial work, she said, must remain aligned with the publisher’s priority of protecting its IP and the value of its journalism. Ultimately, that means assessing when to make specific campaign content available (so unblocking access to that content) where it supports a brand’s visibility. 

Productizing and monetizing AI visibility has become one of the most talked-about topics internally at a plethora of publishers over the last six months. Future’s GEO product has more than 30 clients and secured renewals, while Ziff Davis says it has multiple GEO clients. 

Rob Bradley, group svp of digital advertising and operations at CNNIC and Warner Brothers Discovery, recently told Digiday that while they have no official product to roll out yet, the topic comes up in most commercial meetings with clients now. “All brands and CMOs, in particular client directors, are talking to us about how they show up and how we show up and how we can work together,” he said.  

Meanwhile, Forbes is turning AI-search visibility into a consultative offer for brand partners.

Speaking at Digiday’s Media Strategies London event, Forbes chief innovation officer Nina Gould said brands had approached the publisher for help appearing in AI search, and Forbes began with its Vetted product reviews: tracking citations and optimizing content, then sharing those results with partners. She said the work had helped Forbes secure better affiliate commissions, sponsorships and native-ad deals. 

Forbes is also exploring standalone or bundled products for branded content, including ways to assess a brand’s visibility before and after an optimization effort or campaign. 

Gould described that as work in development, not a fully established product, and said the wider opportunity is to help brands understand and improve how they appear in AI-driven discovery.

“It’s deepened the brand partnerships in a lot of ways because, again, it’s consultative, so it feels like a partnership between the two brands, which we really like.”