May 6, 2026

It's 9 AM (or whenever you opened this email). Do you know where your AEO efforts are right now? 

That's a reference to a prominent child abduction PSA that ran in the U.S. in the ’80s. The message may have bred a generation of helicopter parents, but it still sheds light on an important question in modern B2B marketing. 

Answer engine optimization is turning brand discovery and research on its head — so we surveyed 250 B2B marketing decision-makers to see how they're approaching AEO.  

The Receipts

Olivia Heller / Marketing Against the Grain 

AEO spending is rising, but reporting is lagging.

We asked 250 B2B marketing decision-makers, "In the next 12 months, how do you expect your organization's investment in AEO to change?"

We also asked, "Which of the following AEO-related actions has your organization taken in the past 12 months?"

While most respondents said their organizations were increasing investment in AEO tools, only 8% incorporated AEO metrics into their reporting.

You don't have to be a market analyst, a thought leader, or employed by a corporation promoting an AEO product to understand AEO's momentum. The data does the talking.

57% of B2B marketing and advertising decision-makers say they'll increase their AEO investment in the next 12 months — making it one of the fastest-growing line items in B2B marketing budgets.

However, only 8% have incorporated AEO metrics into their reporting. That disconnect can lead to undersold proof of AEO results.

Your strategy could be doing wonders, but your CFO might have a tough time buying in without performance data to affirm that. 

Developing a reporting infrastructure now can get you ahead of those conversations, and justifying spend is always easier with hard numbers. 

A plurality of organizations lack an ownership plan for their AEO. 

We asked 250 B2B marketing decision-makers, "Who in your organization currently owns or leads AEO efforts?"

Leadership vacuums are problematic.

That's a core tenet of both geopolitics and AEOpolitics.

Still, 26% of our respondents don't have anyone directly responsible for their AEO efforts — and an additional 15% distribute that responsibility across multiple teams without a clear lead. 

That adds up to 41% of marketing orgs without well-defined AEO guidance. 

That "spending before structure" approach can be costly and inefficient.

A marketing department isn't a bottle service section. Throwing money around indiscriminately doesn't make you look cool. 

Any investment in AEO infrastructure should be accompanied by an ownership plan.

Proactively establishing a leadership framework for your AEO strategy lets you hit the ground running — helping your investment compound faster.

What does this mean for…

Social

Track AEO-adjacent social signals — like branded mentions in AI summaries, citation frequency in answer engines, and referral traffic from AI-driven discovery. Most social dashboards don't cover these automatically, so build that layer in before any AEO budget increases.

Email

Report on which of your email-promoted gated assets get cited in AI answers. Lead-gen content that surfaces in AEO is doing double duty — and flagging that in your reporting justifies continued investment in the asset library.

Paid and Performance

Run a controlled test isolating AEO-influenced conversions from paid-search-influenced conversions. Even a directional read helps you find the right balance between the two — giving finance a real basis for allocating budget across both.

Content and Brand

Document what your most-cited content has in common — original data, clear claims, specific formats — and bake those traits into your content briefs. Otherwise you're just observing what works without acting on it.

This week's email was brought to you by Jay Fuchs, using data sourced through Panoplai. Respondents were asked to select all options that apply, so totals do not always add up to 100. Editing by Laura M. Browning.

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