"When companies begin hiring people, developing internal processes, and integrating new measurement frameworks, a capability has typically crossed the line from curiosity to operational priority."
Every emerging marketing discipline eventually reaches the same milestone: someone starts putting real money behind it. According to the 2026 CMO Investment Report from Conductor, 94% of enterprise organizations plan to increase their investment in AEO and GEO during 2026. The report surveyed more than 250 enterprise digital leaders. On its face, that is an impressive statistic. But the more interesting story is not the percentage. It is what enterprises are actually investing in.
This Is No Longer an SEO Side Project
The report suggests that organizations are moving beyond experimentation. Among respondents, 93% are building AEO capabilities internally, rather than relying primarily on external agencies. That is an important signal. When companies begin hiring people, developing internal processes, and integrating new measurement frameworks, a capability has typically crossed the line from curiosity to operational priority. Whether every organization succeeds is another question. But the budget conversation has clearly begun.
Success Metrics Are Changing
Perhaps the most encouraging finding is not the investment itself. It is how organizations say they intend to measure it. According to the report, leading organizations are shifting away from traditional SEO metrics like traffic and rankings toward measures such as conversions, brand sentiment, AI search market share, and broader business outcomes. That evolution matters. AEO should not simply become another race for impressions. Marketers ultimately need to understand whether AI visibility changes consumer behaviour and business performance. The industry still has work to do in proving those relationships, but it is encouraging to see enterprises already thinking beyond rankings alone.
Original Information Is Becoming a Competitive Advantage
Another theme running through the report is the growing importance of first-party research, structured data, and original content. High-maturity organizations appear to be investing more heavily in proprietary information than those at earlier stages of AEO adoption. That trend aligns with a broader pattern visible across AI search. Large language models do not simply retrieve webpages. They synthesize information from across the web. Brands that contribute genuinely original data, research, and evidence are more likely to become part of that information ecosystem than brands that simply restate what already exists.
A Note of Caution
It is important to interpret these findings in context. This is a vendor-sponsored survey conducted among enterprise digital leaders, organizations already much more likely than the average business to be actively evaluating AI search. The results should not be automatically generalized to every company or every market. Even so, the report captures something important. Enterprise marketing teams are no longer asking whether AI search matters. They are asking how quickly they need to respond.
The Bigger Takeaway
The headline is not really '94%.' The headline is that AEO has reached a new stage of maturity. Budgets are forming. Teams are being built. New success metrics are emerging. And organizations increasingly see AI search as something requiring dedicated strategy rather than occasional experimentation. Whether today's investments ultimately produce the expected returns remains an open question. But one thing appears increasingly clear: AEO has entered the enterprise planning cycle. That alone is a meaningful milestone for the industry.
References
[1] Conductor, <a href="https://www.conductor.com/learning-center/aeo-geo-cmo-investment-report-2026/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-amber-700 underline">The State of AEO/GEO in 2026: CMO Investment Report</a>, 2026.
[2] Search Engine Journal, <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/conductor-aeo-geo-cmo-report-2026/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-amber-700 underline">94% of Enterprises to Increase AEO/GEO Investment in 2026</a>, July 2026.
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