Following SEO, App Store Optimization, and social virality, the next major distribution channel is AI answer engines. Product teams must now strategize how to get their brand, features, and knowledge base indexed and surfaced in AI responses, making AEO a critical growth lever for the modern era.

Unlike traditional SEO's long-tail game, gaining visibility in LLMs requires a much faster, more reactive approach. The impact is seen much quicker, making organic content strategy behave more like a paid media campaign, demanding speed and continuous experimentation from teams.

Forward-thinking companies like Shark Ninja are not waiting for AI-driven "agentic commerce" to mature. They are actively optimizing their direct-to-consumer websites for Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, anticipating that what drives conversion today may not rank well in future AI-powered searches.

Shopify's Harley Finkelstein argues agentic commerce will make SEO obsolete. Instead of brands gaming search rankings, AI will recommend products based on merit and a user's personal context history. This shift could level the playing field, allowing smaller, high-quality brands to be discovered more easily.

Generative AI changes brand discovery from a budget-driven game to one based on relevance, credibility, and usefulness. This levels the playing field, allowing smaller, more agile brands to compete with larger incumbents who traditionally relied on massive ad budgets.

In AI-driven commerce, brands win by being selected by an agent, not by ranking on a search page. This shift favors brands with trustworthy, structured, and verifiable data over those with the largest advertising budgets, leveling the playing field for smaller, agile companies.

You.com CEO Richard Socher predicts a new marketing motion where companies market directly to LLMs. As AI agents increasingly make purchasing decisions and consume information, optimizing content for AI consumption will become as critical as traditional SEO.

Marketers must evolve from SEO to GEO, optimizing content for how brands appear in LLM results. This requires a new content strategy that treats the LLM as a distinct persona or channel, creating content specifically for it to crawl and ensuring accurate brand representation.

The primary channel for discovery is shifting from search engines (SEO) to AI-powered "answer engines" like ChatGPT. Product Managers are now responsible for this new distribution channel, requiring a strategy to ensure their brands and products surface in AI-generated responses.