I want to sit with an uncomfortable fact for a second before we get into the fix. 72% of brands actively investing in SEO are receiving zero citations from AI search engines. Zero. And a noticeable share of the companies in that 72% are MarTech and AdTech vendors, companies that build AI-powered marketing tools, and sell them, for a living, to other marketers.
There's a version of this article where I make that the whole joke and move on. I'm not going to do that, mostly because the actual explanation is more useful than the irony, but I did want to acknowledge the irony exists before we get serious. Okay. Moving on.
What Is GEO for MarTech and AdTech, Specifically?
GEO, generative engine optimization, for MarTech and AdTech is the practice of structuring a marketing or advertising technology company's content and entity signals so that AI platforms cite and recommend it when buyers research the category. The reason this needs its own conversation, separate from generic B2B GEO advice: MarTech and AdTech buyers are themselves marketers, often sophisticated ones, which means their research patterns and the content that earns their trust look a little different than a typical B2B procurement journey.
Why the Irony Is Real, and Why It's Not Actually That Surprising
Here's the honest explanation, and it's less "these companies are hypocrites" and more "this is what happens to every category eventually." Only 11% of a recent 200-plus company benchmark across B2B SaaS and AI companies met the baseline structural requirements for consistent AI citation. MarTech and AdTech aren't uniquely bad at this. They're just not meaningfully better than anyone else, despite selling tools that are supposed to help with exactly this problem.
The reason tracks with something I've seen across plenty of categories, not just this one: being good at the thing your product does is not the same as having applied that thing to your own marketing. A company that builds attribution software doesn't automatically have clean attribution. A company that sells AI-powered content optimization doesn't automatically have AI-optimized content. The shoemaker's children, etc. It's a cliché because it keeps happening.
What's Actually Different About How MarTech and AdTech Buyers Research
MarTech and AdTech buyers are, by definition, marketers. That means a few things work differently in this category than in, say, manufacturing software.
These buyers are more likely to have already tried asking ChatGPT or Perplexity about your category, because using AI tools for research is closer to their day job than most other B2B buyer types. 41% of B2B buyers overall now use deep research tools for structured software evaluations. I'd bet that number skews meaningfully higher inside marketing teams specifically, though I don't have a category-specific stat to back that particular guess, so take it as informed speculation rather than data.
These buyers are also more skeptical of marketing copy than almost any other B2B audience, for the obvious reason that they write marketing copy themselves. Vague superlatives, "industry-leading," "best-in-class," land worse here than almost anywhere else, because the reader has personally written that exact sentence about a product that wasn't actually best-in-class.
What Actually Earns Citations in This Category
Two findings from the broader AEO research apply with extra force here, given who's reading.
Branded web mentions correlate with AI Overview appearances at 0.664, compared to just 0.218 for backlinks. That's a meaningfully stronger signal, and it means the old SEO instinct, build links, build links, build links, undersells what actually matters now: being mentioned by name, in context, across the web. For MarTech specifically, this means showing up in "best of" roundups, getting referenced in other marketers' LinkedIn posts, being the example someone cites when explaining a concept. Not backlinks. Mentions.
Listicle-style roundup content earns the highest share of AI citations of any format, at roughly 21.9%, followed by standard informational articles at 16.7% and product pages at 13.7%. If your MarTech company has never built a genuinely useful "best tools for X" page, even one that includes competitors honestly, you're skipping the single highest-citation format that exists in this research.
The Self-Referential Opportunity Nobody's Taking
Here's something I think MarTech and AdTech companies specifically are uniquely positioned to do, and almost nobody's doing it. You have the data. You, more than almost any other category, can publish original benchmarks about the thing AI platforms are already trying to answer questions about: average email open rates by industry, typical CAC by channel, attribution model accuracy comparisons. Original data is one of the most reliably citation-worthy content types that exists, because an AI model literally cannot generate it from nothing. It has to find it somewhere, and if you published it first, with real numbers, that somewhere is you.
I'd guess most MarTech companies are sitting on more proprietary usage data than they realize, locked inside a product analytics dashboard nobody's ever turned into a public benchmark report. That's not a content gap. That's a content goldmine nobody's mined yet, sitting under everyone's own roof.
A Genuinely Practical Starting Point
Pull your last twelve months of blog content and check it against two things: does any of it contain a number that only your company could know, and does any of it mention a specific competitor or alternative by name. If the answer to both is mostly no, that's your gap, and it's a fixable one, not a fundamental positioning problem.
Start with one piece: a genuinely useful comparison of your category's top five to seven tools, written honestly enough that a skeptical marketer, the exact reader you're trying to reach, wouldn't roll their eyes at it. Pair it with one piece of original data from your own product usage, even something small. Two pieces, built around the two highest-citation patterns in the research. That's a more realistic starting point than trying to fix the entire 72% problem in one quarter.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are MarTech and AdTech companies often invisible in AI search despite selling AI-powered tools?
The most likely explanation is that building AI-powered marketing tools and having AI-optimized marketing content are two separate skill sets, and most companies haven't applied the former to the latter. Broader research shows only about 11% of B2B SaaS and AI companies meet baseline structural requirements for consistent AI citation, suggesting this is a category-wide gap rather than something unique to MarTech and AdTech specifically.
What content format earns the most AI citations for MarTech and AdTech companies?
Listicle-style roundup content, such as "best tools for X" comparisons, earns the highest share of AI citations among content formats studied, at roughly 21.9%, followed by standard informational articles and product pages. For MarTech and AdTech specifically, an honest comparison piece that includes real competitors tends to perform well because it matches both the citation pattern AI platforms favor and the skepticism of marketer buyers who distrust one-sided content.
Do backlinks or brand mentions matter more for AI citation in this category?
Brand mentions correlate more strongly with AI Overview appearances than backlinks do, at roughly 0.664 versus 0.218 in recent research. For MarTech and AdTech companies, this means being referenced by name across the web, in roundups, in other marketers' content, in community discussions, carries more weight than traditional link-building alone.
Why does original data matter so much for MarTech and AdTech AI visibility specifically?
MarTech and AdTech companies often have access to proprietary usage data, benchmarks on email performance, ad spend efficiency, attribution accuracy, that AI models cannot generate independently. Publishing this data as original research gives AI platforms something to cite that exists nowhere else, which is one of the most reliable ways to earn citation in a competitive, well-covered category.
How should a MarTech company start improving its AI search visibility?
A practical starting point is building one honest, comparison-style piece covering the top alternatives in your category, paired with one piece of original data drawn from your own product usage. These two content types align with the highest-citation patterns identified in current research and address the specific skepticism of marketer buyers, who are more likely than most B2B audiences to already be testing AI tools for their own research.References
AuthorityTech, Why 72% of Brands Are Invisible to AI Search, The 2026 Machine Relations Crisis: https://authoritytech.io/blog/brands-invisible-ai-search-2026-mr-crisis
MaximusLabs, The AI Visibility Gap, 2026 GEO and AEO Benchmark: https://www.maximuslabs.ai/resources/research-reports/the-ai-visibility-gap--2026-geo-and-aeo-benchmark-report/interactive-html
Delante, B2B SEO Content in 2026, citation format breakdown by content type: https://delante.co/b2b-seo-content-in-2026-best-practices/
Nerdbot, How B2B Companies Can Optimise for AI Citations in 2026, branded mentions vs backlinks correlation data: https://nerdbot.com/2026/02/15/how-b2b-companies-can-optimise-for-ai-citations-in-2026/
