The AI confidence trap: Key takeaways from its 2026 AI search survey. * Marketers are confident they can shape AI answers (84% say so), but more than half aren't sure their strategy is correct - and 62% think they're already behind competitors. * Most teams aren't tracking key metrics, and many are betting on cranking out more content versus optimizing what they already have. * Misaligned KPIs, bolted-on tools, and lagging training are holding teams back - but the gap between "doing something" and "doing the right thing" presents an opportunity. Ninety-one percent of marketing and public relations professionals have a clear, documented strategy for AI search visibility. More than half aren't sure whether it's any good. That's its new survey report in a nutshell: the friction between "we're doing something" and "we're doing the right thing." Scrunch and Scribewise teamed up to survey more than 600 US-based marketing and PR pros, both in-house and agency. Its respondents span a wide range of roles, seniority levels, industries, and company sizes. The one thing they all have in common? Pressure to show up in AI answers - consistently, accurately, and favorably. Either for their own brands or their clients. Here are some of the top takeaways from the report. Confidence cracks under scrutiny. Eighty-four percent of survey respondents say they're confident they can shape AI answers, but 51% aren't sure their strategy is the right one. That number jumps among the people most likely to be doing the work: Junior staff are 41% more likely than the C-suite and VPs to have second thoughts about their AI search strategy. Those same employees are also 41% more likely than senior leaders to say their organization may have moved too fast into AI visibility tactics without a clear long-term strategy (something 46% of respondents say). And 62% believe their organization is already behind the AI search curve compared to competitors. Most brands haven't moved beyond basic monitoring. Forty-five percent of respondents are testing how they (or their clients) show up in AI answers, but monitoring is spotty (and too often manual): * 60% aren't analyzing which sources get cited by AI * 70% aren't monitoring brand sentiment in AI responses * And 71% aren't analyzing share of voice against competitors Only 33% are analyzing AI bot traffic at all. Meanwhile, 42% of the teams taking action are placing their bets on scaled content production, often with the help of AI content generation tools. Only 23% say their primary approach is refining and optimizing existing content to improve how AI systems interpret and cite it, and only 39% are working to secure brand mentions in trusted media sources. Misaligned expectations, tools, and skills are a drag. Sixty-two percent of in-house marketers say that leaders outside of marketing still measure their team's performance based on traditional SEO metrics and web traffic - an example of metric misalignment that 52% say limits their ability to execute an effective AI visibility strategy. The story is similar in the agency world: 80% who offer GEO services say clients interpret search through an SEO lens, which helps explain why 71% say they spend more time explaining AI search than executing on a GEO strategy. On the technology front, 73% of respondents say they've invested in tooling, but much of it is bolted onto legacy SEO or PR platforms. Only 41% say they can turn data into action. When it comes to the job itself, 87% feel more pressure to build technical skills to complement editorial and strategic ones, but 58% say their training isn't keeping pace. The gap is the opportunity. AI search optimization didn't exist as a discipline a few years ago. Today it's a boardroom priority. The data in its report shows that most teams are still very much in the early innings of their strategies - and that provides a real opportunity for the brands that move forward with focus. Early movers get to set the benchmark everyone else measures against. Want to understand how your team measures up to your peers and competitors? Get started with Scrunch. Get your site AI-ready so you show up in answers, get cited, and grow revenue. Try a free 7-day trial or book a demo. Content Lead

Sitecore snaps up GEO startup Scrunch for an alleged $225M. Sitecore, an enterprise content material and digital experiences platform, has acquired generative engine optimization, or GEO upstart Scrunch. Scrunch's tech is designed to assist manufacturers seem in AI reply engines. The deal is valued at round $225 million, per a Bloomberg report. Sitecore declined to verify. Scrunch didn't reply to a request for remark. Scrunch's platform exhibits manufacturers real-time indicators about how they seem throughout numerous AI platforms. It additionally gives aggressive evaluation and technical audits, serving to manufacturers optimize their content material for discoverability in AI programs and by autonomous brokers by its Agent Expertise Platform, or AXP. "We're at a pivotal second the place corporations should rethink conventional digital methods and settle for that the web should be written for machines to know if we would like people to expertise it," Eric Stine, Sitecore's CEO, mentioned in a press release. "With Scrunch, we allow our clients to know how they're represented in AI-generated solutions and robotically act on these insights, maximizing how they attain, interact, and serve their clients." Scrunch works with enterprise companies, together with a number of the Fortune 500. Notable purchasers embody Lenovo, Skims, Headspace, and Penn State College. It beforehand raised $26 million, together with a $15 million Sequence A final summer time led by Decibel, with participation from Mayfield, Homebrew, and others. The GEO area is turning into more and more aggressive. As manufacturers race to indicate up within the AI experiences the place customers spend extra of their time, an emergent crowd of startups is vying for his or her {dollars}. Manufacturers are additionally seeing increased payoffs from investing in GEO, at the least in line with Scrunch CEO and cofounder Chris Andrew, who advised ADWEEK final 12 months that conversion charges in AI search are three to 5 instances increased than in conventional on-line search. "A customer coming from AI search is shopping for quicker than a conventional natural customer," he mentioned. "We need to be facilitating that complete course of and dynamically optimizing what an AI agent consumes."

New in Scrunch: find and fix your AI blind spots with Content Gaps. Last updated: 03.18.2026 * Content Gaps auto-detects when your website is missing content for tracked prompts. * Get detailed analysis on your content opportunities - no manual digging required. * Fix what matters most based on topic, persona, and urgency. If AI can't find relevant content on your site, it retrieves it from another source. Scrunch LLC is launching Content Gaps - the latest in its series of automated insights - to help you find those blind spots before your competitors do. Starting today, Scrunch customers can use Content Gaps to: * Auto-detect missing content for the prompts that matter most. * Drill into any gap to understand the full scope of the opportunity. * Prioritize next steps based on topic, persona, and greenfield opportunities. The brands winning AI search aren't necessarily the ones with the most content - they're the ones that know what matters to their audience, what's missing, and do something about it. Go from gap to action plan in seconds. Too many teams find content gaps by accident - or not at all. This results in a scattershot approach to AI visibility optimization, patching holes on the fly with little-to-no prioritization. You can manually cross-reference prompt and citation data to figure out where to start. Or you can let Scrunch do it for you. Its analysis detects when you're missing content for the prompts you care about and flags it automatically - no data deep dives required. When you log in to Scrunch, you'll see Content Gaps surfaced right on your Home screen. Click the "Take action" button and Scrunch LLC'll show you a list of opportunities to improve visibility in AI responses, filterable by topic or persona. Every listing is earmarked as Red (no content found), Yellow (limited content found), or Green (sufficient content found), along with a count of at-risk prompts. Scrunch's analysis updates as new content is detected on your site, automatically removing listings from Content Gaps as they're addressed. Drill down into any listing and click "Review" to see: * The number of associated prompts (and links to each one in your Prompts Monitoring tab) * The number of pages on your site that match these prompts * The exact URLs for matching pages from most cited to least cited and how many prompts they match You can prioritize content updates and net new content creation - or dismiss the suggestion if it's not relevant or already covered. Scrunch does the detective work - you decide what's worth acting on. Scrunch's Optimizer and AXP features make it easy to maximize the impact of your content by auto-generating a targeted version of webpages designed for specific prompts and personas, then serving it in an optimized, token-light format directly to AI agents without changing what human visitors see on your site. From here you can use Scrunch to monitor AI search performance over time - brand presence, share of voice, citations, AI bot traffic, AI referrals, and more - as content gaps move from critical to healthy. Create the content AI is looking for. When buyers ask, AI answers. The question is: Does your content show up in the response? The old way: Random acts of content creation or manual data wrangling. The new way: Get notified when your content is MIA for tracked prompts and get to work immediately. Scrunch LLC don't think teams should have to dig for opportunities. So Scrunch LLC built Scrunch to surface them. Content Gaps is now live for all Scrunch customers. Log in to see why you may not be showing up where you should be. Close your content gaps with Scrunch. Know exactly what to create to improve AI visibility. Start a 7-day free trial or get in touch to see how Content Gaps can help you stay a step ahead in AI search.