The search box is no longer the only place where B2B buyers begin evaluating software. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are increasingly becoming research interfaces, giving buyers synthesized recommendations rather than simply lists of links. Veloz, an AI-native Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) agency, is responding by making Profound its core visibility infrastructure for helping brands understand — and influence — how they appear inside these AI-generated answers.
Veloz has become a verified Profound partner, adopting the AI visibility platform as a central component of its Answer Engine Optimization services for B2B companies across the United States and EMEA.
The partnership reflects a growing shift in digital marketing: brands are beginning to optimize not only for traditional search engines such as Google, but also for AI systems that generate direct answers and product recommendations.
In conventional search, a company competes for rankings on a results page. In an AI-generated response, the system may summarize several vendors, compare products and recommend one or two options without requiring the user to visit those companies’ websites first.
That changes what marketers need to measure.
Veloz says it will use Profound to monitor brand visibility across AI engines, identify high-value prompts and topics, and evaluate how changes to content and technical infrastructure influence brand sentiment, leads and conversions.
The partnership therefore positions AEO as a performance marketing discipline rather than simply an extension of SEO.
AI engines are becoming part of the B2B buying journey
The growth of generative AI has introduced a new layer between a buyer and a company’s website.
A prospective customer researching customer-data platforms, cybersecurity software or sales automation tools can now ask ChatGPT or another AI assistant to recommend vendors based on company size, budget, features or a particular business problem.
The answer can shape the buyer’s shortlist before conventional search enters the process.
For B2B marketers, that creates a new visibility problem. A company may rank well on Google but receive little or unfavorable representation in AI-generated recommendations.
AI systems also have different mechanisms for generating responses. They can synthesize information from websites, structured data, third-party sources, reviews and other material. The resulting answer can therefore reflect a broader information ecosystem than a traditional search ranking.
That is where platforms such as Profound are attempting to provide visibility.
From tracking mentions to measuring AI representation
Veloz says its implementation of Profound focuses on measuring which brands appear in AI responses, which prompts generate those appearances and how the resulting perception changes over time.
The agency also uses Profound FactCheck to identify instances where AI systems misrepresent a brand, trace potentially incorrect information back to its source and recommend content or technical changes intended to improve how AI systems understand the company.
This is an important distinction for marketers.
AI visibility is not simply a matter of appearing in an answer. A brand could be mentioned but still be described inaccurately, positioned behind competitors or associated with outdated information.
That creates a new measurement category around AI brand representation.
For enterprise marketing teams, the emerging workflow resembles traditional search optimization in some ways: identify important queries, understand competitive visibility, improve source content and measure changes. But the underlying systems are less predictable, and marketers have less direct control over how an AI model constructs its final response.
AEO moves closer to revenue attribution
Veloz is also emphasizing business outcomes rather than treating visibility metrics as the final objective.
The agency says its managed service measures success through metrics such as demo requests, pipeline and conversions.
That approach is important as AEO moves from an experimental marketing practice toward an enterprise discipline.
Marketers already have numerous visibility metrics to manage, from search rankings and organic traffic to social engagement and advertising reach. Adding AI citations and recommendation frequency without connecting them to revenue could simply create another reporting layer.
The more significant question is whether improved AI visibility contributes to qualified demand.
Veloz’s model combines experienced marketers with agent engineers to automate parts of the AEO process while retaining human oversight. The team includes an engineer with machine-learning experience at Nextdoor and a neuroscience researcher from the University of Cambridge, while founder Brian Colivet previously worked in go-to-market and AI deployment roles at Meta and Personio.
The company says it can operate the full AEO process for clients or work alongside internal marketing teams.
The competitive landscape is changing
Traditional SEO platforms such as Semrush, Ahrefs and BrightEdge have spent years helping marketers understand search visibility, competitive rankings and content opportunities.
The emergence of AEO platforms represents a new competitive layer.
Rather than focusing primarily on Google’s index and conventional keyword rankings, these systems attempt to measure how brands appear across conversational AI products.
The distinction matters because the underlying consumer behavior is different.
Search engines typically return a collection of sources. Generative AI systems can collapse that research process into a synthesized recommendation. This potentially gives AI visibility greater influence over consideration-stage decisions.
For B2B software companies, that could be particularly significant because buying journeys are already research-heavy and involve comparisons across vendors.
The risk is that AI-generated recommendations can also reinforce existing market leaders. If a model repeatedly identifies the same companies as strong options for a particular category, those brands can potentially gain visibility that compounds over time.
That makes competitive monitoring an important part of AEO.
What it means for enterprise marketing teams
For enterprise marketers, the Veloz-Profound partnership points toward a broader change in the role of content.
Websites are no longer created solely for human visitors or conventional search crawlers. Increasingly, they also serve as information sources that AI systems use to construct answers.
That places greater emphasis on clear product information, structured content, factual accuracy, authoritative third-party references and consistent brand positioning.
It also means companies need to understand where AI systems obtain information about them — and where those systems may be getting it wrong.
Spara, an AI agent platform and Veloz client, is already using Profound to monitor changes in buyer behavior and AI visibility, according to the companies.
The larger market opportunity is clear. If AI assistants become a significant part of B2B product discovery, then optimizing a company’s representation inside those systems could become as important as optimizing its position on traditional search results pages.
But AEO will ultimately need to prove that visibility translates into measurable business value.
Veloz’s emphasis on pipeline and conversion metrics reflects that pressure. The next phase of AI search optimization may therefore be less about counting mentions and more about proving that AI recommendations generate customers.
Market Landscape
The emergence of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity is creating a new layer of digital discovery alongside traditional search engines.
Google remains dominant in conventional search, while AI platforms are increasingly competing for research and recommendation use cases. That creates an opportunity for AEO platforms to provide marketers with visibility into how brands are represented across conversational systems.
Companies such as Profound are developing dedicated AI visibility tools, while established SEO providers are also expanding into generative search measurement.
The market is still developing. AI answers can change based on prompts, context, model updates, geography and available information, making measurement more dynamic than conventional search rankings.
For enterprise marketing teams, the emerging best practice is likely to combine traditional SEO, content strategy, technical optimization and AI visibility measurement rather than treating AEO as a completely separate discipline.
Top Insights
- Veloz has become a verified Profound partner, using AI visibility technology to help B2B brands improve representation across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.
- The partnership shifts AEO beyond visibility tracking by connecting AI-generated brand representation with content optimization, lead generation, pipeline and conversion outcomes.
- Profound FactCheck helps identify inaccurate AI-generated brand information and trace potential sources, giving marketers a framework for correcting representation.
- AI assistants can influence B2B vendor shortlists before prospects visit company websites, creating a new competitive battleground for software and technology brands.
- Enterprise marketers may increasingly need unified SEO and AEO strategies as conversational AI becomes a more important layer of product discovery and evaluation.
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