Peec AI: What Agencies Can Learn About AEO

Peec AI is an AI search analytics platform that helps brands and marketing agencies understand how they appear in AI-generated answers across platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. As Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, becomes a larger part of modern marketing, Peec is also helping customers understand how to turn AI visibility data into actual marketing services and strategies.

I recently experienced that firsthand through my agency, Position Strategy Group (PSG).

I am a Peec AI customer, although I also use other AI search and AEO software platforms. I reached out to Peec with a question that many agencies are beginning to confront:

How should an agency package AEO services in a way that provides meaningful, ongoing value to clients?

Peec responded quickly and connected me with Leon Sentker, who works in Agency GTM at Peec AI.

The conversation was one of the better customer-service experiences I have had with a marketing software company — largely because it went far beyond explaining how to use the platform.

Sentker helped me think through the larger AEO market, how agencies are currently structuring their services and where Answer Engine Optimization fits alongside SEO, content marketing and other existing agency offerings.

What Is Peec AI?

Peec AI is a software platform for measuring brand visibility in AI search engines.

As consumers increasingly ask AI assistants questions such as:

• What is the best company for a particular service?
• Which software should I use?
• What are the top brands in a category?
• Who are the leading experts in an industry?

companies want to understand whether they appear in those answers.

Platforms like Peec allow marketers to track prompts relevant to their businesses and analyze how AI systems respond.

That can help brands understand questions such as:

Does ChatGPT mention my company?

How often does my brand appear compared with competitors?

Which sources are AI systems citing when they answer questions about my industry?

What does an AI system say about my company?

For marketers, those questions are becoming increasingly important.

What Is Answer Engine Optimization?

Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, is the practice of improving how a company, product or person appears in answers generated by AI systems.

Traditional search-engine optimization, or SEO, primarily focuses on helping websites rank prominently in search results.

AEO expands that challenge.

When someone asks an AI chatbot a question, the system may synthesize information from a company website, publishers, review platforms, forums, databases, customer discussions and other sources across the internet.

The marketer's job is therefore no longer limited to trying to rank one webpage.

Companies increasingly need to think about the entire body of evidence available about their brand.

That includes:

• first-party website content;
• technical website structure;
• third-party media coverage;
• industry publications;
• customer reviews;
• citations;
• online discussions;
• brand positioning;
• authoritative references; and
• the consistency of information across the web.

The objective is straightforward:

When a potential customer asks an AI system a relevant question, does your company appear in the answer?

And if it does not, marketers increasingly want to know why.

Why AEO Is Creating a New Challenge for Marketing Agencies

AEO is still a young category.

That means there is not yet a universally accepted model for what an AEO agency should deliver.

At Position Strategy Group, this is something I have been thinking about extensively.

Clients do not simply need another dashboard showing that they appeared in 14 percent or 27 percent of tracked prompts.

They need to understand what those numbers mean and, more importantly, what should happen next.

That creates several practical questions for agencies.

Should AEO be a standalone service?

Should it be incorporated into SEO retainers?

Should agencies combine AEO with content marketing, digital PR and reputation work?

How frequently should AI visibility be measured?

Which metrics actually demonstrate progress?

What activities can an agency perform each month that improve a client's likelihood of appearing in AI-generated answers?

Those were the kinds of questions I wanted to discuss with Peec.

How Peec AI Helped Position Strategy Group Think About AEO Services

After I contacted Peec, I was connected with Leon Sentker.

Rather than giving me a generic product demonstration, Sentker spent the conversation discussing how agencies are approaching AEO across the industry.

He was attentive, knowledgeable and clearly familiar with the rapidly developing agency side of AI search.

Because Peec works with companies and marketing firms operating in the space, Sentker has a broad view of how different organizations are structuring AEO.

He explained how some agencies are creating dedicated AEO packages while others are incorporating AI-search work into existing SEO, content and broader marketing relationships.

That distinction is important.

AEO does not necessarily replace SEO.

In many cases, it sits alongside it.

The technical foundations that make a website understandable to Google can also matter to AI systems. Strong content still matters. Authoritative websites still matter. Earned media still matters.

But AI search creates additional questions around citations, brand mentions, source authority and the information an AI model encounters across the broader web.

For an agency trying to build a responsible AEO offering, understanding those connections matters as much as understanding the software itself.

Why Peec AI's Customer Service Stood Out

The most useful part of my interaction with Peec was that the conversation was not limited to Peec.

I had reached out because I wanted to understand how to provide more value to PSG clients.

Sentker treated the question that way.

He gave me context about the broader AEO industry, the different ways agencies are packaging services and how companies are integrating AEO with marketing work they already perform.

That is particularly useful in an emerging category.

In established industries, agencies can rely on decades of pricing benchmarks, case studies and accepted scopes of work.

AEO does not yet have that infrastructure.

Everyone is still learning.

Software companies operating close to the data have an unusually valuable perspective because they can see how many different organizations are approaching the same problem.

In my experience, Peec was willing to share that perspective.

What Is the Peec AI Agency Hub?

During our conversation, Sentker also pointed me toward Peec's resources for agencies.

Peec has built an agency-focused hub designed to help firms learn more about AEO and understand how to provide services around AI search.

For agencies entering the category, that kind of education can be useful because selling AEO requires more than learning how to operate an analytics dashboard.

An agency needs to understand:

• what to measure;
• what to report;
• how to explain AEO to a client;
• how AEO relates to SEO;
• how to identify opportunities;
• what actions can influence AI visibility; and
• how to turn those actions into an ongoing marketing program.

The technology measures the problem.

The harder question is what marketers should do about it.

How Should Agencies Think About AEO?

My biggest takeaway from the conversation was that agencies should probably avoid thinking of AEO as one isolated tactic.

AI systems evaluate information from many parts of the internet.

That means improving AI visibility can involve several different marketing disciplines.

For one client, the biggest opportunity may be improving the information on its website.

For another, it may be earning stronger third-party coverage.

Another company may need more customer reviews, clearer product positioning or better technical infrastructure.

In that sense, AEO can operate as a layer across an existing marketing strategy.

The analytics tell an agency where a brand stands.

The strategy is figuring out why.

The execution is creating enough credible evidence across the internet to improve the answer.

AEO Is Moving From Measurement to Execution

The first wave of AEO tools largely answered a fascinating question:

What does ChatGPT say about my company?

That alone was useful.

But marketers are quickly moving toward a second question:

How do I change the answer?

That is where the AEO industry becomes much more interesting.

Tracking visibility is only the beginning.

Agencies increasingly need to identify which sources influence AI responses, where competitors have an advantage, what information is missing and what marketing activities can realistically improve a brand's presence.

That could make AEO an increasingly important part of SEO, public relations, content strategy and broader brand marketing.

Why Customer Support Matters More in a New Marketing Category

There is another reason my experience with Peec stood out.

When software operates in a mature category, the product can often speak for itself.

Customers already know how email marketing works.

They understand paid search.

They understand traditional SEO.

AEO is different.

Many customers are still trying to understand the category at the same time they are learning the software.

That means the people behind an AEO platform can be unusually important.

A knowledgeable customer-service or GTM team can help customers understand not simply how to use the tool, but how to think about the market the tool is measuring.

That was the value of my conversation with Sentker.

I went into the call looking for ideas about packaging services for Position Strategy Group.

I left with a much clearer understanding of how agencies across the market are approaching AEO and how the discipline may fit alongside existing marketing services.

The Future of AEO Agencies

AEO is still being defined.

The terminology may change. The software will improve. AI search products themselves will evolve.

But the fundamental marketing question is unlikely to disappear.

When customers ask an AI system for a recommendation, companies will want to know:

Why did the AI recommend that company instead of mine?

An entire marketing discipline is developing around answering that question.

For agencies like Position Strategy Group, that creates an opportunity to combine analytics, content, positioning, technical work and third-party authority into a broader AI-search strategy.

And for software companies like Peec AI, there is an opportunity to do something beyond providing the analytics.

They can help the marketers using those analytics understand what to do next.

Based on my experience, Peec appears to understand that distinction very well.

Disclosure: I am a paying Peec AI customer through Position Strategy Group and also use other AI-search and AEO software platforms. Peec AI did not review or approve this article before publication.