Survey of 600+ marketing and PR professionals reveals a widening gap between confidence in AI visibility strategy and actual execution, with 62% saying their organization is already behind competitors

Scribewise, a B2B marketing agency, and Scrunch, the Agent Experience Platform (AXP), today released “Moving fast, flying blind: 2026 AI search survey,” a new study examining how marketing and public relations professionals are responding to the rise of AI-powered search. The research surveyed 602 full-time marketing and PR professionals across the United States and found a significant gap between how prepared organizations believe they are for AI search visibility and what they are actually doing about it.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Theresa Pham, Head of Product @ Wayvia

Key findings at a glance

• 91% of marketing and PR professionals say their organization has a clear, documented strategy for AI search visibility.
• Despite this, 51% are unsure whether their current AI visibility approach is the right one.
• 45% are testing brand visibility across AI platforms, but only 33% are analyzing AI bot traffic and only 23% say they’re focused on refining and optimizing existing content to improve how AI systems interpret and cite it.
• 82% say AI search visibility is a top priority for their team in the next 12 months, and 82% believe early adopters of AI search optimization will have a lasting competitive advantage.
• 62% feel their organization is already behind the AI search visibility curve compared to competitors.
• 56% are unsure how AI search optimization/generative engine optimization (GEO) differs from traditional search engine optimization (SEO), and 47% do not understand what content AI search engines are actually using to generate answers.
• 56% worry their brand, or their clients’ brands, may be misrepresented in AI-generated search results, and half say they have actually seen this happen in the past 12 months.
• Organizations using a dedicated AI visibility monitoring platform showed stronger performance on 25 of the 26 specific tactics measured in the study, compared to those relying on free or manual monitoring methods.
• Companies with 10 or fewer employees were 260% more likely than average to report they are taking no action at all on AI visibility.

“There’s a real difference between having a strategy on paper and activating that strategy—a plan on a shelf is largely useless,” said John Miller, Founder and President at Scribewise. “Our research shows that most marketing and PR teams know this is important and believe they’ve made a plan, but what they’re actually doing day to day is still mostly watching the data come in, not acting on it. That gap is where the real risk and the real opportunity both live right now.”

Why this research matters now

AI-powered search engines have rapidly become a primary discovery channel for brand information, moving from an emerging trend to a stated organizational priority for the large majority of marketing and communications professionals. As adoption accelerates, “Moving fast, flying blind” finds that the industry’s confidence in its own readiness has outpaced its actual practice, with most organizations still building basic monitoring habits rather than executing a fully developed optimization strategy.

“Visibility into AI-generated answers is foundational, but it’s only the first step,” said Kevin White, Head of Marketing at Scrunch. “Teams need a consistent, structured way to see where they’re showing up and where they’re not to make informed decisions. But turning that data into prescriptive action is how brands become the answer in AI search.”