Key Takeaways: Visibility, Value, and Velocity in the Content Ecosystem of 2026

What matters most when AI has completely upended how content is found, trusted, and acted on? That was the question at the heart of Knotch’s latest workshop, which brought together leaders across content, brand, SEO, and innovation to pressure-test this new reality for marketers:

• Olivia Douglas, Head of Marketing Content and Innovation, Citi
• Joe Lazer, fractional CMO, Pepper, and author of the upcoming book Super Skill
• Anda Gansca, CEO, Knotch
• David Brown, SVP and Head of Strategy, Knotch (moderator)

Across the conversation, one message landed clearly. Rather than a catalyst for tactical panic, this moment is an opportunity to modernize the full content system – how we earn visibility, prove value, and move with speed – without losing credibility.

1) AI visibility is a brand practice, not a “hackable” channel

A major reset from the panel: generative visibility can’t be reduced to a checklist. Joe Lazer framed GEO as something bigger than a new tactical playbook:

“My hot take on GEO is that it’s inherently a brand play at the end of the day.”

Instead of optimizing only for rankings, brands need to optimize for trust. That’s because LLMs are synthesizing what the world says about you, not just what you say about yourself.

Knotch’s CEO, Anda Gansca, reinforced that this shift looks less like a classic growth lever and more like an earned discipline:

“I’ve been thinking about it as an earned practice…[often] there is no direct correlation to growth. There’s only influence.”

In practice, that means showing up consistently and credibly across the places models “listen”—media, expert communities, reviews, and social—while staying rooted in real customer value.

From Citi’s perspective, Olivia Douglas cautioned against the reflex to “out-produce” the algorithm:

“There is that urge for people to go like, ‘Okay, how do I beat this thing?’…We need to be making sure that we stay focused on [the fact that] what those LLMs are going to reward is still quality and helpfulness.”

2) The biggest impact of AI is indirect, and it’s easy to miss in analytics

A recurring challenge that surfaced in the discussion is the fact that measurement is lagging behind behavior. Even when AI referral traffic looks tiny, AI is often influencing decisions upstream. That’s why visibility alone can’t be the KPI: because the effect is frequently invisible to traditional attribution.

Olivia Douglas described how that shifts what “performance” means in an AI-mediated journey:

“I don’t necessarily care if you clicked. I want to know if I’ve actually changed the conclusion that you’re coming to about our brand.”

For many brands, especially in high-consideration categories like financial services and healthcare, the outcome is a blend of perception, preference, and confidence. And this can happen long before a conversion event.

Joe Lazer acknowledged how hard this is to quantify with today’s tooling:

“Every SEO platform…is coming out and saying, ‘We can tell you how much you’re showing up in AI prompts.’ But the dirty secret is that data is absolutely junk for the most part.”

The implication is that brands need to treat external visibility metrics as directional, but should not let them become their source of truth.

3) Move beyond visibility: tie AI-era discovery to conversion and growth

Visibility isn’t a business outcome. What it is, is an input. The real work lies in connecting AI-era discoverability to onsite behavior, pipeline impact, and conversion velocity.

Anda Gansca introduced a way to ground that work in first-party reality, starting with a brand’s own data and working outward:

“You always have to start with the dataset that you have most trust in…your on-site dataset, real people doing real things.”

From there, you can “back into” SEO and GEO signals to look for correlations that hold across systems.

Importantly, the panel pushed back on content quality as a subjective debate. In this workshop’s framing, quality is defined by outcomes. As Gansca put it plainly:

“To me, high quality content is content that drives growth.”

Not “more content.” Not “more impressions.” Growth.

4) Velocity will matter in 2026, but it can’t be bought with sloppiness

The panel agreed that the market has changed its expectations when it comes to brand content. The old cycle of polishing a “perfect” thought leadership piece for weeks is fading, because in today’s age, by the time it’s ready it’s probably already out of date. But that doesn’t mean brands should flood the zone with low-grade, poorly-strategized output.

Citi’s Olivia Douglas summed up the new tension:

“Gone are the days when you can be like, ‘We’re going to spend the next six to eight weeks perfecting a piece of thought leadership content.’…But they still want quality.”

The opportunity is using AI to accelerate the mechanics – research support, drafts, iteration, testing – while keeping humans accountable for craft, clarity, and credibility.

5) Siloed marketing is now the biggest strategic risk

One of the strongest through-lines of the conversation was that AI isn’t just changing search, it’s changing the entire shape of marketing work. GEO touches SEO, comms, PR, social, brand, and product storytelling at the same time. This means that if fragmentation wasn’t already a competitive disadvantage before, it’s undoubtedly one now.

Olivia Douglas described what the alternative looks like structurally inside Citi, where content isn’t treated as a standalone function:

“My team is brand, measurement…websites like SEO and UX and CRO and analytics…We have the in-house agency team, and content is a part of that…They all have to go together.”

Integrated teams move faster, measure more intelligently, and stay more consistent.

That’s also why the concept of a “Content Architect” resonated in the room. This is a horizontal leader who can connect strategy to operations, and align content across the journey. But the panel also gave an important warning label: Governance without accountability won’t work. Anda Gansca noted that the role must be tied to real outcomes:

“It’s really important to align this role with some level of end results ownership because otherwise, it will just be a…’center of excellence’ kind of role that’s a little bit toothless.”

6) AI raises the stakes for authenticity, and audiences are watching

The workshop also challenged the comforting idea that brands haven’t been punished for misusing AI. Joe Lazer pointed to real consumer backlash when AI output clashes with brand expectations, and warned that this will intensify:

“The gap between how CEOs and marketing leaders feel about AI and how the average consumer feels about AI is pretty damn stark.”

Olivia Douglas added a crucial distinction: AI can be powerful in workflows, but risky when it replaces genuine voice in moments where originality is the product:

“If you’re coming to us for thought leadership…this has to be 'us.'”

The takeaway is not to pull back on using AI, but rather to know where it’s appropriate, and to be intentional about disclosure, IP, and brand trust.

The bottom line is that AI is forcing marketing teams to go beyond upgrading their tactics. They’re now being challenged to rethink their entire systems. In 2026, the winners won’t be the brands that publish the most or chase the latest GEO trick. They’ll be the ones that earn trust across the ecosystem, connect visibility to measurable growth, move faster without sacrificing quality – and operate as one integrated content engine, not a set of disconnected teams.

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Published on December 22, 2025

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