What leadership is asking
Two things we heard in August 2026. A marketing lead at a large payments company: "I need to make my case clearer to higher-ups." A founder: "all the AEO tools are scams." Both are the same request: show me something about my company, on questions my buyers ask, that I can check myself.
A brief that opens with a definition of generative engine optimisation fails that request. A brief that opens with a table of your buyers' questions and who gets named on them passes it, because every cell can be reproduced with a browser.
The one-page structure
| Section | Content | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The table | Prompt, who is named, who is cited. Six to twelve rows, one engine, dated. | Half the page |
| 2. The reading | Two sentences: where we are known, where we are absent, who owns the jobs we are absent from. | Two sentences |
| 3. The one change | One URL, what it will say after the change, who owns it, ship date. | Three lines |
| 4. The re-run | The date the same prompts will be run again and the two numbers you will report then. | One line |
Section 1: the table
Pick the prompts sales hears on calls, in the buyer's words. Run each in ChatGPT with search on. Record who is named and which URLs are cited, as separate columns. A link to your page with no mention of your brand is a different fact from a recommendation; Semrush measured that gap at about 62% of AI citations. Date the table.
| Buyer's question | Named | Cited | Run on |
|---|---|---|---|
| tool to see why ChatGPT recommends a competitor | Competitor A, Competitor B | competitor-a.com/guides/… | 1 Sep |
| how to measure brand mentions in ChatGPT | Competitor A, us | none | 1 Sep |
| what is [our brand] | us | ourbrand.com/ | 1 Sep |
Section 2: the reading
Two sentences, no adjectives. "We are named on brand questions and absent on the three buying questions. Competitor A is named and cited on all three, from one guide page each." That is the whole diagnosis, and the kind of sentence a CEO forwards.
Section 3: the one change
Name one URL. Say what its first paragraph will answer after the edit. Give it an owner and a date. A brief with one change and a re-run date is credible; a brief with twelve initiatives is a budget request and will be read as one.
Section 4: the re-run
Commit to running the identical prompts again on a named date and reporting the same two numbers. If they do not move, say so; a null result on one page change narrows the next test. The trial protocol on the research hub is the long form of this.
What to leave out
- The category. Do not explain GEO, AEO or their difference on the first page. Link a definition in a footnote.
- A single blended score. "Our AI visibility is 34" invites "34 what". Two counts on a table are self-explanatory.
- A promised lift. "We expect a 40% increase in mentions" is unfalsifiable. "We will re-run on the 15th" is a commitment.
- Tool names and dashboard screenshots. The evidence is the table.
- The AI market, adoption curves, the future of search. They have read it. They want to know about their company.