January 20th saw YOYI TECH’s Chief Operating Officer Cai Fang invited to participate in NVIDIA APAC AI for Marketing Week, where she delivered a speech titled From Content Marketing to AI Visibility: GEO Reshapes Brand Influence.
As the wave of AI search sweeps across the globe, the battlefield of brand marketing is undergoing a fundamental shift. The logic of traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is no longer sufficient to meet the challenges posed by generative AI. Brand influence no longer depends merely on rankings on search results pages, but more on the ability to be seen and accurately conveyed in AI-generated answers. This is the core mission of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): in the AI era, to help brands regain narrative sovereignty and become the information source of choice and trust for AI.
01 AI Reshapes Consumer Decision-Making, Brand Sovereignty at Risk of Erosion
AI applications in the Chinese market are experiencing explosive growth. Native AI applications represented by Douyin Doubao, Alibaba Tongyi, Baidu AI, as well as AI features embedded in various platforms, have covered hundreds of millions of users. Consumers’ decision-making paths have shifted from the traditional “search-browse-compare” to “ask-answer-act”.
In this process, AI has become the gatekeeper of information, providing only information summaries instead of the traditional blue link lists in search results. This means a brand is either mentioned in AI’s answers or completely “invisible”.
An even more severe challenge lies in the erosion of brand sovereignty: being overlooked (the brand does not appear in AI answers), information distortion (AI disseminates incorrect or outdated information), and being replaced (the brand’s core intellectual assets are used by AI, yet the credit is attributed to competitors). There is a huge risk that traditional marketing investments may become ineffective in the AI era – if AI fails to understand a brand, billions in marketing spending could go down the drain.
02 GEO: A New Language for Communicating with AI, Not Controlling It
GEO is not a simple upgrade of SEO; its essence is to build a linguistic system that enables AI to understand information accurately. Its goal is not to control the AI models in the “black box”, but to optimize content to ensure that AI can accurately capture and convey a brand’s true value, product advantages and technological strength when retrieving, processing and disseminating information.
The core metrics for GEO include: Brand Visibility (the frequency of appearance in AI answers), Information Accuracy (whether the disseminated information is unbiased), and Brand Image (the emotional tendency of AI-generated content). These metrics together form a brand’s digital identity in the AI world.
03 Divergences in Chinese and International Practices, with Chinese Market Focusing on Short Videos and “Brand Co-creation”
While the global goals of GEO are consistent, there are significant differences in optimization environments and strategic priorities between China and the rest of the world. Overseas, the core of optimization remains brand official websites, blogs and Wikipedia, aiming to facilitate AI crawlers in capturing authoritative information. In China, however, brand official websites have lower priority, and the main optimization battlefield has shifted to short videos and social content.
In addition, the brand co-creation mechanism initiated by People’s Network can directly synchronize structured brand information to major domestic AI models, replacing the function of official websites as an authoritative information source to a certain extent.
As AI platforms such as Doubao and Tongyi gradually integrate shopping features, GEO has become a key bridge connecting content marketing with AI-enabled instant shopping. China’s AI ecosystem is dominated by major walled gardens, leading to a high degree of fragmentation in shopping links and content sources (e.g., Doubao mainly cites Douyin content, YuanBao cites WeChat content), which further increases the complexity of unified GEO implementation.
04 Core Strategy: A Dual Content System for “One Fish, Two Meals”
An effective GEO content strategy requires brands to build a dual content system of “One Fish, Two Meals”:
- Human-centric content: Focuses on emotional resonance and brand storytelling, disseminated through social activities, PR campaigns and other forms.
- AI-centric content: Focuses on factual statements, strictly abides by the E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) principles, and adopts a clear Q&A format.
The key to optimization is to maximize the overlap between the two types of content to improve efficiency. For example, when creating Douyin short videos, core keywords need to be placed prominently in titles, descriptions and tags to help AI quickly capture key brand and product information; at the same time, content should be published on high-authority media platforms that AI prefers to cite.
05 Key to Implementation: Cross-departmental Collaboration and Long-term Platform Construction
The successful implementation of GEO is not the achievement of a single team; it requires the integration of multiple departments including product, marketing, brand, PR, sales and channels to form an AI-oriented collaborative workflow. From product information refinement and KOL content optimization to e-commerce page and review management, an AI-understandable mindset needs to be embedded in every link.
In the long run, a professional GEO platform is crucial for brand building. It can provide short-term monitoring and diagnosis of AI answers, and in the long term, build a brand’s AI marketing knowledge base to continuously consolidate the brand’s authority and credibility in the AI world.
Conclusion
AI search is not the future – it is the present. GEO marks a new era for brand marketing, shifting from “competing for webpage clicks” to “competing for AI mindshare”. Brands that take the lead in mastering the language of communication with AI and systematically building their AI visibility will gain a crucial first-mover advantage in the new battlefield of reshaping influence, safeguarding brand sovereignty and even driving direct conversions.