AEO may be the new SEO. With search engines like Google, we’re getting a single AI answer to our queries at the top of search result now. Optimizing for that result is called Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), rather than search engine optimization (SEO).
And Later, an intelligent influencer marketing company, has launched creator AEO. The creator AEO is built specifically for creator marketing and helps brands shape how they appear across large language models and AI-powered discovery through trusted third-party content and creator-driven conversations.
The launch further expands Later’s growing enterprise intelligence and AI capabilities, enabling brands to forecast and optimize influencer marketing performance using first-party creator and commerce data.
As consumers increasingly shift from traditional search to AI-generated answers, brands face a new reality. According to research, only 10% of AI-search references come from a brand’s own site. The majority of what AI says about a brand is informed by external content such as creator posts, online communities, and editorial coverage. This creates a significant opportunity for brands to influence AI-generated discovery through creator marketing and trusted third-party conversations.
To support brands in navigating this shift, creator AEO enables companies to identify visibility gaps, activate creators strategically, and measure how visibility evolves across answer engines over time. Powered by the company’s predictive intelligence engine, Later EdgeAI, the offering is built on Later’s rich dataset spanning 136 billion annual social content impressions.
“Consumer behavior is rapidly shifting as more people turn to large language models to discover brands,” said Scott Sutton, CEO of Later, in a statement. “This creates a major opportunity for enterprises to rethink how they show up online. Much of what shapes AI-generated discovery comes from creators and third-party conversations, yet many companies still aren’t leveraging creator marketing as part of that strategy. At Later, we’re making sure our clients are ahead of where the internet is going with data-backed creator strategies designed for the answer engine era.”
Creator AEO provides brands with an Answer Engine Optimization strategy designed specifically for the creator economy. The offering includes:
- AI visibility audits and benchmarking
- Prompt and query research tied to high-intent consumer behavior
- Creator and community activations across YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Substack
- Ratings and reviews syndication strategies
- Real-time measurement for citation rate, mention rate, sentiment lift, and Share of Model growth
Unlike traditional SEO strategies focused on rankings and owned websites, creator AEO is built to support the way consumers interact with large language models. By analyzing the prompts driving AI-generated discovery, Later gives brands an understanding of how they appear across answer engines and which creator conversations are influencing visibility. Through Later EdgeAI, brands can identify the creators, platforms, and content formats most likely to drive Share of Model growth before a campaign launches, turning creator marketing into a measurable driver of AI visibility and discovery.
“AEO is not simply an SEO problem in disguise. It’s a more complex content marketing challenge,” said Lyle Stevens, chief strategy officer at Later, in a statement. “With creator AEO, we’re helping companies move beyond optimizing content they own, and start influencing the external conversations that increasingly shape how AI engines recommend brands. As AI-driven discovery continues to grow, Share of Model will become one of the most important indicators of brand visibility, and creator marketing will play a critical role in shaping it.”
The launch reinforces Later’s broader mission to help enterprise brands transform creator marketing into a measurable business growth channel. Today, Later’s proprietary intelligence ecosystem includes insights from more than 16 million creators analyzed, 136 billion annual impressions of social content, $2.9 billion in verified creator-attributed sales, and more than 3,000 retailer integrations through Later’s creator performance network. This gives the company one of the industry’s deepest creator and commerce datasets powering predictive intelligence and AI visibility strategies.
For more information about creator AEO, see here. As for SEO, it’s being absorbed into AEO, synthesizing the info into a single short answer rather than giving 10 links on a page.