AI Visibility and AEO

Today we have Justin Inman who is the founder and CEO of Ambrose AI. I spent nearly a decade at Google during the last kind of large transformational shift that happened in the advertising and marketing world covering off a lot of Fortune 500 companies. Everyone from L'Oreal to Coca-Cola to Sony. What did you learn from that? And you know how have these discovery systems changed over a period of time? The digital transformation and the shift to programmatic and I saw kind of how quickly that shift happened.

I think that this new kind of era that we're entering into the AI era, especially next year, it's going to be about 10 times faster than what that shift was. As people who are building in this space, we see companies trying to appear in those AI searches that are happening on chat jubety and clot. We're really seeing that discoverability. It really starts with an AI is really kind of now the foundational layer for how we operate. When I really knew it was going to be big is when my mom was using it. When we say that AI is now the new frontier or new front door for discovery, what does it actually mean?

45 to 50% of movie goers now go to Chachi BT or Gemini or an LLM for movie information and discovery. We decided to predict box office revenue. And so we did it for four titles over three weekends. The last two were um Wicked for Good and Zootopia 2. And across those four titles, we saw anywhere from a 90 to 98% accuracy. And for a couple of those titles, we were two 2x more accurate than traditional tracking metrics.

Any brand or brand person listening to this, how should they prepare for this whole sort of AI answers word and what what would you tell them to do? It is now the time is to up your game, up your chops, understand kind of what the next iteration of measurements is going to look like and 2026 is going to happen. I feel like sometimes brands can get overlooked or misrepresented inside the AI responses all the time. Is it very different from the Google search word? And secondly, how should brands think about it? Then hello everyone.

Welcome to another episode of Build AI podcast. Today we have Justin Inman who is the founder and CEO of Emrose AI. Uh welcome to the pod Justin. Thank you. Excited to be here. Yeah, thank you.

I think it it might be a great place to start if we can know a little bit about your journey and how you got to this place where you started Embroi and a little bit about the company as well. Sure. So, my name is Justin Emman. I'm the founder and CEO of Embaros. I I spent nearly a decade at Google during the last kind of large transformational shift that happened in the advertising and marketing world which was um the digital transformation and the shift to programmatic at Google. Spent uh like I said nearly a decade on the enterprise sales teams uh covering off a lot of Fortune 500 companies everyone from L'Oreal to Coca-Cola to Sony and I saw kind of how quickly that shift happened.

I you know I think that this new kind of era that we're entering into the AI era especially next year it's going to be about 10 times faster than what that shift was. So I saw a massive opportunity to build a company to kind of help brands understand how much AI visibility for their brand matters. So I built Emboss which is the operating system for AI visibility and we help brands detect, fix, improve lift across all AI assistants and and uh LLM right and that is so much required like as people who are building in this space we see companies trying to appear in those AI searches that are happening on chat gi so I'm really looking forward to learning more about this but maybe based on where you have spend spent time so far, you know, and watching SEO evolve early in your career. What did you learn from that? And, you know, how have these discovery systems change over a period of time? Yeah, you know, I think for for me, this isn't going away anytime soon.

I think consumers are operating differently, right? When social came, search was still a foundational layer and, you know, social is still a very much a foundational layer as well. It's just a new system that marketers and advertisers need to be thinking about because if they're not thinking about it, they're really going to be locked out of the conversation next year and the years upcoming. For us, as we go through kind of deeper experiments within our own systems, like we're really seeing that uh discoverability, it really starts with an AI. And so people consumers go to search for different reasons, but really for discoverability specifically, it's it's now starting with an AI. And so, um, that's kind of a pattern that we're seeing and we're really kind of putting a stake in the ground and saying AI visibility is now kind of the new leading indicator, right?

And when did this all start? Like we know that chat GPT got launched in November of 2022. When did you start noticing that AI answers like will become the next big thing? I mean for me it was actually with my own personal usage. Like I'm sure most of your listeners think about your usage today on ChatBT or Gemini or whichever LLM you use. Think about your usage today versus 3 months ago versus 6 months ago versus a year ago.

You know, what used to be kind of a a cool party trick where you would go and go to to search for something or create an image is really kind of now the foundational layer for how we operate. And it really is kind of becoming an AI assistant for me um in my everyday life asking it complex questions and and multi-step kind of prompts. I and frankly to be super transparent like when I when I really knew it was going to be big is when my mom was using it. I was like I if she's using it for GPT and research then I know this is going to be much bigger than I can even imagine. I totally sort of relate with that. My wife is like a dietician and nutritionist and most of the tech stuff I have done over last 20 years she was least bothered and and then I saw her using chat GPT from very early on like almost like midl last year.

It was insane. Yep. So yeah it's like if if the like least tech advanced person in your life is is using it then you know we're kind of in for this like foundational that's definitely going to happen next year, right? But just sort of going into this visibility area a little bit more that when we say that AI is now the new frontier or new front door for discovery what does it actually mean like you know if you can go into a tad more detail like what are the like when we are searching on chat GPD or claude what are the sources they go into and what happens in the background you know like I can give you a couple stats you know for for movies uh in the entertainment industry it's it's anywhere from like 45 to 50% % of movie goers now go to ChachiBT or Gemini or an LLM for movie information and discovery. one in five uh use an LLM assistant for for all kind of uh entertainment discoverability uh which is huge and and for our data we actually saw it was around like 7 to 12% of total prompts were movie related like massive massive opportunity for the entertainment industry and that's just one industry right like people's behaviors are now going to these systems to understand product recommendations that fit to your specific needs. Something that, you know, search never really was able to get there and offer.

And I think that now these with these customized responses, people trust it more, right? And they they they they feel like this is a catered response to their own personal desires and needs to whatever topic they want to ask about. And so that's what I mean about discoverability being kind of the new front door, right? But Justin has I have also seen that as opposed to Google search which probably used to look at like thousands of pages and rank them. I think what I've seen in typically when I search on chat GPT that it would have looked at or it would actually sort of base the answer on like 10 or 15 sources. Um and I don't know if I'm right or wrong in that but basically I feel like sometimes brands can get overlooked or misrepresented inside the AI responses all the time.

Right. So like two things. one is it very different from the Google search word and secondly how should brands think about it then so you know I think if you have a good SEO strategy you will most likely have a good GEO strategy generative engine optimization there's a lot of terms flying around there's a EO AIO go whatever the acronym is I think foundationally like there's a lot of things that are similar but there are a lot of things that are different, right? When we look at like full brand visibility in a platform, it's not just about your own kind of content, right? Or like backlinks. Uh it could be social sentiment and it could be Reddit, you know, strategy, right?

Like is your Reddit strategy is is driving it positive or negatively from a sentiment standpoint? Could it be uh PR, right? Like which is another big one. the PR industry is now kind of seeing a revive uh just from like a PR newswire or like these press releases because they the LLMs now pick them up more more frequently um as a source. But like you know I think at a foundational level like for for basic brand visibility I think SEO um is kind of a core to that. But when you get into the intentbased u kind of what should I be watching tonight or what what kind of products should I be thinking about for my 3-year-old that is interested in X Y and Z.

That's where it gets more complex, right? And so the strategy needs to evolve a little bit more than just what your typical SEO strategy will look like. And that's kind of the the data that we've been looking at, right? Very interesting. I also have this um sort of very high level idea. I may be wrong.

So I want to confirm with you. What I've seen in the answers, the AI answers is that they will base it a lot on things like Cura and Medium and Reddit and maybe social media and so on and so forth. Now there may be brands which have never focused on such platforms before. So do you think like they are at a dis disadvantage and they should start working on these things as well and review sites as well? like I've seen a lot of G2 and you know those kind of answers coming up. Yes.

Um and that's kind of what we have built the the platform for. Unlike other competitors that are in the space which will give you a dashboard that shows you kind of here's what your brand visibility is. We actually have taken it a couple steps further and we say here are 10 things that you can fix. And the way that our technology is built is that we can kind of predict what that lift will look like. So we'll say um we we our our metric that we use is share a prompt. And so it's share voice, right?

It's made up by a couple different things. But if we have a share prompt score of 13% or something like that and we say, "Hey, looks like Reddit is like one of the driving forces for your brand visibility. here is a very specific fix that you can do within Reddit and we think that that will drive your share prompt percentage up by 3%. And then we have kind of like an operational workflow that allows us to track when that fix happens and then we can kind of so that what the estimated lift was versus what the actualized lift is. Right. Interesting.

And I know you have started getting into that but I like somebody listening about embryos for the first time. How would you explain the company and the product to them? Um yeah so we we have um basically created a platform that is like I said the operating system for AI visibility and it's an agentic platform so it's very simple to use some of our competitors like kind of drown you in and prompt data and noise and so uh we have kind of taken the approach of it's already a confusing and kind of un an approachable space how do we simplify um kind of the workflows uh that are needed to happen for you to increase your visibility. Uh our platform uh does everything from detecting, fixing, improving lift, but it also we can uh we're rolling out a shopping um agent so we can get down to the skew level and also kind of a nod to the agentic shopping era that we're about to go into. And then we also have an like an AI governance and auditing tool which will help with the hallucinations, IP concerns and even making sure if you have your own kind of agent that's representing your brand that it's representing your brand correctly. Oh, super interesting.

So I think the geo part we have discussed a little bit but you mentioned about agentic commerce and you know the other things about AI auditing and all that. I think it will be very interesting to go in a tad more detail about that. So I I think it's very clear now that in the future agents will go and buy stuff for us. Maybe you'll start with 30% things and then you know as you know how technology evolves it may go to a very high percentage and and so the experience will look like you search something in chat GPT and they are working very hard with their ACP protocol and you know other things so that the products actually start showing in line within chat GPT and the same thing is being done by claude and others and then there will be like merchants trying to build this stuff on their website and their app as well where there's an AI agent which is helping people find the products because frankly like the products today on any e-commerce website are like okay this is the fabric and this is the size and you know blah blah blah this is for kids but then people are actually their intent is something like I'm looking for stretchable breathable pants for yoga right so there's a huge difference between what they're trying to find and the way the information is laid out where will like uh just to understand like where are you planning to sort of is it a B2B offering to the companies and and how will they get there what will will they yet what is the offering here? So we we do B2B but we also do B TOC um meaning if a retailer came to us we would help them uh optimize their skew level data so it shows up um to the right consumers uh within uh the AI assistants and LLMs. Um if you are a jewelry designer and you have very specific jew jewelry SKs um you will help you optimize to the right kind of um prompt level asking for those types of products and that's how we'll optimize to it.

That's the that's step one. Um I would say step two is going to be this like larger agentic commerce which is like you have your own personal agent and it recommend it it negotiates with the the merchant directly and um you know that's how the the the transaction happens which is very like future state maybe maybe not as future state as I think it is but you know that's kind of like where everyone is thinking the world is going to be heading where everyone's going to have their own personal agent and they'll negotiate on your behalf. Now, I don't know if the world is ready to be handing over credit card details to this invisible AI agent, uh, but and to be negotiating on behalf of you for like those types of products, right? But I think the first step that we're all going to be embarking on is making those purchases within the LLMs. And that is obviously a clear kind of shift that's been happening. Um, I think actually today I got a like a news alert.

I haven't read the article yet, but it was um I think it was the economist um that was saying like shopping has taken over, right? So I I think we saw a lot of interesting stats coming out of Black Friday and Cyber Monday just around the the usage of it and by this time next year it's going to be very mainstream, right? Yeah. Agent commerce is very very interesting. So I think just from a builder perspective since there's a lot of founders and technical folks which are listening to this also want to understand like um how do you sort of uh you know how do you build the technology for this and and is there like a technology mode here um in the SEO world we saw that basically like there were millions of agencies right and people and individuals who came up who could do SEO for you but this seems to be you know far more technical than than just doing like SEO in the previous era, right? So I want to understand like what is the technical mode here?

Yes. Um so there's a lot of companies that are coming out right now and I think you will see even more next year and the SEO industry as a whole will start to see more of a pivot and I think we're already seeing that right like big SEO companies now offering um GEO type expertise. I'm rebranding it as kind of SEO 2.0. It's not my opinion, but like it's uh I think there's going to be a lot of offerings in the space, right? For us, we decided like I I said earlier, it's it's a it's a different space, right? And I think uh for us, we wanted to build a foundation that really allowed us to create a more approachable, simplified, demystified platform.

And at the foundation of that was building a brand knowledge graph. And so um our brand knowledge graph we map over a entity that could be a brand a product a politician uh and we basically can then track that over time or what are the biggest influencing factors that the internet um has in terms of AI visibility and so that is that is pretty much our technical mo there's a lot more that goes into that right without sharing our our secret sauce but um at our core that allows us to um have predictive capabilities and that's very different than how a a typical like SEO would would operate, right? Or even like a typical GEO company would operate. Um we're kind of labeling this as like a AI brand orchestration era. Um so a little bit different than the the rest of the pack. And for us, you know, it it requires a lot of data science, a lot of engineering power to basically build our moat that will unlock a lot of different really cool and unique capabilities that we can bring to market that are not just a a repurposed version of SEO.

Oh, that sounds really interesting. And h how big is the team and you know, how are you putting fuel into this rocket ship? Um, yes. So, uh, the bit the the team right now is, I believe, as of today, uh, 12 maybe. Yeah, I think 12. I think we're going to be scaling out to to 15 by the the start of the the year.

Uh, we were lucky enough to have an angel investor and we've been moving at the speed of light. Uh, you know, we started this in August and we had MVP last week and we got three clients in the first week, big clients. So, um, you can just see the opportunity there. And like I think we're approaching it so much more differently than what they've used that we're used to. Like I think anyone that's familiar with the GEO space is like here's a bunch of optimizations. How about it and good luck, right?

And so we're saying here's five optimizations you can make that we can confidently say will increase your brand visibility. A very different approach. You know, it's somewhat closed loop. And you know, in terms of funding, you know, I think we're going to have a quite quite a quite a good amount of ARR um and we'll be planning to head to seed uh probably at the end of Q1. Okay. How much money did you raise in the preede round?

Uh 1.2 million. Okay, great. So, this looks great like you you already have customers, you are moving towards a bigger AR. I think it will be also very interesting to know that what are the customer segments you are there like specific industries or verticals that you're focusing on or it's like everything is a fair see if you asked me this a week ago I would have said we're going to start with media entertainment uh but we have been lucky enough to like already diversify with like kind of what our pipeline looks like and and uh a mixture between agencies uh and fortune 500 companies really cool like DDC brands that we're we're we're talking to. This is all within one week. It's been a wild wild ride uh thus far and we're just getting started.

And the reason why I said media entertainment is actually something I did want to bring up on this is um we wanted to make sure things worked right like we have this predictive capability and no one has publicly came out and said brand visibility within AI matters. Um so what we did is for the past month we have started to use our model and our AI visibility kind of metrics share prompt etc. Uh and we decided to predict uh box office revenue and so we did it for four titles uh over three weekends. The last two were um Wicked for Good and Zootopia 2. And across those four titles, we saw anywhere from a 90 to 98% accuracy in terms of revenue. And that is a very noisy space.

And for a couple of those titles, we were two 2x um more accurate than traditional tracking metrics. And the biggest piece of this was we didn't look at any search, no social, no NRG, no traditional tracking metrics. We only looked at our AI signals and our model and we were able to predict box office revenue to that level of accuracy. And like, you know, I'm not trying to be a box office prediction company, right? But like we published the very first timestamped case study that said, okay, AI visibility actually matters, right? Like we should be thinking about it this way because we are now proving that, you know, it is a leading indicator for actual business outcomes or real world outcomes and box office was just the start.

Uh we will replicate that across gaming, retail, etc. And that's kind of like what the original plan is. And I think it will shift a little bit in terms of like what we the types of clients we bring in. But in general, like we plan on on proving it out across every one of our major verticals next year so we can put a stake in the ground and say no more of this like does it actually matter, right? Like we actually are proving it to everyone in the world that this is something that everyone needs to be thinking about and optimizing towards, right? And this is super interesting by the I would love to go and read that study.

Is it is it like for the audience is it available on your website or it is? Yep. Yep. Yep. Embberos.ai and you'll see kind of a banner on the top. It says wicked forgood case study and you can go into and we have um a full case study that you can download and the methodology as well.

So even though there was a lot of focus on entertainment industry now you are thinking about going into other vertical as well. You are serving agencies and that's like quite recent as well right. So it's it's super interesting. Yes. Yeah. And then what is the business model like?

How do you make money? How do you charge your customers? We charge them by the agent. So we have five different agents. They all have kind of a different feature and function. And each one of those agents has a level of sophistication underneath it.

So there's a light, a pro, and enterprise tier. And then we charge by the amount of competitor tracking and also prompt volume. And then we'll be doing kind of like tentpole pricing. So if you have a large movie that you want us to help with tracking, we can do that. Or a gaming launch um or a product launch or something like that as we continue to build this out. Uh or like let's just say you have a popup popups around um you know certain cities.

We can help kind of do a campaign based like tracking for that and optimization for that. Uh so there's a lot of different ways to make money almost too many ways, right? So we're trying to simplify it in terms of just tiers, but you know, it's it's uh each each customer that comes to our platform is going to have very specific needs, right? What a retailer wants versus what a gamer a gaming company wants versus what a studio wants are very different, right? And they're going to be lo they're be using our platform very differently. So we try to create a pricing model that can be somewhat customizable um all like cart if you will so we can meet the needs to our of our customers right and you know I think for entrepreneurs um most of us actually know that the journey is hard a lot of odds are stacked against you fires are burning right and what has been like the hardest part for you building out in this category so far for me there's a lot of things right I think like just in terms of like self-reflection like I doubt like am I building the right thing?

Like are are people going to want to want it? That was that was definitely like I would say um a phase I went through, you know, and then you get a lot of noise just around the AI bubble like what happens if I build this thing and this thing pops like how does that work? And I just kept on coming back to there's a there's a need here in the space like CMOs and brands need this today um or they're going to be shut out of the conversation. And so like I kept on grounding it into like that core business principle of of we're solving an actual real world problem which helped me kind of get through some of those those like self-doubt moments. Um and you know you learn to try to just ignore a lot of the noise, right? Um the best best kind of thing that I've done is uh I've been lucky enough to like have a network of other entrepreneurs that have been through this process and I pick their brains all the time.

probably too much. That would probably be very annoying to them. Um but like you know it's it's a very lonely space if if you don't have a a a network to lean on. And so um for me you know I've been lucky enough to have a lot of adviserss to help along the way and I'm super grateful I have that. I understand that not everyone does but um you know if anyone's listening more than happy to chat chat with anyone about my journey um and give you give you any pointers. You know, I think it's it's uh the your network and like you just have to like be confident in yourself um and try to find ways to bring it back to that confidence level so uh you can continue on with like what you're trying to do, right?

You know, I often joke about this that it's almost like a sinocidal curve. Like there are days when you feel like we will, you know, conquer the world and then there are days where it feels like you doubt everything. So you have to just learn to manage that curve. I think I guess that's I mean it's totally true. It's totally true. Yeah.

No, this is great. I think enough on the business side and all that. I I I want to also talk about you know you as an entrepreneur and the personal side. Um I think when we were going a little back and forth over email about uh you know some of the stuff that you have done in the past on the personal side, there was this whole thing around flipping homes which came up right. Uh I I think it'll be great to know how has uh you know what has flipping homes with your wife taught you about teamwork and decision-m that I'm not the boss in the household. Uh that's usually the the right the right uh answer.

Hopefully she's not listening to this, but I I would say that requires a lot of patience. Um and in many ways it can be applied to what you're going to embark as a founder, right? We've had houses that were seamless, that were easy, three months in and out, and we've had houses that literally everything in the entire world that could happen happened to us. Uh, and I think for us, and similar to that same core principle that we just talked about was like self-doubt, right? Like how do you how do you kind of ground yourself and just continue to move forward? Um, and thankfully I had, you know, we have each other as like a good support system.

We're in it together, right? But a lot of kind of good lessons learned from from that world. Obviously, it's a very challenging time right now to be to be doing that. So, we've had to take a little bit of a break, but also super fun and and it reminds me a lot of what I'm doing right now cuz it's it feels tangible, right? I liked I like building and so I like seeing kind of the fruits of my labor and the same thing that I was the same feeling that I was getting when I would see kind of the finished product is the same feeling I'm getting now when like we hit MVP and like I'm there's a lot of blood sweat and tears that went into it and there's a sense of pride right that you you have when something feels tangible like that. So um that's something you know that super drives me.

Yeah. Yeah. I I have personally also found it very interesting that when you are doing things outside of tech because you know like tech people like us we are all always thinking about okay what can what will AI do next and what's happening to XYZ areas but then any experience outside of all this especially in the physical world doing some side projects or you know like in in your case flipping homes teaches you so much about company building and team building and so on. I I find it super interesting that kind of things we can learn uh you know from the rest of the physical world I guess. Yeah. I mean it's totally true.

It's like if you're a founder and you're listening to this, you better find another like find a hobby that you can like channel some energy because it is it's living breathing is is a requirement but like of of the company. But it's it's nice to take a a step back every now and then and and focus on something that's different even if it's just for a short period of time because I think it also gives you kind of a new perspective on things right that you're building and yeah that's a very good like tidbit that someone told me and I I really take that to to heart right and you know like uh truth be told entrepreneurship is not easy there's um a lot of sleepless nights things are hard sometimes and I wanted to ask you like um not necessarily like you you always have sleepless nights. But what keeps you up at night? Like what are the what is the biggest challenge right now in the business? For me, the biggest challenge is the delicate balance of resourcing and burn rate. Like how do I make sure I'm competitive but not over making sure that I'm building for what the market wants, not what I want, right?

And my world is so data scienceheavy. If I could, I would hire 50 of them tomorrow just because I feel like that skill set is so needed in in my world. But like, you know, like you can't you can't do that. So, it's it's a delicate like teeter totter that you're playing with with these like with the resourcing and burn rate that, you know, it's been a little challenging to like think about. I don't know if it necessarily keeps me up at night, but you know, it's it's it's it's definitely a top of mind for me. you know, also like the the fundraising piece like managing the VCs is like a full-time job.

Understanding like who the right partner is and you know who who can kind of take you to that next level is super critical, too. It's it's kind of like dating. You know, you're going to you're going to be basically potentially marrying this this individual. So, like you want to make sure you like them from a personal standpoint as well. Um and it's not just about the money. So yeah, there's there's and just like you know, I think for for me also uh I have two young kids at home.

How do I balance uh the demands of of building a SAS company and an AI era uh that moves at the speed of light that will have undeniably like massive client requests and and customizations and things like that and also have time for my family. So, you know, I think that's that's also something I would say that that keeps me up at night. Yeah, very important. Very well said. I would like to finish this by just asking you one final question that there may be people from brands listening to this podcast and you know with your sort of your and your team experience and multi- aent systems large scale pipelines prediction engines and you know the way that you're building this AI visibility OS um any any company or any brand or brand person listening to this how should they prepare for this whole sort of AI answers word and what what would you tell them to do like you know just like you know start like reading this or listening to that podcast or reading this book or what should they start sort of going through in terms of content? I mean besides coming to me and and using my platform.

Yes, that will be the best place to go to. I think the best the best the best starting part is going to emosai and clicking on book a demo. No, I'm kidding. I would say it's we're in the first inning and so like if anyone says that they've got it all figured out right now, maybe they do, but I think they're probably lying a little bit because the space changes so much, right? So don't don't feel like you're left behind, but it is now. The time is to to up your game, up your chops, um understand kind of what the next um iteration of measurement is going to look like.

And 2026 is going to happen. So, if you want to be the best marketer or advertiser or make sure you get the most amount of sales for your brand, this is a space that you need to be thinking about. And I can confidently say if you're not, you will be shut out of the conversation. So, I I would say do your research. You know, there's a lot of conflicting opinions out there, but like the more you read, more you understand differing opinions of these things, the better off you are of kind of forming your own opinion. And that's kind of the strategy that you should go down.

I think next year there's going to be a spotlight on this industry. It's already a very very hot space. You know, I think that there'll be kind of the clear winners of the space that we'll probably have a lot of published best practices and ways to approach this for very specific verticals. So, I would say keep your eyes out for that. We certainly will be one of the ones that will be doing those types of things, too. And yeah, I was just I would I would start small and start to understand kind of what where what what your kind of where you're at, where your baseline is, and that's where you work up from.

Yeah. Yeah. No, this is great. It's been wonderful uh talking to you, Justin. Um I personally learned a lot. I'm sure the audience will enjoy this uh when this bot comes out.

Thank you so much for your time and you know, looking forward to chatting with you about AO in 2026 as well. Sounds good. Me too.