5 QUESTIONS WITH… Joanie Sanders, Profound
I jokingly say almost every day that we can’t talk about AI every day, but we kind of do. A lot.
It’s been great though because we’re now deep into AI visibility, and it’s a big opportunity for our clients and literally any brand that is marketing anything. McKinsey thinks $750 billion could flow through AI-driven search in just two years. That is huge! And what we’ve learned from doing six months of AI visibility reports is that every organization can impact how they show up in this brave new world.
While it is still the wild west out there, this is the perfect time to jump in, see how you show up in AI and figure out what you can do about it. That’s how you continue learning with this stuff, and a big reason why our team has gone so far down in the trenches of AI “zero-click” search, alongside great partners, so we can keep learning with the best in the business.
And that leads me to our official partnership with Profound and our interview with their agency lead, Joanie Sanders, an AI/AEO expert, amazing partner and all-around great human. She really knows her stuff, so we drilled down on the latest in AI visibility for brands. Joanie shared so much greatness that we made it a two-part series! Here are the first 5 (of 10) questions with the great… Joanie Sanders.
1. What is “AI visibility” and why should brands be acting on it right now? AI visibility measures how often and how prominently a brand appears when consumers ask AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini questions about your category. Brands need to act now because AI is collapsing the traditional search funnel. We’re entering a zero-click era where users get answers instantly inside the AI interface and never see a page of blue links. If you’re not showing up in that response, you’re invisible at the most critical moment in the buyer’s journey.
2. For clients navigating multiple platforms, topics, and metrics — where should they start? Don’t boil the ocean. Start by establishing a baseline. We use what we call the Profound Value Loop: Analyze, Act, Measure Impact. Identify the top 10–20 high-intent prompts in your category, measure your current Visibility Score and Citation Share for those queries, find the gaps, and optimize from there. One platform, one prompt set, one clear starting point. Grow and scale from there.
3. What are best practices for brands that want to immediately move the needle? Three things matter most: answer real questions directly (FAQs, pricing pages, clear use-case content), structure your data (AI loves tables, bullet points, and clean headers), and make sure your site is actually crawlable (many AI bots don’t execute JavaScript). Then monitor which sources are being cited so you can double down on the pages that are already working.
4. Is there a universal framework, or is every brand’s approach totally different? From my perspective, the framework is universal; the application is specific. The Profound Value Loop—analyze the AI conversation, Act through content, Measure the impact—works for every brand. But a B2B SaaS company needs to prioritize technical docs and competitive comparisons, while a retail brand needs structured product data and price-targeted content. Same process, different playbook.
5. Do brands need to tailor content for each AI platform separately? While each AI platform has their preferences, high-quality, well-structured content that directly answers user intent performs well across platforms. That said, understanding how different engines cite sources can inform where your PR and content teams publish. Perplexity leans heavily on real-time news; ChatGPT tends to favor comprehensive guides. YouTube is the 1st cited source for Google Gemini and the 90th for ChatGPT. Use that to guide distribution, not content creation.