The shift from traditional search engines to AI-powered discovery is forcing enterprise marketing teams to rethink how brands earn visibility, and Assemble is creating a new industry forum focused on that transition. The company has announced the Digital Marketing & Communications Council (DMCC), bringing together its new AEO Board with its existing SocialMedia.org and SocialMedia.org Health Boards.

The council is designed as a peer network for executives responsible for digital marketing, communications, social media, brand, customer experience and growth as large language models (LLMs) increasingly influence how consumers discover and evaluate companies.

Assemble says the combined community includes 394 member companies and 1,750 individual members, representing more than half of the Fortune 500. The organization plans to use the council to facilitate discussions around answer engine optimization (AEO), AI search visibility, organizational structures, measurement and changes to digital media strategy.

AEO Moves Beyond Traditional SEO

AEO has emerged as a new layer of digital visibility as consumers increasingly use AI interfaces to obtain direct answers rather than navigating a conventional list of search results.

For enterprise marketing teams, that changes the measurement problem. A brand can maintain strong conventional search rankings while receiving little visibility when an AI system generates an answer from multiple sources. Conversely, being mentioned or cited by an AI system does not necessarily translate into website traffic in the same way as a traditional search click.

Assemble says members of its communities are reporting traffic declines of between 40% and 60%, although the figures are based on member-reported experiences rather than an independently audited industry dataset. The company also says nearly two-thirds of members identify operationalizing AEO as a near-term challenge.

That distinction matters. AEO is not simply a replacement for SEO. It introduces questions around brand representation, source authority, structured content, entity recognition and how AI systems interpret information across a company's digital footprint.

The resulting challenge extends into marketing operations. Teams need to determine who owns AI-search visibility, how it should be measured, what content should be optimized and how changes in discovery affect paid media, organic acquisition and conversion.

DMCC Creates a Peer Network for AI-Driven Marketing

The DMCC combines Assemble's AEO Board with its SocialMedia.org and SocialMedia.org Health communities. The broader structure reflects the convergence between previously separate functions as AI changes how organizations manage digital communications.

The council's launch is scheduled for Assemble's North American Marketing Leadership Summit (NAMLS), running September 28–30, 2026. Leaders from digital marketing, AEO, social media, brand, communications, customer experience, growth and digital strategy are expected to participate.

Executives from companies including Amazon, PepsiCo, SAP, Spotify, Unilever, KPMG, AT&T and Bank of America are listed among the 2026 summit speakers.

The involvement of large enterprises is significant because AI-search optimization is becoming an organizational issue rather than a narrowly defined SEO task. Companies operating across multiple brands, markets and content systems face a different problem from smaller businesses experimenting with individual pages: they need repeatable governance and measurement across their entire digital presence.

Market Landscape

Google remains central to conventional search, while Microsoft has integrated AI capabilities into Bing and its broader Copilot ecosystem. Meanwhile, standalone AI platforms such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini are changing how users can discover information without starting from a traditional search-results page.

This creates a fragmented visibility environment. Enterprise marketers increasingly have to consider not only rankings and clicks, but also whether their brands are accurately represented in AI-generated answers and which sources influence those responses.

The broader enterprise AI market is also moving toward agentic workflows, automation and AI-assisted decision-making. For marketing organizations, that means AEO is likely to intersect with content management, analytics, brand governance, public relations and customer experience rather than remain isolated within an SEO team.

Strategic Outlook

The launch of DMCC highlights an important development in enterprise marketing: AI search is becoming an organizational and governance challenge as much as an optimization problem.

Traditional SEO provided relatively familiar metrics such as rankings, impressions, clicks and organic traffic. AI-generated discovery introduces less standardized measurements around mentions, citations, recommendations and brand context.

That creates demand for shared methodologies. Marketing leaders will need to determine which AI-search signals matter commercially and how those signals connect to pipeline, customer acquisition and brand outcomes.

For MarTech vendors, the opportunity is equally significant. Platforms that can connect AI visibility data with analytics, content operations, customer data and marketing automation could become increasingly important as enterprises attempt to understand the relationship between AI discovery and revenue.

Top Insights

• Assemble's DMCC brings AEO and social-media leadership together as enterprises confront fragmented AI-search visibility and changing digital discovery behavior.
• Member-reported traffic declines highlight the uncertainty surrounding AI-powered search, although Assemble's figures have not been independently validated as an industry benchmark.
• AEO is expanding beyond SEO into brand governance, content strategy, analytics and communications as LLMs increasingly influence customer discovery and evaluation.
• Enterprise marketing teams will need new measurement frameworks connecting AI mentions and citations with acquisition, conversion, revenue and broader customer outcomes.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.