AI visibility isn\u2019t the only zero-click concern keeping marketers up at night. Now that tools like Scrunch and Profound are commonplace, CMOs are thinking ahead to the next task: finding evidence that a strong zero-click search presence actually drives sales.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery CMO we know has been under excruciating pressure over the last 18 months from their boards and C-suites or investors to to crack this nut,\u201d said John Barham, managing partner at performance media agency Roast.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Per one\u00a0recent AI search survey, 73% have invested in the tools to monitor AI visibility<\/a>. But while share of model tools like SEMrush, Profound or Scrunch can be used to estimate how an LLM tool might be presenting a brand to users, and the sources it\u2019s basing its information on, they don\u2019t help marketers link those measures with sales or other commercial activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no one tool out there that can paint you a picture of the universe,\u201d said Barham.<\/p>\n Instead, CMOs and marketing teams are left piecing together the answers bit by bit. Alicia Yoon, founder and CEO of skincare brand Peach & Lily, said this type of analysis requires marketers to \u201ctriangulate\u201d proxy signals and data points that can help them estimate the impact their brand\u2019s profile (or lack of) within Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT might be having on inbound leads or digital sales.<\/p>\n Some companies are attempting to move beyond makeshift deduction. At B2B SaaS company Rippling, for example, head of growth Neel Murthy said the marketing team works back from a range of different signals: visibility measures taken from tools Profound and AirOps, conversion data from paid ChatGPT ads, and web traffic incoming from branded and unbranded search queries, as well as data from a bespoke media mix model (MMM) based on Google\u2019s open-source Meridian platform. \u201cAll these systems allow us to triangulate value,\u201d said Murthy.<\/p>\n Rippling\u2019s approach makes work for its in-house data scientists, but it could be the shape of things to come. According to a survey conducted by Demandbase, ChatGPT-referred visits to B2B brands rose 303% from roughly 645,000 in June 2025 to 2.6 million in June 2026, as B2B buyers adopted the AI tool for research. Linking that traffic back to commercial outcomes, noted Demandbase CMO Rachel Truair, brings marketers back to attribution questions that have \u201cplagued\u201d them for years.<\/p>\n Roast, too, has been using statistical tools such as Google\u2019s Causal Impact model \u2014 an open source solution that uses Bayesian logic to link search inputs and business outcomes. \u201cThere isn\u2019t the tech or tools to draw a clear line from visibility on a given LLM and sales going up\u2026 you have to start going down the modelling route,\u201d said Barham.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a path more marketers are heading down, prompting the IAB to release a standardized set of measurement guidelines around which marketers can build such measurement apparatus, at the beginning of this month<\/a>. And In June, Google added a Search Console feature<\/a> that provides generative AI performance data.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only real way to do it is to model it yourself by putting together your first-party data from pages, excluding what you know to be AI traffic,\u201d said Mulenga Agley, founder and CEO of marketing agency Growthcurve.<\/p>\n A lack of concrete link between sales and visibility hasn\u2019t stopped marketers from attempting to improve their AI visibility, of course. Many have focused on the role that platforms like YouTube and Reddit play in LLM results, a finding that\u2019s led some directly into the comment section as they attempt to steer consensus their way before it can be scraped and summarized.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dating app Seeking.com<\/a>, for example, hired agency Disruptive Advertising to hunt down and intervene in Reddit threads that gain a lot of traction, according to the brand\u2019s co-CEO Dana Rosewall. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit of reputation management,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n The practice has become typical among consumer brands lacking levers to influence the LLMs behind tools like ChatGPT. While ChatGPT\u2019s paid ads (Rippling, as it happens, is one advertiser using them) business offers marketers a conversion pixel linking consumer actions with its paid ads inventory, other attempts to use paid media to alter AI search outcomes have<\/a> run aground; an attempt by Time Inc, for example, to sell markdown page ads scannable by AI agents prompted an aggressive response from AI search company Perplexity<\/a>.<\/p>\n