This usually occurs during a call between the traffic summary and the next quarter’s plan. A customer asks if it appears when someone types a question in ChatGPT. Most agencies still don’t have a real answer.
This question is now everywhere.
In AgencyAnalytics’ Marketing Agency Benchmark Report 2026Based on responses from 494 agency professionals, 66% said helping clients appear in AI-powered search is the new service most requested by clients. It ranked ahead of performance-based paid ads and short-form videos, both of which have been growing for years.
AI search went from a curiosity to the top customer demand in a single year. The demand is real and growing rapidly. The rest is more difficult.
Demand exceeds measure
Agencies feel change, but feeling it and measuring it are two different things. In the report, 64% of respondents named Google’s AI insights as their top industry concern.
At the same time, 48% said they couldn’t reliably track people discovering a brand through AI tools, and 47% couldn’t attribute conversions across multi-session journeys created by AI-powered search.
Rank tracking was designed for blue links. It can’t show whether an AI-generated response names a customer, how it describes them, or what sources shaped the response.
So when a client asks how they are doing in ChatGPT, most agencies have to admit that they can’t tell. That’s a tough answer to give to someone who pays to know.
What agencies can actually measure now
AI search visibility is no longer a black box. Four elements are traceable today and, together, they provide a real answer:
- Visibility: Indicates whether a customer appears when a prompt is about their business.
- Position: With what importance they appear.
- Feeling: How the AI describes them (positive, neutral, or issue worth reporting).
- Quotes: Which URLs the model relies on to construct its response, revealing whose content shapes the response.
Track these four elements over time on engines like ChatGPT and Gemini, and “Are we there?” becomes a graphic that an agency can present to a client.
Where that tracking is located matters as much as what it measures. AgencyAnalytics has integrated AI Tracker into the same platform that more than 7,000 agencies already use for reporting, so AI research visibility sits alongside the traffic, leads, and revenue they already track.
Unlike a standalone tool, AI Tracker tells a connected story: where a customer appears in AI search and what they do for the business. It uses a pool of credits shared by an agency’s entire customer base, with no calculation per seat as customers are added.
A complementary tool can report a metric. Connecting AI visibility to marketing results explains what it means.
Get the data where the work happens
There’s a second half to the equation: where agencies actually work.
More of an agency’s day now takes place in AI tools. An account manager reviews a customer’s performance in Claude or ChatGPT, then stops, switches tabs, pulls a number from a dashboard, and brings it back into the conversation.
AgencyAnalytics MCP fills this gap. It connects live customer data to AI tools agencies already use, so they can ask performance questions without leaving the conversation.
Each query is limited to a specific client and existing permissions are retained, so agencies only see the accounts they are authorized to access. Data from AI Tracker comes to the team where they already work instead of sitting in a dashboard that someone has to remember to open.
Together, AI Tracker and MCP simplify the workflow: measure how customers appear in AI search, then feed that data into the tools where analysis and writing takes place.
Why this is a retention problem, not just an SEO problem
It’s tempting to categorize AI search under SEO and move on. This underestimates the issues.
The top question asked by clients, cited by 55% of agencies, is whether marketing is linked to actual revenue.
This question reflects a broader shift in what customers now expect.
“Agencies are being asked to do different work than they were doing a year ago,” said Joe Kindness, CEO of AgencyAnalytics. “Customers want to know if they’re showing up in ChatGPT, they want answers as soon as they ask for them, and they expect revenue-related proof. We work with 7,000 agencies serving 150,000 customers, so we’re seeing these changes early. AI Tracker puts that visibility in the hands of our customers.”
An agency that can show where a client appears in AI results, as well as revenue generated from viewability, has a very different conversation. We seem prepared for market developments. The other finds himself without an answer to a question that already interests him.
The change is already here. Agencies that can measure and report on it will answer the ChatGPT question with data. The full picture of what’s changing and how agencies are responding is available July launch by AgencyAnalytics of its new AI features.
The position Your client just asked if it appears in ChatGPT. And now ? appeared first on MarTech.
