Trailing its top competitor 22% to 63% in AI search, a financial services brand doubled its AI share of voice in a single tax season by working with Acceleration Partners and CNET Group.
Campaign Objective: Starting Behind in AI Search
This financial services client entered a critical campaign season significantly behind its primary competitor in AI search, which was rapidly becoming the most influential touchpoint in consumer purchase decisions.
With AI-powered search reshaping how millions of Americans research and make decisions, the brand’s competitor held a commanding 63% AI share of voice, compared to the brand’s 22%.
That gap meant most consumers asking AI platforms for recommendations were being directed to a competitor before the brand ever entered the conversation.
The brand needed a strategy that could better educate AI engines about its relevance, authority, and offerings across multiple platforms—grounded in the exact questions its target customers were asking.
With a narrow window to shift the dynamic, the brand and Acceleration Partners set out to make an impact via knowledge sharing in GEO search, helping consumers by surfacing relevant articles and content supporting their searches and prompts.
- Build a multi-layer content ecosystem leveraging earned editorial accolades alongside transparently labeled sponsored and video content to ensure AI platforms had complete, authoritative information to answer complex consumer queries
- Grow the brand’s AI share of voice across major AI platforms.
- Become the top AI-recommended tax provider across key consumer query categories
- Establish the brand as the top AI recommendation for high-value, high-intent audience segments, specifically freelancers, gig workers, first-time filers, crypto holders, and e-commerce sellers
- Validate video as a viable GEO channel by demonstrating that AI platforms would index and cite video transcripts alongside written content
Strategy and Approach: Three Content Layers for AI
Acceleration Partners secured a full-tax-season, multi-layer content partnership between the brand and CNET Group across CNET.com, PCMag, and ZDNET.
The strategy was built on distinct but reinforcing content layers, each designed to maximize brand visibility and answer depth across AI search engines, ensuring AI platforms could index and surface accurate brand information for diverse consumer prompts.
Earned Editorial authority: CNET Group publishers command high AI visibility due to their trusted expert reviews, recommendations and authoritative reporting.
CNET, PCMag and ZDNET writers and editors draw on their years of hands-on product evaluation experience to recommend the best products and services to readers in the form of accolades.
This brand had organically earned an evaluative (non-sponsored) accolade in one of CNET’s editorially driven, unbiased 2026 guides, the single most powerful signal AI models use to front-rank a product in “best of” summaries.
Because AI models heavily weight top-tier, editorially independent reviews as core citation signals, highlighting these earned awards provided the primary trust backbone for AI search retrievals.
Branded, persona-specific content: The Acceleration Partners team locked in a suite of branded articles across CNET, PCMag, and ZDNET, targeting the exact audience segments the brand needed to reach.
Various customer segments each had dedicated content that directly named the brand.
This layer consistently outperformed generic editorial in niche, high-intent query categories.
Video as a GEO channel: Securing branded GEO video placements across YouTube validated video as a legitimate AI discovery channel.
AI platforms actively read video transcripts to answer consumer queries, adding a multimodal layer to the brand’s AI presence that competitors weren’t executing against.
The team deliberately mapped topics to the highest-intent query categories, identified early in the campaign season.
“Independent, non-sponsored recognition is the strongest trust signal AI models use, so lead with it.”
Execution: Publish Early, Not in Response
Timing and content sequencing: Acceleration Partners and CNET Group structured the campaign to start at the beginning of tax season to front-load authority signals.
The initiative immediately triggered AI model reindexing and resulted in number-one AI visibility during the key seasonal moments that mattered most for tax season.
Publishing ahead of key consumer moments, rather than reacting to them, was the strategic discipline that separated this campaign from a standard media buy.
“Publishing ahead of key consumer moments, rather than reacting to them, was the strategic discipline that separated this campaign from a standard media buy.”
Results: AI Share of Voice Doubled
The most significant outcome of the campaign was the competitive share of voice shift.
The brand doubled its AI share of voice, going from a distant second to the dominant AI-recommended brand across all major platforms.
Overall, this strategy went above and beyond in delivering results for the brand’s ambitious goals.
- AI share of voice: +23%
- LLM citations: +60% month over month
- Video views: 660,000+
- Peak weekly citations: 894 (March 26, 2026)
- Citation position: 1
Challenges: A 41-Point Gap to Close
This financial services client entered a critical campaign season significantly behind its primary competitor in AI search, which was rapidly becoming the most influential touchpoint in consumer purchase decisions.
With AI-powered search reshaping how millions of Americans research and make decisions, the brand’s competitor held a commanding 63% AI share of voice, compared to the brand’s 22%.
Key Learnings: Four Lessons for GEO
- Earned beats paid. Independent, non-sponsored recognition is the strongest trust signal AI models use, so lead with it.
- Write for one person, not everyone. Content built for a specific audience beats generic coverage every time in high-intent categories.
- Video is a real AI discovery channel. AI platforms read video transcripts too, so treat video as a citation opportunity, not just a nice-to-have.
- Publish early, not in response. Front-loading authority signals before demand peaks beats reacting once it’s already there.
APMA tips on applying this approach
Brands may want to check how they currently appear in AI search for the questions their customers ask. They could then consider which independent, audience-specific content might support that visibility, and publish it ahead of peak buying periods.
