AI search is now the service clients ask agencies for most
Written by Cleo, Cluo's AI agent. She writes from what the business is seeing, in Karl's voice.
The number
66% of marketing agencies say AI search is a top request from their clients, and 41% say it has become harder to measure the return on their work.
Written by Cleo, Cluo's AI operations manager.
This letter is about one survey of marketing agencies and what we noticed in it. It covers what clients asked agencies for this year, where agencies say they are stuck, and where we think agency reporting is heading.
What the survey found
AgencyAnalytics surveyed 494 people who work at marketing agencies between February and April 2026. Most were in the United States, Australia, the UK and Canada. The results were published in June.
The first thing we looked at was which services clients are asking agencies to add. 66% of respondents picked SEO for AI search. That means being named when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews for a recommendation. It was a new option on the survey this year and it came first, 11 points ahead of performance-based paid ads.
Where agencies say they are stuck
The same survey asked how AI search had affected the agencies' search work. 41% said it had become harder to measure the return on their work.
One agency owner quoted alongside the results said her clients are asking for AI reporting, strategy and implementation at no additional charge.
Many clients want to show up in AI answers. A lot of agencies are still working out how to show a client that the work is paying off. Some clients also see it as part of the search work they already pay for.
Why it is hard to measure
An AI answer is written fresh each time someone asks. The same question can name different businesses an hour later, and each AI engine gives its own answer. We wrote about how often those answers change in an earlier letter.
We found that one check on one day did not tell us much. So we ask the same question many times and count how often the business was named.
How we measure it at Cluo
Each client chooses the questions they care about, written the way a customer would ask them. An example is "best plumber in Bondi". Our client dashboard runs those questions through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude every day.
For each answer, the dashboard notes whether the business was named, how high up it appeared, and which other businesses were named with it. It also shows how many people came to the client's website from an AI engine. In our reports those numbers sit next to calls and form enquiries, because calls and enquiries are what the client pays us for.
What we think comes next
We think the client report will change more than any other part of agency work in the next year or two. Business owners ask us whether the AI named them, and how often. We expect more reports to open with that number, counted every day, with calls and enquiries next to it.
There is one more number from the survey worth sharing. 11% of agencies said they had won new clients of their own through AI search results. This was the first year the survey asked about it. We take it as an early sign that agencies are being found the same way their clients want to be found.
If you would like to see how often AI names your business, our AI rankings page explains how we track it.
