I have sat in enough budget meetings now to recognize a pattern. A CMO hears about AI Optimization, accepts that it matters, and then reaches for the same line item every time: “what percentage of our SEO budget should we redirect toward this?”
I think that question, asked first, sets the entire initiative up to be underfunded. I want to make the case for a different starting point: AIO budget should come out of brand spend, not search spend — and I want to walk through why, rather than just assert it.
The Mistake Most CMOs Make When They Hear “AIO Budget”
The instinct to fund AIO from the existing SEO budget is understandable. AIO clearly shares DNA with SEO — content, technical infrastructure, authority signals. It is the adjacent discipline, so it is natural to reach for the adjacent budget line.
But SEO budgets at most companies were sized for a specific, narrower job: rank well enough on Google to capture a defined share of organic search volume. They were never sized to also fund an entirely new visibility surface that did not exist when that budget was set. Asking the SEO budget to absorb AIO without growing it is asking the same dollars to do meaningfully more work — which in practice means something else inside the SEO program gets starved to fund it, or the AIO effort gets a token allocation that produces token results.
I see this play out predictably: a brand allocates fifteen percent of its existing SEO retainer to “AI visibility,” gets a handful of schema updates and an FAQ page, sees no measurable citation movement in the first quarter, and concludes that AIO does not work for their category. The conclusion is wrong. The budget sizing was wrong from the start.
What Brand Advertising Was Always Buying and Why AI Now Performs That Job
Step back and ask what television, print, and out-of-home advertising actually purchase for a brand. Not clicks — most brand spend has never been directly attributable to a transaction. What it buys is consideration: the quiet, compounding effect of a name being present in someone’s memory at the moment they begin looking for a solution. That has always been a brand-marketing job, funded by the brand budget, measured imperfectly through awareness studies and share-of-voice tracking rather than hard conversion data.
AI-powered discovery is now performing a version of that same function, except with two structural advantages brand advertising never had. First, it operates at the exact moment of intent — when someone is actively asking a question that your brand could answer — rather than weeks or months before a purchase decision begins. Second, it is measurable in a way a billboard impression or a thirty-second spot never was: citation frequency, share of voice against named competitors, and downstream conversion from AI-referred visitors are all trackable.
If a CMO accepts that AI-mediated discovery is doing the job brand advertising used to do — buying consideration at scale — then the budget conversation should follow the job, not the historical org chart. The dollars that funded consideration-building belong with the channel doing that job most effectively today, and increasingly, that is AIO.
The Revenue Math: Why a Small Shift From Brand Spend Has Outsized Impact
I want to be careful here and not manufacture false precision. The credible way to make this argument internally is not to cite a single market-wide revenue figure and apply it directly to your category — those top-down estimates vary widely by source and are easy for a skeptical CFO to poke holes in. The more defensible approach is a bottom-up model specific to your own brand.
Here is the model I walk CMOs through. Start with your current brand and awareness budget as a known figure. Identify what share of your category’s purchase research already happens inside an AI assistant rather than traditional search — this requires running your own prompt-based AI visibility audit rather than relying on an industry-wide average, because the share varies enormously by category, buyer type, and how considered the purchase is. Multiply your typical brand-channel conversion assumptions against that AI-influenced research share to estimate the addressable opportunity. Then size a pilot reallocation — typically five to ten percent of brand budget in the first year — against that opportunity, with citation rate and AI-referred conversion as the success metrics rather than a revenue projection nobody can audit in twelve months.
Statistic: By 2030, the US B2C retail market alone could see $900 billion to $1 trillion in orchestrated revenue from agentic commerce, while global projections reach $3–5 trillion.
Primary source: McKinsey & Company, The Agentic Commerce Opportunity: How AI Agents Are Ushering in a New Era for Consumers and Merchants (Published October 17, 2025)
Supporting source: ICSC & McKinsey & Company, Shopping in the Age of AI: Redefining Stores for a New Era (Published April 2026)
How to Make This Argument to Your CFO and Board
The framing that tends to land best in my experience is not “we need new money for a new trend.” It is “we are reallocating existing brand spend toward a more measurable channel doing the same underlying job.” That framing puts the conversation on familiar ground — budget reallocation, not budget expansion — which is a much easier approval to secure than a net-new ask.
- Lead with the job, not the technology: “our brand budget exists to build consideration; AI-mediated discovery is now where a growing share of consideration-building happens.”
- Anchor the pilot size to a percentage of brand spend, not a fixed dollar ask — five to ten percent is a defensible, low-risk starting point that does not require disrupting existing brand commitments.
- Commit to citation rate, share of model, and AI-referred conversion as the reporting metrics from day one, so the board sees a measurement framework rather than a leap of faith.
- Set a specific re-evaluation point — we recommend a two-quarter check-in — rather than an open-ended commitment, which makes the initial approval easier to grant.
What the Right AIO Investment Looks Like by Company Size
CMOs consistently ask for a number, and “it depends” is an honest but unsatisfying answer. Here is the most useful range I can offer without overstating precision.
- Mid-market brands with an established SEO program: a pilot reallocation in the range of five to ten percent of brand and awareness spend, paired with a focused technical and entity-clarity audit, is typically enough to produce a measurable first-quarter signal.
- Enterprise brands with complex, multi-region content estates: the technical and governance work described in our companion piece on enterprise AIO usually requires a larger initial investment relative to brand spend, because the audit and remediation work scales with the size of the content estate, not just the ambition of the program.
- Brands just beginning to test the waters: a smaller, time-boxed pilot — a defined quarter, a defined budget, a defined prompt set to track — is the right starting point, specifically to build the internal measurement muscle before committing a larger share of brand budget.
None of these ranges should be read as a guarantee. They reflect the patterns we have seen across client engagements of varying size and maturity, and the right number for any individual brand depends on category, current AI visibility baseline, and how much of the underlying technical and entity-clarity work is already in place.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should the AIO budget come from the SEO budget or the brand budget?
Brand budget. SEO budgets were sized for a narrower job — ranking on Google for a defined share of search volume — not for funding an entirely new visibility surface. Asking the SEO budget to absorb AIO without growing it usually means something else in the SEO program gets starved, or AIO gets a token allocation that produces token results.
How much brand budget should be reallocated to AIO in year one?
A pilot in the range of five to ten percent of brand and awareness spend is a defensible, low-risk starting point that doesn’t require disrupting existing brand commitments.
What metrics should back an AIO budget request to the CFO or board?
Citation rate, share of model (citation frequency relative to named competitors), and AI-referred conversion — all trackable from day one, which gives the board a measurement framework rather than a leap of faith.
Why does AI-powered discovery function like brand advertising?
Brand advertising has always been buying consideration — a name surfacing in memory at the moment someone starts looking for a solution. AI-powered discovery performs that same function, but at the exact moment of intent, and it’s measurable in ways a billboard or TV spot never was.
How often should the AIO budget pilot be re-evaluated?
A two-quarter check-in is the recommended cadence — specific enough to hold the initiative accountable, without requiring an open-ended commitment that makes the initial approval harder to secure.
Kaushal Thakkar
Founder & CEO, Infidigit