Coty (COTY) Puts a Visibility Score on Its Brands in AI Answers

Coty (COTY) told its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter earnings call on August 19, 2026 that it now measures AI answer visibility for each of its brands — how often a brand appears in the answer to an unbranded AI query — and is funding the work by shrinking its agency model [2]. Eight days earlier, Catena Media (CTTMF) described the other end of the same change: it defended its search rankings and still lost clicks [1]. Direct Digital Holdings (DRCT) and Dolphin Entertainment (DLPN), both reporting on August 12, sell the remedy [3][4].

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Rankings Held, but the Clicks Stopped Coming

One group of companies lives on organic search. They produce content, get a page to rank under a keyword, and hand the visitor who clicks through to an advertiser for a commission on the lead or the sale. That is affiliate marketing, and it is Catena Media's business. The whole model assumes the reader clicks the link.

Generated answers now resolve many of those questions on the results page itself, so no click is needed. On August 11 Catena Media said second-quarter organic search performance was volatile but roughly flat year over year, that its teams held their rankings, and that the same rankings now convert into fewer clicks and less traffic than before. Management framed the effect as reaching beyond its own industry to every industry that depends on organic search [1].

The reverse of that rule matters just as much. If the generated answer names a brand, being named becomes the entry point, and the thing to optimize shifts from keyword rank to whether your material gets written into the answer. The industry calls this generative engine optimization, or GEO.

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Coty Attached a Number to Being Named

Coty operates beauty brands including Rimmel, Marc Jacobs and Hugo Boss. On its August 19 call it disclosed a visibility score for the first time, measuring how often one of its brands appears in the answer to an unbranded AI query. Marc Jacobs scored 8.7 in the UK and Hugo Boss 6.3; the standout was Rimmel in the UK at 13.8, which moved its brand ranking inside large language models from number seven a few months ago to number four [2]. The levers are its own brand pages, the product description pages on retailers' sites, social media and editorial content, and the money comes from a streamlined agency model that redirects resources away from non-working spending [2].

The sell side spoke on August 12. Direct Digital Holdings said it launched AI search and GEO offerings in the prior quarter, that demand from current and prospective clients is strong, and that these products draw on technology budgets its media business never reached. It attached no contract value, and not one analyst asked a question before the call ended [3]. The same day, the PR firm Dolphin Entertainment said the service is currently folded into existing PR contracts, that it has not yet signed a first client to pay for it on its own, and that it plans to break it out and sell it standalone in the second half — the build is already paid for, so serving another client costs nothing extra [4].

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Demand Arrived Before the Price

On the buying side, the marketing metric under review is moving from clicks to citations, and the spending it touches — content production, retailer pages, PR — sits outside what used to count as media buying. On the selling side three layers have formed: agencies and PR firms selling diagnosis and remediation, software selling a visibility score, and a data layer underneath. comScore said on August 12 that it intends to license the real consumer prompts and responses observed on its opt-in panel to GEO firms, replacing the machine-generated prompts those tools rely on today, and that it has begun commercial negotiations with several leading firms [5].

Because these services are bundled into contracts that already exist, the first movement should show up in gross profit rather than in revenue growth. Informa TechTarget launched comparable services in March and reported high demand, but management said plainly that it does not expect them to be material revenue generators in their own right [6]. Two things test this over the next few quarters: whether Dolphin signs a first standalone client before the end of 2026, and whether comScore's licensing talks convert into contracts.

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Which Companies This Change Touches

• Lovesac (LOVE): The furniture brand said on June 11, 2026 that it invested in "AI-readable content, structured data, and creator ecosystems" for agentic engine optimization [7], the same playbook Coty is running in a different category. It has disclosed no visibility metric and no sales effect from that spending.
• Estée Lauder (EL): The other large beauty group. Its August 19 call covered consolidating media buying into a single agency group and acknowledged that where consumers interact with brands has changed [8]. It faces the same rule as Coty but has disclosed no comparable score.
• Forrester Research (FORR): It sells industry research and advisory work, and on July 30 it named the problem as a research category, the "visibility vacuum," telling clients they need to adopt some form of answer engine optimization [9]. What it sells is the advice these companies buy while doing the work.

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Sources

[1] Drillr - Catena Media (CTTMF) - 2026-08-11 - Q2 2026 earnings call

[2] Drillr - Coty (COTY) - 2026-08-19 - FY2026 Q4 earnings call

"We are measuring our brand's geo-attraction with a visibility score, which captures how often the brand in question appears in the answer of an unbranded AI query. As an example, Marc Jacobs has already reached a strong AI positioning in the UK with an 8.7 visibility score, while Hugo Boss in the UK has reached a 6.3 visibility score. But the real highlight of the last quarter has been Rimmel in the UK with a visibility score of 13.8, driving its brand ranking in large language models from number seven several months ago to number four currently."

[3] Drillr - Direct Digital Holdings (DRCT) - 2026-08-12 - Q2 2026 earnings call

[4] Drillr - Dolphin Entertainment (DLPN) - 2026-08-12 - Q2 2026 earnings call

[5] Drillr - comScore (SCOR) - 2026-08-12 - Q2 2026 earnings call

[6] Drillr - Informa TechTarget (TTGT) - 2026-08-06 - Q2 2026 earnings call

[7] Drillr - Lovesac (LOVE) - 2026-06-11 - Q1 fiscal 2027 earnings call

[8] Drillr - Estée Lauder (EL) - 2026-08-19 - FY2026 Q4 earnings call

[9] Drillr - Forrester Research (FORR) - 2026-07-30 - Q2 2026 earnings call

This is only meant to surface industry changes and companies that may be overlooked - not a stock recommendation.