Aviation Securities has released a research report stating that GEO, as a key marketing paradigm in the era of AI-driven traffic, is currently in a critical phase transitioning from proof-of-concept to commercial scaling. E-commerce operators with first-mover advantages and accumulated platform resources are expected to benefit first. On one hand, GEO requires continuous investment and long-term optimization, which helps enhance customer loyalty and extend service cycles. On the other hand, as the technological aspect strengthens, operators are likely to gain greater influence in marketing decisions, with potential improvements in profit models and gross margin structures. The main views of Aviation Securities are as follows:
As generative AI tools rapidly penetrate user information acquisition scenarios, digital marketing is shifting from traditional SEO to GEO. The core logic of SEO involves optimizing website structure and keywords to improve rankings on search engine results pages and capture click-through traffic. In contrast, GEO emphasizes content being actively understood, referenced, and integrated by generative AI during responses, enabling users to obtain information and make decisions without leaving the page. While SEO relies heavily on "ranking positions," GEO focuses more on whether content can be accurately recognized by large models and incorporated into recommendation logic. Essentially, it aims to enter the "recommendation pool" of a comprehensive AI-guided shopping system, placing new demands on brands' traffic acquisition methods and mindshare positioning.
GEO + AI Marketing: From Traffic Competition to AI Mindshare Capture GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is a strategic framework designed to optimize content structure, data tagging, brand authority, and conversational experience across multiple dimensions, specifically tailored to the content distribution and recommendation mechanisms of generative AI. Its core objective is to ensure that brands, products, or services are prioritized, referenced, or recommended within AI-generated content, enhancing visibility and authority in AI search results. This creates a new, entry-level battleground for AI-driven marketing traffic, with commercialization expected to accelerate by 2026.
AI has become a "super intermediary" for information distribution, while GEO acts as a "translator" enabling brands to communicate effectively with AI, forming the new infrastructure for AI marketing. The user base for AI applications continues to expand. According to QuestMobile data, among native AI applications, Doubao leads with a weekly active user count of 155 million, followed by DeepSeek with over 80 million and Yuanbao with over 20 million. Alibaba's "Qianwen" quickly entered the second tier after its year-end release, nearing 10 million weekly active users. Against this backdrop, AI applications are evolving from mere tools into significant traffic portals. iResearch data shows that in Q2 2025, China's GEO market size grew 215% year-on-year, with over 789% of enterprises prioritizing AI search optimization as a key direction for digital transformation. Calculations by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology indicate that after GEO commercialization, customer acquisition conversion rates in AI recommendation scenarios are 2.8 times higher than those in traditional search. Gartner predicts that by 2026, traffic from traditional search engines will decline by 25%, with a clear trend of marketing budgets shifting towards AI search and conversational interfaces, highlighting GEO's medium-to-long-term substitution potential.
Marketing Model Transformation Forces Adjustment in Advertising Spend Structure; E-commerce Operators Hold First-Mover Advantage In the early stages of GEO development, most brands, particularly small and medium-sized ones, generally lack model adaptation capabilities, multimodal content production skills, and experience in cross-platform synchronous optimization. Meanwhile, domestic large model providers and e-commerce platforms show significant overlap in terms of traffic and commercialization. E-commerce operators, with their deep, long-term involvement in platform rules, content marketing, and consumer insights, possess systematic service capabilities ranging from semantic parsing and structured content generation to performance tracking. They are well-positioned to be among the first to develop deliverable GEO solutions, addressing brands' new marketing needs in AI search scenarios. Some leading operators have already transitioned from a singular "store hosting" model to becoming full-service providers encompassing content, data, and technology. Their accumulated expertise in AI product selection, dynamic pricing, and platform resource coordination lays a solid foundation for GEO deployment.
Supply-Demand Mismatch Highlights Scarcity of Service Providers with Delivery Capabilities On the demand side, leading brands have begun to allocate separate GEO budgets within their annual marketing expenses, with average increases reaching 42%. However, on the supply side, the number of service providers truly capable of synchronous multi-platform delivery and possessing reusable case studies from major clients remains limited, indicating a significant industry supply-demand gap. It is believed that during the phase of accelerating concentration of AI search traffic dividends, capabilities in technology implementation, deep platform understanding, and continuous iteration mechanisms will become core competitive barriers. GEO service capabilities are expected to directly determine a brand's growth potential in the AI search era, while also opening up new performance elasticity for related marketing service companies.
Recommendations focus on two categories: 1) Marketing companies: [YiDianTianXia, BlueFocus, Zhewen Interconnected,引力传媒, Fushi Holdings]; 2) E-commerce operator targets: [ZhiMai, RuoYuChen, Qingmu Technology, Yiwangyichuang].
Risk warnings include potential underperformance in technology investment and implementation capabilities, intensifying industry competition, policy changes, shifts in the international environment, and fluctuations in brand marketing budgets.
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