Foundation Marketing Earns Verified Profound Partner Status, Cementing Leadership in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

SAN FRANCISCO & TORONTO — In a major milestone for the B2B marketing landscape, Foundation Marketing has officially been named a verified Profound Partner following its inclusion in the inaugural agency certification cohort for Profound.

The elite certification recognizes agencies that possess advanced, verified expertise in measuring and improving brand visibility across generative AI engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, and Gemini. For Foundation Marketing, the designation validates an 18-month strategic integration of Profound’s technology, which has served as the agency’s Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) tool of record for baseline visibility audits and enterprise client growth.

Main Facts: The Evolution of B2B Search and the AEO Mandate

The modern buyer’s journey has undergone a structural transformation. Rather than navigating traditional search engine results pages (SERPs) and visiting vendor websites directly, modern B2B software buyers increasingly rely on large language models (LLMs) to perform initial vendor discovery, feature comparisons, and software evaluations.

When a prospective buyer asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini for software recommendations, the models synthesize answers from third-party sources, community discussions, and digital citations—often drawing from repositories that traditional brands have never audited.

• The Core Problem: As Foundation Marketing CEO Ross Simmonds succinctly puts it, "You can’t fix what you can’t see. Profound is how we see it."
• The Solution: Profound serves as the definitive measurement layer for AI visibility, tracking metrics such as citation share, share of voice, sentiment, average position, and the specific third-party sources models pull from to generate responses.
• The Execution: Foundation Marketing provides the strategic execution—building the digital presence, community signals, and authoritative citations necessary to make a brand surfaces organically within AI responses.

Chronology: A Shared History of Pioneering Emerging Categories

The partnership between Foundation Marketing and Profound is rooted in parallel trajectories of early market identification and rapid scaling.

2024: The Birth of AEO

Profound launched in 2024 as one of the very first dedicated platforms for Answer Engine Optimization. At a time when the broader digital marketing industry was still debating whether AI-driven search would meaningfully impact traffic, Profound identified and named the problem of invisible AI brand sentiment.

Simultaneously, Foundation Marketing was establishing its own reputation as a pioneer in unconventional B2B channels. Long before mainstream agencies embraced them, Foundation championed Reddit as a critical B2B channel, reimagined YouTube as a primary search surface rather than a mere video host, and leveraged content distribution as a primary driver of AI visibility.

2024–2025: Deepening Integration

Over the last year and a half, Foundation utilized Profound to power baseline visibility audits for enterprise clients. The relationship evolved past a simple software subscription into a collaborative ecosystem. Profound relies on Foundation to demonstrate how brands can practically strengthen their AI footprint, while Foundation relies on Profound’s enterprise-grade data to measure campaign success.

Late 2025 – 2026: Explosive Market Growth

The bet on AEO paid off exponentially for Profound. Just 24 months after defining the category, Profound secured a massive Series D funding round at a staggering $1.8 billion valuation, cementing its status as a tech unicorn used by 18% of Fortune 500 companies—including giants like Walmart, Wayfair, and U.S. Bank. Foundation’s formal entry into the inaugural verified partner cohort arrives directly on the heels of this market maturation.

Supporting Data: Analytics at the Prompt Level

Profound’s platform operates at the prompt level across the exact platforms B2B buyers use daily. This granular tracking transforms vague executive anxieties—such as "Are we showing up in ChatGPT?"—into actionable, quantifiable metrics.

Key Metrics Tracked by Profound:

• Citation Share: The frequency with which a brand is referenced in AI-generated answers compared to competitors.
• Share of Voice: The overall dominance of a brand within specific category-related prompts.
• Sentiment Analysis: Whether the AI describes the brand in a positive, neutral, or critical light.
• Average Position: Where the brand ranks within the list of cited sources.
• Source Attribution: The specific forums, review sites, and media outlets the AI trusts and references.

By capturing these data points, Foundation’s strategists can pinpoint precisely which prompt categories a client wins, and which competitors are capturing the traffic for lost opportunities.

Partnership in Action: The Bitly Case Study

To understand how this partnership translates into tangible business outcomes, one need only look at Foundation Marketing’s year-long engagement with Bitly, a brand operating in a fiercely competitive digital category.

When Foundation began working with Bitly, the brand’s presence in AI-driven search was largely unoptimized. Over a 12-month period, the agency deployed a comprehensive strategy backed by Profound’s baseline tracking:

1. Community Revitalization: Foundation transformed a dormant, branded subreddit consisting of just 38 members into an active community and owned content engine.
2. Generative Engine Citations: Because LLMs heavily index peer-to-peer discussions on platforms like Reddit, the revitalized community began appearing regularly as a trusted source in AI-generated search responses.
3. Channel Expansion: Profound’s ongoing reporting identified YouTube as an unexploited secondary channel where Bitly could capture additional AI visibility. Foundation expanded the strategy to target video search surfaces, cementing Bitly’s position as a top-cited brand in AI search.

Progress was meticulously monitored across hundreds of Bottom-of-Funnel (BoFU) prompts tracked within Profound, proving that AI visibility is not a matter of luck, but a direct result of pairing targeted data with disciplined execution.

Official Responses and Industry Perspectives Leadership Commentary

Executives from both organizations emphasize that the verified partnership represents a critical turning point for how enterprises approach digital marketing investments.

"Buyers now ask AI before they ever visit a website, and those answers are increasingly shaped by community conversations. Profound shows brands where they stand today. Our job is to improve where they stand tomorrow. Clients can see where they started, track progress over time and invest with confidence because every strategic decision is backed by data."
— Ross Simmonds, CEO of Foundation Marketing

"Foundation has demonstrated that AI visibility is measurable and improvable when the right strategy is paired with the right data. They’ve used Profound to help clients establish a baseline, identify opportunities and track meaningful progress over time. Their work with Bitly shows exactly what’s possible when measurement and execution work together."
— Trevor Pyle, Head of Growth Marketing, Profound

Implications: The Future of B2B Marketing and Measurement

The formalization of the Foundation-Profound partnership signals a broader maturation of the digital marketing industry. As generative search engines continue to supplant traditional search parameters, the traditional playbook of keyword stuffing and generic SEO is losing efficacy.

1. The Death of Guesswork in AI Marketing

For years, brands flying blind in generative search could only guess how LLMs perceived them. With unified measurement layers like Profound, AI visibility is shifting from a speculative marketing tactic to a rigorous, accountable discipline. As Simmonds notes: "Measurement without execution is a dashboard. Execution without measurement is a guess."

2. The Rise of Third-Party Authority Signals

Because AI engines synthesize information from external validation points rather than corporate sales copy, brands must invest heavily in digital PR, community building (Reddit, Discord), video optimization (YouTube), and review ecosystems. Agencies that master the intersection of community marketing and AI measurement will dominate the next decade of enterprise tech marketing.

3. A New Standard for Agency Certification

As enterprise buyers demand verifiable return on investment for AI readiness, certifications like Profound’s inaugural agency cohort establish a clear benchmark of competence. Brands can no longer afford to partner with generalist agencies that treat AI optimization as an afterthought; they require specialists equipped with deep, platform-verified analytics.

Conclusion: Finding Your AI Visibility Baseline

For enterprise brands uncertain of their footing in the era of generative AI, the path forward begins with visibility. Understanding a brand’s citation share, competitor positioning, and the exact sources AI models cite within a specific category is no longer optional—it is the prerequisite for modern market survival.

Through its verified partnership with Profound, Foundation Marketing is uniquely positioned to help B2B organizations transition from AI uncertainty to verifiable market leadership.

To learn more about baseline visibility audits or to explore Foundation Marketing’s comprehensive AI visibility strategies, visit Foundation Marketing.