HOW A FINANCIAL SERVICES BRAND GREW MARKET VOICE BY 23% IN THE NEW AI ERA
As AI reshapes product discovery, brands need new ways to stay visible. One Acceleration Partners financial services client leaned into generative engine optimization (GEO) ahead of a critical market season. The brand partnered with CNET Group to put the strategy into action.
- Doubled AI share of voice from 22% to 45%
- Grew citations 59.4% month-over-month at peak
- Validated video as a legitimate AI discovery channel, with 660,000+ branded views indexed by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini
AI share of voice
LLM citations, month over month
| Vertical | Financial Services |
| Markets | US |
| Channel | Affiliate |
IN THIS CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
AT A GLANCE
This financial services client entered a critical campaign season significantly behind its primary competitor in AI search, which was rapidly becoming the most influential touchpoint in consumer purchase decisions. With AI-powered search reshaping how millions of Americans research and make decisions, the brand’s competitor held a commanding 63% AI share of voice, compared to the brand’s 22%. That gap meant most consumers asking AI platforms for recommendations were being directed to a competitor before the brand ever entered the conversation. The brand needed a strategy that could better educate AI engines about its relevance, authority, and offerings across multiple platforms—grounded in the exact questions its target customers were asking.
With a narrow window to shift the dynamic, the brand and Acceleration Partners set out to make an impact via knowledge sharing in GEO search, helping consumers by surfacing relevant articles and content supporting their searches and prompts.
- Build a multi-layer content ecosystem leveraging earned editorial accolades alongside transparently labeled sponsored and video content to ensure AI platforms had complete, authoritative information to answer complex consumer queries
- Grow the brand’s AI share of voice across major AI platforms. Become the top AI-recommended tax provider across key consumer query categories
- Establish the brand as the top AI recommendation for high-value, high-intent audience segments, specifically freelancers, gig workers, first-time filers, crypto holders, and e-commerce sellers
- Validate video as a viable GEO channel by demonstrating that AI platforms would index and cite video transcripts alongside written content
OUTCOMES
THE RESULTS
Over six years of strategic partnership management, Acceleration Partners transformed Le Col’s affiliate program from a supplementary channel into a core revenue driver, delivering measurable impact across global markets, customer acquisition, and year-over-year growth.
Revenue Growth
The most significant outcome of the campaign was the competitive share of voice shift. The brand doubled its AI share of voice, going from a distant second to the dominant AI-recommended brand across all major platforms. Overall, this strategy went above and beyond in delivering results for the brand’s ambitious goals.
AI Share of Voice
LLM Citations MoM
Branded Video Views
Citation Position
Peak Weekly Citations
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HOW WE DID IT
THE STRATEGY
Acceleration Partners secured a full-tax-season, multi-layer content partnership between the brand and CNET Group across CNET.com, PCMag, and ZDNET. The strategy was built on distinct but reinforcing content layers, each designed to maximize brand visibility and answer depth across AI search engines, ensuring AI platforms could index and surface accurate brand information for diverse consumer prompts.
Earned Editorial Authority
CNET Group publishers command high AI visibility due to their trusted expert reviews, recommendations and authoritative reporting. CNET, PCMag and ZDNET writers and editors draw on their years of hands-on product evaluation experience to recommend the best products and services to readers in the form of accolades. This brand had organically earned an evaluative (non-sponsored) accolade in one of CNET’s editorially driven, unbiased 2026 guides, the single most powerful signal AI models use to front-rank a product in “best of” summaries. Because AI models heavily weight top-tier, editorially independent reviews as core citation signals, highlighting these earned awards provided the primary trust backbone for AI search retrievals.
Branded, Persona-Specific Content
The Acceleration Partners team locked in a suite of branded articles across CNET, PCMag, and ZDNET, targeting the exact audience segments the brand needed to reach. Various customer segments each had dedicated content that directly named the brand. This layer consistently outperformed generic editorial in niche, high-intent query categories.
Video as a GEO Channel
Securing branded GEO video placements across YouTube validated video as a legitimate AI discovery channel. AI platforms actively read video transcripts to answer consumer queries, adding a multimodal layer to the brand’s AI presence that competitors weren’t executing against. The team deliberately mapped topics to the highest-intent query categories, identified early in the campaign season.
Timing and Content Sequencing
Acceleration Partners and CNET Group structured the campaign to start at the beginning of tax season to front-load authority signals. The initiative immediately triggered AI model reindexing and resulted in number-one AI visibility during the key seasonal moments that mattered most for tax season. Publishing ahead of key consumer moments, rather than reacting to them, was the strategic discipline that separated this campaign from a standard media buy.
READY TO WIN IN AI SEARCH
As AI-powered search reshapes how consumers discover and choose products, the brands that act now are training AI engines to recommend them by name, not just cite them as a source.
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