Google’s AI Overviews, rolled out in France in 2024, are redistributing organic visibility. A portion of informational queries now receives a response directly in the search interface, without a click to a third-party site. For marketing teams, traditional SEO is no longer sufficient to capture qualified traffic. Enhancing presence in generative responses has become a strategic focus in its own right, on par with technical SEO or social media content strategy.
GEO and visibility in generative responses: the marketing lever that the SERP ignores
Most guides on marketing trends for 2024 discuss AI as a content production tool. We observe a much more structural blind spot: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), which means optimizing your brand to appear in the responses of LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini).
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Recent analyses show that LLMs are becoming a distinct source of traffic separate from traditional organic traffic. Over several dozen monitored sites over six months, no significant difference in conversion rates was measured between traffic from LLMs and traditional SEO traffic. Visitors arriving via a generative response convert just as well, sometimes better, because they have already been pre-qualified by the AI summary.
To be selected and cited by these engines, several industry reports published on geeknewz.fr confirm the necessity of structuring content around verifiable data, consistent brand mentions, and a solid online reputation based on third-party sources.
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Specifically, GEO relies on three pillars:
- Fact-based content with sourced claims (numbers, studies, named quotes) that LLMs can extract and rephrase without the risk of hallucination.
- Cross-platform brand consistency: the company name, its products, and attributes must appear identically on the website, directories, social profiles, and press articles.
- A network of external mentions (press relations, guest contributions, structured customer reviews) that reinforces the algorithmic trust of generative models.
Marketing content and “editorial slop”: producing less to exist
The overproduction of AI-generated content degrades the trust of B2B audiences. The phenomenon has a name in the industry: editorial slop. Brands that publish three articles a week without real added value see their engagement metrics drop, while those that reduce their output while increasing depth gain authority.
We recommend shifting from a volume logic (a filled editorial calendar at all costs) to a signal logic. A long, technical article backed by proprietary data is worth more than ten reformulated posts. Google’s algorithms, like LLMs, favor content that provides new information or a structured viewpoint.
This approach has a direct impact on digital communication strategy. Budgets allocated to content production do not decrease, but their allocation changes: fewer generalist writers, more industry experts capable of producing top-tier content on a specific topic.
Regulatory compliance and influencer marketing in 2024
European regulation has caught up with marketing practices. The texts of the DMA and DSA now more strictly govern online advertising campaigns and partnerships with content creators.
On the influencer side, surveys conducted in 2024-2025 reveal that advertising remains insufficiently disclosed by influencers. For brands, the legal risk is real. Working with micro-influencers without a clear contractual framework exposes them to sanctions and, more sustainably, to a loss of credibility with an audience increasingly sensitive to transparency.
The anti-fast fashion law adopted in France in 2026 illustrates this underlying trend: the legislator now intervenes on promotional content itself, not just on products. Brands that anticipate these constraints in their marketing strategy gain a competitive advantage because they build a customer relationship based on compliance rather than avoidance.
Points of vigilance for marketing teams
- Systematically check for the mention “commercial partnership” or “advertisement” on every collaboration with a creator, including ephemeral formats (stories, reels).
- Integrate a DSA compliance clause in influencer contracts, with an obligation for reporting and a right of withdrawal for the brand.
- Audit landing pages and sales funnels to ensure that targeting practices comply with the new DMA obligations regarding consent.
End of third-party cookies and first-party data: reconfiguring advertising targeting
The scheduled disappearance of third-party cookies on Chrome, combined with iOS restrictions, renders obsolete the retargeting strategies that relied on cross-site tracking. Digital advertising in France continues to grow, but the nature of investments is transforming.
First-party data is becoming the most strategic marketing asset. Companies that have invested in direct collection (customer accounts, newsletters, loyalty programs, transactional data) have a structural advantage over those that relied on third-party data. The acquisition cost via lookalike audiences built on proprietary data remains lower than that of segments purchased on ad exchanges.
This reconfiguration also affects SEO and content strategy. Content that generates sign-ups (white papers, free tools, simulators) takes on new value: it directly feeds the CRM with qualified leads, regardless of the fluctuations in external advertising targeting.
Marketing in 2024-2026 is not just about adopting generative AI or multiplying short formats on social media. The most structural levers are less visible: GEO, editorial quality, regulatory compliance, mastery of first-party data. The companies that progress are those that treat these issues as infrastructure projects, not as passing trends.