Why AI Visibility Demands a Sector-Specific Approach: Lessons from Industry Data

Why AI Visibility Demands a Sector-Specific Approach: Lessons from Industry Data AI visibility isn’t just a tech buzzword anymore , it’s a commercial battleground. If your brand isn’t getting picked up by generative AI systems, you’re invisible. And invisible doesn’t sell. But here’s the thing: treating AI visibility as a universal problem misses the entire point. Visibility doesn’t just depend on good SEO or chucking more money into paid media. It’s deeply tied to your industry, your audience, and critically, how AI interprets those things. I’ve spent years watching businesses scramble to make sense of digital marketing. Now, with the explosion of generative AI systems from ChatGPT to Google AI Overview, we’re in a new chapter, but the same mistakes keep happening. Brands think if they optimise for one engine, they’ve cracked the code. Spoiler: they haven’t. And our data proves it. One Size Doesn’t Fit All Let me hit you with some numbers. Across our dataset of 2801 AI prompts, the overall brand mention rate sits at 62.8%. Not bad, right? But dig deeper. Break it down by provider and you’ll see just how messy things get. ChatGPT mentions brands 75.1% of the time, while Google AI Overview comes in at 45.6%. That’s a massive gap . The divergence between these systems? 38% of the time, they give conflicting recommendations. So, let’s say you’re visible on ChatGPT. Great. But you can’t automatically assume you’re covered on Google AI or Perplexity. This matters more than you think, especially when you realise people aren’t loyal to just one platform. Users bounce around to find the answers or recommendations they trust most. Related reading: this piece about prompt engineering for visibility: how brands can influen... . Related reading: this piece about how b2b enterprises can dominate llm visibility in ai sys... . If you’re only optimised for one, you’re leaving pounds on the table and handing opportunities to your competitors. AI visibility divergence And it’s not ju