AI has changed where a brand gets seen. A shopper used to open a search engine, scan a page of blue links and click through to judge for themselves. Today more of them put the question straight into DeepSeek, Doubao or Qwen, read one assembled answer and decide. Who appears in that answer, and whose page gets cited, now shapes the outcome. That is why GEO, generative engine optimization, went from a marketing buzzword to a formal line item in corporate budgets within a single year.
On Oct 23, 2026, during the 33rd China International Advertising Festival, the 2026 New Consumer Brand Transformation and Growth Exchange took place in Haidian District, Beijing. It was co-hosted by the China Advertising Association and Frost & Sullivan, with support from the association's new consumer and internet advertising committees, the LeadLeo Research Institute and IAB China. Three GEO group standards proposed and administered by the association were presented to their drafting units, while the 2026 China GEO Marketing Practice and Compliance Development Report and version 1.0 of the China GEO Marketing Ecosystem Map were released. The message from the floor was consistent: being understood accurately by AI matters more than raw exposure, and credibility is becoming the long-term dividing line among service providers.
1. The decision path moved, and the budget followed
The survey data in the report draws a clear line. Across five stages, awareness, evaluation, purchase, sharing and after-sales, AI cuts deepest into evaluation: 61.7% of respondents said AI played a major or even decisive role at that step. At the purchase stage the figure drops to 51.8%, where real-time signals such as price, stock, channel and after-sales policy regain the upper hand. AI is not taking over the checkout counter. It is taking over the comparison and shortlisting that happens right before it.
Corporate money moved first. Budgets once split between SEO, content marketing and brand PR are being carved up to fund GEO. Frost & Sullivan estimates China's GEO market at roughly CNY 700 million in 2024, CNY 5.7 billion in 2025, about CNY 13.7 billion in 2026 and CNY 48.8 billion by 2029. The global market expands on the same curve, from about CNY 47.5 billion in 2025 to a projected CNY 427.9 billion in 2029.
2. Three group standards land, and the industry gets a passing grade
Fast growth usually drags silt along with it. Keyword-stuffed pages, fabricated citations and screenshots of a single friendly AI answer have been common over the past year, and the cost is paid by the credibility of AI answers themselves. The response from industry bodies was not slow. Three group standards proposed by the China Advertising Association, covering GEO service requirements, effect monitoring and verification, and the classification and selection of content sources, have been formally issued and took effect on Oct 23, 2026, setting rules for service conduct and baseline delivery, for measurement and validation, and for how source entities are graded and chosen.
Released the same day, the China GEO Marketing Ecosystem Map 1.0 was initiated by the association with Frost & Sullivan as knowledge partner. It sorts participants into three groups: model and AI answer entry platforms, GEO service and technology providers, and content and citation platforms. Its practical value is simple: before hiring an agency, a brand can see where that agency sits in the ecosystem and what it can actually deliver, which lowers the cost of trial and error.
3. Credibility is not an adjective, it is four stages
When choosing an AI tool, 41.8% of users rank accuracy of results as their top concern, the most cited worry in the report. Many have built a habit of asking AI to summarize first and then searching to verify, which raises the GEO goal from being mentioned to being cited correctly.
The report breaks implementation into four stages. In the content stage, a brand consolidates its website, product materials, specifications and case studies into one factual base where every key claim states its basis, scope and source, and AI-generated content is labeled as required. In the source stage, the question is why AI should trust you: sources are graded by qualification, track record, traceability and outside evaluation, then cross-checked against independent third parties rather than resting on one channel. The distribution and evaluation stages carry that content to the right places and keep verifying that answers stay consistent across platforms and over time.
Frost & Sullivan puts it bluntly in the report: short-term exposure advantages are fading, and credibility determines a provider's long-term competitiveness.
4. A solid factual base is the hardest and most valuable step
Of those four stages, the first is where most projects stall. Brand facts are scattered across corporate sites, channel brochures, marketplace listings, old social posts and sales scripts. Wording diverges, versions of the same specification disagree, and no model can read that mess and restate it correctly.
This is where Beijing ANMEI Technology Co., Ltd. spends most of its project time. Brand facts are consolidated into a verifiable base first, key pages are restructured so machines can parse them, and multi-platform citation monitoring then shows how those facts are described and cited across DeepSeek, Doubao, Qwen and other entry points, so gaps can be filled where they appear. The goal is not a viral post but a plain requirement: every time AI talks about the brand, it gets the facts right. Teams that want a closer look at how website GEO is implemented can reach out to Beijing ANMEI Technology.
Conclusion
The window for GEO is still open, but it is no longer a dividend anyone can collect by publishing a few extra articles. The standards exist, the ecosystem map exists, and budgets are shifting. What remains is a question for the brand itself: is the site structure machine-readable, are the facts consistent, do the sources survive cross-verification. AI will hand its answers to the brands that explain themselves clearly, can be checked, and stay consistent over time.
Original author: Li Shaoting, National Business Daily (editor: Yang Jun). This article is a restructured rewrite of the original report, with all figures and core arguments taken from it.