Research that shapes how the category thinks

Read the latest insights from the AirOps Research team to keep you ahead of what's coming next.

Marketing Leaders Reality Index

Get an honest look at how 300+ marketing leaders are funding growth, reshaping teams, and responding to higher targets. See where budgets are going, which teams are gaining resources, and how often marketers are being asked to deliver more without them.

REPLACE: one sentence describing all five results.

How ChatGPT Ads Are Reshaping Fintech Answers

Weekly ad load over all in-scope fintech brands. From near zero in April to ≈ 53% in the week of 2026-07-13. The window average is 7.35%; the trajectory, not the average, is the story.

Weekly ad load starts at 0.46%, remains below 10% through June 22, then rises to 14.5% and finishes at 52%—about 113 times its initial value.

The Fastest-Growing Source in AI Search

The old AI-visibility playbook was simple: own the page that answers the question. That still matters, but as consumer behavior is undergoing a huge shift with AI search, it’s no longer the whole playbook.

Creator and social sources grew 140%, followed by reviews at 38%, marketplaces at 15%, and media or publishers at 2%. Owned brand or product sources declined 10%, educational sources declined 27%, and communities declined 28%.

The GEO Strategy Playbook for Marketers and Organic Growth Teams

Have you noticed a change in how buyers approach transactions and purchases? Perhaps you've seen an uptick in AI search referral traffic or your "how'd you hear about us" form get populated with names of popula...

July 21, 2026

Why Enterprise Teams Can't Afford to Ignore Answer Engine Optimization

Consider for a moment your organic search traffic from the past 3 or 5 years. Most of it came from Google and users landed on your homepage, product pages, or educational content. That's not longer the case. For ins...

May 18, 2026

The Fan-Out Effect: What Happens Between a Query and a Citation

Retrieval rank is the strongest predictor of whether a page gets cited in a ChatGPT answer. A page at the top position in ChatGPT's web search results has a 58% chance of citation; by position 10, that drops to 14%. ...

April 13, 2026

From Retrieved to Cited: How Commercial Content Earns Citations in AI Search

When ChatGPT generates a response, it pulls in pages from across the web, evaluates them, and cites only a small share of what it sees. For brands trying to understand why one page gets cited and another does...

April 1, 2026

More from AirOps

The New Rules of Growth: Five Takeaways From Krithika Shankarraman and Christy Roach

What are the new rules of growth? Krithika Shankarraman of Thrive Capital joined Christy Roach, CMO of AirOps, to discuss 2026 data and survey findings.

How Vibe Cut Its Competitive AI Visibility Gap in Half With AirOps

See how Vibe and AirOps built offsite authority to improve AI search visibility, lift brand mentions by 13.3%, and cut the gap with a category leader in half.

The paid layer of AI search has arrived: Introducing AI Ads in AirOps

Paid is now the third pillar of AI search. AirOps' new AI Ads feature lets teams track competitor ad activity in ChatGPT, act on those signals with on-brand Playbooks, and connect campaign performance, including spend, CTR, and CPC, to the same market data driving their organic AI search strategy.

Turn the AI-first buyer shift into a category advantage

Whether you’re starting from square one with AI discovery or ramping a successful program, our team will meet you where you are to drive results.