Skye Lambley, CEO at Herd MSL.
Herd MSL Australia has partnered with specialists from Publicis Groupe ANZ to launch Elevate, a service helping brands manage how they are represented in AI-powered search.
The service combines category-level search intelligence, AI search strategy and content structuring, and earned and owned authority building into a single offering.
“AI search is increasingly a reputation engine,” said Skye Lambley, CEO at Herd MSL.
“It doesn’t just decide who appears - it shapes how brands are described, trusted and recommended."
Elevate aims to assist brands in assessing the quality of their representation, identifying where signals of credibility, relevance and authority are strong, where they are weak, and where to invest in owned content or earned media to influence outcomes.
The service will use three specialist Publicis Groupe ANZ capabilities within its functions: category-level search intelligence, AI search strategy and content structuring, and earned and owned authority building.
"Brands are racing to track how they appear in AI search and optimise owned experiences for retrieval, but this is only part of the picture," said Jack Telford, Zenith Australia head of search.
Category-level search intelligence provides brands with an understanding of what people are searching for across a category, how demand is forming, and where brands, competitors and third-party sources are showing up, revealing gaps, risks and opportunities to influence discovery.
AI search strategy and content structuring encompasses identifying priority question clusters, decoding the signals AI systems use to generate responses, and defining what needs to change to improve how brands are selected, framed and explained in AI search results.
Earned and owned authority building includes designing and delivering insight-led owned and earned programs that efficiently build third-party validation, expert presence and credible references, strengthening the signals AI systems rely on when generating responses.
"AI platforms don't reward brands based on their websites alone. They assemble answers from a broader ecosystem of trusted sources, including publishers, experts, reviews, communities and user-generated content," said Telford.
"As a result, brands can experience a gap where third party narratives frame visibility, and competitors with weaker brands outperform via stronger earned authority signals. Elevate brings together our specialist capabilities, human intelligence and AI powered technology to close that."
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