What's Really Stopping the CMO's GEO Decision (It Isn't the Budget)
Every CMO I've spoken to in the last six months believes the same thing. AI search is real. It matters. It's coming for a slice of the pipeline they've spent years building through SEO. In the GEO readiness conversations we've been running at Kreativ Street over the last six months, the same pattern shows up. But most of them have not moved. This is not because the CMO's are unaware, rather they're standing at the edge of a decision that feels bigger than it is: whether to open up the tidy, defensible SEO-first mandate and let something messier in: an integrated SEO + GEO approach, built for a world where people ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews before they ever type a query into a search bar. It's worth being clear about why this is even worth the discomfort. This isn't a replacement story. Gartner's famous prediction that traditional search would fall 25% by 2026 hasn't materialised, and Google still holds north of 90%...