Does this replace our SEO agency or our paid social?

Three channels, three measures

Your SEO agency is measured on rankings. Your paid social is measured on CAC. Neither of those numbers moves when ChatGPT names three brands to a shopper and yours is not one of them, and neither team is set up to notice. Being named in an AI answer has its own measure, mention rate and share of voice against the brands the engines name, tracked from daily runs of your shoppers' questions. That is the number we own, and it does not overlap with theirs.

Where the work touches, it helps rather than competes. A product page rewritten so an engine can quote it is also a page Google reads more easily, so your SEO agency inherits the fix.

Why it sits next to paid social in particular

The recommendation an AI gives is unpaid and high-intent. The shopper has already said what they want and what they will spend, and the engine narrows the category to two or three names before the shopper leaves to check out on the brand's own site. You cannot bid on that placement; you can only be in it. Other people's research on the 2025 holidays put AI-search referrals at nine times the conversions of social referrals, which is the comparison a rising Meta CAC invites.

So the useful frame is not replacement but a second line on the same sheet. Next to the CAC you pay for a click that converts worse each quarter, you get a channel where the cost is the retainer and the measure is how often the engines say your name.