• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Marketers supporting the B2B go-to-market (GTM) movement must account for the machine being part of the purchase process now that companies have begun to use agentic artificial intelligence (AI).

The machine gathers information, synthesizes it for answers and questions that humans ask through agents through searches or purchases. The amount of content these machines ingest has exploded, so the brand must pay attention to how they and competitors show up in answers.  

Geoffrey Sidari, chief innovation officer and head of AI for Marketbridge; and Mark Arduino, partner director, agency and consulting for Meltwater, told MediaPost that machines are taking on a range of research challenges for humans at nearly each step in the buying journey.

Marketers must pay attention to sources that agentic cites, because it is a complex media environment that frequently changes. In the past 12 months, agents went from favoring YouTube to Reddit to LinkedIn for research, but in a year, it may be a different site.

Marketers must be able to measure this shift, which is one reason that Marketbridge and Meltwater recently announced a partnership to provide a complete view of how brands perform in AI engines and through the purchase funnel.

“With the impact models have on the buying journey, we must understand the narrative to monitor all types of discussions like on Reddit,” Sidari said.

He said the same machines that impact the go-to-market lifecycle also impact the procurement process -- with disinformation or critical information that may impact how agentic machines present the brand to consumers.

Under the partnership, Meltwater provides the narrative and generative engine optimization (GEO) intelligence for Marketbridge to integrate into its broader go-to-market intelligence, strategy, and content workflow.

As GEO reshuffles channels that present the most weight in the buying journey, extending go-to-market intelligence into narrative intelligence becomes essential to seeing the full picture.

That picture includes brand awareness, visibility and thought leadership that reshapes GEO performance and human-driven channel engagement optimization.

Marketbridge will layer custom systems and data, content strategy and specialized B2B consulting on top of Meltwater's narrative intelligence platform.

They will work to improve on the B2B GTM marketing workflow, strengthening intelligence and strategy with Meltwater data.