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Most brands have two marketing or agency relationships that have never been introduced to each other: the social media agency and the SEO or AEO agency. Different briefs, different KPIs, different Slack channels. And for a long time, that was fine, because what you posted on Instagram didn't have much to do with whether you showed up in search.
That's very much no longer true.
AI search engines pull from the entire content ecosystem around your brand: social posts, video transcripts, community threads, UGC, and the engagement signals that tell AI systems what people actually find useful. Which means your social presence is now, functionally, an AEO input. And most agencies on either side of that equation haven't caught up to it yet.
This list is for brands that have. It covers the agencies doing meaningful work at the intersection of social media and AEO, ones that understand how the two disciplines feed each other, and can actually execute on both.
Your social media presence is an AEO signal. Many brands still treat social media and AEO workstreams: one for the content team, one for the SEO/AEO team, and they’re rarely in the same room. That’s a problem, because AI search engines don’t view them as separate at all.
Optimizing for answer engines today means ensuring your brand is part of the social data ecosystem, not just your website, but also the captions, video transcripts, conversations, and communities that feed it. Here’s why that matters more than you may realize:
All that is to say, social media is more than just an awareness channel. Today, it’s infrastructure in how AI engines understand, trust, and surface your brand. Which means the agencies managing your social presence are also, knowingly or not, shaping your AI visibility. That's exactly why finding one that gets both matters.
Search and discovery have transformed in the last couple of years (and continue to do so), and not every agency has bridged the gap between AEO and social media services. To build this list, we reviewed agencies doing meaningful work at this intersection.
Each agency was evaluated across four main criteria:
Rather than assigning numeric scores, we've given each agency a "Best for" label to signal what kind of brand or team the agency is most likely to be a strong match for.
Best For: Post-Series A to enterprise brands across SaaS, Fintech, Healthcare, Consumer, and B2B that want social and AEO treated as a single, connected growth system.
Here's the thing about most agencies on this list: they're genuinely good at either social or AEO. NoGood is one of the only agencies building both disciplines from the same strategic foundation, and doing it at a time when the line between those two things is genuinely dissolving.
Their full-service AEO suite starts with LLM visibility audits and technical optimization: site speed, indexing, schema, then layers in content tailored for AI readability, intent mapping, prompt-gap analysis, and authority-building through digital PR and citation strategies. That's not SEO with an AI sticker slapped on it. It's a distinct discipline, executed by a team that's been building in this space since before most agencies took notice.
On the social side, case studies include scaling Gelato's organic social views to 1 million+ while cutting acquisition costs by 61%, building a TikTok community for a client from scratch that hit 3.5M+ organic impressions and 10% engagement rates in under six months, and helping Culligan build their social presence from zero, starting with TikTok discovery content and expanding to YouTube.
What makes them the best-overall pick, though, is that they don't operate with the AEO-social divide that many agencies haven't figured out how to close yet. NoGood's organic social practice explicitly treats social content as AEO infrastructure, recognizing that AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are increasingly crawling and citing social posts, particularly on platforms like Reddit and YouTube, and building content strategies that account for how a brand shows up when AI synthesizes answers.
HQ: New York City, NY
Founded: 2016
Company Size: 11-50 employees
Key Services: AEO, SEO, Organic Social, Social Ads, Paid Search, Performance Branding, Content Marketing, CRO, Video Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Lifecycle Marketing, Fractional CMO
Industries Served: SaaS, Healthcare, Fintech, B2B, Consumer, AI
Case Studies: SteelSeries AEO, Gelato Social, all case studies.
Best For: Enterprise and mid-market brands looking for a full-service agency that can connect social and search strategy under one data-driven roof.
Amsive is a data-led performance marketing agency that treats AEO as part of a connected discovery ecosystem. Their search practice is branded as “SEO + AEO,” covering both traditional rankings and visibility in AI answers across platforms. Additionally, their social offering spans organic content, paid media, influencer partnerships, and community management.
What makes Amsive relevant to the AEO + social conversation is how they explicitly connect the two disciplines. Their content bridges the gap directly, with pieces like "How Video Fuels AEO and Brand Visibility" speaking to how social-first content formats (video in particular) are becoming a meaningful input into how AI search surfaces brands. The logic tracks: as LLMs pull from a wider range of content signals, what’s made and distributed on social starts to influence what gets cited in AI answers.
HQ: New York City, NY
Founded: 2021
Company Size: 501-1,000 employees
Additional Services: Paid Search, Programmatic, Direct Mail, Email, Mobile Messaging, Customer Communications, Performance Creative, Brand Identity, Web, App & UX Design, Content, Web Development, eCommerce, CRO
Industries Served: Healthcare, Finance, Insurance, Retail, Education, B2B, eCommerce
Case Studies: American Montessori Society, Commerce Bank, and more.
Best For: DTC and Consumer brands (particularly in Fintech, Health & Wellness, and emerging Tech) that want AEO and social connected to a broader PR and earned media strategy.
Avenue Z is more of a hybrid agency that’s framed its practice around this thesis: reputation and revenue are the same problem. Their service mix spans earned media (PR, strategic communications, thought leadership), owned media (AEO, SEO, organic social content), and performance media (paid search, paid social, TikTok advertising, influencer, and affiliate marketing), all positioned as a connected influence engine.
Their AEO offering doesn’t treat AI citations as a purely technical SEO problem, but also as a PR and credibility issue as well. LLMs are more likely to surface brands that appear in authoritative publications and have a consistent, structured presence across the web. So their AEO work combines content optimization with earned media placements, structured data, and what they call a "Trust Alignment Network" designed to position brands as preferred answers in LLM responses.
The social and AEO connection is most visible in their social commerce work. Avenue Z is a certified TikTok Shop agency and Shopify Plus partner, and they explicitly connect creator-driven social content to AI discoverability, the idea being that social signals, UGC, and commerce activity across platforms feed into the broader content ecosystem that LLMs train on and reference.
HQ: Miami, FL
Founded: 2023
Company Size: 51-200 employees
Additional Services: PR, Communications, Crisis Communications, Events & Brand Activations, Affiliate Marketing, Email & SMS Marketing, CRO, Brand Strategy, Content Studio, Shopify Design & Development, Website Design & Development
Industries Served: Consumer Brands, Health & Wellness, Beauty, Lifestyle, Tech, Finance
Case Studies: Mosh, Kind Patches, and more.
Best For: Growth-stage and mid-market companies ($10M+ revenue) in SaaS, eCommerce, and B2B that want AEO and social tied directly to revenue metrics and pipeline reporting.
Single Grain has repositioned itself around what it calls "Revenue Marketing," the idea that every channel, including social and AEO, should be measured against pipeline and revenue, not impressions. Their service mix covers SEO, AEO, paid media (Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok), content marketing, CRO, and creative, all framed as integrated levers in a single growth system rather than a menu of standalone services.
On the AEO and social side, they’re more performance-native than most. Single Grain treats AI search visibility as a direct revenue channel instead of a brand awareness play. Their case studies report that one client generated 10 monthly SQLs attributed directly to LLM referrals, with a reported pipeline value of $126K.
Their social work tends to be TikTok and paid social-heavy, with strong case studies in DTC commerce. One client generated $132K in TikTok revenue, another achieved 1,023% revenue growth on the platform.
The AEO + social connection at Single Grain is implicit rather than explicit. They don't frame it as a unified discipline the way some agencies do, but in practice, their TikTok content work, YouTube growth services, and AI search optimization are all being measured against the same revenue outcome. For brands where social drives top-of-funnel discovery and AEO drives mid-funnel consideration, that shared measurement framework is actually more useful than a theoretical integration story.
HQ: Remote operations, no HQ
Founded: 2009
Company Size: 51-200 employees
Additional Services: Paid Search, Programmatic, SEO, Podcast Advertising, Email Marketing, Landing Page Optimization, Influencer Marketing, Video Marketing, Link Building, Content, CRO
Industries Served: SaaS, eCommerce, Education, Crypto & Blockchain
Case Studies: Windeals, SmartRent, Schumacher Homes, and more.
Best For: Mid-market brands in Healthcare, Pharma & Biotech, Financial Services, B2B, or Sports that want a reliable, long-tenured agency partner to manage AEO and social as connected visibility channels without the overhead of a large holding company.
Arc Intermedia is a full-service digital agency that's been operating since 2010. Their pitch leans heavily on stability and tenure: under 3% staff turnover, and client relationships that outlast most of their competitors' existence. For brands tired of getting handed off to rotating junior staff, that track record is genuinely meaningful.
Their AEO and social practices both sit under an "Organic and Earned Visibility" umbrella, which is one of the more structurally honest ways to frame the relationship between those two disciplines. The implication is clear: social media management and AI search optimization are both channels for building brand presence and credibility over time, not just traffic levers.
Their AEO framework is comprehensive and explicitly includes social media sentiment as a training input, with a dedicated step around coaching clients on improving brand representation across social platforms and external communities. That's a connection most agencies acknowledge in theory but rarely build into their actual process.
Their AEO case study results are also concrete: one client (a national retirement community network) saw a 726% increase in AI search traffic and a 2,597% increase in ChatGPT-referred traffic specifically. They also ran AEO on themselves as a proof-of-concept, which at minimum suggests they believe what they're selling.
That being said, Arc Intermedia is a mid-sized regional agency so their social offerings cover mostly the basics, but there’s limited evidence of sophisticated, platform-native social strategy that goes beyond execution.
HQ: King of Prussia, PA
Founded: 2009
Company Size: 2-10 employees
Additional Services: Display Advertising, Connected TV, Influencer Marketing, Content Marketing, Reputation Management, Web Development
Industries Served: eCommerce, Sports, Healthcare, Consumer Goods, Pharma & Biotech, Financial Services
Case Studies: Acts Retirement-Life Communities, Fair Trade, and more.
Best For: Franchise groups and multi-location businesses that need AEO and social managed in sync across dozens of locations, without sacrificing local relevance for national consistency.
Ignite Visibility is a San Diego-based full-service agency that's made a clear bet on owning the franchise and multi-location category. What makes them relevant here is how tightly their social and AEO capabilities are structurally integrated.
Rallio, a platform they recently acquired, powers Ignite's social media services, helping franchise and multi-location brands manage social presence, online reputation, and employee advocacy under one roof PRWeb.
On the AEO side, their work is documented:
The AEO + social connection here is less about a unified theory and more about operational reality: when you're managing content and community at franchise scale, the same infrastructure that keeps social consistent across locations also determines what signals AI engines can actually learn from. Ignite has built for that.
HQ: San Diego, CA
Founded: 2013
Company Size: 201-500 employees
Additional Services: Paid Search, Programmatic, Display, Digital PR, Influencer Marketing, Email Marketing, SMS, Lifecycle Marketing, CRO, Web Design & Development, Creative Strategy, Branding, Analytics
Industries Served: Franchise, Home Services, Healthcare, Finance, eCommerce, B2B, Retail, Automotive, Hospitality
Case Studies: View all case studies here.
Best For: Consumer brands (Beauty, Lifestyle, Entertainment, CPG) targeting Gen Z and Millennial audiences that want a social-first agency capable of generating the kind of UGC volume and cultural traction that feeds AI visibility downstream.
Movers+Shakers was co-founded in 2016 by Evan Horowitz and Geoffrey Goldberg. Adweek named them the most influential agency on TikTok. They've racked up over 250 billion views across TikTok campaigns, a number that sounds made up until you realize their flagship work with e.l.f. Cosmetics generated nearly 5 million user-generated videos (and is widely cited as the most viral branded campaign in TikTok history).
So why are they on an AEO list? Fair question. Movers+Shakers doesn't offer structured AEO or SEO services, and they're up front about that. What they offer is something arguably harder to manufacture: the conditions under which AI systems learn that a brand is culturally relevant.
Here's the connection: as we outlined at the top of this article, social platforms are among the dominant citation sources for LLMs, and UGC volume is a meaningful input signal for how AI systems model brand credibility and relevance. When Movers+Shakers engineers a campaign that generates millions of authentic creator videos around a brand, they're not just building awareness; they're seeding the kind of distributed, engagement-weighted social signal that AI search systems are trained to recognize and trust.
The honest caveat: if you need AEO strategy, structured content optimization, or LLM citation tracking, Movers+Shakers isn't the call. But if your brand's AI visibility problem starts upstream. They're one of the best agencies in the world at solving that.
HQ: Los Angeles, CA
Founded: 2016
Company Size: 51-200 employees
Additional Services: Social Strategy, Creator Partnerships, Influencer Campaigns, Cultural Strategy, Original Music & Content Production, Paid Social
Industries Served: Beauty, CPG, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Consumer Tech
Case Studies: e.l.f. TikTok Challenge, or you can view all of their work here.
The agencies on this list were chosen because they sit at a specific intersection that most of the industry hasn't figured out yet. But if you're evaluating beyond this list, or vetting an incumbent agency for AEO readiness, here's what actually separates an agency that gets it from one that's just added "AEO" to their services page.
The truth about the AEO + social media space is that it's still early. Most agencies are somewhere on a spectrum between "added AEO to the services page" and "genuinely rebuilt their social practice around how AI systems learn." The picks on this list skew toward the latter, but even among them, the depth of integration varies.
What that means practically: the right agency for your brand depends less on who has the most comprehensive service menu and more on where your biggest visibility gap actually is. If AI systems barely know your brand exists, you probably need someone who can build entity authority and citation infrastructure from the ground up. If you have the SEO foundation but your social content isn't generating the kind of engagement signals that feed AI retrieval, you need a different kind of partner.
The good news is that the gap between social strategy and AEO strategy is closing, and the agencies paying attention now are building a real advantage for their clients. Finding one that gets both is worth the extra diligence.
More than most brands realize. AI systems learn from websites and from the full content ecosystem around a brand, which increasingly includes social platforms. Goodie's research on citation patterns across AI answers found that social and UGC platforms consistently ranked among the most influential citation sources for LLMs, ahead of many traditional publishing sources.
The mechanism is a few things at once: social content (especially video transcripts and long-form posts) gives AI systems more signal about what your brand does and stands for; engagement patterns tell algorithms which content people find credible and useful; and platform-specific signals feed different AI surfaces differently.
It depends on how integrated you need the work to be. Some brands run separate agency relationships successfully, a specialist AEO shop for the technical and content layer, a social-first agency for platform execution, and coordinate between them internally. That can work if you have the bandwidth to manage it and a clear owner for the integration layer.
But if you're trying to build a coherent AI visibility strategy, siloed agency relationships create a real gap: the social team isn't thinking about LLM citation signals, and the AEO team isn't informing what gets made and distributed on social.
Ask them to show you, not tell you. A few things to probe: Can they walk you through how they'd audit your brand's current presence in ChatGPT or Perplexity? Do they track AI-referred traffic as a distinct metric in reporting? Can they explain the difference between entity optimization and keyword optimization? Do their case studies include AI-specific outcomes, not just organic traffic lifts?
The agencies with genuine depth will have clear answers and real examples. The ones who've bolted "AEO" onto an existing SEO practice will get vague fast. The checklist earlier in this article is a good starting framework if you want something more structured to bring into an agency evaluation.
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