AI isn't a search engine.
It's a
friend
life coach
therapist
confidant
Aethon is the Contextual AI Presence Mapping platform. We measure where your brand shows up in the conversations AI is having across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, then ship the work that lands you in the answer.
People tell AI things they'd never type into Google. A baby coming. A marriage falling apart. A diagnosis they're scared to say out loud. One life trigger gives AI every piece of context it needs to recommend a brand. Aethon makes sure that brand is yours.
Mapped across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude
4 platformsSources: Accenture Life Trends 2026 · McKinsey "The Agentic Era of Commerce" · OpenAI usage disclosures · Bain agentic-commerce forecast.
Every moment in your market. Scored, tracked, fixable.
Presence map · Austin, TX
| Life moment | Presence | |
|---|---|---|
| “We're planning a 200-person office event” | 86% | |
| “Caterer with great dietary options near me” | 71% | |
| “We need lunch for 50, tomorrow”GAP | 23% | Fix → |
| “Wedding rehearsal dinner ideas” | 64% |
An illustrative presence map for a sample brand. Yours gets built on the first call.
Search understood queries.
AI understands people.
People describe situations, not products. AI infers needs before a category search ever happens. Recommendations emerge from context, not keywords.
- 01 Life Moments Engaged. New baby. New diagnosis. New job.
- 02 Inferred Needs Mortgage. Tax planning. Wealth advisor. Insurance.
- 03 Recommendations AI names a brand, often before the user asks.
- 04 Brand Outcomes Pipeline, revenue, share of recommendation.
Most companies measure what AI says.
Aethon helps brands understand why AI says it.
Every life moment fans out into a graph of inferred needs.
AI doesn't wait for a product query. It pivots from context. A wedding becomes a honeymoon. A nursery becomes an SUV. A child's injury becomes an orthopedic surgeon. Aethon maintains a living Moment Library and tracks what AI recommends along every pivot.
“We just got engaged.”
- Type
- Life event · marriage
- Stage
- Planning
- Urgency
- Medium
- Horizon
- 3-6 months
- Category fan-out
- 10 inferred needs
- Joint banking
- Mortgage pre-approval
- Tax planning
- Term life insurance
- Home insurance
- Wealth management
- Prenup attorney
- Honeymoon travel
Detect the moment
We run a continuous panel of representative conversations across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, probing for life-event language: a new baby, a diagnosis, a job offer, a new VP of Sales. The signal isn’t a keyword. It’s a sentence about someone’s life.
Classify it
Every moment gets a taxonomy: type, stage, urgency, time horizon, and a confidence score. That structure is what lets you act on it instead of just observing it.
Map the inferred needs
For every moment, we model the categories AI will recommend next, ranked by likelihood. “Engaged” fans out to joint banking, mortgage, tax planning, wealth management. Categories the user never typed. Categories AI is already naming brands in.
GEO was built for the search era. Aethon is built for the conversation era.
Retrofitting search metrics onto AI tells you a score. Mapping context tells you why, and what to do about it.
| The search eraGEO & rank trackers | The conversation eraContextual AI Presence Mapping | |
|---|---|---|
| Optimizes for | Engines and keywords | Conversations and life moments |
| Measures | Rankings and share of voice | Presence in the contexts that convert |
| Prompts | Generic lists, same for every brand | Industry-specific context, tuned to how your buyers actually talk |
| Coverage | 3 or 4 platforms | 4 platforms: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude |
| Ends in | A dashboard. The work is on you. | Action, hands-on or autopilot |
Detect the moment. Map the needs. Land in the answer.
A closed-loop platform that turns market-level context signals into prioritized action. Detect the moment, map the inferred-need graph, model the recommendation pathway, ship the fix, measure the lift.
Detect the moment
Cluster conversational signals into a taxonomy of life events and business transitions. Wedding. New baby. Promotion. Diagnosis.
Map the need graph
For every moment, model the categories AI will infer next, with urgency window, sequence order, and confidence.
Model the pathway
Track which competitor enters first, where you appear, where you fall out. From moment recognition to final recommendation.
Ship the work
Aethon generates the pages, schema, comparison content, and source-authority work that lands you in the answer.
See how Aethon stacks up against the AI visibility platforms most marketers evaluate.
Compare Aethon vs. Profound, Peec, Otterly, AthenaSee exactly where AI introduces a brand, and where you drop out.
Aethon models the full path AI takes from context to recommendation: moment recognition, need expansion, category narrowing, brand consideration, recommendation, decision support. So you know if you're absent early, weak mid-journey, or only showing up at final decision.
-
Share of recommendation by stage
Not just "are you cited," but at which stage of the conversation AI first names you.
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First-brand appearance rate
The brand AI names first wins. Aethon shows you where you do, and where a competitor beats you to the punch.
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Drop-off diagnostics
If you're strong at Stage 2 and absent at Stage 4, we tell you why. Usually a missing comparison page, weak schema, or a source you don't own.
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01Moment recognition"We're planning a wedding for October" · Category not yet introducedYou: not applicable
-
02Need expansionAI introduces honeymoon, travel, ring insuranceYou: absent · Marriott first-named in 41% of pivots
-
03Category narrowing"Maldives or Bora Bora?" · "All-inclusive vs. à la carte?"You: 14% share, rank #3
-
04Brand considerationShortlist with reasonsYou: 31% share, rank #2
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05Recommendation"Most couples in your range pick X" · final answerYou: 28% share, rank #2
Share of voice is dead. Share of recommendation is the metric that moves revenue.
Mentions don't pay rent. Aethon tracks how often a brand is recommended, how early it appears, how often it's named first, and how positively it's framed, broken down by moment, pathway stage, model, and source.
- 01Marriott Bonvoy28%
- 02Delta Vacations24%
- 03You14%
- 04Hyatt Andaz11%
- 05Four Seasons8%
- ·Not recommended15%
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01Build "family-transition travel" hubCloses the Stage 2 honeymoon pivot where Marriott is first-named.
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02Add FAQ + schema to honeymoon package pagesThree top-cited sources are missing structured entities for your property class.
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03Earn citation in The Knot & Brides "honeymoon" guidesThese two domains drive 38% of source influence in this moment.
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04Publish "Maldives vs Bora Bora" comparisonCategory-narrowing stage; you're absent from the comparison set.
Your presence, growing in the background.
Monitoring tells you whether your brand is appearing in AI answers. Aethon actually improves it. The Action Engine converts every gap on your map into work that ships: pages generated, signals strengthened, fixes deployed. Autopilot keeps it running week after week.
Stay hands-on and approve every move, or let it run. Your presence map updates either way.
Made for your industry.
Each vertical ships with its own moment library tuned to your buyers' actual conversations. Calibrated on day one, not month four.
Plus real estate, insurance, education, e-commerce, hospitality, manufacturing, construction, professional services, consulting, marketing agencies, nonprofits, and family services.
See every industry Aethon works withPricing that scales with how much you want us to ship.
Every plan includes the Presence Score, the Conversation Simulator, and access to your vertical's life moment library. Pick the plan that matches how much you want us to ship for you.
- ✓ Presence Score across all 5 platforms
- ✓ 1 brand, 3 competitors tracked
- ✓ 100 life-moment prompts / week
- ✓ Conversation Simulator (basic)
- ✓ Weekly recommendations
- ✓ Everything in Starter
- ✓ Auto-content generation & publishing
- ✓ Comparison pages, schema & source-authority drafts
- ✓ Up to 10 competitors, 3 locations
- ✓ Full vertical life-moment library
- ✓ Slack + email alerts on gaps
- ✓ Everything in Pro
- ✓ Up to 25 locations / sub-brands
- ✓ Revenue attribution & reporting
- ✓ Custom prompt & life-moment authoring
- ✓ Priority content review & QA
- ✓ Dedicated CSM
- ✓ Unlimited brands & locations
- ✓ SSO, custom DPAs
- ✓ White-glove onboarding
- ✓ API access & custom integrations
- ✓ Quarterly strategy reviews
- ✓ Compliance-grade content review
Questions teams ask us
What is Contextual AI Presence Mapping?
CAPM is the practice of mapping the life moments and contextual signals that drive AI recommendations, and engineering your brand's presence in the conversations where decisions are made. We defined the category because the search-era playbook doesn't translate to conversations. Read the full definition.
How is CAPM different from GEO?
GEO retrofits search thinking, keywords, rankings, and share of voice onto AI platforms. CAPM starts from how people actually talk to AI: in moments, with context. The output isn't a rank report. It's a presence map and the actions that change it. Teams often start with GEO tools, then move to Aethon when monitoring stops being enough.
Which AI platforms does Aethon cover?
Four: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. Refreshed continuously as models update.
Do I run Aethon myself, or does it run for me?
Both. Use it hands-on: explore your map, generate content, approve every action. Or set it to autopilot and let ongoing optimization run in the background while you focus on the business. Either way, you win.
We're an agency. Can we run this for clients?
Yes. Aethon works for performance, content, brand, and influencer agencies running AI visibility for clients across verticals. See how agencies use Aethon.
The recommendation is happening today. With you or without you.
A 30-minute walkthrough. We'll run your category live, show you exactly where AI names you across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, where competitors land instead, and the three highest-leverage actions to change it.