For nearly two decades, digital marketing revolved around a familiar formula:
Create content → Rank on Google → Drive website traffic → Convert visitors.
That model is rapidly changing.
Today, millions of buying decisions begin inside AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot—often before a customer ever visits a website.
Recognizing this shift, Sitecore announced its acquisition of Scrunch, an AI customer experience platform focused on helping brands understand and improve how they appear in AI-generated responses. While financial terms were not officially disclosed, multiple reports place the acquisition at approximately $225 million.
This acquisition represents far more than adding another AI feature to Sitecore. It marks the beginning of a new era where Digital Experience Platforms are expected to optimize not only for humans but also for AI systems.
Why Traditional SEO Is No Longer Enough
SEO remains critical.
Google still drives enormous volumes of traffic.
However, search behavior is evolving.
Instead of typing:
“Best CRM for manufacturing”
Users increasingly ask:
“What is the best CRM for a manufacturing company with under 500 employees?”
Rather than presenting ten blue links, AI platforms generate a single synthesized answer.
Only a handful of brands may be mentioned.
If your company isn’t included in that answer, it may never enter the buyer’s consideration set.
This is creating an entirely new optimization challenge:
- How often does AI mention your brand?
- Does AI understand your products correctly?
- Which competitors receive more recommendations?
- What content influences AI-generated answers?
These questions are becoming just as important as keyword rankings.
What is Scrunch?
Scrunch is an AI Customer Experience platform designed specifically for the era of AI-powered discovery.
Rather than tracking traditional search rankings, Scrunch helps organizations understand how they appear inside AI-generated responses.
Its platform enables businesses to:
- Monitor brand visibility across major AI platforms
- Identify missing citations
- Detect inaccurate AI responses
- Discover content gaps
- Improve AI understanding of products and services
- Measure competitive visibility
Instead of optimizing for search engines alone, Scrunch optimizes for AI reasoning engines.
This emerging discipline is commonly known as:
- Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
- AI Search Optimization
Sitecore increasingly refers to this broader capability as influencing AI-driven discovery.
Why Sitecore Bought Scrunch
This acquisition solves a problem every enterprise marketing team is beginning to face.
Sitecore already manages:
- Content
- Digital assets
- Personalization
- Customer journeys
- Omnichannel delivery
- Marketing automation
But one critical question remained unanswered:
How does AI perceive your brand?
Scrunch answers exactly that.
Together, the platforms create a closed loop:
Create Content → Publish Content → Monitor AI Visibility → Identify Gaps → Optimize Content → Improve AI Discovery
Instead of merely publishing webpages, marketers can continuously improve how AI platforms understand and recommend their brands.
The Website Is No Longer the First Touchpoint
One of the most insightful observations from both companies is this:
The website is becoming the last mile for humans—but the starting point for AI.
Think about your own behavior.
How often do you now ask ChatGPT:
- Which running shoes are best?
- Compare two software platforms.
- Summarize product reviews.
- Recommend a vacation.
The recommendation often comes before you ever visit a company’s website.
That means first impressions increasingly happen inside AI-generated responses.
If AI misunderstands your company, that misunderstanding becomes your customer’s first experience.
Beyond SEO: Introducing AI Experience Optimization
For years, digital teams focused on:
- Technical SEO
- Core Web Vitals
- Metadata
- Structured Data
- Keyword optimization
Those practices remain valuable.
However, AI introduces additional requirements.
Brands now need content that AI can:
- Understand
- Trust
- Cite
- Summarize
- Recommend
- Compare accurately
The optimization target is no longer just Google’s ranking algorithm.
It is the reasoning process of large language models.
What This Means for Sitecore Customers
Organizations already using Sitecore stand to gain significant advantages.
Imagine opening your Sitecore dashboard each morning and seeing insights such as:
- AI incorrectly describes Product X.
- Competitor Y is cited twice as often.
- Your documentation is rarely referenced.
- Customers frequently ask questions you haven’t answered.
- Your knowledge base lacks authoritative content in key areas.
Instead of exporting reports into another tool, marketers can take corrective action directly within Sitecore.
That dramatically shortens the feedback loop between insight and execution.
Content Operations Become Even More Important
Generative AI rewards authoritative content.
That doesn’t necessarily mean producing more content.
It means creating better connected content.
Organizations should focus on:
- Product documentation
- FAQs
- Buying guides
- Comparison pages
- Expert articles
- Customer success stories
- Structured data
- Consistent terminology
- Clear entity relationships
AI systems perform best when they can confidently understand and connect information.
The Rise of AI Visibility as a Business Metric
For years, organizations tracked metrics such as:
- Organic traffic
- Keyword rankings
- Domain authority
- Click-through rate
The next generation of marketing dashboards will likely include:
- AI citation share
- AI recommendation frequency
- Brand sentiment in AI responses
- Competitor visibility
- AI answer accuracy
- Entity completeness
- AI-driven referral traffic
These metrics will increasingly influence marketing strategy.
Implications for Digital Experience Platforms
The DXP market is evolving.
Historically, platforms competed on:
- CMS capabilities
- Personalization
- Marketing automation
- Commerce
- Analytics
The next battleground is AI discoverability.
Every major platform is moving in this direction:
- Adobe is investing heavily in AI optimization capabilities.
- HubSpot has introduced AI search tools.
- Sitecore has acquired Scrunch.
- Numerous standalone AEO platforms continue to emerge.
The future DXP won’t simply manage websites.
It will manage how brands are represented across the AI ecosystem.
My Perspective
As someone working extensively in the SEO and AEO space, I believe this acquisition validates something many digital strategists have been discussing for the past two years:
The customer journey no longer starts with your homepage. It starts with an AI conversation.
That fundamentally changes how brands should think about digital experiences.
Success will no longer depend solely on attracting visitors to a website.
Instead, organizations must ensure AI systems can accurately understand, trust, and recommend their content before a customer even clicks.
Sitecore’s acquisition of Scrunch positions the company to help enterprises navigate this new reality.
The future of digital experience isn’t just about building exceptional websites.
It’s about becoming discoverable, understandable, and trustworthy wherever AI helps customers make decisions.