Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast How AI search is reshaping visibility: from rankings to mentions
Feb 23, 2026
Thomas Peham, CEO and co-founder of Otterly AI, builds tools to monitor AI-driven brand visibility across models like ChatGPT and Gemini. He discusses how mentions are overtaking links, strategies for mention-first optimization, product-driven growth, measurement of AI visibility KPIs, and integrations that help marketers track citations in AI responses.
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Bootstrapped Origin From A Marketer's Frustration
- Thomas Peham built Otterly AI after not finding existing tools to track AI-driven visibility and started prototyping following his work at Storyblok.
- He recruited users quickly and grew to over 20,000 users as a bootstrapped, remote company by solving a gap he experienced firsthand in marketing operations.
Shift From Keywords To Prompts
- Otterly reframes tracking from keywords to prompts because users query AI models differently than search engines.
- The product includes an AI prompt research tool to ideate, categorize, and organize prompts across markets and languages.
Prioritize Data Quality Before Optimization
- Invest in data quality and accuracy before trusting AI visibility analytics so teams can act on reliable insights.
- Otterly focused heavy engineering effort to ensure objective, neutral analytics for ChatGPT and other models to enable optimization.