“"It gives us actionable insight into not just our own AEO progress but into our advertisers’ progress as well." ”
As advertisers began asking how publisher content could earn them visibility in Answer Engines, Bustle Digital Group (BDG) moved first. Graham Howes and his team use Profound Agents to run a publisher playbook. The approach has produced results for a global beauty brand, a leading Korean skincare brand, and a leading diaper brand, with programs running across BDG's full publisher portfolio.
A publisher with 10 authoritative brands and a head start
Bustle Digital Group began as Bustle, a digital media platform for young women. Today it runs 10 publications, including Bustle, NYLON, Scary Mommy, W Magazine, Elite Daily, and Inverse. Its audience is comprised of Gen Z and Millennial readers spanning pop culture, fashion, beauty, parenting and other lifestyle categories
Bustle Digital Group is ad supported, with much of its revenue coming from direct sales. Advertisers across beauty, fashion, health, entertainment, travel, technology, and auto work with BDG to create branded content for its sites and social channels. This content is backed by the editorial authority of BDG’s sites, so it resonates with readers while still carrying the advertiser's message.
Meeting a new advertiser request
Graham Howes is SVP of Distribution and AI Intelligence at Bustle Digital Group. He has been with the company for 9 years, primarily leading BDG’s distribution team, which oversees the owned, earned, and paid media supporting every branded content campaign.
Toward the beginning of 2026, the questions coming from advertisers were shifting. Consumers were turning to ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews to learn about brands and products they once searched for with a blue link. “It was a turning point. Suddenly, more and more advertisers were asking how to show up in these channels.” says Graham. As authoritative editorial platforms, BDG already knew their sites’ content was playing a significant role in what Answer Engines say. BDG needed to build content programs that engaged audiences on their owned and operated platforms as well as Answer Engines, a discipline known as Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO.
“We needed a tool built with publishers in mind, one where we could report on our progress and act on it.”
Choosing Profound: 1 tool, 2 audiences
Graham's team ran a deliberate evaluation of platforms and tools before selecting Profound. The use case was 2-sided: BDG needed to grow its own citation share as a publisher while also growing the AI visibility of their advertisers. Profound fit both sides of that equation.
How BDG runs an AEO program with Profound
BDG packages each content program as a collection of AEO articles published to their sites. The workflow runs in five steps, and Profound Agents sit at the center of almost every one of them. It begins with building the right prompt set.
Turning topics into a prompt set
BDG begins by aligning with the advertiser on 8 to 10 topics where they want to increase their visibility within Answer Engines. They then use AI Marketer to build out prompts for each topic, grounding them in real user conversation data. A single content program typically expands to around 250 prompts, which become the foundation for everything that follows. With the prompt sets in place, the team moves into a structured learning period.
[Image: Answer Engine Insights view of a tracked prompt set for a Bustle advertiser program]
Building a learning stack with Profound Agents
After a 2 to 4 week learning period, the team uses Profound Agents to analyze the data. Graham describes Profound Agents as "an extension of our team." The Agent examines how the advertiser performs across each topic, how that compares with its closest rivals or the category leader, and which article structures tend to earn citations. It also surfaces cited content that does not mention the advertiser at all.
From that analysis, the Agent recommends the best topics for BDG to pursue first, such as those where the competitive set consists mostly of smaller blogs with no authoritative editorial leader. That recommendation feeds directly into the content strategy.
Writing 10 creative briefs in an hour
Once the content strategy is locked, Graham turns to his brief-writing Agent. In less than an hour he can draft more than 10 briefs he is confident sending to BDG’s creative team. "It builds on the best practices while still giving our editors the creative freedom to write in their own voice and bring a unique perspective to the content," he says. With briefs in hand, the team is ready to write.
“I can get 10 creative briefs sent over to an editor in an hour.”
Publishing content optimized for AI
With the briefs approved, BDG’s editors write freely about the assigned topics, guided by the guardrails the Agent's analysis recommends. The result is content that reads as genuine editorial while following the structures Answer Engines are most likely to cite. Once the articles go live, attention shifts to tracking their impact.
Monitoring visibility and citation share every day
Once content is live, BDG tracks two views. A client dashboard shows the advertiser's visibility across Answer Engines. On BDG’s side, they analyze citation share and citation rank for the content itself. Checking both every day lets the team catch shifts early and adjust the program in real time.
Results across 3 brands
A global beauty brand: launching a new fragrance
BDG worked with a beauty brand launching its first new fragrance since 2021, and its first gourmand scent, aimed at younger buyers. BDG ran a Profound analysis of how AI answers fragrance questions, and published 10 AEO articles on Bustle in September 2026.
Results:
- ~9x growth in AI visibility for the advertiser within “best new fragrance” questions
- The beauty brand listed first every time it appeared in gourmand fragrance answers
- Bustle became the most-cited source for those answers
A leading Korean skincare brand: winning sunscreen searches
BDG published 10 guides across 8 skincare topics for a leading Korean skincare brand known for its sunscreen and serum products sold globally. BDG measured prompt data across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode in the US, comparing against a prior baseline.
Results:
- +30% growth in the brand’s AI visibility across 200 tracked prompts
- Bustle’s citation rank moved from #709 to #12 across all sources AI engines used against the brand’s prompts
- 4.7x growth in AI visibility for the advertiser within sunscreen and serum prompts
A leading diaper brand: fixing outdated product info after going fragrance-free
When this brand’s flagship diaper line went fragrance-free in June 2026, AI engines kept citing outdated product info, and the brand ranked second on fragrance-free diaper prompts. BDG looked at which sources the engines were pulling from and wrote explainer content on Scary Mommy covering the change. Within days of publishing, Google’s AI Overview was citing BDG’s articles.
Results:
- The brand moved to #1 on fragrance-free diaper prompts, overtaking its closest competitor
- AI visibility rose from 69% to 79%
- BDG’s citation share grew 4.2x
Looking ahead
Graham and the BDG team are energized by what they are seeing. The initial results for the global beauty brand, the leading Korean skincare brand, and the leading diaper brand show that authoritative publisher content can earn a place in Answer Engine responses, and that BDG can measure the impact for its advertising partners as well as for itself.
“Profound gives us the foundation to lead the market in AEO.”
