Articles

AgenticAI Article

<hr /> “We’re turning insight into action and that action into revenue, so marketers can work at the level of their ambition.”That’s how <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-stine-ceo-sitecore/">Sitecore CEO Eric Stine</a> introduced MarketingIQ, a new module now available in its next-gen <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/shock-and-ai-awe-sitecore-unleashes-sitecoreai-its-next-gen-ai-powered-dxp">SitecoreAI platform,</a> designed to help marketers bring their ideas to life by connecting brand intelligence with AI agent orchestration.The solution was officially unveiled at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Sitecore Symposium 2026</a> yesterday in Orlando, a fitting backdrop as the capital of “The Experience Economy.” At last year’s event, which was held in the same location, the company made a seismic shift – ushering in a bold agentic roadmap that is now positioning it as a global leader in AI-enabled digital experience software.When it comes to change, a year might be a decade in this new era. For the first time ever, automated bot and AI agent traffic has <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/agentic-web">officially surpassed human web traffic</a>, representing a larger audience of website visitors that's only growing.At the same time, AI discovery and visibility have become hyperbolic boardroom concerns as AI answer engines like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://claude.ai/login">Claude</a>, and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_Overviews">Google AI Overviews</a> represent more of the top-of-funnel consumer search behavior. The answers consumers receive are now driving decisions – and brands are often missing from the conversation. But it’s not enough to simply see or monitor what’s happening in these channels. Marketers are hungry for solutions that can help them act on those insights with greater speed and precision, and ultimately impact the bottom line. Unlocking that potential has become a serious focus for brands: according to a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-11-09-gartner-survey-finds-42-percent-of-cmos-are-monitoring-brand-misinformation-in-ai-generated-content">recent Gartner study,</a> 61% of marketing leaders have adapted their strategies to support AI-assisted buying motions.If you’ve been following my coverage of the burgeoning categories of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_engine_optimization">AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization),</a> it has become a noisy sector both up and downstream, with new players entering the field on a regular basis. In the race to deliver real value, vendors have been expanding their portfolios with an array of solutions, and I’ve looked at (almost) all of them. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:89.27%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/11/scrunch-screenshot.png" /></figure>Source: Scrunch website <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/crunch-time-for-ai-visibility-sitecores-acquisition-of-scrunch-gives-brands-an-edge-beyond-aeo">Sitecore’s acquisition of Scrunch</a> back in June stands out as one of the more potent power plays. I was already keen on Scrunch’s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://scrunch.com/platform/agent-experience/">Agent Experience Platform</a> as it was speaking the LLM love language by “scrunching” websites for AI traffic. But it was also making its intelligence more useful for marketers, providing tangible recommendations to help brands increase their visibility. There’s always been an echo of “smoke and mirrors” across the caverns of search engine marketing, and AEO and GEO have been harangued by a similar albatross. Some of the enterprise customers I've spoken to have seen mixed results from their investments. But Scrunch has garnered compelling results, where customers like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.akamai.com/">Akamai</a> (a leading cloud and content delivery provider) have notched an impressive 364% increase in visibility across non-branded prompts.And that’s not a blip. Scrunch has delivered similar outcomes for other brands and use cases, reinforcing why Sitecore has made it central focus of its go-to-market strategy. But there’s more to this digital explosion than what we see in the surface metrics. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:77.71%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/11/eric-chris-sitecore.jpg" /></figure>(Left to right) Sitecore CEO Eric Stine and Scrunch CEO and Cofounder Chris Andrew. Source: LinkedIn “This isn’t just about marketing, and it’s not just about technology,” Eric told me back in June. During an interview where we were joined by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswandrew/">Scrunch CEO Chris Andrew,</a> we discussed how this new platform was transforming the marketer’s toolkit and giving them a decisive edge on this new battlefield for brands – one where human judgment is playing a critical role.With so much data and decisioning, brands and teams have been saddled with cognitive overload and tightening bottlenecks. This is where MarketingIQ is making its value play as marketing that builds, runs, and improves itself – spotting opportunities, staging responses, and learning from the results. It harnesses the foundational understanding that Scrunch provides, turns it into action, and renders brand content and information readable for AI agents.“Conversational AI has redefined how customers discover information and make decisions about brands and their products and services,” Eric continued. “That’s why we brought Scrunch into Sitecore, and it’s why MarketingIQ now takes it further.”For brands to compete in this brave “New Web,” velocity is paramount. This is where platforms like Sitecore are crafting a strong position as a unified agentic ecosystem that encompasses AI discovery. MarketingIQ crystallizes this value, maintaining a source of truth for the evidence, planning, content, approvals, and measurement of visibility across the engine landscape. It also provides an authoritative system for branded content and assets for both people and agents.<h3 id="how-marketingiq-works">How MarketingIQ Works</h3><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/seasons-of-love-sitecore-symposium-2025-sings-putting-ai-and-marketers-in-the-spotlight">At last year's Symposium,</a> SitecoreAI was launched as a doorway to true one-to-one personalization, and the central hub for Sitecore’s ambitions in a world where AI engines were consuming more search traffic than ever. This new platform promised an agentic framework for automating tasks at scale, and helping marketers get real work done.MarketingIQ fits right at home in SitecoreAI, combining contextual intelligence around your brand and business with its native AI agent orchestration. That layer of agentic fuel is what powers insight into action, helping marketers identify opportunities worth pursuing, then orchestrating the entire response.With MarketingIQ, a marketer starts by identifying a specific goal or spotting a signal worth acting on. This can be a creative spark about reaching an audience, or a competitive opportunity that Scrunch surfaces. With a few simple prompts, a marketer can trigger an entire campaign, with MarketingIQ acting as a powerful lever to coordinate, execute, and ultimately learn and improve from the results.  <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:93.42%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/11/marketingiq-2.jpg" /></figure>Source: Sitecore website Because MarketingIQ connects to your broader marketing stack, it gathers brand and business context across SitecoreAI’s CMS or DAM, as well as through Scrunch, analytics, and the organization’s approved knowledge and content. This can also include key objectives and evidence about customers and previous results. MarketingIQ can decipher which facts support a claim, which audiences and products they apply to, and what content is suitable to use. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:92.4%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/11/marketingiq-1.png" /></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:92.29%"><img /></figure>Source: Sitecore website MarketingIQ then coordinates with SitecoreAI’s agents, marshaling everything from product research, brief development, relevant content, and more. It also interfaces with your brand kit and asset library to ensure that everything is on point. From there, it can assemble assets into targeted campaign deliverables like landing pages with FAQs, all designed to reach specific customers, segments, and markets – and built for AI agents. Once completed, a human marketer can review, edit, approve, and launch with confidence – and measure whether a campaign improves discovery, attracts qualified customers, or increases conversions. Sitecore employs strong guardrails, ensuring that nothing leaves a staging area without human involvement,MarketingIQ is designed as a module within SitecoreAI's native agent orchestration platform, but it can also be harnessed to your AI assistant of choice (like ChatGPT or Claude). This provides greater flexibility and control for marketers based on their goals and preferences.One other key benefit of MarketingIQ is its raw extensibility. The solution works across Sitecore and third-party CMS, DAM, CRM, or other business apps – allowing organizations to connect the content, customer data, and capabilities they already have without replacing their underlying systems.<h3 id="agentic-automation-meets-human-judgement">Agentic automation meets human judgement</h3>Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts of AEO and the intersection with Scrunch – which is where MarketingIQ has the real potential to shine.Here’s a common use case: An AI answer omits your brand or lists outdated pricing for one of your products. Scrunch surfaces the issue, but MarketingIQ can examine the brand’s approved product information and existing content, then craft and stage a proposed resolution.Once the response is approved, MarketingIQ coordinates both the people and agents needed to complete the resolution. A marketing team can then measure if the response impacts visibility and qualified traffic, and whether that traffic actually converts. Here’s one of the best parts: MarketingIQ then uses the results to inform its next recommendation and action.As pitched, it’s marketing that builds, runs, and improves itself. And that elevates the value beyond simply identifying the gaps.“It’s one thing to understand how we show up in AI-based search results, but it drives little value unless you act upon it,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pilgerstorfer/">Oliver Pilgerstorfer</a>, Chief Marketing Officer at IFS, and a Sitecore customer. “That’s the real value of MarketingIQ, which combines the insights of Scrunch with the publishing capabilities of Sitecore. Now we can act on the findings, see the work turn into qualified pipeline and, ultimately, drive revenue growth. It’s an investment in outcomes.”Like all AI tools, human judgment is an essential component – and MarketingIQ makes it a key ingredient in the recipe. Marketers set both the strategy and priorities, and make all final decisions that require any human interaction. But in between, MarketingIQ does the heavy lifting, facilitating the handoffs and routine executions that can burden teams with coordinating disconnected work.<h3 id="the-verdict">The verdict</h3>MarketingIQ just rolled out, but it is – in a word – slick. It's where all roads have been leading in the agentic transformation of digital experience tools and the intersection with search, and it squarely elevates marketers at the pivotal points in the journey. Combined with Scrunch, it completes the picture of what a next-gen marketing toolset looks like in the AI era.As Sitecore pointed out in its announcement, MarketingIQ was built in collaboration with partners that know a thing or two about marketing technology and delivery. This includes <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perficient.com/">Perficient</a>, a leading global AI and technology consulting firm. The company is a testament to the acceleration effect of SitecoreAI, having launched its new website in just under 10 weeks by leveraging an AI-enabled experience platform.“Perficient is its own first client,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carriegrapenthin/">Carrie Grapenthin,</a> Perficient's Chief Marketing and Communications Officer. "We apply the same AI-accelerated approach to our own front office, delivery, and digital experience that we bring to clients, across the platforms they’ve already invested in.” What I like about MarketingIQ is that it meets marketers where they work, from ChatGPT to Claude to Teams to Slack. Users can work in their preferred environments, or in Sitecore, while maintaining the vital content, permissions, and approvals that their work depends on. I talk to a lot of marketers who are leaning on Claude, for example, and this reinforces the freedom to create and execute on your own terms.AI discovery is, of course, central to the value proposition – and this is where MarketingIQ is amplifying the signals from Scrunch and turning it into real action. Program pages are designed for humans, but also for agents, so you can reach both audiences. This also stacks your deck across the answer engines, improving your competitive position when it comes to critical questions and decisions. Both Scrunch and MarketingIQ are a natural evolution for Sitecore's ecosystem. At the edge, it's enabling brands and marketing teams to be more ambitious. Behind the scenes, it's providing the deep governance across content operations to coordinate the right assets and publish with control and confidence. This is where Sitecore's integrated legacy comes in, providing a secure agentic plane that is reinforced by structure around approved assets, usage rights, and custom workflows.From here, Sitecore is looking to expand the functionality of its agents, so marketers can endow them with permission to take action on a brand's website (such as requesting a demo or registering for an event). There's an implicit “trust factor” that comes with this automated horizon, but this is where a quarter-century of proven innovation and partnership comes in – and where Sitecore continues to raise the IQ for marketers and brands. <hr />MarketingIQ will be available to all customers of SitecoreAI. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sitecore.com/marketing-iq">You can learn more here.</a>

Raise your MarketingIQ: Sitecore Combines Brand Intelligence with AI Agents to Power Marketers

matt-garrepy

Explore a wide range of informative articles on AgenticAI, insights, and industry updates. Stay informed and ahead of the curve with our diverse collection of news and posts covering the latest trends and developments in the industry

News

Raise your MarketingIQ: Sitecore Combines Brand Intelligence with AI Agents to Power Marketers