From AI Invisibility to 40% Citation: Discovered Labs vs. Peec AI (A Modern Animalz Alternative)

Updated January 04, 2026

Why marketing leaders are seeking Animalz alternatives

Gartner predicts a 25% drop in traditional search volume by 2026 as AI chatbots and virtual agents replace queries that previously went to Google. B2B marketing leaders feel this shift already.

Your prospects ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for vendor recommendations and receive a shortlist of 3-5 competitors. ChatGPT doesn't mention your company. You've invested heavily in blog content over the past year, ranking page 1-2 for target keywords, but 74% of sales professionals now report that AI tools are making it easier for buyers to research products before they ever talk to your team.

Legacy agencies like Animalz positioned themselves as premium content solutions for B2B SaaS, with pricing starting around $10k monthly according to third-party analysis. But marketing leaders report recurring issues: steep retainers without measurable ROI, multi-month waitlists, and quality concerns as production scales.

Marketing leaders now face two main paths forward:

• AI content software like Peec AI that provides visibility data and monitoring
• Managed AEO services like Discovered Labs that handle strategy, production, and optimization end-to-end

The first option cuts direct costs but demands internal bandwidth. The second option replaces your agency with a specialized partner focused on the outcome that matters: getting cited when prospects research vendors with AI.

The two approaches: Managed AEO service vs. AI content software

The fundamental difference is data versus pipeline.

Software platforms like Peec AI give you visibility reports. You see which AI platforms mention your brand, which prompts trigger citations, and where competitors dominate. But translating that visibility into action requires internal resources: strategists to interpret data, writers to create content, editors to maintain quality, and someone to manage outreach when you identify citation opportunities.

Managed services like Discovered Labs deliver the outcome directly. You receive daily content production structured for AI citation, visibility tracking across platforms, and strategic recommendations backed by proprietary methodology. The agency handles content creation, optimization, publishing, and measurement. You review performance reports and see citation improvements within 90 days.

The software approach works when you have strong internal teams with available bandwidth and the expertise to act on raw data. The managed service works when you need pipeline results fast, lack internal AEO specialists, or operate in regulated industries where verifiable, compliant content is critical.

Budget is a factor, but not the only one. While Peec AI's Pro plan costs $199 per month, Discovered Labs starts at €5,495 monthly for 20+ articles. The gap narrows when you calculate total cost of ownership: the software subscription plus internal staff time to interpret data, develop strategy, and coordinate content production.

Discovered Labs: The managed service for answer engine optimization

Discovered Labs positions itself as the modern AEO agency for B2B SaaS teams capitalizing on the distribution shift to AI search. The service combines proprietary technology with human expertise to engineer brands into the recommendation layer of ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Proprietary CITABLE framework

The agency developed CITABLE as a structured methodology ensuring content is optimal for LLM retrieval while maintaining strong human reader experience:

• Clear entity & structure: Open with a 2-3 sentence BLUF that directly answers the query
• Intent architecture: Answer the main question plus adjacent questions buyers ask next
• Third-party validation: Include reviews, community mentions, and news citations that AI models trust
• Answer grounding: Link every claim to verifiable facts with sources
• Block-structured for RAG: Organize in 200-400 word sections with tables, FAQ schema, and lists
• Latest & consistent: Add timestamps and unify facts across all platforms (your site, G2, LinkedIn)
• Entity graph & schema: Make explicit relationships between your product, use cases, and alternatives using structured data

This increases the surface area for passage retrieval while maintaining trust through verifiable, consistent information.

Daily content production at scale

While average SEO agencies offer 10-15 blog posts per month, Discovered Labs packages start at 20 pieces monthly. Each piece answers specific buyer questions using the CITABLE framework. The agency handles topic research, content creation, optimization, publishing, and performance tracking.

AI visibility tracking and competitive benchmarking

Discovered Labs uses internal technology to audit where clients appear (or don't appear) in AI outputs across platforms. The audit tests high-intent buyer queries to identify gaps where competitors dominate while clients remain invisible.

Weekly reports show citation rate trends, competitive positioning versus top competitors, and which content pieces drive citations. This moves optimization from guesswork to data-driven iteration.

Proof of impact

The company helped a B2B SaaS client increase AI-referred trials from 550 to 2,300+ in four weeks. Research from Ahrefs found that AI search visitors convert at a 23x higher rate than traditional organic search visitors, because prospects arrive pre-qualified after the AI assistant told them your solution fits their needs.

Peec AI: The platform for automated content generation

Peec AI helps marketing and SEO teams monitor brand visibility across AI-driven search engines including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. The platform provides real-time insights into brand mentions, source citations, and competitor performance.

Core features

According to multiple platform reviews, Peec AI offers seven main capabilities:

1. Multi-platform visibility tracking: Monitor brand mentions across major generative search platforms with real-time analytics
2. Competitor benchmarking: Compare your brand's visibility against competitors in AI search results
3. Source attribution analysis: Understand which content sources drive brand mentions
4. Prompt performance insights: Identify specific queries that trigger brand citations
5. Content gap identification: Discover opportunities where your brand should appear but doesn't
6. Sentiment tracking: See whether AI models describe your brand positively, neutrally, or negatively
7. Suggested prompts: The platform analyzes your website and suggests relevant prompts to track automatically

Pricing and structure

Peec AI uses a tiered subscription model:

• Starter: $89/month for 25 prompts tracked with unlimited countries
• Pro: $199/month for 100 prompts tracked with unlimited countries
• Enterprise: $499/month for 300+ prompts with unlimited countries

All plans include unlimited seats and email support. Adding Claude, Gemini, or other platforms requires additional fees. A 7-day free trial is available.

The human-in-the-loop requirement

The critical distinction is what Peec AI doesn't do. As industry analysis confirms, the platform tracks visibility but doesn't create content, optimize existing pages, or provide strategic recommendations for closing gaps.

Users must handle core tasks themselves:

1. Content strategy development: Interpret the data and decide which gaps to prioritize
2. Competitive analysis: Reverse-engineer competitor content strategies when they dominate key prompts
3. PR and outreach execution: Contact publications or communities that frequently get cited
4. Content creation: Write all content using separate tools or hire writers
5. SEO optimization: Apply technical optimizations without built-in assistance
6. Editing and quality control: Maintain content standards across all pieces
7. Publishing and distribution: Manage workflow for getting content live
8. Performance interpretation: Analyze why citation rates change and what to do next

The platform shows you problems but doesn't solve them. If you want strategic recommendations and content creation to act on the visibility data, you need separate solutions or internal teams with available bandwidth.

Head-to-head comparison: Discovered Labs vs. Peec AI

Analyzing the trade-off

The table reveals the core decision: pay for data or pay for outcomes.

Peec AI's $89-199 monthly cost looks attractive until you calculate what's required to act on the insights. According to salary data from Freelancermap, content coordination and strategy development require significant time investment. Add internal staff time to interpret data, develop strategy, coordinate content creation, and manage quality control, and the true investment becomes substantial.

At that point, Discovered Labs' €5,495 starting package delivers measurable value: 20+ optimized articles monthly, full strategy, visibility tracking, and no internal project management burden.

The math shifts if your team already has excess capacity. A strong content manager with available bandwidth can use Peec's data to guide internal writers, making the tool approach viable. But most B2B marketing leaders report their teams are already stretched managing campaigns, ABM programs, and core demand generation.

When to choose Discovered Labs

The managed service approach fits specific scenarios where outcomes matter more than tool ownership.

You need pipeline results within 90-120 days

Your CEO or board expects measurable impact from marketing spend. Discovered Labs delivers weekly citation rate reports, competitive positioning data, and tagged traffic source tracking for AI-referred visitors. You can present concrete evidence with citation rate improvements, AI-referred MQL growth (tracked via UTM parameters and Salesforce integration), and conversion rate advantages over traditional search traffic.

Your team lacks internal bandwidth

You manage 5-12 people already focused on campaigns, events, and demand programs. Adding "interpret visibility data, develop AEO strategy, coordinate writers, and optimize content for AI citation" to their workload breaks the team. The managed service removes that burden entirely.

You operate in regulated industries

Healthcare, fintech, and other regulated sectors require verifiable, compliant content. Generic AI-generated drafts risk citation of unsubstantiated claims that trigger legal or compliance issues. Discovered Labs' third-party validation and answer-grounding principles ensure content is citable without regulatory risk.

You want month-to-month flexibility

Legacy agencies locked you into 12-month contracts. Discovered Labs operates month-to-month with 30-day notice to cancel or scale. The agency must earn your business each month through measurable citation growth and pipeline impact.

You need a data advantage

Discovered Labs builds internal technology tracking winning patterns across substantial monthly traffic volume. The agency uses this knowledge graph to understand what content clusters, formats, titles, and structures perform best, then applies those insights to client work. You benefit from cross-client learning without the cost of building that intelligence in-house.

When to choose Peec AI

The software approach makes sense in specific contexts where internal capability and control outweigh fully managed execution.

You have strong strategists with available capacity

Your content manager or demand gen director understands AEO principles, has time to interpret analytics, and can coordinate writers effectively. They just need visibility data to guide their work. Peec's $199 Pro plan gives them that intelligence without requiring them to learn complex agency workflows.

Budget constraints limit options

You're a seed-stage startup with under $500k revenue or facing budget cuts that eliminate agency spend above $1k-2k monthly. The Starter plan at $89 per month fits within constrained budgets where a €5,495 monthly service doesn't.

You prefer building internal expertise

Your team wants to develop AEO skills and retain that knowledge in-house rather than depending on an external partner. The platform gives them visibility data to learn by doing while maintaining full control of strategy and execution.

Your content needs are simple

You're not operating in complex B2B spaces with long sales cycles and multi-stakeholder buying committees. Your product is straightforward, your content requirements are basic, and you mainly need visibility into whether AI platforms mention you for core terms.

You're testing the category

You're not yet convinced AEO deserves meaningful budget. Starting with Peec's 7-day trial and $89 Starter plan lets you gather preliminary data on your current visibility before committing to a larger agency relationship.

Frequently asked questions about AEO agencies

What is the difference between SEO and AEO?

SEO optimizes for ranking individual pages on search engine results pages, targeting specific keyword rankings and backlink profiles. AEO optimizes for passage retrieval across AI platforms where one piece of content can be a source for many citations without a fixed position.

How long does it take to see results from AEO?

Initial citation signals typically appear within 2-3 weeks as AI platforms begin surfacing optimized content. More substantial visibility improvements showing increased citation rates across priority buyer queries take 3-4 months of consistent daily content production and third-party validation building.

Can AI tools replace a content agency?

AI tools replace drafting speed but not strategy, citation engineering, or third-party validation. Research on B2B AI content challenges shows that generic AI-generated content often lacks product-specific expertise, contains factual inaccuracies, and requires significant human oversight to ensure quality and compliance. Implementation without clear strategy undermines effectiveness because AI tools require clear guidelines, structured data, and well-defined brand parameters to function effectively.

How do I measure ROI from answer engine optimization?

Track three metrics: citation rate percentage across tested buyer queries, AI-referred MQL volume with conversion rate comparison versus traditional organic search, and attributed pipeline value from AI-sourced opportunities. Most platforms see measurable pipeline impact within 90-120 days.

What happens if AI platforms change their algorithms?

Continuous testing and optimization is built into managed AEO workflows. While specific platform tactics evolve, the core CITABLE principles (clarity, verifiability, authority, consistency) remain durable because they reflect fundamental requirements for confident LLM citation regardless of which model or platform dominates.

Key terminology for AI search

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): The practice of optimizing content to be cited by large language models and AI assistants when users ask questions, focusing on passage retrieval, clarity, verifiability, and entity structure.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): A synonym for AEO often used specifically regarding Google AI Overviews, referring to optimization for AI-generated search results rather than traditional blue-link rankings.

Share of Voice: The percentage of times a brand is cited across a set of relevant buyer-intent queries, used to benchmark competitive positioning in AI answer results.

CITABLE Framework: Discovered Labs' proprietary methodology for structuring content optimal for LLM retrieval through Clear entity structure, Intent architecture, Third-party validation, Answer grounding, Block structure, Latest consistency, and Entity relationships.

Citation Rate: The percentage of tested queries where an AI platform mentions or recommends a specific brand, typically measured across high-intent buyer questions relevant to the company's category.

Third-Party Validation: External mentions across Wikipedia, Reddit, G2, Capterra, industry forums, and media that AI models use to verify and gain confidence in citing brand claims.

Pipeline Attribution: The process of connecting AI-referred website visitors to specific marketing opportunities and revenue in CRM systems, typically using UTM parameters and multi-touch attribution models to isolate AI-sourced leads from traditional organic search.

Ready to move from AI invisibility to consistent citations? Book an AI Visibility Audit with Discovered Labs. We'll test buyer-intent queries across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, show exactly where competitors appear while you don't, and deliver a 90-day roadmap to close those gaps. Month-to-month terms with 30-day notice mean you test our approach with minimal risk.