Contentful, a leading digital experience platform trusted by more than 4,800 customers, announced the general availability of Palmata, a new offering designed to help organizations understand, measure, and improve how AI answer engines represent their company, so teams can confidently control their brand’s reputation in the age of AI discovery.

As consumers increasingly turn to AI answer engines to research products, compare brands, and make purchase decisions, marketing leaders face a new challenge: AI systems are often forming impressions of companies before customers ever visit a website. While brands have spent years optimizing for search engines, they now must understand how AI systems discover, interpret, compare, and represent them.

Unlike traditional Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) tools that primarily track visibility, rankings, and mentions, Palmata helps organizations understand the factors influencing AI-generated answers and provides clear, prioritized guidance on how to improve them. The platform enables teams to move beyond measurement and toward action, helping them identify the content decisions most likely to influence how their brand is represented over time.

“Understanding how AI systems represent your brand is only the first step,” said Tricia Gellman, CMO, Box. “Today's buyer journey is increasingly invisible, with prospects researching solutions through AI long before they engage directly with a company. Marketers need to understand whether they're showing up in those conversations or being left off the shortlist entirely. Palmata helps teams identify where they're vulnerable, understand what actions will improve their AI reputation, and prioritize the opportunities that matter most.”

“Most AI visibility tools tell you whether you appear in an answer, but they don't tell you what to do next,” said Jason McGhee, Palmata Head of Product, Contentful. “We built Palmata to help marketers understand how AI systems perceive their business, why those perceptions exist, and which actions are most likely to improve outcomes. Instead of creating more anxiety, Palmata creates clarity.”

Palmata is powered by the proprietary Sounder Discovery Agent™, which continuously observes, learns, and synthesizes the signals that influence AI-generated answers by conducting ongoing analysis of publicly available data. Through research across a company's market, competitors, audiences, content footprint, and digital ecosystem, Palmata develops a deep understanding of the factors shaping AI discovery and reputation. Key capabilities include:

Steering Control: Allows teams to focus research toward specific brands, products, competitors, audiences, segments, regions, and strategic priorities that matter most to their business.

“In AI search, the question that matters is whether AI describes you accurately, because the model answers with total confidence whether it's right or wrong,” said Harry McIntosh, VP of Engineering, Telus Digital. “Palmata's Steering Control lets us point it at the specific products, audiences and competitors we care about, so we can see exactly what AI says we do and where it learned it. That's a much clearer path from insight to action.”

Adaptive Deep Research: Continuously develops context around a business’ competitors, category, audiences, and digital landscape, uncovering the factors that shape AI discovery and influence how a brand appears in AI-generated answers.

“Palmata's Adaptive Deep Research goes beyond broad monitoring of AI answers and adapts to the complexity of our business,” said Jamie Bothwell, VP Marketing, Docusign. “Rather than treating our company as a single brand, Palmata develops context around our category, audiences, and competitors that helps us understand how AI systems are representing each part of our portfolio and where we have the greatest opportunities to improve.”

Recommended Actions: Palmata’s Sounder Discovery Agent translates research into prioritized actions, identifying the quick wins and strategic opportunities most likely to improve how brands are represented in AI-generated answers, and explaining why those actions matter.

“Everyone is talking about visibility in AI search, but visibility alone doesn't tell you what to do next,” said Alice McKown, Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer, The Atlantic. “What differentiates Palmata is its ability to show us how AI systems are actually perceiving our business, how we can optimize, and a clear set of actions backed by research and simulation.”

Simulated Impact: Models how recommended actions may influence AI reputation, helping teams compare opportunities, understand tradeoffs, and prioritize investments with greater confidence.

“As answer engines increasingly become the first place consumers go for information, brands need a way to understand and influence how they're being represented,” said Bob Ray, CEO, Marketbridge. “Palmata helps move the conversation beyond mentions and rankings toward a clearer understanding of how AI answer engines surface and describe brands.”

While Palmata operates independently from the Contentful platform, the launch reflects Contentful’s broader vision for the future of digital experiences — one where brands must optimize content not just for websites and search engines, but for AI systems that increasingly mediate how information is discovered and consumed.

“Contentful was built on the belief that content is the foundation of every digital experience,” said Karthik Rau, CEO, Contentful. “Today, AI systems increasingly shape how businesses are discovered, understood, and evaluated before a customer ever visits a website. Palmata helps organizations navigate this shift by turning AI discovery risk into a credible plan for growth. It gives teams the clarity and intelligence they need to understand their AI reputation and improve it over time.”

This also aligns with Contentful’s long-term strategy to help organizations adapt to the changing nature of content operations. For years, enterprises optimized content for websites and search engines. Today, organizations must also prepare content for AI systems that summarize, compare, recommend, and generate answers dynamically across channels.

The launch of Palmata positions Contentful at the forefront of that evolution, extending the company’s commitment to helping marketers create scalable, adaptable, and future-ready content strategies.

“AI is now shaping brand perception before a customer ever reaches your website,” said Mark Abramowitz, CMO, Dataiku. “The hard part is knowing what actually matters. Palmata has the potential to help us focus on that.”