Samsung sponsored feature in Future title Tom’s Guide
Future has begun offering LLM optimisation as a commercial product across its media brands.
The move means Future offers tailored content campaigns for commercial partners which are aimed at boosting their visibility on generative AI-based services like ChatGPT.
The move follows research that has found that Future brands – particularly Techradar – are among the most cited sources on various AI platforms .
According to research by SEO software company Ahrefs, Future’s Techradar is the most cited publisher website domain globally on ChatGPT , closely followed by The Sun.
The specialist websites and magazine publisher recently worked with Samsung to promote the launch of two new phone brands. And, according to Future SEO director Simon Glanville, the content campaign secured up to a 33% uplift in visibility on ChatGPT for the new Samsung products.
One example is this sponsored feature about the Samsung S25 Ultra which appeared in Tom’s Guide.
Now the publisher has launched Future Optic, which is offering generative AI optimisation as part of the marketing mix offered across its portfolio of brands.
The content in these campaigns is labelled as sponsored but is still used by ChatGPT and other LLMs to answer relevant queries.
Glanville said: “We see this as a big potential revenue driver. Everyone we are speaking to wants more visibility on LLMs.
“I’m not saying that search is dead, but we are seeing more people interacting with LLMs.”
Glanville said that existing SEO rankings are a good predictor of website visibility on leading LLMs because platforms like ChatGPT have access to Google search data and use it to select sources.
Future is seeing substantial disruption from Google AI overviews, with as many as 50% of its top website keywords triggering an AI-written summary rather than a traditional search results page. So revenue from LLM optimisation campaigns could offset falling programmatic advertising income caused by lower referral traffic.
Glanville said that optimising for LLMs requires a more nuanced approach than traditional SEO, ensuring that articles answer a variety of questions which might crop in a 50-word ChatGPT prompt.
So, whereas SEO might optimise a page for “best budget laptop”, an LLM-optimised article might ensure it signposts answers to a more detailed search such as “best budget laptop to take on holiday which is still good for watching movies on”.
Ways to optimise an article for LLMs include: providing a clear summary at the top, bullet points and an FAQs section, Glanville said.
Where SEO has always been about delivering traffic to publishers, Glanville said, ChatGPT is seen as a “visibility channel” rather than a traffic source.
Future sees particular opportunities to leverage generative engine optimisation (GEO) around its core coverage strengths in consumer technology, gaming, lifestyle and fashion.
Glanville said: “If it is an area where we are already a big part of the conversation and the citation mix on LLMs then we know we can get results there.”
While Future does block some automated website scraping, on the whole its approach is to optimise its content to be as visible as possible on LLMs.
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