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How Optimizely Tackles the Shift to AI-Powered Search In an interview with The Software Report, Optimizely CEO Alexander Atzberger described a shift in how people interact with brands online. “Eight billion people are changing their behaviors of how they find information and how they engage with brands,” he said. “Now people want answers and they come through generative, and answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity and other tools.” This shift challenges brands to stay visible. “The biggest question for these brands is, how do I not become invisible, how do I still maintain control of my brand narrative, and how do I actually produce content that gets picked up by these answer engines,” Alex explained. Optimizely’s platform helps marketers respond. “We help marketers create great digital experiences and that they can optimize and personalize through our platform,” he said. The solution has two key parts: “One is managing content and managing a full content supply chain… and then the second part of the business is once you actually publish something, you want to understand your customer and you want to personalize it and you want to use data to assess what works well with what segment.” With AI bots crawling the web, consistency and structure are more important than ever. “It’s no longer just humans going to your site. Now it’s bots going to your site,” Alex noted. “If your answer to who you are as a company is different across all these places, your summary result is going to be pretty poor.” Visibility now means more than a website. “Your brand is in many, many different places,” he said. “That Wikipedia page should have the same content on it that it says on your website.” Optimizely supports “content consistency, content inventory,” helping brands stay aligned. But content still needs originality. “I think the uniqueness of your content matters,” Alex said. “Great content will still be the driver for engagement.” Alex’s approach to business draws from his upbringing. “My dad had obviously a huge, huge influence on me because he was an entrepreneur… I do think there's something about really earning your success and working hard for it.” His leadership journey started unexpectedly while consulting, helping a newly promoted SAP board member prep over a July 4th weekend. “He looked around and he was trying to find somebody who had a head on his shoulders… I had no girlfriend. It was a bad situation, RJ.” That board member, Bill McDermott—later SAP’s CEO—opened doors that shaped Alex’s career. Outside of tech, Alex supports causes like Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, a nonprofit redistributing food waste in New York. “There's an environmental impact. On the other hand, there's a very, very deeply human impact.” Looking ahead, Alex sees this shift as part of a broader evolution. “Change is always opportunity,” he said. “The biggest opportunities come from challenges. And today is full of them.”
