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Case studySeptember 23, 2026

0% to 36% of AI answers in four weeks.

East 2 West Collective is a boutique publicity firm working out of Los Angeles and New York: entertainment publicity, book launches, brand marketing, and crisis work. On August 27, 2026, Tibly asked ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity the 15 questions their buyers ask and the agency wasn't named once. Four weeks later it was named in 16 of 45 answers, more often than 42West, ShapiroPR, or Rogers & Cowan PMK.

0% → 36%

of daily AI answers naming East 2 West Collective, Aug 27 to Sep 23

#1

most-named PR agency across the tracked prompts, last 7 days (90 answers vs 58 for the runner-up)

34

pages Tibly wrote and published to e2wcollective.com, Sep 5 to Sep 22

Visibility over time

Share of AI answers that name East 2 West Collective

  • All engines
  • ChatGPT only
Every day Tibly asks three answer engines the same 15 buyer questions (45 answers) and records whether East 2 West Collective is named. Google AI Mode was tracked in place of Perplexity from August 31 to September 15, so the ChatGPT-only line is also shown: it's the one engine measured the same way on every day. Source: Tibly scan data, pulled September 23, 2026.

Engine by engine

First week (Aug 27 to Sep 2) against the last seven days (Sep 17 to 23). Perplexity had only six successful answers in the first week; treat its starting point as a floor, not a rate.

ChatGPT

3%

3 of 90 answers

33%

40 of 120 answers

Named in 6 of 15 answers on the September 23 scan.

Perplexity

0%

0 of 6 answers

43%

51 of 119 answers

Named in 9 of 15 answers on September 23. Perplexity cites e2wcollective.com pages directly.

Gemini

0%

0 of 90 answers

2%

2 of 120 answers

Hasn't moved yet. Gemini leans on Google Business Profile and directory data, which is where the two open actions point.

Who gets named

Number of AI answers naming each agency across the 15 tracked prompts, September 17 to 23. Competitors are whoever the engines chose to name, not a list we picked.

  1. 01East 2 West Collective90
  2. 02Persona PR58
  3. 03Key Elements PR52
  4. 0442West51
  5. 05ShapiroPR46
  6. 06Rogers & Cowan PMK40
  7. 07Press Shop PR38
  8. 08Beachwood Entertainment Collective38

What happened, in order

  1. Site goes live on Tibly

    East 2 West Collective describes the agency and Tibly generates the site, which today runs at e2wcollective.com. The visibility profile is set up the same day: public relations and marketing, Los Angeles and New York.

  2. First scan: 0 of 30

    Tibly asks the tracked prompts for the first time. Not one answer names the agency. The names that do come back are large incumbents like 42West and Rogers & Cowan PMK.

  3. First eight actions generated

    Tibly reads the losing prompts and drafts pages that answer them directly: a book-launch PR cost guide, a Los Angeles entertainment PR page for actors and musicians, crisis retainer pricing, a NYC bestseller-campaign page.

  4. Pages start publishing to e2wcollective.com

    Between September 5 and 22, 34 pages go live on the site. Each one targets a specific buyer question the engines were answering with someone else's name.

  5. Engines start citing the new pages

    e2wcollective.com is cited three times in the week of September 7, then 121 times in the week of September 14. The daily visibility rate crosses 13% for the first time.

  6. 22% of answers

    20 of 90 answers across two scans name the agency. Perplexity, tracked again from September 16, names it in nearly half of its answers.

  7. 36% of answers, first position in half of them

    16 of 45 answers name East 2 West Collective. In 8 of those 16 it's the first agency named.

Where they started

A publisher planning a non-fiction launch doesn't Google "PR agency" anymore. They ask ChatGPT for a boutique firm that can place media around a book. A talent manager asks for the best entertainment publicists in Los Angeles for an actor who's about to break. Those are the questions Tibly tracks for East 2 West Collective: 15 prompts across three buyer types (publishers, talent managers, independent film producers) in Los Angeles and New York.

On the first scan the answer to every one of them was some other firm. The agency's site described who they were, but it had no page that answered what a buyer was actually asking: what a book launch campaign costs, who handles emerging talent in LA, who can move fast on a crisis. Answer engines pull from pages that answer the question. There weren't any.

What Tibly did

Tibly scanned daily. For each prompt the agency lost, it drafted a page written to win it: a cost guide where the question was about cost, a market page where the question named a city, a service page where the question named a service. Because the site already runs on Tibly, publishing was one step, no developer and no CMS login.

Over the four weeks, Tibly generated 64 actions. 52 were completed, 10 were dismissed as off-target, and two are still open. Behind them sit 64 deliverables: 62 page drafts (34 distinct pages, several revised more than once as the scans came back), plus a directory-listing kit and a Google Business Profile kit generated on September 18.

  • Non-fiction book launch PR in Los Angeles and New York: the most-cited page on the site, referenced 58 times in AI answers.
  • Book launch PR cost and pricing guide: what Los Angeles and New York authors pay.
  • Boutique entertainment PR in Los Angeles for indie talent.
  • Entertainment publicists in NYC for upcoming actors and musicians.
  • Los Angeles indie film PR and festival publicity.

What changed

The engines started citing the site. In the first two weeks e2wcollective.com wasn't cited once. In the week of September 14 it was cited 121 times. The visibility rate followed the citations, not the other way round.

The prompt that moved most is the one a publisher would type: "find a boutique PR agency for a non-fiction book launch campaign with media placement." East 2 West Collective was named in 15 of 24 answers to it in the last seven days, and in 13 of 24 for the Los Angeles version. On the talent side, "best entertainment publicists in Los Angeles for upcoming actors and musicians" went from never to 11 of 24.

Across every tracked prompt, the agency is now named more often than any competitor the engines bring up. Position matters too: on the September 23 scan it was the first name in 8 of the 16 answers that named it.

Questions people ask about this study

How long did it take East 2 West Collective to show up in AI answers?
About two and a half weeks from the first published page to the first sustained lift. Pages started going live on September 5, engines started citing them in the week of September 7, and the daily rate crossed 13% on September 13. It reached 36% on September 23.
Did the agency write the pages?
No. Tibly drafted every page from the losing prompts and the agency's existing site, and published them to e2wcollective.com, which runs on Tibly. 10 of the 64 suggestions were dismissed as off-target and never published.
Is 36% a good AI visibility rate?
For a boutique agency competing against 42West and Rogers & Cowan PMK, yes: in the last seven days East 2 West Collective was named in more answers than any of them. But it means nearly two in three answers still don't name the agency, and Gemini barely does. That's the work still open.
How is the visibility rate measured?
Tibly asks each tracked engine the same 15 buyer questions every day and records whether East 2 West Collective is named in the answer. The rate is answers naming the agency divided by successful answers that day. Competitor counts come from the same answers: whoever the engines named.

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