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Demandbase launches AEO Agent and formalizes 'B2A' marketing at GO NYC

The pipeline vendor says buyers now start with an agent, not a search engine, and ships three agents to shape what those assistants say about a brand.

By Iris Holloway·Tools & frameworks·

Demandbase today announced three new AI agents at its GO conference in New York City and named the discipline they’re built for: B2A, or business-to-agent marketing. The headline product is AEO Agent, flanked by Campaign Agent and Audience Agent, all three riding on Mojo, the company’s existing B2B marketing agent, and wired to external assistants through APIs and the Model Context Protocol.

The pitch rests on a Gartner prediction that by 2028, 90% of B2B buying will be AI-agent intermediated, with more than $15 trillion of B2B spend pushed through agent exchanges and traditional SEO and PPC giving way to agent engine optimization. Demandbase is converting that forecast into shippable software roughly two years ahead of the deadline.

“Marketing to people isn’t enough anymore because buyers no longer start with a search. They start with an agent. And those agents are deciding which brands get seen and which get overlooked,” said CEO Gabe Rogol.

AEO Agent is the one doing the structural work. It draws on 342 million contacts across 13 million companies, compares how major AI assistants describe and recommend a given brand to each buying group member, surfaces the sources those assistants are reading, and attempts to resolve anonymous AI-driven traffic back to accounts and contacts. In other words, it audits what the machines are saying about you while quietly re-identifying the humans the machines sent.

The timing is unflattering for most buyers of this software. Demandbase’s own GO research says 72% of marketing teams haven’t grown in two years, which is the same stagnant cohort now being told to staff a brand-new optimization function.

Pricing wasn’t disclosed. That’s its own tell: the category is being named before it’s being priced, which is how AI agents become the invisible first step in the buyer’s journey gets converted from analyst slideware into a line item nobody budgeted for.

Sources