ThriveFinity vs Exposure Ninja vs a Fractional CMO for AI Search (GEO)

An agency, a studio and a part-time marketing director can all sell you "AI search optimisation". They're very different things to buy.

Google's own advice has caught up with this. Its page on whether you need an SEO, updated in June 2026, now tells you to ask anyone offering "AEO" or "GEO" services whether their advice lines up with Google's own guidance. That's a fair question for all three options on this page, including us.

This page compares three common routes for a B2B company: Exposure Ninja, a full-service search marketing agency, ThriveFinity, which is us, and hiring a fractional CMO. I've kept it to what each one publishes. Where a page is silent, the table says "not stated". There's also a section on when Exposure Ninja or a fractional CMO is the better pick, because sometimes they are.

Facts about Exposure Ninja come from its own website, its listing in a public agency directory and Companies House, all checked on 10 October 2026. Prices and services change, so check their site before you decide. ThriveFinity isn't affiliated with Exposure Ninja.

Three Different Ways to Buy GEO

The three options differ in who does the work, how it's priced and how much of your marketing they take on. Here's each one in a paragraph.

Exposure Ninja describes itself as "a search marketing agency specialising in SEO, AI Search and PPC" on its homepage. Its menu runs to seven service lines: AI Search Optimisation, SEO, Content and Digital PR, Paid Media, CRM and Email, Website and CRO, and Brand. Companies House lists its trading company, Exposure Trading Ltd, as active and incorporated on 8 November 2011.

ThriveFinity sells AI search optimisation (GEO) as defined pieces of work: a free Signal, a fixed-price Retrofit with a re-test at day 30, and an optional monthly Retainer. Every price is on the site. It's a one-person company, and every paid report is signed by a named verifier.

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works for you part-time, usually one to three days a week on a monthly retainer. They own the plan, the budget and the agencies. They don't usually do specialist GEO work themselves.

So the first question isn't which one is best. It's which job you're hiring for.

Side-by-Side Comparison

The table lines up what each option publishes on the same twelve points. Exposure Ninja's column quotes or summarises its own pages, and the fractional CMO column uses two UK provider guides.

"Not stated" means the pages we checked didn't say. It doesn't mean the provider doesn't offer it. Ask them.

What Exposure Ninja Publishes About Its GEO Work

Exposure Ninja's GEO service is broad and sits inside its SEO and digital PR work. Its Generative Engine Optimisation page lists nine parts: a GEO Game Plan, SEO, AI Overviews Optimisation, Semantic Keyword Structuring, AI-Optimised Content Creation, Structured Data, Review Generation, Digital PR and GEO Consultancy.

Two of those are worth noticing if you're comparing proposals. Review generation uses "automated email flows that prompt customers to leave feedback on your preferred platforms". And the page is clear that GEO sits on top of SEO: "To be successful with GEO, you need to already be successful with traditional SEO." I'd agree with that. It's also close to what Google says in its own guidance on AI features: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary."

The work that happens away from your own site matters more than it used to. Lily Ray, an SEO and AI search strategist, put it this way in October 2025:

That's where an agency with in-house content, video and digital PR teams has an obvious advantage. Exposure Ninja's menu includes all three.

Its AI Search Audit page is the most specific thing it publishes about measurement. It says the audit measures "your visibility, mentions, sentiment, citations, and positioning" across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. You get the full prompt library, a competitor benchmark, a technical review covering "blocked crawlers, JavaScript, technical errors, and schema", and "a clear, prioritised action plan". After the audit, the page says you can implement the plan yourself or work with them on a wider programme.

What I couldn't find on the pages I checked: prices, how many times each prompt is run, a minimum term, or a guarantee. None of that is unusual for an agency that prices through a consultation. It just means you'll need to ask.

What a Fractional CMO Costs and Does

PrimeWise quotes £4,000 to £12,000 a month (one to three days a week). Leadership Services quotes £1,795 to £15,000 a month depending on company size. Both guides are published by firms that sell the service. A fractional CMO is a different kind of hire from either a GEO agency or a GEO studio.

PrimeWise's April 2026 guide sets out three tiers by days per week, based on what it calls its analysis of "40+ fractional CMO engagements across UK sectors in 2025–2026".

Leadership Services' May 2026 guide prices it by company size instead. It assumes a senior CMO with 15-plus years of experience working with businesses between £1m and £50m in revenue.

Two details from that guide matter for this comparison. It says the fractional CMO and an agency "are often used together, with the fractional CMO setting strategy and managing the agency rather than replacing it". And it says you should budget separately for "specialist freelancers or agencies the CMO brings in for specific work". In plain terms, a fractional CMO will probably end up hiring someone like Exposure Ninja or us for the GEO work itself.

Minimum terms are longer, too. PrimeWise says "the standard minimum engagement period for a fractional CMO in the UK market is three to six months." I compare the costs in more detail in fractional CMO vs strategy consultant vs AI.

How Each One Measures Results

Measurement is where GEO proposals differ most, and it's the hardest part to judge from a sales call. The reason is simple. AI tools rarely give the same answer twice.

In January 2026, SparkToro and Gumshoe had 600 volunteers run 12 prompts through ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI a combined 2,961 times. Rand Fishkin reported a less than 1 in 100 chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI would give the same list of brands in any two responses. Getting the same list in the same order was closer to 1 in 1,000.

So a single run of each question tells you very little. What you want is a rate, like "named in 7 of 10 runs", measured the same way before and after the work.

Here's what each option says publicly. Exposure Ninja's audit measures visibility, mentions, sentiment, citations and positioning. Its GEO FAQ says "tracking AI mentions is still evolving, but visibility metrics are the primary measurement tool." I didn't find a stated number of runs per prompt. We ask each of 100 to 150 buyer questions 3 times in each of five AI tools, then run the same set again at day 30. A fractional CMO's measurement depends entirely on the person and the tools they buy in.

Rand explains why visibility percentage beats position in this interview. Watch it before you sit through any GEO pitch:

Play Video (Loads YouTube)

If you want the maths, I go through it in measuring AI share of voice.

When Exposure Ninja Is the Better Choice

Exposure Ninja is the better choice when AI search is one part of a bigger search and marketing programme, and you want one team to run all of it. These are the situations where I'd point you there rather than to us.

• You need several channels at once. Its seven service lines include paid media across Google, Meta, LinkedIn and Microsoft, email and HubSpot CRM, WordPress and Shopify builds, and branding. We do none of those.
• You're mid-market or enterprise. Its agency directory listing on Peec AI says it partners with "mid-market and enterprise B2B and B2C brands that rely on search to drive growth". Its SEO menu includes Enterprise SEO for large sites.
• You want content and digital PR made for you, at volume. It lists content marketing, digital PR, link building, copywriting and in-house video, design and photography. Earning mentions on other sites is a big part of GEO, and that takes people.
• You sell in the US or Europe too. Its contact page says it works "with businesses across the UK, North America, and Europe", lists a US phone number and shows a New York office as coming soon.
• You want a long-established team. The company was incorporated in 2011, and its About page says its team grew to "100+ Ninjas". It also says it launched an AI search tracking tool, MineMyBrand.com.

The trade-off is the one you'd expect with any full-service agency. Scope and price get agreed in a consultation, so you'll need to pin down the measurement method, minimum term and notice period in writing yourself.

When a Fractional CMO Is the Better Choice

A fractional CMO is the better choice when your real gap is marketing leadership, and AI search is only one symptom of it.

• Nobody senior owns marketing, and you need someone to set the plan, manage the budget and report to the board.
• You're not sure who you sell to or why they buy from you. GEO only makes a fuzzy company easier to find, and the first job may be sharpening your B2B positioning.
• You're juggling several agencies and freelancers and nobody's holding them to account.
• You can commit to a monthly retainer for at least three to six months.

If you're in that spot, hire the leader first. Let them decide whether GEO goes to an agency, a studio or an in-house hire.

Questions to Ask Any Provider

Ask every option the same questions, and get the answers in writing. Google's hiring advice is a good starting point. Its page suggests asking what results to expect "and in what timeframe", how they measure success, and whether they'll "share with me all the changes you make to my site". It also says that if someone guarantees first place in search results, "find someone else."

Google's Search Central team has a short video on hiring an SEO specialist that covers references and a technical interview. It applies just as well to a GEO hire:

Play Video (Loads YouTube)

Then add the GEO-specific questions:

1. Which buyer questions will you track, and can I see the full list before we start?
2. Which AI tools do you test, and how many times do you run each question?
3. When is the re-test, and will it use exactly the same questions and settings as the baseline?
4. What exactly will you change, and who does the work: you, or my team from your list?
5. What does it cost, what's the minimum term and what's the notice period?
6. What happens if a report contains a factual error?

The longer version, with red flags, is in our GEO agency buyer's guide. And before any of these calls, run a baseline yourself. My guide to running an AI visibility check shows how in an afternoon.

Plenty of established companies are surprised by what they find. This founder's post on Reddit is typical:

That's one person's experience, not proof of anything. But it's exactly the kind of result a baseline turns into a number you can act on.

How We Wrote This Comparison

This page names a competitor, so UK advertising rules apply to it, and you should know which ones. Section 3 of the CAP Code says a comparison with an identifiable competitor must "compare products meeting the same needs or intended for the same purpose" and must "objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature". The same conditions sit in regulation 4 of the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008, which also bars comparisons that discredit or denigrate a competitor.

So every fact about Exposure Ninja links to the page it came from, and every check is dated. I haven't repeated any of its client results or testimonials, because I can't verify them, and quoting them would only repeat its marketing. Where its pages say nothing, the table says so.

Google's original "How to hire an SEO" talk, from 2017, makes the same point about evidence from the buyer's side. It's long, but the advice has aged well:

Play Video (Loads YouTube)

Spotted something out of date or wrong? Email om@thrivefinity.uk. We respond within 5 working days, and corrections are logged on our errata page. The next scheduled recheck of every fact here is due by 8 January 2027.

Where ThriveFinity Fits

We fit when you want AI search work as a defined job with a known price and a measured before and after. Here's what that looks like, with every price taken from our published pricing.

• AI Visibility Signal (free, under an hour): 12 buyer questions across GPT (OpenAI), Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, scored 0 to 100. It's automated and unsigned, and you can run the free AI visibility check right now.
• Diagnostic (£349, 3 working days): the diagnosis on its own, credited in full to the Retrofit if you book it within 30 days.
• AI Search Readiness Retrofit (£1,950, 10 working days): 100 to 150 buyer questions across five AI tools, your 10 highest-value pages fixed, 5 briefs for new pages, and a re-test at day 30. Signed by a named verifier, with an accuracy guarantee.
• AI Visibility Retainer (£1,950 a month) or Quarterly Re-measurement (£595): after the Retrofit, if you want ongoing tracking. The Retainer has a 3-month minimum, then 30 days' notice.

We're not the right choice if you need paid media, email, web builds or branding, if you want a large team producing content every month, or if you need someone to lead your whole marketing function. An agency like Exposure Ninja or a fractional CMO will serve you better there. We also don't buy links or placements, and we won't promise that any AI tool will name you. Our sample AI visibility report shows exactly what you'd get.

Whoever you choose, start with a baseline. It's the only way to know later whether the money moved anything.

Weighing a specialist instead? We've compared ourselves the same way with The GEO Agency, Whitehat SEO, Solvid and Gripped. Every page is listed on the comparisons hub.

Pranav Unni

Founder · ThriveFinity Connect on LinkedIn →

Pranav Unni is the founder and lead verifier of ThriveFinity. He reads and signs every paid deliverable personally, and writes about go-to-market decisions for established B2B companies.