Spotlight Surpasses 100 Profound-Certified Practitioners, Solidifying Its Position as a World Leader in LLM Visibility Consultancy

The Kansas City–based firm is now listed in Profound’s official partner directory as the most AEO-certified consultancy globally, marking a major step forward in how influence is built and measured in the AI era.

KANSAS CITY, Mo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Spotlight LLC, the world-leading influence orchestration firm based in Kansas City, today announced that its consultants have collectively earned more Profound certifications than any other firm in the world. With over 100 certified practitioners across three certification tracks, Spotlight simultaneously debuts on Profound's official partner directory, a vetted network of agencies and consultants who deliver results on the Profound platform.

The milestone underscores Spotlight's commitment to staying ahead of the rapidly evolving AI search landscape, where buyers increasingly discover and evaluate B2B vendors through AI-mediated conversations rather than traditional search engines.

A New Era of B2B Influence

As large language models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini become primary research tools for B2B buyers, companies face a new and urgent challenge: being discoverable, credible, and recommended in AI-generated answers. Profound is the full-stack marketing platform purpose-built for this environment, helping brands understand how AI represents them, optimizes their presence across answer engines, and deploys autonomous marketing agents at scale.

Spotlight has invested deeply in this platform, building what it believes to be the most credentialed Profound practice in the world:

• 100+ AEO Foundation Certifications — establishing a firm-wide baseline of answer engine optimization expertise across the full consultant team
• 10+ AEO Analytics + Agent Engineering Certifications — equipping analysts to measure AI visibility data with precision and deploy AI-native marketing workflows for clients
• 20+ Custom Agent Library — a proprietary suite of pre-built agents ready for immediate deployment across any client engagement

This depth of certification, combined with Spotlight's decade-long track record in analyst relations and customer engagement, gives the firm a distinctive vantage point: it understands not only how to optimize a client's Profound implementation and AEO strategy, but how to strengthen the underlying trusted sources — analysts, customers, and third-party validators — that LLMs draw on when forming their answers.

Influence Orchestration for the AI-Mediated Buyer Journey

Spotlight's approach to LLM visibility goes beyond technical optimization. The firm's influence orchestration model is built on the premise that credibility in AI search flows from credibility in the real world — and that the most durable competitive advantage comes from earning trust with the audiences that LLMs trust most.

“We're at an inflection point in how B2B buyers discover and evaluate vendors,” said Rick Nash, CEO and co-founder of Spotlight. “LLMs don't reward the loudest voice — they reward the most trusted one. Often, the most credible voices are not owned directly by the vendor, but rather those of a vendor’s customers, industry analysts, and other influencers. Spotlight was built to help companies earn credibility among those pools of trust. Now, with our depth of experience as the firm with the most certified Profound practitioners in the world, we give our clients the clearest possible view of how they're showing up in the conversations that matter most."

“Spotlight is helping define how leading organizations use Profound,” said Josh Blyskal, head of education at Profound. “Their approach pairs deep diagnostic insight with an agent-driven execution model that allows teams to systematically improve how they show up across AI-driven buying journeys.”

About Spotlight

Headquartered in Kansas City, MO, Spotlight LLC is the world's leading influence orchestration firm, specializing in helping B2B companies earn visibility, credibility, and recommendations through human and AI-mediated touchpoints. For more information, visit www.spotlightar.com

About Profound

Profound is the full-stack marketing platform for AI search, used by leading marketers to monitor how AI models represent their brand, analyze prompt volumes and answer engine performance, and deploy autonomous marketing agents across AI channels including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Learn more at tryprofound.com.