Felix Norton launches BrandAxis to track AI visibility for brands

South African digital marketing entrepreneur Felix Norton has launched BrandAxis, an AI visibility platform aimed at helping businesses measure how they appear in answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and other AI tools. The launch targets a fast-growing shift in discovery as brands move from ranking in search results to being recommended directly by AI systems.

Why it matters: - AI search is changing how customers discover brands, shifting attention from website traffic to whether AI systems recommend a company at all. - BrandAxis is positioning AI visibility measurement as something smaller businesses and agencies can afford, not just enterprise marketing teams. - Norton sees AI visibility, AEO and GEO as an early-stage opportunity for South African brands before the market becomes more competitive.

What happened: - South African digital marketing entrepreneur Felix Norton launched BrandAxis, an AI visibility platform built to show how brands appear in answers generated by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude and other AI platforms. - Norton unveiled the platform in Cape Town on Sept. 15, 2026, after more than three years of research into Answer Engine Optimisation, Generative Engine Optimisation, AI SEO and AI visibility. - Norton is also the founder of South African digital agency Woww and co-founder of BrandAxis with Freddie O'Donnell, a full stack software engineer and fintech founder. - BrandAxis is designed to help businesses understand, measure and improve how AI systems describe, rank and recommend their brands.

The details: - BrandAxis repeatedly asks commercially relevant questions across AI engines and analyzes the answers rather than only tracking website traffic. - The platform shows whether a brand is mentioned, how prominently it appears, which competitors are recommended, the sentiment tied to each company and which sources shaped the response. - BrandAxis currently tracks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, with support planned or expanding for Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Mode. - Norton says the platform answers a deeper question than referral traffic: what an AI thinks about a brand before a user clicks. - BrandAxis is built around three questions: how a brand is showing up, why it is showing up that way and what to do next. - The platform measures brand visibility, ranking, sentiment and citations, then benchmarks those results against competitors and identifies the sources influencing AI responses. - BrandAxis is being developed to translate those findings into recommendations, including brand positioning changes, clearer owned-site information, stronger SEO foundations, relevant content, authoritative third-party coverage, corrections to inconsistent information and more credible mentions across the web. - The company says paid plans start at $19 per month and include a free tier. - Comparable AI visibility products often start at about $99 per month, creating a lower-cost entry point for startups, SMEs and agencies. - Norton says BrandAxis is also attracting enterprise customers and agencies looking to switch from platforms such as SEMRush and Ahrefs. - BrandAxis also plans a pay-as-you-go model. - South African search data already shows interest in terms such as answer engine optimisation, generative engine optimisation, AI SEO South Africa, ChatGPT SEO, AI SEO agency and AI visibility. - Norton prefers the term AI visibility because it focuses on the business outcome: whether a brand appears when someone asks an AI a commercially important question.

Between the lines: - Norton’s research suggests AI discovery is becoming a brand problem, not just a keyword or traffic problem. - Large language models pull from information spread across owned sites, media coverage, review platforms, industry sites and other web sources, so inconsistent messaging can weaken a brand’s chances of being recommended. - That makes positioning and narrative consistency more important than traditional SEO alone. - The launch also signals a push to make AI search analytics accessible before standards, terminology and best practices settle.

What's next: - BrandAxis will keep expanding its AI platform coverage and its recommendation layer for improving visibility. - Norton is likely to keep testing how brand positioning, citations, authority signals and external mentions affect AI-generated answers through both Woww and BrandAxis. - South African companies that move early may gain an advantage as AI search matures and becomes more competitive. - More information is available in BrandAxis's announcement and on Woww's LinkedIn page.

The bottom line: - BrandAxis is betting that the next major marketing battleground is not just getting found in search, but getting recommended by AI.