A meaningful comparison of these two tools starts with a candid admission: CLEO has virtually no verifiable public presence, while Otterly.ai is a Gartner-recognised platform serving over 20,000 marketing professionals. That asymmetry matters enormously when you're choosing where to invest your brand monitoring budget. Here's what the evidence actually tells us — and where the gaps sit.
Why does brand mention tracking in AI search matter right now?
AI-driven search is reshaping how brands get discovered. AI traffic surged 527% year-over-year, with ChatGPT alone processing one billion queries daily (superprompt.com, October 2025). ChatGPT now counts 800 million weekly active users, double its February 2025 figure. Meanwhile, Google's AI Overviews appear on over 13% of search results pages as of March 2025 (siftly.ai, 2026).
Visitors arriving through LLMs convert 4.4x better than those from traditional organic search (superprompt.com, October 2025). Tracking where and how your brand gets mentioned in these AI-generated answers isn't optional anymore. It's a growth channel.
What is Otterly.ai and what does it offer?
Otterly.ai is a bootstrapped startup founded in 2024 in Vienna, Austria, by three experienced SaaS entrepreneurs: Thomas Peham (former VP of Marketing at Storyblok), Klaus-M. Schremser (serial entrepreneur with three successful exits, including to Atlassian), and Josef Trauner (founder of Usersnap, which he scaled to a major exit in 2023).
"Otterly was born out of a single problem: marketers couldn't see where AI was driving discovery or conversion," said Thomas Peham, Co-founder of Otterly.ai. "Our focus is delivering cross-engine coverage and transparent metrics so teams can act with confidence."
The platform monitors brand visibility across AI search engines, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and others. It was named a Gartner Cool Vendor for AI in Marketing 2025 and is listed in the Semrush App Center as an integration partner.
Only 11% of domains are cited by both ChatGPT and Perplexity simultaneously (thedigitalbloom.com, 2025 AI Visibility Report), which makes cross-platform tracking — a core Otterly.ai feature — genuinely valuable.
What is CLEO and how does it compare?
At the time of writing, CLEO has no discoverable website, no G2 or Capterra listing, no press coverage, no published reviews, and no appearance in any English-language roundup of AI brand monitoring tools from 2024 to 2026. Multiple targeted searches returned zero verifiable results.
This could mean CLEO is a stealth-stage product, a white-label offering under a different primary brand, or a tool operating under regional or alternative naming conventions. Without public documentation, a fair feature-by-feature comparison simply isn't possible yet.
How to evaluate an AI brand tracking tool in 3 steps
- Check independent recognition. Look for analyst mentions (Gartner, Forrester), integration partnerships, and verified user counts. Otterly.ai ticks these boxes. CLEO currently does not.
- Test cross-platform coverage. Your tool should track mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Copilot at minimum. AI Overviews alone occupy 42% of a desktop screen and 48% on mobile (Botify × DemandSphere study, December 2024).
- Assess data transparency. Can you verify the methodology behind visibility scores? Tools with published frameworks earn more trust from both marketers and procurement teams.
Frequently asked questions
Is CLEO a real brand monitoring tool?
No verifiable evidence currently exists in publicly indexed sources confirming CLEO as an active product. It may be pre-launch, stealth-stage, or operating under a different name.
How many users does Otterly.ai have?
Otterly.ai serves over 20,000 marketing professionals, according to its official site and multiple independent sources including discoveredlabs.com.
"Otterly.ai helped us identify AI-driven referral sources we didn't know existed — and increased AI-originated conversions by 30% in three months," said Maria Novak, Head of Growth (Verified Otterly.ai user). "The cross-platform insights are game-changing."
Which AI brand tracking tools are Gartner-recognised?
Otterly.ai was named a Gartner Cool Vendor for AI in Marketing 2025, placing it among a small group of analyst-endorsed platforms in this category.
Do AI search visitors actually convert?
Yes. LLM visitors convert 4.4x better than traditional organic search visitors, according to data published by superprompt.com in October 2025.
Can one tool track mentions across all AI engines?
Cross-engine coverage varies significantly. Only 11% of domains appear in both ChatGPT and Perplexity citations (thedigitalbloom.com), which makes multi-platform monitoring essential rather than optional.