Zheshang Securities released a research report stating that AI is catalyzing a fundamental transformation in traffic acquisition and content production, highlighting two key themes: GEO and AI comics. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is rapidly evolving from a technical concept into a marketing necessity, while AI comics, as an innovative form of AIGC in the content domain, may receive a boost from ByteDance's sponsorship of the Spring Festival Gala. The firm continues to advise focusing on the thematic investment opportunities in GEO and AI comics.
Why is GEO starting to gain attention? Because in the first half of 2026, service providers are expected to intensively launch products or strategies, and major model developers are anticipated to introduce new policies concerning source governance and GEO optimization management. The domestic GEO market began in the second half of 2025, with service models still not yet finalized, making it temporarily impossible to provide a clear gross margin figure. The primary commercial path for GEO in the market currently focuses on meeting marketing needs to enhance AI recommendation rates, with charges based on keywords and the duration of AI recommendations.
AI Comics: From "Cost Reduction and Efficiency Gains" to "Platform Support" and Now the "Spring Festival Gala Opportunity". The 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala has confirmed ByteDance's Volcano Engine as the exclusive AI cloud partner. Its AI assistant, Doubao, will be deeply involved in interactions, providing a massive user base and significant monetization potential for AI applications, including comics. ByteDance's release of multimodal models has made "creating shows" extremely inexpensive. At the Volcano Engine Force conference in December 2025, ByteDance launched the Doubao large model 1.8 and the Seedance 1.5 Pro video generation model. These have increased the efficiency of draft creation by 65% and reduced无效 creation costs by 60%. The further decline in video generation costs provides a solid technical foundation for the scalable replication of hit content.
Investors should be aware of risks including macroeconomic performance falling short of expectations and slower-than-anticipated adoption of AI applications.