The daily briefing for AI marketers, growth hackers, and operators.

TL;DR — Semrush analyzed 200,000+ keywords and found zero-click rates slightly decreased (38.1% to 36.2%) after AI Overviews appeared. Pew data shows only 1% of AI-summary encounters click a listed source. Tactical implication: Run a 30-day audit mapping top queries to AIO presence + intent, then shift effort from definitional pages to commercial/transactional terms.

TL;DR — CMOs from Intuit, Adobe, Zappi, and BetterHelp share 2026 priorities. Key theme: AI brand presence now equals first-party presence. Nataly Kelly (Zappi): optimizing for AEO and GEO because AI leans on authoritative sources. The new KPI is Citation Authority - how often an AI cites your brand as the primary source. Tactical implication: Audit your 'About' page and press releases for structured entity data.

TL;DR — MarTech playbook is authority + citations: strengthen E-E-A-T signals, earn mentions from trusted sources, and improve structured clarity so LLMs can extract and cite you. Tactical implication: Pick 10 priority pages and add a definition block, 3-5 cited stats, and a short how-to section designed to be quoted.

TL;DR — Plan structured as Days 0-30, 31-60, 61-90. Recommends prioritizing pages above 8% GSC CTR, adding AEO-focused schema (FAQ/HowTo/Organization), and tracking LLM brand mentions with Profound, Otterly.AI, and BrandRadar. Tactical implication: Build a 90-day sprint board starting with top CTR pages in GSC.

TL;DR — MarTech highlights strategies for brands to enhance visibility in AI platforms. Strategy: Optimize content for AI algorithms. Tools: AI visibility tools. Action: Regularly update content to align with AI changes.

TL;DR — HubSpot Marketing outlines effective AI visibility tools for lead generation. Tools: AI visibility tools. Strategy: Focus on improving lead quality. Action: Integrate selected tools into marketing workflows.

TL;DR — [PPC Land] highlights the efficiency of Anthropic's Claude Code in replicating a complex system architecture. Strategy: This indicates a shift in how technical debt and build costs are perceived. Action: Consider adopting mini-apps for specific campaigns instead of traditional software suites.

TL;DR — [Search Engine Land] argues AI Overviews are materially reducing organic CTR, even for #1 rankings. Strategy: SEO is shifting from ranking optimization to AI citation optimization. Action: Track brand mentions inside AI Overviews.

TL;DR — [AdExchanger] breaks down the shift towards signal-rich inputs in advertising. Strategy: Performance correlates with event quality. Action: Optimize for down-funnel events like qualified leads or purchases.

TL;DR — [HubSpot Blog] highlights the use of AI in automating campaign operations. Workflow: AI handles campaign QA and performance summaries. Action: Use AI for pre-send QA and auto-generate performance briefs.

TL;DR — [Digiday] highlights CMOs' shift towards consolidating MarTech stacks by replacing point solutions with AI-native platforms. Strategy: Audit tools by outcomes, not features. Action: Remove tools used less than 20% of the time.

TL;DR — [Reddit r/marketing] argues AI-generated content only performs when tightly constrained. Workflow: Templates and tone control outperform free-form prompting. Action: Lock AI into fixed templates for ads, emails, and landing pages.

TL;DR — [Jason M. Lemkin] breaks down a practical approach to deploying an AI agent for GTM challenges. Strategy: identify a painful GTM problem and a leading vendor. Action: dedicate 1–2 hours daily for 30 days to refine the agent's outputs.

TL;DR — [PPC Land] breaks down the new operating environment with hard numbers. Strategy: Google’s December 2025 core update ran 18 days and volatility is now more continuous. Action: stop optimizing for ‘keyword rank’ as the north star and design content for agentic browsers.

TL;DR — [VKTR] highlights Databricks securing $4 billion in funding to enhance Agentic AI. Strategy: Focus on building infrastructure for autonomous data workflows. Action: Consider investing in advanced AI systems to improve data processing capabilities.

TL;DR — [Destination CRM] highlights Iterable's launch of a Model Context Protocol server. Tools: Enables AI agents to manage campaigns. Action: Marketing ops teams should explore building custom AI agents.

TL;DR — [Seafoam Media] breaks down the shift from SEO to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and the emergence of Employee Influencers as a media channel. Strategy: pivoting to GEO. Action: consider integrating Employee Influencers into your marketing strategy.

TL;DR — Search Engine Journal provides templates to enhance PPC execution using AI prompts. Tools: leverage templates for efficiency. Action: implement prompts to improve ad performance.

TL;DR — [Kieran Flanagan] highlights the challenges of keeping up with AI advancements. Strategy: Focus on mastering a few tools. Action: Prioritize learning and building in the AI space.

TL;DR — The Rundown AI reports on Instagram chief Adam Mosseri's pivot away from the 'curated feed' aesthetic. Shift: Gen Z usage data shows a migration to 'unflattering candids' and DMs over polished grids. Trust: IG is exploring cryptographic signing to verify human-captured media vs AI generations. Action: test 'raw', personality-driven video content to align with the platform's push for authenticity.

TL;DR — CX Today argues that AI personalization engines must be evaluated on their ability to suppress messages. Guardrail: effective engines use 'fatigue scoring' to stop sending after low engagement signals (e.g., rapid deletes). Integration: sync support ticket data to automatically pause upselling during active complaints. Action: ask vendors to demonstrate a 'do not send' scenario based on negative intent signals during demos.

TL;DR — Search Engine Journal frameworks a 70/30 budget split between PPC and SEO for balanced growth. Strategy: allocate 70% to PPC for immediate product launches, shifting to SEO for long-term CAC reduction. Adaptation: invest SEO budget into schema markup and structured data to capture AI Overviews. Action: model a 6-month budget scenario that transitions spend from paid acquisition to organic compounding.

TL;DR — MarTech Series posits that marketing technology has evolved from execution tools to autonomous 'control planes'. Governance: algorithms now determine brand identity by dynamically prioritizing high-performing creative variants. Strategy: leadership must shift from approving campaigns to designing the 'guardrails' and rules that machines operate within. Action: audit automated optimization rules to ensure they don't sacrifice brand equity for cheap clicks.

TL;DR — Fast Company argues that organizational simplification is the prerequisite for AI success. Metric: track 'complexity signals' like tool onboarding time (e.g. Spotify reduced code merge time from 60 to 20 days). Protocol: establish clear data ownership and decision protocols before adding new AI tools. Action: audit the tech stack to remove disconnected 'Frankenstein' tools that increase manual reconciliation.

TL;DR — Barchart (via Visionary Unleashed) claims advertisers can train Facebook's AI to target affluent buyers by filtering conversion signals. Method: use a 'TTO' approach to send only qualified lead data (verified income/fit) back to the pixel. Result: prevents the algorithm from optimizing for cheap, unqualified leads. Action: review server-side conversion events to ensure you are only feeding 'high-value' signals to ad platforms.