• How to Build a Brand Entity for AI Visibility
    Sep 24 2026

    For most of the last decade, brand was the marketing line item hardest to defend, because there's no click to track when a buyer arrives already knowing who you are. AI search changes that math. An assistant reads your website, your listings, your reviews, and every page that mentions you in passing, hands the buyer one summary, and decides whether to name you at all. This week Michael connects brand entity work to the brand building marketers already know how to do, then gets practical: settle what your company is best at, make every page you control say it, cut the content that says something else, and get other sites to repeat it.

    In this episode:

    * What a brand entity is: your company as a thing AI systems can identify, the facts attached to it, and the link between your brand and your subjects that gets you named
    * Why brand work is easier to defend now, with Airbnb's 2020 marketing cut as the example
    * How AI systems compress weeks of buyer research into one description, and what happens when a forgotten directory listing or a passing newspaper mention gets it wrong
    * Using Jim Collins' hedgehog concept to pick the handful of subjects you want to be known for
    * Why publishing outside those subjects confuses AI systems about what you do, and what happened to HubSpot's and ClickUp's off-subject traffic
    * How to audit your site with Search Console and GA data, and why a human should tag every page on or off subject before anything gets deleted
    * What the homepage, about page, case studies, and team page need to say, plus a brand block at the end of every post
    * Organization schema, sameAs, and Wikidata, and why schema won't fix a page that doesn't say who you are
    * Mention building versus link building, and the order Michael recommends: fix the profiles you own, claim the ones you don't have, then go after earned coverage
    * How long changes take to show up on each platform, and why tracking should start the day the work does

    Find all the sources referenced in this episode at http://victorious.com/podcast/brand-entity/

    Chapters:
    [00:00:00] This week in search: Comscore's AI assistant share data, Google tests AI Mode links in AI Overviews and Dive Deeper in Discover, GBP spam review alerts
    [00:00:00] Brand was the hardest line item to defend
    [00:00:00] Airbnb's 2020 marketing cut
    [00:00:00] What a brand entity is: the who and the what
    [00:00:00] Buyers now start with a chatbot
    [00:00:00] How AI systems assemble one description of your company
    [00:00:00] Wolf River Electric vs. Google
    [00:00:00] The hedgehog concept and your short list of subjects
    [00:00:00] The stop-doing list
    [00:00:00] Off-subject content confuses AI systems: HubSpot and ClickUp
    [00:00:00] Auditing your site: keep, combine, remove, improve
    [00:00:00] Pruning risks: IBM and CNET
    [00:00:00] Homepage, about page, case studies, team page
    [00:00:00] A brand block on every post
    [00:00:00] Organization schema, sameAs, and Wikidata
    [00:00:00] Mention building and co-occurrence
    [00:00:00] Fix what's wrong, claim what's missing, then earn coverage
    [00:00:00] How long changes take to show up
    [00:00:00] Pulling it together

    Sources:
    Ahrefs, "An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied)," ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/
    Semrush, "How We Are Using Semrush to Drive LLM Visibility," Oct. 2025, semrush.com/blog/how-we-are-using-semrush-to-drive-llm-visibility/
    Reason, "Large Libel Models: Small Business Sues Google, Claiming AI Overview in Searches Hallucinated Attorney General Lawsuit," June 11, 2025, reason.com/volokh/2025/06/11/large-libel-models-small-business-sues-google-claiming-ai-overview-in-searches-hallucinated-attorney-general-lawsuit/
    Jim Collins, Good to Great (2001)

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    46 Min.
  • How To Build an AI Search Strategy, Part 4: Measurement and Reporting
    Sep 18 2026

    For 15 years, marketing measurement got more precise every year. AI search is moving the other way. An assistant's recommendation happens in a conversation you can't see, and no platform will tell you what was asked. Michael closes out our four-part series on building a full-funnel AI search strategy with the measurement layer: which numbers you can get, why share of voice reads like a poll, and how to report to leadership that wants more certainty than the channel can give.

    In this episode:

    • Why AI assistants don't report like Search Console: the conversations are private, there's no site boundary to measure inside, and most assistants have no ad revenue riding on your click
    • Hold the channel to the word-of-mouth bar. You can influence it, but you can't listen in
    • The leading indicators from a prompt tracker: share of voice, mention rate, citation rate, and sentiment, by funnel stage and platform
    • Share of voice is a sample, not a census, so your CEO's "we weren't in the answer" is one response in a poll
    • The lagging indicators already in your stack: GA4's AI Assistant channel, organic conversion rate, direct traffic, branded search, and the how-did-you-hear-about-us field
    • The monthly one-pager and quarterly narrative, labeled leading and lagging, with a note on what the report can't show


    Chapter Headings
    [00:00:00] Intro
    [00:02:08] This week in search: GSC AI position counting will change
    [00:03:49] Similarweb on how much AI-influenced traffic analytics can see
    [00:05:14] Google pays publishers for AI answers inside Search Console
    [00:07:02] Measurement is getting less precise as the channel grows
    [00:09:21] Why AI assistants don't give you reporting
    [00:11:55] The word-of-mouth bar
    [00:13:44] Two groups of numbers: leading and lagging indicators
    [00:20:10] Share of voice is a poll, not a census
    [00:22:24] Mention rate, citation rate, and sentiment, by funnel stage
    [00:25:23] Track platforms separately
    [00:27:51] Check how your tool matches your brand name
    [00:29:36] Lagging indicators: GA4, Search Console, and Merchant Center
    [00:33:05] Direct traffic, branded search, and conversion rate
    [00:35:47] The monthly one-pager
    [00:38:12] The quarterly narrative
    [00:40:42] Answering the executive who wants full attribution
    [00:44:42] Pulling the series together


    You can find the transcript and all the resources on the episode page:
    https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-measurement/

    Sources
    Search Engine Roundtable, "Google: Google Search Console AI Position Reporting Will Evolve Over Time," September 16, 2026, seroundtable.com/google-search-console-ai-reporting-change-42099.html
    Similarweb, "Being Recommended in AI Makes Users 2.5x More Likely to Visit Your Site," June 2026, similarweb.com/blog/insights/ai-news/ai-visibility-downstream-impact/
    Digiday, "Google rolls out pay-per-value AI licensing program to publishers," September 14, 2026, digiday.com/media/google-rolls-out-pay-value-ai-licensing-program-to-publishers/
    Forbes Business Council, "CMOs Say Teams Know How To Win AI Search, Few Have Proof," June 1, 2026, forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2026/06/01/cmos-say-teams-know-how-to-win-ai-search-few-have-proof/
    Victorious, Q2 2026 AI search research, victorious.com/quarterly-search-report/
    The Search Signal, "Building an AI Search Strategy, Part 1: The Infrastructure," youtu.be/WW8qIH1XpQc
    The Search Signal, "How To Build An AI Search Strategy, Part 2: Top-of-Funnel Content," victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-tofu/
    The Search Signal, "How To Build An AI Search Strategy, Part 3: Bottom-of-Funnel Mentions," victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-bofu/

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    46 Min.
  • How To Build a Full-Funnel AI Strategy, Part 3: Bottom of the Funnel
    Sep 10 2026

    Ranking well and earning citations builds AI systems' trust in your company, but it doesn't get you recommended. This week Michael covers part three of our four-part series on building a full-funnel AI search strategy: what actually decides whether your company's name shows up when someone asks an AI system who to hire. According to Victorious's own research, it has little to do with your website's rankings or traffic. It comes down to how often the rest of the internet mentions your name.

    What you'll hear in this episode:

    • Why being a trusted authority, the job of part two's informational content, makes your company a candidate and not the pick, and how wide that gap actually is
    • What predicts whether AI systems name your company: the number of other sites linking to and mentioning you, not your own search performance or your Knowledge Graph entry
    • Two mention variables that barely move the needle: whether the mention includes a link, and how authoritative the mentioning site is
    • Why co-occurrence, showing up on pages about your category, is what actually builds the association AI systems rely on
    • How to build a bottom-of-funnel outreach list from the commercial and transactional prompts you're already tracking
    • The four types of sites that mention companies in your category, and why the approach for reaching each one is different
    • Five ways to ask for a mention, and why Michael thinks a paid placement counts the same as an earned one
    • What your bottom-of-funnel web pages are for once the mention has already done the persuading

    Chapter Headings

    0:00 Intro
    1:46 This week in search: Google's AI Mode bug

    3:58 Google tests paid ads inside AI Mode

    5:37 Google's EU search changes under the DMA

    8:19 Catching up on part two, and today's question

    9:57 Why being known and being recommended aren't the same

    12:07 Citation rate vs. mention rate, defined

    13:14 What actually predicts a brand mention

    16:17 Co-occurrence: why context beats authority

    17:46 Building your outreach list from tracked prompts

    23:41 The four types of sites that mention your competitors

    27:38 Five ways to ask for a mention

    34:25 Five routes to raise your mention rate across the web

    39:29 The case for paid placements

    41:02 Finding more targets beyond your prompt audit

    43:45 What your bottom-of-funnel pages are actually for

    45:47 Pulling the series together

    You'll find all the sources mentioned in this episode on our website:
    https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-bofu/

    Sources
    Search Engine Land, "Google to fix citation bug with Gemini 3.8 Flash in AI Mode," September 4, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/google-to-fix-citation-bug-with-gemini-3-8-flash-in-ai-mode-486892

    Search Engine Land, "Google tests traditional Search campaigns in AI Mode," September 7, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/google-tests-traditional-search-campaigns-in-ai-mode-487199

    Search Engine Land, "Google says DMA changes in EU resulted in worse degradation of search quality ever," September 8, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/google-says-dma-changes-in-eu-resulted-in-worse-degradation-of-search-quality-ever-487340 Victorious, Q2 2026 AI search research (150-brand study on citation and mention rates), https://victorious.com/quarterly-search-report/

    The Search Signal, "How To Build An AI Search Strategy, Part 2: Top-of-Funnel Content," https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-tofu/

    The Search Signal, "How To Future-Proof Your Search Strategy For AI Mode" (AI-referred traffic conversion data, "the perfect click"), https://victorious.com/podcast/ai-mode/

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    47 Min.
  • How To Build a Full-Funnel AI Strategy, Part 2: Top of Funnel Content
    Aug 27 2026

    For most of the history of SEO, the deal was simple: write a page, rank it, get the click. Today about two-thirds of Google searches end without one. This week, Michael argues informational content still has a job to do, just not the one it used to, and lays out how to write it for two readers: the human and the AI system reading right alongside them.

    In this episode:

    • Informational content now has two readers: humans, who still drive the majority of site traffic, and AI systems, which pull pages into their training corpus and into live retrieval whenever someone asks a question
    • Why mass-producing AI content backfires: real cases from National Today, Business Insider, and Deloitte, and what all three have in common
    • Adding real, verified statistics to a page improves its odds of being cited in an AI answer by up to 40%, per the Princeton GEO study
    • Victorious’s quality bar for informational content: N-E-E-A-T-T, which adds notability and transparency to Google’s E-E-A-T
    • Use AI to plan, structure, and draft, but it can’t supply your first-party data, your expertise, or accountability for what publishes under your name
    • The order of operations before writing anything new: entity and prompt strategy, a content audit against it, a reoptimization list, then a content brief

    Find all the sources referenced in this episode on the Victorious website: https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-tofu/

    Chapter Headings

    [00:01:54] This week in search: Reddit's ChatGPT citations collapse
    [00:03:37] Google's third spam update of 2026
    [00:05:15] ChatGPT expands paid advertising
    [00:07:18] Catching up from part one: entities, anchor pages, and infrastructure
    [00:09:33] Why informational content still matters when clicks are disappearing
    [00:14:05] What happens when companies publish AI content at scale
    [00:19:08] How AI systems read your content: chunked retrieval and the NEEATT framework
    [00:26:23] What AI can't do: the human layer
    [00:28:12] A framework for auditing and building content that earns citations
    [00:40:34] Building today's authority for tomorrow's pipeline

    Sources

    Search Engine Land, “Reddit’s ChatGPT Search citations fell 86% in four days: Report,” August 19, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/reddit-chatgpt-search-citations-fall-report-485473

    Search Engine Land, “Google August 2026 spam update done rolling out,” August 21, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/google-august-2026-spam-update-done-rolling-out-485471

    Search Engine Land, “ChatGPT Ads are expanding to 31 European countries,” August 19, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-ads-are-expanding-to-31-european-countries-485468

    Search Engine Land, “ChatGPT Ads adds automated bidding, platform targeting,” August 24, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-ads-adds-automated-bidding-platform-targeting-485707

    SparkToro, “In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click,” June 9, 2026, https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2026-less-than-one-third-of-google-searches-still-send-a-click/

    Axios, “Exclusive: AI writing hasn’t overwhelmed the web yet,” October 14, 2025, https://www.axios.com/2025/10/14/ai-generated-writing-humans

    Ahrefs, “74% of New Webpages Include AI Content (Study of 900k Pages),” May 19, 2025, https://ahrefs.com/blog/what-percentage-of-new-content-is-ai-generated

    GSQI (Glenn Gabe), “When ‘Mt. AI’ Crumbles, ChatGPT Can Follow [Case Study],” April 20, 2026, https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/when-mt-ai-crumbles-chatgpt-follows/

    The Search Signal, Episode 10, “Building an AI Search Strategy, Part 1: The Infrastructure,” Wikidata section at 41:45, https://youtu.be/WW8qIH1XpQc?t=2505

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    42 Min.
  • How To Build an AI Search Strategy, Part 1: The Infrastructure
    Aug 20 2026

    AI systems answer at the entity level. They pick out the things in a question, then assemble an answer from what they have stored about those things and how they connect. Michael lays out what an entity strategy is, how you build one, and the two things that have to be true before any of it can work.

    What you’ll hear in this episode:

    • Why checking whether you appeared for one exact prompt tells you almost nothing
    • What an entity is, and why AI systems assemble answers at that level instead of the page level
    • The two ways AI systems get a brand wrong, and why the second one costs more
    • Two checks you can run in a browser to see whether AI crawlers can read your site at all
    • Where to start, and what to fix before you publish anything new


    You can find all the resources for this episode at:
    https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-foundation/

    Chapter Headings

    0:00 Intro
    1:18 This Week in Search: Microsoft Clarity Adds an AI Scrape-to-Referral Ratio

    3:42 Shopify's Q2 Data: AI Referrals Up Almost 200%, and Converting Better

    6:41 Google Research: Models Store Your Facts and Still Fail To Retrieve Them

    9:05 Today's Topic: Building a Full-Funnel Strategy for AI Search

    11:55 The Reframe: Search Used To Be Deterministic

    14:19 Why Entities Are the Foundation

    15:36 How AI Systems Get Your Brand Wrong

    17:40 Building Your Entity List

    20:37 Keywords, Anchor Pages, and Prompt Research

    29:17 Can AI Reach Your Content? Rendering and Blocking

    34:35 What You Declare About Yourself: Schema and Disambiguation

    38:15 Getting Corroborated Off Your Own Site

    40:55 Where To Start

    Sources

    Microsoft Clarity, “Microsoft Clarity adds AI Scrape-to-Referral Ratio insights report,” August 13, 2026 https://clarity.microsoft.com/blog/scrape-to-referral-insights/

    Shopify, “AI referrals up 197%, but organic search still leads traffic,” August 13, 2026 https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/blog/ai-search-category-behavior

    Google Research, “Empty shelves or lost keys? Recall is the bottleneck for parametric factuality,” August 17, 2026 https://research.google/blog/empty-shelves-or-lost-keys-recall-is-the-bottleneck-for-parametric-factuality/

    Vercel, in partnership with MERJ, “The Rise of the AI Crawler,” December 17, 2024 https://vercel.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-ai-crawler

    Cloudflare, “Your site, your rules: new AI traffic options for all customers,” July 1, 2026 https://blog.cloudflare.com/content-independence-day-ai-options/

    Victorious, “Q2 2026 Quarterly Search Report, Findings 1 and 2,” July 2026 https://victorious.com/quarterly-search-report/

    Google, “Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings,” May 16, 2012 https://blog.google/products/search/introducing-knowledge-graph-things-not/

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    46 Min.
  • How To Future-Proof Your Search Strategy for AI Mode
    Aug 13 2026

    Google is rebuilding search around AI Mode, and Michael Transon makes the case that it will become the default way people search. He walks through the evidence, from the rapid spread of AI Overviews to the rise of zero-click results, and explains why AI Mode's modest adoption numbers understate what's coming. Then he gets practical about preparing for it, laying out the four foundations that keep a brand visible on every Google surface and the specific numbers to track each month so you can watch the shift happen in your own data.

    CHAPTERS

    0:32 Search news: Google tests a sign-in wall and new homepage AI buttons

    2:43 Today's topic: Google's AI Mode and the future of search

    4:52 AI Overviews: from 30% to nearly 50% of queries in a year

    6:40 Zero-click searches reach almost 70%

    8:45 AI Overviews move onto commercial keywords

    10:08 The "perfect click": AI-referred traffic converts at 3x

    10:39 What AI Overviews do to a #1 ranking

    12:07 What AI Mode is and how it differs from AI Overviews

    14:29 Every AI Overview is now a doorway into AI Mode

    16:11 Adoption numbers, and what they can't tell you

    18:57 Michael's prediction for where Google is headed

    20:55 The four foundations that carry across every search surface

    28:30 How AI Mode behaves differently, and what it means for your content

    33:20 Measuring AI Mode: visibility and traffic are separate systems

    35:12 The four numbers to record every month

    39:56 The one thing to take away from this episode

    RESOURCES
    Find links to everything on the episode page:
    https://victorious.com/podcast/ai-mode/

    Google tests forcing sign-in for more search results (Search Engine Land): https://searchengineland.com/google-search-testing-forcing-searchers-to-sign-in-to-get-more-search-results-484223

    New AI buttons on Google's homepage (Search Engine Roundtable): https://www.seroundtable.com/google-home-page-ai-features-41842.html

    AI Overviews at the one-year mark (BrightEdge): https://www.brightedge.com/resources/weekly-ai-search-insights/ai-overviews-one-year-presence-size-citing

    Less than one-third of Google searches still send a click (SparkToro): https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2026-less-than-one-third-of-google-searches-still-send-a-click/

    AI Overviews are expanding across commercial search (Semrush): https://www.semrush.com/blog/ai-overviews-commercial-search-study/

    AI traffic converts at 3x the rate of other channels (Microsoft Clarity): https://clarity.microsoft.com/blog/ai-traffic-converts-at-3x-the-rate-of-other-channels-study/

    Click loss when an AI Overview appears (Ahrefs): https://ahrefs.com/blog/?p=195053

    How AI Mode is changing the way people search (Google): https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/ai-mode-us-insights/

    The 2026 Generative AI Landscape Report (Similarweb): https://www.similarweb.com/corp/reports/2026-generative-ai-landscape/

    Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings, including AI Mode's 1B+ monthly users: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q2-2026/

    Google.com is now AI Mode's #2 cited domain (Profound): https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/google-com-is-now-ai-mode-s-2-cited-domain

    Google's AI features documentation for site owners: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features

    The Search Signal is hosted by Michael Transon, founder and CEO of Victorious, and brings marketers research-backed guidance on what's happening in search. New episodes weekly. If this one helped, leave a review and hit follow so the next episode finds you.

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    41 Min.
  • Which AI Search Platform Should I Prioritize?
    Aug 4 2026

    ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI surfaces all launched around the same time, so most marketers built one AI search strategy to cover them all. This week, Michael argues these platforms have grown too different for one playbook and explains how to pick which ones deserve their own strategy.

    In this episode:

    • What every AI platform rewards: pages AI crawlers can read and third-party mentions of your brand
    • Gemini's most-cited sources overlap more with ChatGPT's than with Google's own AI Mode or AI Overviews
    • Why visibility tools and surveys can't tell you which platforms your buyers use, and three ways to resource AI search
    • Why Google surfaces come first: AI Overviews appear in over 40% of searches, AI Mode passed a billion monthly users, and nearly six in 10 consumers double-check AI answers on Google
    • How to pick your second platform: corporate spend data points B2B brands to Claude, while Pew keeps ChatGPT the B2C front-runner

    Key sources are below. Find the complete list of links on the episode page:

    https://victorious.com/podcast/which-ai-platform-to-optimize/

    Chapter Headings

    [00:01:11] This week in search: Search Console platform properties roll out worldwide

    [00:03:52] Why a whole category of AI search got treated as one channel

    [00:06:06] AI is not a monolith

    [00:09:22] What every AI platform has in common: page rendering and third-party mentions

    [00:11:52] Where the platforms diverge: training data, live search, and citation overlap

    [00:13:36] Claude's brand-owned citations and Perplexity's moving target

    [00:15:37] Why the same platform won't answer the same way twice

    [00:17:07] Why your visibility tools can't tell you where your buyers are

    [00:18:36] Three credible surveys, three different numbers

    [00:19:58] Three ways to resource an AI search strategy

    [00:23:34] Why Google surfaces come first, and the case for AI Mode

    [00:28:08] Picking a second platform: B2B, B2C, and citation pools

    [00:34:28] Four takeaways

    Sources

    Google Search Central Blog, "Platform properties roll out globally," July 29, 2026, https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/07/platform-properties-social-video-guide

    Victorious, "Quarterly Search Report," 2026, https://victorious.com/quarterly-search-report/

    Ramp, "AI Index," June 26, 2026, https://ramp.com/data/ai-index-june-2026

    Pew Research Center, "How Americans' Opinions and Use of AI Differ by Age," June 17, 2026, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/how-opinions-and-use-of-ai-differ-by-age/

    Google, "Q2 2026 Earnings Call: Remarks from Our CEO," July 22, 2026, https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q2-2026/

    Related Episodes

    • AI Search Right Now

      https://victorious.com/podcast/ai-search-right-now/

    • How Do AI Platforms Affect Your Brand Reputation? https://victorious.com/podcast/brand-reputation/
    • The Q2 2026 Quarterly Search Report https://victorious.com/podcast/q2-2026-quarterly-search-report/

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    38 Min.
  • Does AI Change How Much You Should Spend on SEO?
    Jul 28 2026

    Every competitor can buy the same AI tools you can, at the same price, this afternoon. That makes AI table stakes, which means the thing actually worth funding is the judgment directing it. In this episode of The Search Signal, Michael Transon puts a number on that: about 1 percent of revenue, or $800 a month at $1 million in revenue and $80,000 at $100 million, plus the four arguments to make when your CFO asks why AI can't just do all of this now. What you'll hear in this episode:

    • Marketing budgets have fallen to 7.8 percent of company revenue from 9.5 percent four years ago, while the AI share of those shrinking budgets climbed past 15 percent
    • The production layer AI genuinely handles well: data pulls, first drafts, keyword research, and reporting, the work a junior analyst or a freelancer used to do
    • Why clearing the baseline earns you nothing, using last quarter's research: AI described 96 percent of brands accurately and nine out of 10 still never got mentioned in a buyer answer
    • Two cost assumptions that don't hold up: a Harvard Business Review field study that spent eight months inside a 200-person tech company and found AI intensified work instead of reducing it, and the fact that AI is only this cheap because providers are absorbing billions in losses to build adoption
    • What each tier funds: $800 to $1,000 a month at $1 million in revenue, $8,000 at $10 million, $15,000 to $17,000 at $20 million, and $80,000 at $100 million and up
    • The four arguments for a CFO, including organic search as a compounding asset rather than a cost, and why ground competitors are abandoning is the cheapest ground you'll ever take
    Chapter Headings

    [00:01:12] Alphabet's earnings put Cloud ahead of search

    [00:03:27] Google's information agents push answers before you search

    [00:04:31] AI Mode connects to Instacart, Canva, and YouTube Music

    [00:06:02] Top Stories moves inside AI Overviews

    [00:07:40] A judge throws out Google's copyright case against SerpApi

    [00:08:52] The question: should you run search in-house with AI?

    [00:10:31] Budgets are down, the AI line item is up

    [00:13:19] Why search should keep its funding

    [00:15:35] What AI genuinely does well

    [00:17:06] Everyone buys the same tools, so no tool is the advantage

    [00:20:11] Spreadsheets, Google Analytics, and the chisel

    [00:23:20] Assumption 1: AI lets you do the same work with fewer people

    [00:25:35] Assumption 2: AI stays this cheap

    [00:27:55] AI isn't a fourth option, it's a layer underneath

    [00:29:49] The rule of thumb: 1 percent of revenue

    [00:31:07] At $1 million in revenue

    [00:32:24] At $10 million in revenue

    [00:33:39] At $20 million in revenue

    [00:36:43] At $100 million and up, run both

    [00:38:26] The case to make to your CFO

    [00:42:36] Three takeaways


    Find all sources referenced in this episode here: http://victorious.com/podcast/marketing-budget/

    • CMO Spend 2026 – Gartner: https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/cmo-spend
    • AI Doesn't Reduce Work, It Intensifies It – Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it
    • The State of Business Buying, 2026 – Forrester: https://www.forrester.com/blogs/state-of-business-buying-2026/
    • Q2 2026 Quarterly Search Report – Victorious: https://victorious.com/quarterly-search-report/
    • Top Stories roll out in Google AI Overviews – Search Engine Land: https://searchengineland.com/top-stories-roll-out-in-google-ai-overviews-482615
    • Google AI Mode adds Instacart, Canva and YouTube Music integrations – Google: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/connected-apps/
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