Published this unscientific chart on LinkedIn with my prediction that this will be the last decade of growth for paid search advertising as agentic AI ads steal share of consumer queries and marketer budgets.
Whether this is net positive/neutral/negative for Google remains to be seen but it certainly has a leg up given its millions of advertisers that, in theory, it could simply port over to ads within Gemini.
The question is what lengths it will go to in protecting its core business of pure search ads. Of course the other question is how good/fast a job OpenAI does with rolling out ads on ChatGPT.
Worked with my colleague Kristin Sanford to respond back on Bluesky with this take on what may become of ChatGPT once it decides subscription revenue is not enough.
It’s been a minute (ok, 12 years) since I posted here but thought I’d share my recent LinkedIn article in which I revisited the 20 Googley Lessons from my book as a blueprint for marketers to thrive in a world of Gen AI and ChatGPT.
While I may not have predicted the term we’d use was “agentic AI” or “AI agents” my prognostication around “app-sisstants” and “search-and-act engines” was on point and the key principles for brands to deploy still hold up.
I won’t rehash them all on this blog but I will take this opportunity to encourage folks to re-read Chapter 21 and get Googley!
Last week, I pulled out all the analogies in the book (hey, there’s another one!) to describe search and social marketing at the SIM Partners SIMposium at the (too legit) Wit Hotel in Chicago.
Below is my presentation and below that is my (too legit) rap…
Yesterday, I presented at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition with Sachin Gadhvi, director of search and mobile marketing at TicketsNow. The topic we addressed was “How to Turn Dynamic Inventory, Seasonality, and Promotions into an SEM Advantage” and the answer was easy… via automation. Although, as we discussed, you still need a healthy dose of human strategy and intervention because the machine needs to be properly calibrated to your business needs and goals. Methinks the rap I threw down at the end of the session could’ve used some intervention as well, particularly by way of offering any other closing line than “yeah-yeah-ee.” See below for deck and video.
Last week I took the stage at ad:tech San Francisco with my peeps Kevin Lange from SMG Search and Bryan Kelley from Ampush Media to discuss the similarities and differences between Google and Facebook (deck embedded below) and lo and behold a rap battle broke out.
Unlike the Search Insider Summit, where I got pounded by the SEO Rapper, I set up a battle I couldn’t lose. Yep, I battled myself! In character, though, as Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook and (after a near wardrobe malfunction at 1:25 in the video) Larry Page from Google. Round 2 featured Sergey Brin vs. Sheryl Sandberg aka me vs. me again.
2 days ago, at the Search Insider Summit, I tackled the heady topic of the perfect search engine and, after 45 minutes on stage with Alan Osetek, Jason Lehmbeck, and Vural Cifci, we made a good deal of progress but could not reach consensus on what would make the perfect search engine. At the end of the day, it appears one man’s perfection is another man’s defecation. Now we know what life is like for the engineers in Mountain View! Here’s the vid and, below that, the deck…
