13 minCopy the formatted transcript to paste into ChatGPT or Claude for analysis
One of the things that many marketers
don't realize is that we have entered
this era of platforms dominating
influence rather than websites. The job
of the marketer has switched.
>> Could you maybe give us your thoughts on
why you think so many people are keen to
push this Google is dead narrative?
>> People are blaming the wrong thing.
They're blaming like, oh, AI tools must
be taking market share away from Google.
That's why search traffic is down or
that's why my traffic is down. And
that's not what's happening. It really
bothers me. It just pisses me off when
people publish headlines like that
because I think it biases marketers and
[music] teams to make the the worst kind
of investments. People say foolishly
foolishly AI is making your website
irrelevant. And I could not disagree
with that more. Where the hell do you
think Google gets that answer from? Your
website is more relevant than ever. Just
because the traffic doesn't come there
doesn't mean the website doesn't matter.
And you have to shift your strategy cuz
you're not you're not going to be able
to convince, hey Facebook, like let's
[music] play nice. just send me more
traffic again. That's not going to
happen. The old world, right, of getting
traffic and then monetizing it once it
gets to you and trying to increase your
conversion rate, that that world is dead
and dying.
>> What how what's your advice to people
who are really struggling with the
attribution problem?
>> Attribution is not dead, [music]
it's just broken. It's so broken that it
biases you to what the platforms want
you to do, which is spend more money
with them. And so, I urge people to do
two things.
Hello and welcome to the paid media lab.
My name is James. I'm the content lead
here at Luno. And in this episode, I'm
joined by Ran Fishkin, founder and
former CEO of Moz and now the co-founder
and CEO of the audience research
platform Spark Toro. I'm sure many of
you out there will already be well aware
of Rand and he probably doesn't need
much by way of an introduction here, but
to cover the main points, Rand has
dedicated his entire career to helping
people become better marketers. Whether
that's through his writing, original
research, or his educational videos on
YouTube. A few years back, Rand also
published a book titled Lost and
Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide
to the Startup World, which is a truly
unfiltered account of what it's actually
like to be in the trenches of founding a
tech startup, which I think these days
is all too often romanticized. He is the
co-founder of inbound.org, or as well as
the co-author of the art of SEO, which
for many of us, including myself, was
practically required reading when we
were first starting out in the industry.
Over his career, Rand has given more
than 100 keynote talks around the world
and built companies that have shaped how
we think about marketing, startups, and
leadership. What makes Rand stand out
isn't just the scale of his success,
it's his honesty about what it takes to
actually get there. And in this
conversation, we explore one of the
biggest questions clouding the entire
marketing industry right now. Namely,
are we in an AI bubble? And if so, what
happens when it bursts? It's a big
question and to help us answer it, we
discuss Spark Toro's research showing AI
adoption slowing down, why Google search
definitely isn't dead yet, and how
marketers should be thinking about
attribution, performance tracking, and
channel strategy as AI tools become an
increasingly embedded part of the
customer journey. Rand also shares his
take on what's driving the AI hype train
and how you can futureproof your
strategy no matter how things shake out.
This conversation cuts through the noise
and gets to the actual growing truth
behind the headlines we're seeing in the
moment in the marketing world and I hope
you find this one as useful as I did.
Rans, welcome to the paid media lab.
It's great to have you on.
>> Yeah, good to be here James. Thanks for
having me.
>> Firstly, I want to say this is a bit of
a full circle moment for me. Uh we were
speaking just before we switched on the
mics about how I transitioned from my
original career as an optometrist
working for Specs Savers here in the UK.
Um lifetime ago it feels like now. But
when I made the transition to marketing,
it was your whiteboard Friday video
series that kind of really helped me
learn the foundations of how Google
works, especially on a content and SEO
site. Um, I remember sitting at my desk
and I'd have two screens and one screen
would be one of your whiteboard Friday
videos and on the other screen I'd have
my Google Docs and I'd be making notes
trying to uh learn and keep up with what
the latest was. And I noticed you're
you're keeping the whiteboard tradition
alive over at the Spark Toro YouTube
channel as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. just
uh usually
>> once every week or two putting together
a five minute video with some
information. Rarely do I use the
whiteboard these days. Usually it's a
digital whiteboard now. But uh yeah.
Nice. Nice. So the topic we're going to
get into today is about whether we're in
an AI bubble and what the fallout could
be for marketers and marketing
departments if that burst. But before we
get into the details bubble and what it
means for marketers, I wanted to take a
step back first of all and get a sense
of your bigger picture view on on the
whole issue. So broadly speaking, would
you consider yourself an AI optimist or
an AI pessimist? Uh on that kind of
sliding scale,
>> let's see. I would consider myself
much more pessimistic than most of the
media hype around it and probably more
pessimistic than
um
most of the AI company operators who
believe that they'll reach general
intelligence at some point in the
future. But I would consider myself more
optimistic than the extremely
negative folks on blue sky or threads or
Twitter who think that everything AI is
baloney. Uh I don't agree with that
either. I think sometimes it's really
nice to have a spicy autocomplete that
can tell you what words frequently come
after other words.
>> Nice. So, you're not buying into those
kind of real doomer arguments that AI is
going to be the the end of us all in
terms of an existential threat.
>> I I know Elon really wants that to be
true so that the only people who
populate the earth are like his
children, but um
no, I don't I don't see that happening.
>> There's a lot we could go into on Elon's
children, but that's not the topic of
discussion today. So I could spend a
long time talking to you about the more
philosophical existential stuff. But to
bring it back to our main topic of
discussion for today. Uh do you think we
are in an AI bubble right now in
marketing and if so what is [snorts]
inflating the bubble? Mhm.
>> Uh we are absolutely in an AI bubble
macroeconomically,
especially in the United States where
essentially AI is the only thing
propping up our flagging economy. We we
would otherwise have been in a recession
for several quarters now. Um, I think we
have something over a trillion dollars
of expenditure in AI hardware alone and
uh AI optimism is propping up the stock
market at this point.
Is that a bubble? Almost certainly it
is. Um, I don't I don't think that we
can get to a normal price to earnings
ratio
for the the major stocks with just the
AI progress that we can make. Are we in
a marketing AI bubble is a weird other
question because it marketing can't be
disconnected from company growth, right?
Like what when companies stop growing,
marketing stops getting investment.
People stop paying their agencies. They
>> fire marketers. The marketing team is
often the first to go. The CMO is often
the the role that's, you know, most
replaced in those times. That will
happen. I I have no doubt. I don't know
when exactly it's coming but um it would
shock me if it's not in the next two or
three years. However, in terms of
marketing use cases for AI tools and
putting AI to work to help you become a
better marketer or to streamline some of
your processes or to do some of the
annoying tasks that you hate doing or to
give you a bunch of brainstorm ideas so
that you can be more creative. Sure.
Well, I I don't think that's a bubble at
all. I think there's it's kind of like
the internet, right? Like 10 years from
now, there's going to be 10,000 new use
cases for AI stuff and we're gonna use
it in technology just like we used its
predecessor machine learning in a
billion ways, just like we used
algorithms broadly, you know, math
algorithms in in computer science and
software and marketing. That that's all
going to happen. So, it's complicated.
>> Yeah. And in terms of the the
macroeconomic situation, do you I've
heard listened to some podcasts and I've
heard some people talking and drawing
comparisons between the situation that
we're in right now and the do era crash?
Like I was a little I was quite young at
the time when that happened. So I wasn't
didn't really have much firsthand
experience of it. But do you would you
say that there are some similarities
between those two eras?
Yeah, it's definitely the similar media
hype and
um stock and investment hype, right? So
that you know whatever venture capital
companies in the US have put,
you know, billions of dollars to work
into
tens of thousands of of AI first
software companies that will almost
certainly fail. Um, that's kind of the
venture model, but I think the failure
rate is going to be considerably higher.
And then, you know, similar to the
internet, you fast forward a decade or
two, a lot of those promises that many
of those companies are making will
probably come true thanks to a
combination of not just AI, but other
types of technology and software and
maturation and investment and
development. So, again, it's, you know,
we we overhype something. We're human
beings, right? So we we go way too far
on something and then we pull back way
too fast and then eventually we find a
healthy middle.
>> Yeah, I think that's fair. And just on
those promises before we move on to to
the next kind of topic. Um I for me
obviously working in marketing using
chatbt a lot you know being blown away
when when it first came out and thinking
like this is really serious shift in in
how the digital world operates and then
noticing the shift from like chachbt 3.5
to 4 and being like whoa like this is a
significant improvement over what we had
previously and then kind of being
excited for the release of chachit 5 and
like what what's going to come around
the corner and it was just like is more
or less That's a slightly better Chad
GBT4. And for me, I was like really
underwhelmed. And I just wanted to get
your sense of were you underwhelmed in
the same way that I was, or did you kind
of know that it's probably not going to
be this big step change when when Chad
GBD5 is is released?
>> No, I mean, look, I I I tend not to
believe the hype generally from these
companies. Um, and I think you know Sam
Alman from OpenAI has and anyone who's
looked into his history and behavior
would say, "Oh, well that's a charlatan
who got very lucky." Um, and uh, yeah, I
would expect I would expect you'll hear
lots more,
I think, what the general public would
call um, terrible lies [laughter] from
him for a long time. And uh, and it'll
be okay. his career is going to be just
fine because even if he lies about 50
things, the 51st thing is not a lie and
is actually useful to a lot of
businesses and you know he's he's he's a
little bit Elon Musky, more than a
little bit um in this in this kind of
way, right? Elon made a million promises
about Tesla and getting to Mars and
rockets and all this kind of stuff. And
even though nine out of 10 of them
turned out to be just bald-faced lies,
one out of 10 of them were useful enough
that people kept paying attention and
you know his stuff was useful and um his
companies made money. I I I think the
same thing's going on with Open AI. Um
so your experience similar to mine?
>> Yeah. Nice. Um, so you shared research
um at Spark Toro uh showing that AI
adoption is slowing while search remains
steady. And I saw a LinkedIn post that
you made last week about how Google
still absolutely dwarfs Chat GBT in
terms of search volumes. Like you said,
Google has something like 210 times the
number of searches per day. And you made
the point that Chachbt doesn't even have
as many daily searches as duck.go go
yet, which really brings things into
sharp focus for where we are actually
currently at when you strip away the
noise and the hype. So, could you maybe
say a little bit more about the points
you were making in that LinkedIn post
and then maybe give us your thoughts on
why you think so many people are keen to
push this Google is dead narrative and
the the tables been completely
overturned.
>> Yeah, I you said it quite well, James,
right? Um so our our research comes from
uh datos which clickstream data
provider. We're talking about desktop
here. So you know as as many folks who
are listening might know Google is way
more used on mobile than it is on
desktop but chatbt is more used on
desktop than it is on mobile. So you
know whereas Google's maybe 66 you know
67%
uh mobile
>> chatbt is more like 30 40% mobile. So
again, we're underounting and and
undervaluing the degree to which Google
is dominating and dwarfing chatbt when
it comes to search. However, that
doesn't mean that chatbt and other AI
tools aren't getting used. They are
getting used. They're huge. They're big.
>> It's just that comparing anything
against Google is, you know, it's like
looking at uh any other global economy
versus the top five global economies.
like, you know, next to the United
States and China and Japan and Germany,
like everything else just looks so tiny.
You're like, "Oh, And Pandora's really
taking off." Well, sure, but you know,
whatever it is, like I I think that um
the reason this happens, the reason this
happens is because
it is not in anyone's interests,
personal, financial or or your agency's
interest or your business's interest or
you as a marketing team to say, you know
what, things change kind of slowly and
this isn't that big of a change. It's
interesting. we should watch it, but you
know, throwing billions of dollars at it
tomorrow is not a great idea. That
doesn't serve anybody. What serves
people is you need to pay attention.
This is you need to worry about this.
This is something to be fearful of. you
better throw money at it because that
money gets funneled to individuals and
agencies and companies and departments
and AI tool providers and AI service
providers and AI consultants and experts
and AI conferences and those those
people both good and bad
want to make money, right? and and they
recognize that the fear and
uh surprise
and expectation that's been created by
the media hype and by by people exactly
like you you were talking about James
that first time you used Chat GBT3 and
you went whoa this is crazy like this is
this kind of works I can't believe it it
can do a million things that um that was
a sea change moment for a lot of people
and as more people have started to use
it. It feels like magic the first time
you do it. And I think that um that
magic feeling created that fear and
uncertainty and doubt which now gets
prayed upon by people. The other thing
I'll say is if you know anything about
how uh modern media works and modern
engagement works, you know that let's
say let's say there's a hundred people
like you and I who are saying, "Hey, you
know, it's not that big of a deal, but
like here's here's the real numbers
around it. Here's what's really
happening."
That's not what's going to go viral.
That's not what the press is going to
write about. That's not what people are
going to talk about in the office.
That's not what your aunt Sally forwards
you, you know, in a panic.
What she's going to forward you in a
panic is AI is going to take your job.
AI is going to kill us all. AI robots
can already destroy human troops. You
know, like that that is the thing that's
going to get attention. And the things
that get attention also achieve
virality, which means they also receive
um the the lion's share of our, you
know, mental
uh attention. And and that, you know,
that's very frustrating. I think this is
this is why you know whenever any
researchers look at like why do extreme
political opinions or or extremist
content uh happen all around the world
why is that you know taking hold it's
because the extremes are what get
amplified and shared and broadcast and
consumed and the sort of hey maybe let's
think about you know housing density and
you know focus on like doing the right
things for our community
you know Let's just push brain rod all
the time.
>> Yeah, that's the thing like nuance just
does not work well online. And like you
said like the the previous kind of the
early iterations of AI that we had which
were these you know
>> algorithms which were controlling our
news feed and like you said yeah it's an
attention economy. You need to push
what's going to get attention because we
are maximizing time on platform and
engagement because that means we can
sell more ads and we need to and then
they they found out that outrage is the
thing that makes people come back and
getting into fights with people in the
comment section. People cannot resist
coming back on Facebook or coming back
into the Instagram threads or whatever
it is and and getting into some kind of
battle with someone. That's a strong
incentive to return. And I think yeah I
I think in future like the impact that
that has had on society and then this
ability for social media companies to
wash their hands of any responsibility
that a newspaper editor at at the New
York Times would have
>> is kind of outrageous I feel like and
and the the whole legal system does need
to catch up with the fact that no these
are publishers and they should be held
to some kind of standards about what are
they putting on the front page because
what you put on the front page matters
and there is a decision that goes into
that. So again, that that could take us
off topic and we could make a whole
different um podcast on that.
>> No, but I think this is it really does
speak to, you know, if you're if you're
a marketer, you have to understand this.
And I think understanding the the macro,
especially, you know, like political and
economic um and and what gets attention
in an attention economy, I think that's
part of your job. You need to be able to
explain that to your boss, your team,
your client, yourself because that is
what governs how
marketing works in 2025 and almost
certainly will for a long period of time
to come. I think it also helps immunize
you against the,
you know, virus of extremism or or
doomerism or, you know, what whatever
the the extreme content that's that's
got you and your aunt Sally so scared on
the internet today, you know, whether
that's political content or or racial
content or or whether it's marketing
content or AI is going to take over the
world content, you know, no matter what
it is, um that that knowledge will help
protect you and I think that um one of
the things that many marketers don't
realize
is that we have entered this era of
platforms dominating
influence rather than websites.
And many of us, unfortunately, James,
still operate in a world where we think
of our website as being the place where
we're trying to get people to rather
than the website
essentially being a resource that other
platforms will pick up and point to, AI
tools and search engines in particular,
but but social media too. and and are
it's almost as though the the job of the
marketer has switched from uh bring
people to your website and influence
them there to create influence in all
the places your audience pays attention
and then sort of rely on them to go find
your website if if they are interested
enough to do so. That's a that's a
really different world too. And the
platforms hate to send you traffic
unless you pay, but they love creating
engagement. And so your job is to create
that engagement and influence on the
platform.
>> Yes. So this ties into one of the next
questions that I wanted to ask you. So
obviously at Lunio, we're a B2B SAS
business and historically we've been
primarily blog driven content, mostly
all written content. And you know, we've
we've pivoted and and we've started to
branch out and we're putting much more
focus on YouTube. you know, case in
point, recording a lot more interviews.
>> And one, you know,
>> one thing I want, and I've heard to your
point, what you were saying about
changing your conception of what you
think as as the website as, and I've
seen other commentators on LinkedIn
saying things like now rather than all
these visits to these blog pages that
might be very low intent kind of
topformational type queries, and you
might be sad to see that your organic
click volume is going down month over
month. uh you should start paying
attention to well what is your homepage
traffic doing and how many people are
hitting your homepage and looking at
these other places that people yeah like
you said we'll hear about your brands
elsewhere on these other platforms and
then make their way to hopefully your
homepage or some other section of your
site. Um, but
should if for all the marketers out
there in the B2B space, you have
probably seen their organic traffic take
a hit. Um, like
>> is that something that they should be
concerned about and how should they be
pivoting their their strategy in
response to that?
>> Yeah, I think I published a a blog post
earlier this year that sort of
summarized what was happening on a in a
bunch of different examples. Um, you
know, notably with with places like
HubSpot, right? You everybody was
talking about, oh, HubSpot lost 80% of
their search traffic and they must be
hit so hard and what a terrible whatever
SEO decision they made. Then you go and
look at their quarterly stock price and
their earnings per share and their, you
know, like their performance
looks like it's they're having record
highs. What where's the disconnect here?
And they're just they're just one
example of thousands of traffic down,
revenue up.
And the reason that that happens is
because, you know, in HubSpot's case, in
in a million of these other cases, the
content that is being consumed, the
influence that's being created is
happening on YouTube, just like you
said, it's happening on Reddit, it's
happening on LinkedIn, it's happening on
threads, it's happening on Blue Sky,
it's happening on Instagram and Tik Tok,
right? and all these places. It's It
used to happen on Twitter that that's
not really happening any anymore unless
you're in like cryptocurrency or men's
rights advocacy or something. But like
all the all of these platforms
have taken the attention away. Even even
Google search, think about the fact that
Google is answering 60 or more percent
of all searches without a click, right?
So, like a twothirds of the time when
you go to Google and you search for how
old is Paul Rudd or what are the best
hotels in Hong Kong, like it just gives
you a list. It gives you the answer. It
tells you what you needed to know. You
don't have to go anywhere else, right?
You don't you don't you don't need to
click on anything. And that's Google's
future. And people say foolishly
foolishly, there was an article in Fast
Company yesterday or this morning, I
can't remember, that was like AI is
making your website irrelevant. And I
could not disagree with that more. I
think I think that is just the dumbest
headline because where the hell do you
think Google gets that answer from?
Where are they citing that that original
source? Where is Chat GBT getting their
answer from? Your website is more
relevant than ever. It's influencing
people but indirectly in a way that you
can't measure. Just because the traffic
doesn't come there doesn't mean the
website doesn't matter. And I it really
bothers me. It just pisses me off when
people publish headlines like that
because I think it biases marketers and
teams to make the the worst kind of
investments.
So yeah, I mean I don't know, James,
like I
I feel like we're in this sea change.
People are blaming the wrong thing.
They're blaming like, oh, AI tools must
be taking market share away from Google.
That's why search traffic is down or
that's why my traffic is down. And
that's not what's happening. Google is
putting answers and AI and Google
flights and Google hotels and YouTube
and like you know and their properties
up at the top. They're the ones taking
their own traffic away from you, right?
And the same thing's happening on all
these platforms. Facebook used to send
you know 10 12% of all media traffic.
That's down below 1%. Right? Twitter
used to send 5% of of all traffic to to
media sites in the US. That that is not
even half of 1%. I don't even know if
it's a tenth of 1% today. So, you know,
you want to find someone to blame. The
platforms are where that's happening.
And you have to shift your strategy
because you're not you're not going to
be able to convince, hey, Facebook,
like, let's play nice. Just send me more
traffic again. That's not going to
happen.
>> Yeah. Like it you I was watching one of
your um whiteboard, don't know if it's a
digital whiteboard. looked like a normal
whiteboard to me, but it was a point
that you were making about these three
different stages of development of
Google and we had the kind of early
stage where traffic was being sent to
your website and then we had this kind
of I think you said it was 2014 to 2022
when um feature snippets and rich
snippets were the key thing and that was
Google's first iteration of users just
want the answer fast and we're going to
go into the content and rip out the
relevant answer to match with that query
and people really like that. And then
you were saying then we we've kind of
moved into this new era where it's still
zero click but it's an AI generated
answer but to your point as you were
saying that answer has to be generated
from somewhere and you need to wash the
internet and all these different
platforms with your brand positioned
next to whatever terms you want to be
fine for. Like in in Lunio's case it
would be invalid traffic and and click
fraud and this kind of thing. you need
to be everywhere talking about your
brand and and your offering and position
it next to to relevant topics and it
does kind of require a mindset shift in
in how you approach marketing. Yeah,
absolutely. I think that
you know the um
the old world right of getting traffic
and then monetizing it once it gets to
you and trying to increase your
conversion rate that that world is dead
and dying. The world of attribution is
gone. Uh let's just pose an experiment
here. Let's say James, right, that you
you and I run, I don't know, a hotel in
Italy. And we, you know, get on all
these lists of top luxury hotels in um
Pulya, right? The the boot region at the
at the south uh southeast corner of
Italy, uh Bootill region. And and like
Pulya is this this beautiful area. We've
got a lovely hotel. It's in the perfect
place. it's near the sea where we have
all these features and amenities
whatever it is right and so we get onto
these lists and we you know manage to um
kind of get into the language model so
that when people say what are the best
luxury hotels in Pulia in Google in chat
GPT in Perplexity in Gemini in um you
know anywhere or they ask their friends
on Facebook and LinkedIn and or they ask
on Reddit you know all this kind of and
people are recommending Randon James'
hotel,
which is great for us. But what are we
going to see in our analytics?
We're going to see
almost none of that. What we're going to
see is the we will not see the hidden
user behavior which is person asks
whatever friends, family, um people in
forums, people on social media sites, AI
tools, search engines and then we come
up in a list in an unlin way and then
they go to Google and they search for
our hotel.
Who gets credit for that?
Google. Google gets credit for that.
even though they did nothing nothing to
help actually create that demand or that
or or show someone our hotel, but they
get the credit in the analytics. And so,
you know, as savvy operators in 2015,
we'd be like, "Okay, Google's sending us
great traffic. Let's spend more on
Google Ads. Let's spend more on SEO.
Like, let's put a bunch into our Google
marketing."
Google was never responsible for that.
And this biases a ton of people to do
exactly the wrong things. The same thing
is true by the way on in my opinion meta
ads. So if for example let's say we run
a ton of ads on Instagram and Facebook
right and threads and that kind of stuff
and like oh hey this really looks like
it's working like you can see the view
through conversions are very high like
people who see our ad on a meta platform
later book almost you know whatever 40%
of people who book have seen one of our
ads on Meta. So, we might take [snorts]
away from that, oh, you know, the the
Meta ads are really working for us.
Let's keep investing more there, which
of course is what Meta wants us to do,
but what they're really good at, what
Facebook rocks at is knowing where
you're going to go before you buy. So
they what they're doing is essentially
in their algorithm they're identifying
people who are like oh I see them
browsing around you know Italian travel
content and eventually figuring out
Pulia and then look looking in the
luxury subcategory of hotels and finding
Randon James' hotel coming up for them a
lot on the internet because everybody
has their Facebook pixel on their
website right and and every web property
is using this and and mobile apps are
using it and so Facebook is like hey
this person they're going to book at
random James' tell. So, let's show them
the ad. Let's show them the ad so we can
take credit. They are taking credit for
sales that would have already happened.
And you can prove this to yourself just
like a hundred other companies have.
There have been plenty of media stories
about it. You know, Bank of America and
Chase and um um uh Uber did this. Uh
Airbnb did this where they shut off
their ads for a few months and they saw
95 96 97% of the same conversions go
through.
They're taking credit for sales that
would have happened anyway.
>> This is really interesting because in
another video that I watched, you you
were talking about attribution and how
it leads people to invest in the wrong
areas. And in that you were saying that
um because performance marketing and
paid media is very easy to put into a
spreadsheet and deliver to your finance
team and say if we uh increase spend by
this much we're going to get this much
out at the bottom. Um whereas in SEO and
content and and other it's it's much
more difficult to get this kind of
formulaic spreadsheet where you can get
investment. But based on what you said
there now, like is this whole point
about attribution just a mood point and
it's kind of like pointless? Like how is
attribution something that you're still
thinking about because people are
racking their brains? Is it's causing
them such trouble with all the privacy
issues coming in and we're trying to
attribute and we can't get it right. And
what how what's your advice to people
who are really struggling with the
attribution problem? How should they
think about it?
My my best recommendation is if you are
obsessed with attribution and you have
to prove it, just know that you really
cannot do attribution for anything other
than uh paid media.
everything else, PR, content, SEO, email
marketing, um, you know, uh, social
media marketing, like all those
channels, organic social, I mean, all of
those channels will be underounted or
not counted at all. Let's say you're
listening to this podcast and you're
like, "Oh, this rain guy seems smart.
Let me check out Spark Toro."
Guess what, friends? Like, we will never
ever know the value, right? or or or be
able to see that. But it's very possible
that if we were running meta ads, we're
not, but like if we were running meta
ads or if we were running Google ads
that you would do search for Spark Toro
and you know we would buy that top slot
for our own brand name and then we would
attribute it to Google. You know, like
attribution is not dead, it's just
broken. It's so broken that it biases
you to what the platforms want you to
do, which is spend more money with them.
And so I urge people to do two things.
One, if you want to measure paid, you
have to be willing to measure uh you
have to be willing to test turning it
off or turning it all the way down. You
don't have to turn it off entirely. I
know there's reasons ad campaigns, you
know, if you shut them off and then turn
them back on, Google penalize you for
that and they try and do that so that
you don't do the testing I'm talking
about. But if you turn it down to like a
dollar a day, you you'll be fine, right?
Like they they let you they still let
you do that. So, you got to test turning
it way down and see what the marginal
contribution of paid media actually was
to your bottom line. For some
businesses, it's a lot. For a lot of
businesses, it's under 5%. The other
thing that I urge people to do is you
got to go back to 20th century style
measurement.
Like you have to go back to the days
when, hey, we're driving down a freeway,
we see a billboard for Coca-Cola
and in a five mile radius around that
billboard, same store, year-over-year
sales with, you know, seasonality
included rise a little bit. And the
Coca-Cola Corporation says, "Okay,
here's how much that billboard works."
That is measurement, but it's not
attribution because they can't prove
that any one highway driver, right, who
saw that billboard went into the, you
know, gas station and bought an extra
can of Coke because of the billboard.
But they know that statistically
speaking, they got 4% more sales in that
5 mile radius or 10 mile radius,
whatever, than they would have
otherwise. That is measurement. And
that's what you have to do with every
other kind of channel. You want to
invest in PR? Okay, great. we're going
to invest in, you know, this specific
niche media in this country or this
region. We're going to see what our lift
looks like in that region, sales to that
area, sales to, you know, people who are
in the demographics who read that or or
just, you know, measure it overall. Oh
man, it looks like the Instagram
influencer campaign that we ran, we saw
10% more sales than we were expecting to
get than the model suggested we were
going to get. That's probably that
influencer campaign, right? because it
was for this particular product. We ran
it for this long during this time
period. And you're going to misattribute
some of it. Absolutely. Like it will not
be perfect, but it is a way better model
than what you were promised in in the
attribution era of the first 20 years of
the internet, which kind of did work.
Like I'm not going to argue that it kind
of worked up until 201617.
It's just broken since then for a whole
ton of reasons, like the privacy thing
you mentioned, but you know, 50 million
more.
>> Yeah. It's um yeah, I think it just
seems to become Yeah, there's more
there's more problems and challenges
with it every year and it's just like it
yeah it's time to shift how you think
about it. Um so
from being in the performance space and
um
thinking about AI and how that's going
to affect paid um perplexity have
obviously been very quick and trying to
get to market first with some kind of ad
offering and trying to it seems like
jump the gun on open AAI and get
something out to advertisers. I've never
used their offering. I don't know much
about it, but based on the fact that as
we discussed earlier in this
conversation that the market shares that
we're talking about here are so small,
is it your like cuz me me based on
hearing that I would just think well
it's not even worth like testing
investing in this right now or is there
still value to be had in experimenting
and and seeing how it goes?
>> Um so this is this is why I tell people
to do audience research, right? because
the broad macro trend is not your
audience's trend. So for example, let's
say that you are
um
selling data to LLMs,
right? Like like Chat GBT and um
Perplexity and Gemini, like these are
your customers because you're selling, I
don't know, language model data to them
from your giant store of content or
whatever it is. Well, guess what?
the directors of engineering at those
companies and the VPs of, you know,
bisdev who who do the partnership deals,
they use a lot of perplexity,
you probably want to be in there. You
might find value in advertising directly
to them in that place where they pay
attention.
Now, let's say you're selling, you know,
uh, time shares to retirees.
Well, like, man, you you know what? you
probably want to be in you probably want
to be in the American Association of
Retired Persons magazine.
Like I'm serious, right? That
>> and and the two don't cross over at all.
And the AAP has, you know, onetenth of
1% of, you know, ChachiBT's market share
or reach or whatever, right? It's not
like it's not even close. But your job
as a marketer is to do audience research
to figure out which publications, which
platforms, which websites, which
podcasts, which YouTube channels, which
subre does my audience pay attention to.
The macro is interesting. It's great for
discussions like these. It's fun to talk
about on stages. I do a bunch of videos
about it. But what you care about is
your audience and your customers.
And so I cannot tell everyone that
perplexity advertising is wrong for
them. Just like I can't tell everyone
that, you know, buying an ad in the AP
magazine is right for everyone. It and
this is, you know, not to toot our own
horn, but like you could use Spark Toro
for this. You could use um uh Similar
Web has a has a nice product for this.
If you like the sort of the enterprise
offerings, they have a good one. It's
expensive, but high quality. I like
their stuff. Um Spark Toro is more of
the self-service like cheap version. And
yeah, like go use a tool, figure out
where your audience pays attention. If
you see that perplexity is very high,
you know, in the little Spark Toro graph
of like which search and AI tools are
popular, make an investment, right? Give
it a try for sure. So I don't this
kind of Yeah, I don't know whether it's
a mood point, but did you see the
article earlier this week about OpenAI
launching this instant checkout feature
and
>> Oh god. Yeah. And I just want to get
your take on that and whether you think
this whole agentic e-commerce thing is
has got legs in it. And what's your take
on that?
>> It you know what's so weird? It's
exactly like Amazon's Alexa.
Like it one for one, right? Like it is
the same thing. Remember when Amazon
launched Alexa and they were like, "Hey,
people aren't going to have to go to
amazon.com anymore. They're not going to
going to go to your website. They're
just going to say, "Hey, Alexa, buy me
10 more, you know, rolls of Bounty
toilet paper, you know, or whatever it
is." Maybe Bounty doesn't make toilet
paper. It's probably that would that
would probably be rough. Um uh paper
towels. Paper towels. That's the one.
Yeah. Uh right. And like it never
happened. Like they shut down the
program. I think last year they shut
down the program. They were basically
like, "Yeah, nobody uses this.
I don't think I don't think anybody's
gonna use this one either. I don't I
don't trust it." Nature. Like it is
they're solving a problem that is not
hard.
>> Yeah.
>> Right.
>> That's such a good point. Like I didn't
even think of us.
>> Yeah.
>> It's it's silly. Like it's such a hey,
we're going to do this because we can,
not because we should or because anyone
wants it. Like I don't I don't really
have that much trouble going to
Nordstrom's website and like buying a
new com shirt like you know, right? that
I can it it's easy that it they already
have my saved checkout information and I
get my Nordstrom points there. I don't
want to tell Chat GBT to do it. Alaska
Airlines has all my stuff saved and like
my you know whatever. Like I'm not going
to tell Chat GBT to buy my airline. I
don't trust them to pick the seats
correctly. And if they mess up, who's to
blame? Like do you think Sam Alman is
going to be like, "Oh, sorry. I'll
upgrade you to first class next time."
No. You know,
>> I I love that. Like it's just Yeah, that
Yeah. the problem that they're solving
is not a hard problem and I think there
will be there's going to be people out
there who are super users and they use
chat GBT for everything just like there
was a tiny minority of people like my
dad got really into Alexa and he was
like you know he wasn't making purchases
through Alexa but he was using that a
lot when it first came out but he was in
the minority like I've point of pride
never engaged with an Alexa at all like
I don't own one it just feels weird to
me to interact with something in that
way and I think Yeah, I I would have to
agree with you that I don't think the
agentic AI e-commerce thing is going to
live up to the way it's being hyped
right now. That's not to say that, you
know, some people will use it and there
will be a small minority of people that
find value in it, but I can't see that,
you know, consumer behavior on mass um
changing in that direction. Yeah. Also,
the incentive is just, you know, I think
businesses, e-commerce businesses in
particular, but but SAS businesses too,
any anyone you buy from, right? service
businesses, they have all learned that
these platforms are going to, you know,
forgive my language, but they're going
to f you over, right? Like if if you own
a store, you know, whatever, your Specs
Savers or your Nordstrom or your um
Marks and Spencer, like they those
businesses have learned that Google was
a Trojan horse that eventually screwed
them, right? and is trying to take, you
know, 99 cents of every dollar of margin
that they make. Um,
how why in the world would they trust
OpenAI to do anything else? It just
seems wild to me that you would be like,
"Well, I was a sucker last time, but
these guys seem trustworthy. Let's do it
again." [laughter]
>> Yeah, it's it's great. Okay. So, I think
I know I think I have a idea of what you
you'll say to this. So, I was thinking
about I've only got two questions left.
So, this second to last one thinking
about how to get cited in
LLMs that have your brand featured in
the answers that come up. And the the
one that often gets cited is you you
need to get into Reddit and you need to
be engaging in those forms. And I think
like to your point the step before that
is no before you go straight to Reddit
you need to understand where your
audience are paying attention and where
they spend their time and you shouldn't
just go we need to be everywhere all at
once because as you said you don't you
need to figure out okay where are our
audience and then therefore we need to
make a decision of this is where we're
going to focus our efforts and these are
the channels that we need to spend time
on. So, am I along the right lines of
thinking there like in terms of how you
want to get surfaced in those answers
that that's the right approach? Um, is
there anything else
>> Yeah, James. Long term, I think you're
absolutely right. Like there's no
there's no question in my mind that the
LLMs will eventually get smart enough to
where they they figure out the right
source of influence for any given search
or or query or prompt or whatever and
then they pull from those specifically
rather than trying to like take their
whole language model. But right now,
>> if you would like to appear at the top
of LLMs,
you can spam it pretty easy. Um, and you
know, it's like 1990s Google, like
teach.
>> Yeah, sure. Uh, I think my buddy Will
Reynolds did a did a post that was like
basically if you search for um in Google
if you go search for like best agency or
best you know web marketing agency in
city
uh in quotes and look for that in the
title and then add the name of an
agency. you can see who's spamming
Google or sorry who's spamming the LLMs
cuz essentially what they're doing
they're not spamming Google because it's
not Google's smart enough to like know
not to put them at the top but the LLMs
are not they just crawl and index the
web and they are taking any article that
gets put up on any website and so people
are putting up you know 50 little mini
websites with like best hyphen agency
hyphen in hyphen Toronto you know
whatever and like they're winning the AI
game with that because the AI tools are
not smart enough yet to be able to go,
you know, specific source to specific
source. A large language model is just
that. Lots of language from the internet
look for words that frequently come
after other words, tokens that
frequently come after other tokens,
right? And so they if you have a 100
pieces of content on the web from a
bunch of different domains that say, you
know, that and your agency is always at
the top. Yeah. when when you ask chat
GBT what's the best agency in Toronto
you can totally game that you can come
up first right now that works and and as
a result like if you think about why
that works you also realize the
legitimate ways to do it which is press
and PR media appearances podcast
transcript appearances YouTube
appearances like you this is not the
only reason I do podcasts but one of the
reasons I do podcasts nowadays is
because I know that I will mention
audience research and zeroclick
marketing and you know all this stuff
and Spark Toro will also be in there and
so in the transcript of this podcast and
dozens like it
chat GBT and Gemini and Perplexity and
Claude will all see that content and
then they'll go oh I should whenever
someone asks me about audience research
I should say Spark Toro and and I'm
doing it the legit way right which is
going to last for much longer than the
sort of spammy way that a bunch of these
agencies are doing it but both work. You
just you just need to be in the model
more times and and uh they care a lot
about recency, too. So, don't think you
can do it once and then it'll last for
years. If they see, you know, a big
spike in the last 90 days of a bunch of
new mentions of of one thing over
another, that'll that'll make it into
the model, too.
>> Nice. It's good to know. Uh a
masterclass in spamming the algorithms.
Well, yeah. I've always been a fan of
just doing it the proper way cuz it's
like you're going to we know you're
going to be penalized down the line for
this kind of activity. Like as you said
like Google's done that time and time
again where there's sites. Did you see
all the things that happened when Chad
GBT first got released and these people
were able to generate huge volumes of
traffic to their site through these AI
generated blogs and then they all came
crashing down like you know six, seven
months later and it's like what is the
point of trying to do things this spammy
way? It's so much time and investment.
But anyway, um my final question um rant
um is just for any marketing leaders out
there who there's so many new shiny
objects and attribution is really hard
and it is you know it it can feel like a
hard time right now to be um in charge
of a marketing budget and deciding what
we're going to do. Um, are there any key
bits of advice or or areas that you'd
recommend to focus on so that you don't
get caught up in these things that might
not actually move the needle uh for for
your business?
>> Um, okay, my this is my top
recommendation. It's very hard to do,
but if you can bake marketing into your
product, you will have way more success
than someone who builds a product and
then tries to market it. And here's what
I mean by that. There are some products
where the product itself creates an
incentive for people who buy it, consume
it, use it, see it to share it, and talk
about it. It's that amplification and
reach and sort of virality that we
talked about at the start of the
podcast. If you can bake that into your
product, you will have incredible
success
and and you'll just multiply the the um
value of any marketing that you do. So,
uh, you know, here's an example. Like,
let's say you and I make, um, an
incredible new, you know, Japanese
steel, beautiful, uh, Damascus, you
know, markings on the on the on the
blade. And we do like the special
etching and engraving and like the
handle is made from this rare wood. And
it's just the most beautiful knife in
the world, handmade by us, and we sell
them for like $700 or whatever.
It's a great knife. It's beautiful. Does
it get people talking? Yeah, maybe a
little bit. But there's a lot of them.
There's so many, you know, so much
competition.
Or let's say you do what my buddy Scott
did. Um, I was just playing with it last
night where he he's a he's like a
culinary inventor and he put ultrasonic
technology into the knife handled. And
so it it passes a little ultrasonic um
current through the blade that vibrates
the blade like 40,000 times a second.
similar to your ultrasonic toothbrush
except you can't feel it. You know, if
you're holding the knife, you won't you
won't feel anything. So, you push this
button and it just glides through food.
It's not a lightsaber, but it's not that
far off. Like, it's really it's super
fun to use. Like, it's really cool. And
it just looks like a knife, you know,
with that happens to have a button on
the underside of the handle. I can't
stop talking about it. Like, anybody who
comes over to my house for dinner, I'm
like, "Oh my god, you have to see this.
Like, play with this. Try this. Like,
cut through some fruit with it. Oh,
isn't that incredible?" like try it
versus this night. You know, I got this
professionally sharp and now try this
one. Oh my god, it's like you can't stop
talking about it. That's what I'm
talking about when I say bake marketing
into the product. Like if you can change
the the product itself. We did this with
Spark Toro where Spark Toro, the old
Spark Toro had the same data as as the
new one we launched in May. But James,
the new one is super visual. Like
there's all these graphs. I'm sure you
played with it, right? there's like all
these graphs and charts and like you can
see open a you know chachi bt versus
Google and like here's how much or less
it's used and then because of that
people screenshot it and they put in
their presentations and they put it in
their blog posts and they put it in
their YouTube videos and they put it in
their Instagram videos and like oh my
god you know the the growth the last
four months has dwarfed the growth from
the previous year because people talk
about it they have an incentive to share
it so if you can do that that's my that
is my top number one tip for marketers s
in any environment. Doesn't matter what
algorithm changes happen, what platform
changes happen, what AI does, that's
always going to work.
>> Nice. Given me a lot to think about
there and and I think yeah, we'll take
back and what could we do in Lunio to
try and build some of that into the
product? What day what data can we put
in front of people and how can we make
that data look nice and sharable? Really
good ideas. I'm going to go away and
talk with the product team, but I want
to say thank you so much, Rand, for uh
for joining me today. I really enjoy the
conversation and I think people will
find this one really useful as as we
look ahead into 2026 and certainly it's
given me some some reassurance and
clarity on you know I'm not going crazy
and attribution is broken like it it's
just it's not working. Um before we wrap
up is there anything else you'd like to
mention or let people know about before
we before we finish?
Uh gosh. Well, I you know, James, I do
run these other two companies. So, if
you are uh an indie video game
enthusiast and you want to play the role
of a chef in 1960s Italy who um you know
fights magical boores in the wilderness
and then brings back your ponetta and
your guanchale to make your spaghetti
alakarbon at your restaurant. You should
check out snackbarstudio.com.
That game is going to be launching in
2027. Um, and my other uh company which
is just launching in a few weeks here is
called Alert Mouse. It's a better
version of Google Alerts. So, it's free.
You can try that out, too. Nice. There's
been some good Italian restaurant
references in this uh in this
conversation. And yeah, I think I'm
going to have to Google that knife.
>> You can tell what's on my mind.
>> Nice. Thank you so much, Ran. Really
appreciate it.
>> My pleasure, James. Thanks for having
me. Take care.
>> That's it for this episode of the Pay
Media Lab. Thanks for tuning in. If you
found it helpful, hit the subscribe
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And if you want more advice on how to
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Lastly, if you know any other marketers
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That's all for this one, and I'll see
you in the next episode.
13 minBacklinko
