AI has made publishing faster and easier than ever. And the result is saturation. As AI lowers the barrier to production, the web is filling with content that is technically sound, reasonably optimized and increasingly indistinguishable. When everything looks polished and competent, standing out becomes harder. AI has changed content output, but users still arrive …
Read more “How to make your content stand out in the age of AI”
Did you know technical debt costs global enterprises approximately $400 million annually? It’s a staggering amount of money, and that debt arises from — among other things — a cultural resistance to change or budgetary limitations, which lead organizations to add new applications rather than replacing outdated systems. Technical debt can accumulate practically anywhere in …
Read more “Your technical debt is crushing your bottom line”
This article was co-authored with Lucas Walshe, digital analytics consultant at fifty-five. Privacy is becoming increasingly important in the U.S. With more than 20 states now enforcing privacy laws, companies face a patchwork of regulatory requirements, further complicated by limited case law and formal guidance. However, the state leading the way — California — has …
Read more “GPC compliance must be a legal priority for U.S. marketers”
Marketing organizations have never had more visibility into performance. Dashboards track campaigns in real time, attribution models connect touchpoints to revenue and project management systems quantify output, timelines and cost efficiency with precision. Yet when it comes to creative work, measurement often narrows instead of expands. Creative teams are typically evaluated by throughput — how …
Eighty-three percent of marketers say customers expect two-way conversations. Yet 69% admit they struggle to respond quickly to inquiries. That gap may be the most critical signal in Salesforce’s latest State of Marketing report. The AI revolution in marketing is already operational. Nearly 4,500 marketers surveyed globally confirm that expectations are rising faster than most …
Read more “Customers want dialogue, and marketers cannot keep up”
Are empathy, sympathy and humanity bad now? That’s what I hear from some thought leaders and government officials who say we can’t afford to be so soft anymore. I couldn’t disagree more, and I urge my fellow marketers not to abandon these values. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us how important they are. With the turmoil …
Read more “We need more humanity in email, especially at unsubscribe”
The most significant advertising moment of 2026 happened on the second Sunday in February. It wasn’t the most popular Super Bowl spot or the most cinematic brand anthem. It was a pointed message embedded in one of the game’s most self-aware ads. In attempting to position itself against a rival, Claude revealed a line the …
Read more “Advertising in AI is a trust experiment marketers can’t ignore”
When Gmail rolled out a new “Manage Subscriptions” feature last summer, we knew it would make an impact, particularly for brands that didn’t lean into segmentation and automated journeys and instead peppered users with frequent messaging that lacked personalization. Six months in, the impact is deeper than we expected. Unsubscribe rates are up an average …
Read more “Email retention after Gmail’s ‘Manage Subscriptions’ rollout”
In MarTech’s “MarTechBot explains it all” feature, we pose a marketing question to our very own MarTechBot, which is trained on the MarTech website archives and has access to the broader internet. Question: How should B2B organizations architect data governance and consent models to support full‑funnel AI applications across marketing and sales systems? MarTechBot’s answer: …
Read more “How to future-proof your AI stack with data governance”
A client I’ve been creating online content for recently asked me to shift priorities. Instead of writing for traditional SEO first, they want me to focus on AEO first, with SEO as a secondary consideration. I understand the logic. Discovery is changing. Content isn’t just competing for blue links anymore. It’s competing to be cited …
Read more “Writing for GEO feels like early SEO all over again”