The Problem: For the last few years, companies have been investing inordinate sums into AI tracking and AI visibility for their brands and products. $100M+/yr is already estimated to be spent on this new version of search analytics and yet, I could find absolutely no research showing whether AI tools are consistent enough, when prompted
Vibes Meet Facts: Write Like the Smart Human You Are, Not the LLM Making Stuff Up Again
By If you were to perceive the world based on a skim of my Threads feed this morning, then you would be convinced that absolutely everyone is engrossed with the Beckham family drama, the only other pressing matter at hand is whether to recline your airplane seat, and the cost of $0.79 for a garlic bulb
Starting today anyone can analyze any (describable) audience in SparkToro
By Until now, if you wanted to research an audience with SparkToro, you needed to choose a particular website, a search keyword, or a URL to analyze…. No more. As of today’s launch, we’re now providing the ability to describe, in natural language, any audience, with any restrictions or specificity you want, and get data about
How to Overcome the “Link in Comments” Problem on LinkedIn and Other Social Platforms
By Those pesky, anti-link, pro-native-content social platforms are at it again, muzzling the visibility of links anywhere and everywhere they can. Sure, they occasionally let something especially high-performing through, but as we learned when Twitter open-sourced its algo, these systems intentionally and consistently demote content with links… But… Amanda and I have been working on ways
Where Agency Revenue Is Heading: Fewer Big Retainers, More Mid-Market Retainers, and Longer Engagements
By Recently, Rand and I released the results of the State of Digital Agencies survey for 2025. Our goal of this annual survey is simple – get a temperate check on the digital agency world and give folks a benchmark for how they’re performing compared to their peers. If you missed the launch post, you can
The 5 Big Trends that Will Dominate Marketing in 2026
By I find most end-of-year prediction and crystal ball-gazing listicles to be trash. They don’t prove their assertions, use anecdotes rather than data at scale to back up their prognostications, and, worst of all, fail to grade their previous predictions (how the #$%@ else do you know if you can trust their current ones?!). And yes,
Our Top 5 Blog Posts in 2025 to Help You With Your Marketing in 2026
By Raise your hand if you remember these roundup posts! No? That’s just me? I was the only one paying attention to these in 2008? Come onnnn. We all love a good roundup post. This one’s like a “SparkToro Wrapped” except it’s not about you… yet it has everything to do with you. These are our
Your Next Launch Will Fail Without an Amplifier Strategy
By When teams say, “We’ll build first and figure out marketing later,” they’ve already made their launch harder. That’s not a dunk; it’s an observation. Every time we separate “product” from “marketing,” we guarantee that one will limp behind the other. I was reminded of this when Rand said in a recent interview with Jacob Cook
Never Ask an AI Tool How It Came Up with That Answer
By This post on LinkedIn by Britney Muller is, IMHO, the most important short piece on AI you’ll read this year. It’s so critical to understand what she’s saying here that I’ve focused this week’s 5-Minute Whiteboard on explaining and demonstrating exactly the problem she’s so succinctly captured. If you’ve ever asked ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini,
The Best Damn Food & Drink Gift Guide 2025
By Hey friends! It’s been a crazy few months what with flutters hands, gestures to the burning tire fire just outside the window. The point is, December caught us completely unawares this year. We genuinely thought that November was followed by … Smocktober? We apologize for the delay on the gift guide this year, but fear