The AI advice I gave in January looks different now

The biggest surprise? The hard part isn't AI. It's everything before AI: clean data, clear workflows, the ability to articulate what you're actually building. That upstream clarity determines downstream success more than any tool choice.

Tracking brand mentions in AI has shifted from PR vanity metric to a real measure of business value.

Wondering about AI in marketing? See why it belongs in your 2026 plan. We break down how manufacturers can use it to drive leads—without the headache.

The rush to adopt AI often skips the crucial question: which problems are we solving? Smart marketers aren't chasing every shiny tool – they're identifying specific friction points where AI creates measurable impact. Start with your biggest bottleneck, then find the right solution. Technology should serve strategy, never the reverse.

The 17x usage gap between power users and typical employees reveals enterprise AI's real challenge: adoption, not capability. When 81% of active users haven't explored core features, the bottleneck isn't technology—it's change management.

Publishers are tracking AI citations to understand visibility, attribution gaps and referral traffic in these tools and platforms.

If you've ever found yourself wrangling with your AI tool and not quite getting the output you wanted, a greater understanding of how it works under the hood may help.

The bottleneck in AI for marketing is no longer computational power. It is contextual intelligence.

The agent revolution isn't about autonomy—it's about augmentation. Smart teams are building constrained systems that compress hours of work into minutes, not replacing judgment with unpredictable black boxes. Control isn't a limitation; it's the entire value proposition.