Marketing, growth
& GEO.
Practical thinking on strategy, brand, organic growth, and getting found — by search engines and by AI.
Meta wants your URL and a budget. Nothing else
Full ad automation by end of 2026. What the black box costs — and what stays scarce when execution is free.
The answers now sell ad space. The citations don’t
ChatGPT ads went international; Google sells placements in AI Mode. Why the paid slot raises the value of the cited one.
Keywords are retiring. Your content is the targeting now
AI Max reads your pages, ChatGPT reads the conversation. Paid and organic just converged on one asset: machine-readable substance.
Google made AI visibility a setting. Set it right
Search Console now has an include/exclude switch for AI answers, a generative AI performance report, and platform properties. What to set this month.
Most AI citations are earned, not owned
Muck Rack’s 1M-link study: 82% of AI citations point to earned media. Why GEO is half reputation work — and what a citable footprint looks like.
llms.txt: the file everyone argues about. We ship it anyway
Google ignores it, the cost is near zero, the agentic web grows. The honest state of the debate — and this site’s own llms.txt.
The web is walling off AI. That is your opening
Cloudflare’s new AI-bot defaults reprice the crawl from 15 September. Publisher walls are brand openings — if you are open by policy.
The EU’s AI-labeling rules are now in force
Article 50 applies since 2 August: chatbot disclosure, synthetic-media marking, deep-fake labels. The four duties in marketing terms — and what is not required.
The AI checkout died. The AI shelf won
In-chat buying lasted five months; the discovery layer it left behind matters more. AI-referred visitors convert better — the contest is the recommendation.
Winning search when nobody clicks
Pew’s data: 8% clicks with an AI summary vs 15% without. Visibility and traffic have decoupled — the scarce event is the mention.
The EU’s AI transparency rules just kicked in
Article 50 applies since 2 August 2026 — chatbots must disclose, synthetic media must be labeled, and the duties bind ordinary brands, not just AI companies.
The in-chat checkout died. The discovery layer won
Instant Checkout lasted six months. Why the transaction was never the prize — and why being the brand AI recommends is the asset that survives every pivot.
68% of Google searches end without a click
The 2026 data: zero-click at 68%, 83% with AI Overviews, 93% in AI Mode. The click is dying — the customer isn’t. Optimise for the mention.
What a medical practice website actually needs
Current beats beautiful: self-service updates, local and AI findability, trust within the rules, and forms with no health data.
If you can’t edit your own website, you don’t own it
The holiday-notice test, the dependency tax, and what self-service editing must cover — without a heavyweight CMS.
Interactive lead capture that respects consent
Games and quizzes as a fair trade — and why the child plays but the parent decides. Consent-first capture that compounds.
Half the new internet is written by machines
The ‘dead internet’ theory got its numbers: bots are now the majority of traffic, ~half of new articles are AI-written — and a twist that makes human content the scarce asset.
After strategy, visibility: the priority most brands miss
Once the positioning is right, distribution decides everything — and buyers now start with AI. Why GEO is the next priority, not a later add-on.
Start with the business goal, not the campaign
Marketing that isn’t tied to a business number can’t be right or wrong — it just runs. The order of operations that connects marketing to revenue.
The marketing metrics that map to revenue
Activity metrics rise while the business doesn’t. The short chain that connects spend to revenue — and the one question every report should answer.
How AI assistants choose which brands to recommend
Query fan-out, consensus across sources, the outsized weight of third-party mentions and freshness — and what an absent brand has to change.
Structured data for small brands: the markup that matters
The four schema types that do the work, the mistakes that quietly void them, and a two-minute check of your own site.
Your first marketing hire vs an outside partner
The real costs of each path, what each does better, and the sequencing that works for companies under fifty people.
Does AI recommend your brand? A 10-minute check
Buyers ask ChatGPT which brand to choose. The FIB AI Visibility Check: how to run it yourself across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google — and what each result means.
Marketing agency vs independent consultancy: which fits a small brand?
What you buy from each model, the honest economics, where each wins, and four questions that expose either before you sign.
How much should a small brand spend on marketing?
Benchmarks say 5–15% of revenue; the better answer is arithmetic from customer value and allowable CAC — plus a starting split.
Answer pages: the fastest way into AI search results
Product pages state specs; buyers ask questions. What an answer page is, how to choose the queries, and how one page gets a small brand cited by AI.
Running ads onto thin pages: the quiet budget leak
Media buys the click; the page decides what it becomes. The GA4 signals of a leak, what to fix first, and a two-week test that settles it.
How to build a short-form content engine that compounds
Most brands post and hope. Here are the five parts of a system that manufactures organic reach — strategy, hooks, format, cadence, and analytics.
Organic reach vs paid ads: which lowers customer acquisition cost?
Paid rents attention; organic builds attention you own. How each affects CAC, why blended CAC is the number that matters, and the order to use them in.
Generative Engine Optimization: how to get your brand cited by AI
More buyers ask an AI before they ask Google. Here’s what GEO is, how it differs from SEO, and a practical checklist to become the answer AI gives.