Decoding AI for Marketing

Michael Walrath, Chairman and CEO of Yext, says today’s AI is fundamentally rewriting the rules of search, discovery, and brand visibility. Drawing on his extensive ad tech experience at DoubleClick, Yahoo, Moat, and now Yext, Walrath explains why AI-powered search is so much more powerful than traditional search—and why many current assumptions about GEO, SEO, and advertising are headed for a fast reckoning. Expanding on our episode with Bill Gross, Walrath also argues that inserting ads into AI experiences is the wrong answer, clicks are disappearing, and the future of AI marketing will look more like structured data and affiliate-style value exchange than traditional advertising.

Yext CEO on Search in the Age of AI: https://www.barrons.com/video/yext-ceo-on-search-in-the-age-of-ai/F798C382-AB67-47FD-AA54-4BEA89F5F38F

Yext’s Visibility Brief on Brand Visibility in AI Search: https://martech.org/yexts-visibility-brief-your-guide-to-brand-visibility-in-ai-search/

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Shelly Palmer, professor in residence at Syracuse and expert in all things AI, returns to the show to offer up what trends he saw at CES, and where the marketing industry is going. He explains how fast AI is changing every day, what marketers need to be doing to keep up, and why the technology is still underhyped.

For Further Reading:

CES 2026 Day 1: https://shellypalmer.com/2026/01/ces-2026-day-1-robot-wars/

How to Install and Setup Claude Code: https://shellypalmer.com/2026/01/how-to-install-claude-code/

MMA CMO AI Transformation Summit featuring Shelly: https://mmaglobal.com/cmo-ai-transformation-summit

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Sid Sudhakaran, Head of Data Strategy & Engineering for North America at Kantar, explains the benefits of the company’s ambitious AI assistant: KAiA. He explains how it democratizes data, when chatbots work for marketers (and when they don’t), and the real customer pain points they are tackling each and every day. 

For Further Reading: 

Embedding Artificial Intelligence in the World’s Largest Companies

Leveraging GenAI for Connected Insights

Kantar forecasts ten marketing trends for 2026 strategic planning

MMA and Kantar unveil how consumers are using AI

More about KAiA

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Bill Gross, founder of Overture (the company that created paid search) and now ProRata.ai, says that generative AI is fundamentally rewriting the rules of search - which means marketers, advertisers, and customers must all adapt to new ways of discovering products. Gross explains ProRata’s business model, how advertising will evolve inside AI-generated results, what a fair-value model for publishers and creators might look like, and how brands can stay discoverable and trusted as attention shifts away from search pages toward GenAI chat models. 

For Further Reading: 

Generative AI Has a 'Shoplifting' Problem. This Startup CEO Has a Plan to Fix It

ProRata.ai raises $40M and launches new search tool for publishers

ProRata.ai

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Jacob Bank, Relay.app founder and CEO, says the days of building up a huge marketing department might just be over. The Relay.app platform helps teams design and deploy custom AI agents, without losing impact. Bank explains why the old model of hiring is on the way out, why he offers step-by-step guides to users on how to effectively build agents, and how marketers can rethink scale, autonomy, and leverage in this new age. 

For Further Reading: 

After selling his last startup to Google, this founder now wants to automate mundane tasks with Relay

Backed by a16z, Relay races to market with Zapier in its crosshairs

The Mom Test

Traction

Jeff Su

Jacob’s Favorite AI Agents!

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Diaz Nesamoney, Founder, President, and CEO of Jivox, says that commerce media is fast becoming the next big wave in advertising, thanks to transaction-level data that makes personalization more precise than search and social media ever could. He explains how commerce media is growing beyond retail and how AI allows that scale, as well as the complexities marketers face when handling diverse product catalogs across multiple retail platforms. 

For Further Reading: 

The Future of Commerce Media Isn’t Retail. It's Everywhere

Commerce Media Has Entered a New Era

Commerce media evolves as AI, offsite, and new vertices reshape the landscape

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Hannah Elsakr, Vice President of New GenAI Business Ventures at Adobe, hears from enterprise marketing leaders every day about what they really need from their AI tools. She talks about why so many marketers are still hesitant to adopt AI into their workflows for true transformation, and how Adobe Firefly is helping to create commercially safe and ethically sourced generative AI to open new doors for your brand.  

For Further Reading:

Adobe’s AI Vision: Hannah Elsakr on Empowering Creativity Responsibly

Adobe Firefly and Adobe Express now feature Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image Model

What’s Next in the Evolution of Generative AI-Powered Marketing

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Wade Foster, CEO and cofounder of Zapier, says the next frontier for marketers isn’t just shiny AI agents, but practical AI workflows. By weaving automation and intelligence into the systems teams already use, marketers can reduce manual tasks, accelerate lead management, and unlock new personalization at scale. Wade explains how Zapier has moved beyond basic integrations to become an orchestration layer for AI, and why this shift matters for marketing leaders looking to drive results without overhauling their entire stack. He unpacks the biggest workflow wins he’s seeing across the industry and where marketing is heading next. 

For Further Reading: 

Wade Foster in AdWeek

How to analyze Facebook and LinkedIn campaign performance with AI-powered agents

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755

Sandeep Menon, cofounder at Auxia, says AI is quickly enabling the marketing industry to enter the age of “supermarketers” - where individuals can do the jobs of all different kinds of specialized marketers with the help of AI tools. He unpacks how agentic AI is changing the game by creating tools to compress roles, accelerate experimentation, and drive deeper personalization at scale. From lifecycle decisioning to AI-powered analyst agents, Sandeep shares real-world applications and explains how marketers can set guardrails, gain explainability, and finally unlock the value of first-party data - and avoid the AI marketing content that feels overly spammy. 

For Further Reading: 

The Anthropic Vending Machine Test: https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/an-ai-ran-a-vending-machine-for-a-month-and-proved-it-couldnt-even-handle-passive-income/91207636

More about Auxia: https://www.auxia.io/en

The One to One Future (book): 

https://www.amazon.com/One-Future-Don-Peppers/dp/0385485662

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Paul Yacoubian, founder and CEO at Copy.ai, is on a mission to cut down go-to-market bloat. One big way that AI can help marketers, especially at larger organizations, is in creating standardized content creation processes - and integrating those outputs into existing companies at the organization. It can mean efficiency and scale that saves thousands of employees time, and can increase the satisfaction of thousands of customers. Paul chats with Greg and Rex about how Copy.ai generates marketing and sales content, the importance of workflow-based solutions over isolated AI tools, and how to enhance customer experience. 

For Further Reading:

Learn more about Copy.ai: https://www.copy.ai/

Learn more about Paul: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulyacoubian/

NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google.com/

AI productivity study: https://fortune.com/2025/07/20/ai-hampers-productivity-software-developers-productivity-study/

Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1715735755