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The internet’s unspoken deal is DEAD.
For 20 years, we operated under an unspoken agreement: create great content, get traffic in return. That deal is dead.
Search engines built billion-dollar empires on it. Publishers structured entire business models around it. But now, LLMs are devouring content, serving up answers, and bypassing the creators who made them. Referral traffic is falling off a cliff. The old “SEO-for-traffic” equation isn’t just eroding — it’s being rewritten in real time.
AIO? GEO? SEO? Regardless of what we end up calling it, this is disruption in real time.
But this shift isn’t limited to media. It’s a direct hit to the way businesses build, manage, and scale their playbooks. You know the ones. Those frameworks and formulas were designed to deliver predictable results, but AI doesn’t care about your playbook. The cycle time between “best practice” and “obsolete” has shrunk from years to months, sometimes weeks. In some cases, overnight.
In this episode of Playbook Broken, I talk with Will Allen, VP at Cloudflare, to unpack this collapse. Will’s not just another exec waving an AI banner. He’s on the frontlines, building products that challenge how content creators and AI companies interact — and more importantly, how value will be exchanged in the future internet.
We talked about why repetition is a leadership superpower, how AI agents will outnumber human users, and why blocking crawlers isn’t a strategy — it’s a countdown clock.
If you’re still measuring success by pageviews, or if you think your current playbooks will carry you through the next cycle of AI-driven disruption, you need to hear this conversation.
The deal has been broken. The question is — what are you going to do about it?
Thanks for reading and watching Playbook Broken! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Around the town, notes and musings:
* I'm still experimenting with TikTok. I've been told my vids are good, but they need work. “Mid,” as the kids say. Or in other words, “6-7.”
* I’m reading The Dutch House by Ann Patchett not only because she’s amazing (she is!) but because when my daughter gives me a book recommendation, there is a reason. It’s so good.
* Over on MarTech.org we’ve been trying a live stream on Fridays to talk marketing, martech, and to connect with smart people. Check out the episodes and clips on the YouTube channel.
* If you have read this far, let me just say “Thank you” and that I hope you are safe and okay.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcsirkin.substack.com
View all episodes
By Marc SirkinFor 20 years, we operated under an unspoken agreement: create great content, get traffic in return. That deal is dead.
Search engines built billion-dollar empires on it. Publishers structured entire business models around it. But now, LLMs are devouring content, serving up answers, and bypassing the creators who made them. Referral traffic is falling off a cliff. The old “SEO-for-traffic” equation isn’t just eroding — it’s being rewritten in real time.
AIO? GEO? SEO? Regardless of what we end up calling it, this is disruption in real time.
But this shift isn’t limited to media. It’s a direct hit to the way businesses build, manage, and scale their playbooks. You know the ones. Those frameworks and formulas were designed to deliver predictable results, but AI doesn’t care about your playbook. The cycle time between “best practice” and “obsolete” has shrunk from years to months, sometimes weeks. In some cases, overnight.
In this episode of Playbook Broken, I talk with Will Allen, VP at Cloudflare, to unpack this collapse. Will’s not just another exec waving an AI banner. He’s on the frontlines, building products that challenge how content creators and AI companies interact — and more importantly, how value will be exchanged in the future internet.
We talked about why repetition is a leadership superpower, how AI agents will outnumber human users, and why blocking crawlers isn’t a strategy — it’s a countdown clock.
If you’re still measuring success by pageviews, or if you think your current playbooks will carry you through the next cycle of AI-driven disruption, you need to hear this conversation.
The deal has been broken. The question is — what are you going to do about it?
Thanks for reading and watching Playbook Broken! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Around the town, notes and musings:
* I'm still experimenting with TikTok. I've been told my vids are good, but they need work. “Mid,” as the kids say. Or in other words, “6-7.”
* I’m reading The Dutch House by Ann Patchett not only because she’s amazing (she is!) but because when my daughter gives me a book recommendation, there is a reason. It’s so good.
* Over on MarTech.org we’ve been trying a live stream on Fridays to talk marketing, martech, and to connect with smart people. Check out the episodes and clips on the YouTube channel.
* If you have read this far, let me just say “Thank you” and that I hope you are safe and okay.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcsirkin.substack.com