Hey👋,
I'm Giacomo

Sunday thoughts:

Working in marketing doesn’t feel like work.

This week I was talking to friends in different industries, and I was struck by how much “boring” work fills their days:

• Daily 9am standups
• Structured “agile” routines
• Clearly defined tasks
• Endless slides
• Jira updates
• Annoying clients

For me, it’s the opposite.

No rigid tasks, no daily meetings.
Every day looks different.

One day I might spend hours on Slack and meetings. The next I’m deep-diving into a new AI trend.

Almost every week there’s something new in digital marketing that I need to explore.

And that’s what I love.

It reminds me of my music days:
hours spent experimenting with sounds, learning new riffs, chasing inspiration etc.

I loved it,
but I had no clear structure, and maybe that’s why I never became good enough.

Is it the same happening now in my marketing career?

Hard to say.

But here’s what I know for sure:

Waking up not knowing how the day will unfold gives me motivation.

It keeps my passion alive.

And considering I now get paid for what feels like play...

whatever I’m doing seems not to be that wrong. ☺️

Curious,
are there other marketers who feel the same way?

🚀 Just show up.

That’s it. That’s the game.

Google’s landmark Messy Middle research found something unexpected:

👉 30% of consumers will pick you over their favorite brand…
Simply because you showed up, as a possible alternative.

That was back in 2020. An eternity ago.
Yet in the age of AI, it’s more relevant than ever.

Why?
Because when people chat with AI bots, they’re shown options.

And the moment your brand gets mentioned, you suddenly have a 30% chance of being chosen.

Even if the consumer was thinking of someone else!

That’s the power of showing up.

Where?
Everywhere!

Across forums. Socials. Reviews. Search. Industry publications.

Because the more you show up, the more likely AI will recall you.

💡that recall alone is enough to swing 30% of consumers.

Forget backlinks!

SEO in the age of AI is not about links.
It’s about mentions!

Ahrefs found that referrals and backlinks, the backbone of traditional SEO, barely move the needle for LLMs.

So what matters?
Your brand being mentioned online.
Unsolicited.

That means outside of a marketing context:
- a Reddit user recommending you.
- a comment thread dropping your name.

Even someone Googling your brand directly is good enough!

Not shady backlinks. Not hacks. Not shortcuts.

We’ve “nerdified” marketing for too long.

Now it’s time to get back to fundamentals:

👉 Real PR.
👉 Real brand building.
👉 Real conversations.

That’s what LLMs actually pick up.

Yet,
way too many marketers, even here on LinkedIn, are still in denial.

When they'll finally get it, it'll be too late.

ChatGPT will sell ads.

No, there’s no official announcement.
But I’m 100% sure it’s coming. And soon.

Why?
Because AI chatbots don’t need to send traffic anywhere else.
Users stay inside the walls of the bot.

The better the answers, the less need to click out, the better the user experience.

What I think it'll happen:
👉 GPT stops sending free traffic to outside websites.
👉 Unless you pay for it.

Think about it: agents can already handle tasks end-to-end.
No clicks. No browsing.

But…
if advertisers step in, you can bet the agent will “recommend” their sources. 😅

Sort of influencer marketing in the age of AI 😂.

Also,
only 4% of ChatGPT users pay for a subscription.

Do you really think OpenAI will pass on monetising the other 96%?

Sorry Perplexity, Chrome is not on sale anymore 😅

The landmark antitrust trial against Google is wrapping up.

And guess what?

They likely won’t have to:

- Sell Chrome
- Stop paying Apple billions to remain the default search engine on Safari

The judge pointed to the rise of AI chatbots as proof that Google isn’t really a monopoly anymore.

Which is ironic.

Because yes, AI chatbots are threatening Google’s core business model…
…except Google built one AI Chatbot itself 😅

And a pretty good one, too!

What’s next?
Google paying Apple even more billions to make Gemini the default AI assistant on iPhones 😂

The AI wars just got a new twist.

Time to rewatch Mad Men.

Because marketing is back to the 1960s. 🍸

Rand Fishkin saw it coming over a year ago,
and his piece is even more relevant today.

Marketing is undergoing a massive reshuffle.
In many ways, it’s going back to the old glory days.

Yet a lot of “modern” marketers are still in denial.
They can’t accept the shift.

I started my career nearly 10 years ago, right in the peak of the technical marketing era.

Back then, ROAS was the mantra.

But now…

Attribution is dead.
Clicks are dead.
Keywords in search are dead too.

That hyper-granular campaign structure I mastered for years? Irrelevant now.

Targeting specific user groups or positioning single products is now virtually impossible.

Broad Ai-driven campaigns like Google Performance Max are greatly over-performing any traditional campaign.

If you disagree with this statement, sorry but you're in denial too.

So where does this leave us?

Back to what the Mad Men did best!

Bold creative ideas.
Broad reach.
Simple, yet effective lift experiments.

That’s going to be the new (old) mantra of the Ai age.

Because everything else, the tech stack, the targeting, the mechanics, has already become a commodity.

Marketing as we know it is dead. ⚰️

RIP clicks.
RIP traffic.
RIP cookies.
RIP attribution.
RIP user targeting.
RIP marketing ROI?

So who's the killer? 🕵️

You'd think Ai.
And you'd be right. But...

the truth is,
Ai just joined a crime scene that was already crowded.

Social platforms and Google killed clicks long before ChatGPT.
They don’t want you to leave their walled gardens.

And when you do, they hide referral info.
Ever heard of “dark social”?

GDPR and privacy regulations buried cookies and tracking years ago.

Marketing attribution?
Let’s be honest. It never really worked.
Last-click was a lie, and by the time better models arrived, it was already too late.

Now, AI is simply accelerating the inevitable.

ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews are designed to keep you within the walls of a single conversation.

They often handle entire purchase journeys without sending ANY traffic.

Attributing sales to Ai conversations without traffic is virtually impossible.

We're left with lot of open questions and very few answers:

- How do we target users within Ai conversations?
- How do we target users who opt out of tracking?
- Do we even need to "target" users??
- How do we measure ROI without traffic and clicks?

We're at the beginning of a whole new era of marketing!

Who will find the answers first, will win.

Last week I presented what I call "The Great Marketing Reshuffle".

It's by far the biggest revolution in Marketing of the past 20/25 years.

The new age of Ai is completely reshaping the consumer journey and with it the way we do marketing.

Many things are dead:

- cookies are dead
- channel attribution is dead
- clicks are dead
- traffic is (almost) dead

Now consumers can perform the whole purchase journey within one single Ai platform. Without EVER clicking and visiting external sites/apps.

This happens in ChatGPT, Gemini etc, but also on Google itself with Ai Overviews and Ai Mode.

And if you add GPTAgent to the mix, then you really have a revolution unfolding before your eyes!

It's a huge disruption, that impacts every aspect of marketing.

From content, to media buying, to user targeting, even to how marketing teams are organised and their role within organisations.

It also impacts marketing measurement.
How can we prove marketing ROI without clicks or traffic?

I tried to make sense of all of this last week and I really enjoyed the deep discussion we had afterwards. Lot of food for thoughts!

But we're just at the very beginning of this revolution and I'm looking forward to what it'll bring next!

🚨Perplexity offers to buy Chrome!

If this isn’t the AI wars at full play I don’t know what else is.

Google was deemed a monopoly after loosing an antitrust trial earlier this year.

Splitting the giant up is one of the options on the table of antitrust officials.

Chrome could be separated and so Perplexity is making proposal.

The goal is to create the largest AI-powered browser on earth.

I strongly believe the internet of the near future will look very different from now!

🚨 SEO-hack alert.

Create a GPT conversation about yourself (or your brand) and make it discoverable.

Hopefully it'll rank on Google and serve as another piece of content.

Or maybe it's just a BS tactic? 😂