Marketing AI Blog
Insights and strategies for marketing leaders exploring AI
Marketing AI Pulse Brief (June 2026): Cannes Lions, CMO AI Gap, NY Disclosure & AI Love-Hate
The June 2026 Marketing AI Pulse Brief unpacks a marketing world splitting in two. From Cannes Lions, Aby Varma and Matt Cyr trace AI becoming the platform default, just as in-camera, human-made work from Apple TV and Coinbase wins the top awards. A BCG study finds 96 percent of CMOs call AI transformational, yet only a third have truly restructured around it. New York's synthetic performer law forces brands to disclose AI-generated humans. And while 60 percent of consumers reject AI in messaging, AI-referred shoppers spend 53 percent more, redrawing the acquisition map.
How AI Search Is Changing Brand Discovery and Paid Media
As a guest on the Off the Rails podcast with Jeff Mason, Spark Novus founder Aby Varma explains generative engine optimization (GEO): the practice of structuring brand content so AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity can find, trust, and cite a company. As buyers shift from clicking search links to asking AI for recommendations, GEO determines whether a brand shows up in the answer.
Overcoming “AI Imposter Syndrome” in Content and Communications Teams
Guest contributor Heather Hinojosa, Head of Marketing and Communications at Speakeasy, examines why content and communications professionals experience AI imposter syndrome differently — and shares a three-part discernment blueprint for using AI with confidence.
Marketing AI Pulse Brief (May 2026): The CMO Scaling Gap, AI Search, Agentic Buyers and the End of Manual Ad Management
AI is no longer a future priority for marketing leaders — it is the operating environment right now. The May 2026 Marketing AI Pulse Brief covers four shifts reshaping the industry: why most CMOs are stuck in pilot purgatory, how Google’s AI search overhaul is changing the click economy, why AI shopping agents ignore your persuasion tactics, and how every major ad platform is automating what paid media teams used to manage manually.
How Paid Media Is Changing in 2026 and What It Means for Your Business
Paid media has changed structurally. Google and Meta are automating campaign execution. ChatGPT launched ads. Perplexity abandoned advertising entirely. Amazon rebuilt product discovery around AI. For marketing leaders, the question is not what is changing but what to do about it. This post covers the strategic implications for your brand, your agency, and your team.
The Creative Brief Is the Design Now
The brief-to-output gap has collapsed. Five major AI design platforms from Canva, Anthropic, Adobe, OpenAI, and Figma launched agentic creative tools in rapid succession. This post breaks down what each tool actually does, what teams are discovering in practice, and why the teams seeing real returns are investing in judgment and governance rather than just tools.
Human Judgment Is the New Competitive Edge: What We Learned at the 8th Marketing AI Pulse
At the 8th Marketing AI Pulse, five sessions explored how AI is reshaping talent, go-to-market execution, brand authenticity, emotional prompting, and creative production. The clear takeaway: AI accelerates speed and scale, but human judgment, creativity, and emotional intelligence remain the true competitive edge.
Marketing AI Pulse Brief (April 2026): Creative Martech landscape, Agentic Customers and the Race for AI Visibility
The Marketing AI SparkCast presents the April 2026 Marketing AI Pulse Brief, hosted by Aby Varma of Spark Novus with guest Matt Cyr of Loop AI, covering how AI creative tools from Anthropic, Canva and Adobe are compressing production into conversations, why AI agents are becoming a primary brand audience, and how authenticity, AEO and ChatGPT ads are reshaping strategy.