Everything you need to know about AEO in 2025

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Everything You Need to Know About AEO in 2025"

Podcast: Marketing Against The Grain
Hosts: Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot CMO), Kieran Flanagan (SVP of Marketing, HubSpot)
Date: September 23, 2025

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Overview

In this insightful episode, Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan break down the seismic shifts happening in digital marketing for 2025. They focus on the emergence of AI Engine Optimization (AEO) as SEO evolves, radical updates from Google (especially Gemini and agentic browsing in Chrome), the renaissance of personality-driven PR, and a massive, often unmet, demand for human-driven AI transformation consulting. The discussion is dynamic, candid, and peppered with their unfiltered hot takes and real-world frameworks.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Google’s Gemini & The Paradigm Shift in Browsing

• Agentic browsing: With Google’s Gemini AI fully integrated into Chrome, users now interact directly with the browser, which can “see” and interpret the content of web pages and multiple tabs without the need to click or skim as much as before.

  • "Chrome is an incredible front door for the average user to start to use AI... it's a no brainer.” (Kieran, 01:24)

• Death of clicks and web pages: Conventional web browsing—clicking through links and pages—is being supplanted by AI-powered querying directly on webpages.

  • "We've already gone through the death of clicks... This is the death of web pages.” (Kieran, 01:24)

• Conversational browsing: Users can ask complex, natural-language queries (not just keywords), and Gemini helps synthesize, tabulate, and organize information from many pages into actionable data.

  • "[Gemini] can pull in all of the data across your tabs into a context window so you can open up a hundred pages... and just use Gemini to query those things." (Kieran, 06:14)

• Productivity features: Gemini remembers previously visited sites, helps find exact video snippets, and is extending to manage tasks like online shopping and scheduling within the browser.

  • “Gemini has memory, so it can recall any pages you’ve actually been on and you can easily bring them up. So again, an incredible productivity save.” (Kieran, 08:02)

2. The Strategic Shift from SEO to AEO

• SEO is not dead, but transforming: Traditional search optimization is giving way to AEO, which is about making content discoverable and quotable for AI engines rather than just humans.

  • “SEO... might be dead, but he is reborn as AEO Kieran.” (Kipp, 14:45)

• Less traffic, better leads: Expect fewer but higher-quality website visits because users are much better informed before they even land on a site.

  • “The visits to that website is going to go down, but the quality of the visits you do get is going to go up.” (Kipp, 10:45)

• The paradox—need for more pages, not less: You now need to create more, highly specific, question-and-answer formatted content to feed conversational AIs, even as traffic disperses.

  • "You're going to get less visits but need more pages." (Kipp, 18:32)
  • "One of the subtle differences is you have to create many, many more pages to be visible for all of the long tail of questions..." (Kieran, 17:07)

• Nuance and memory: The subtle differences in AEO like optimizing for memory (the AI’s recall of previous queries and context) offer a competitive edge.

  • “Unless you’re an idiot, you think memory is valuable to the search experience. And if you think memory is valuable... then AEO is a big and important thing.” (Kipp, 16:13)

• AEO tools and frameworks: HubSpot is developing tools like an AEO grader and sharing frameworks on how to craft content AI will cite.

  • “We just put together our early science guide to AI Engine optimization. And honestly, this is the playbook we're using internally.” (Kieran, 09:50)

3. The Resurgence and Evolution of PR

• Direct, personality-led communication: CEOs and founders are taking control of the brand narrative, moving away from agency-driven corp-speak to authentic, direct customer and investor engagement (e.g., Opendoor’s new CEO strategy).

  • “[CEO is] managing the perception of my company directly... I am going straight to the people.” (Kipp, 21:14)

• PR as content, not just media relations: Channels like podcasts, X (Twitter), Reddit, YouTube, and newsletters are now as (or more) powerful than traditional outlets for brand building.

  • "Now we're starting to see like founders, CEOs go direct... and just do real speak. That's how people want to be talked to." (Kieran, 22:24)

• Citation and trusted sources: For AEO, being referenced in trusted sources (traditional media, Reddit, LinkedIn) is still crucial as AIs draw on credible citations.

  • "A big part of that [AEO] is citations... and because of the way those platforms work... they look at these large trusted sources which you typically have to try to get visibility on through like PR." (Kieran, 23:27)

• PR professionals' evolving role: Instead of external agencies, forward-thinking companies are hiring internally or collaborating with leaders to do communications in a more integrated, impactful style.

  • “You're going to see this dramatically. What you're going to see is the firing of external PR agencies who have less valuable relationships and less business context. You're going to see CEOs going direct.” (Kipp, 26:11)

4. AI Transformation: The Next Service & Training Boom

• Massive demand for AI consulting: Companies eager to adopt AI workflows and apps don't know where to start and are hiring humans to help them modernize.

  • “We need more humans than ever in this AI era... they really want some real human handholding.” (Kipp, 27:47)

• Entrepreneurial opportunity: Smart, curious people are packaging frameworks from shows like this podcast into consulting services—earning serious money by helping organizations with AI adoption and workflow integration.

  • "If you have curiosity, if you're technical, if you know how to work with businesses, there's just unlimited opportunity in being able to integrate AI across those businesses." (Kieran, 31:25)

• Key skills in demand: Systems thinking, identifying what to automate, and enabling staff to use new AI-enhanced workflows.

  • “The hardest thing isn't just... building of the AI. You really need to be an incredible systems process thinker to figure out how to integrate AI across things that are actually useful for your business." (Kieran, 28:45)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the experience of agentic browsing:
  "This is just a great time to be alive. I have essentially a robot that is going to pull together all the relevant information on any topic I care about in the moment..."
  — Kipp (07:05)

• On AEO’s importance:
  “This is a brand new channel that has 800 million weekly active users... probably the best brand visibility channel or one of the best brand visibility channels you have access to.”
  — Kieran (17:07)

• On SEO/AEO paradox:
  "The ultimate mind bend of this AEO SEO shift is that you're going to get less visits but need more pages."
  — Kipp (18:32)

• The change in PR:
  "In the world we live in now, an AI world where an agent can get you any answer, if what you're saying isn't super interesting, nobody's going to care."
  — Kipp (27:18)

• On opportunity for consultants:
  "If you are a person who can help them go from 0 to 1 in their AI adoption, you can kind of print cash."
  — Kieran (31:25)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Google/Gemini update & death of clicks: 00:47 – 07:05
• Agentic browsing deep dive (Gemini & Chrome): 01:24 – 09:47
• SEO vs. AEO debate & frameworks: 10:45 – 18:32
• The paradox (less traffic, more pages): 18:32 – 20:01
• PR’s return & Opendoor’s playbook: 20:01 – 26:11
• Evolving role and future of PR: 26:11 – 27:43
• AI transformation services & consulting: 27:47 – 32:10
• Fun closing—cooking robot demo: 32:10 – 33:17

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Takeaways for Marketers & Leaders

• Adapt your content for agent-based consumption. Focus on question-and-answer pages and long-tail queries to feed AI engines.
• Double down on unique, nuanced content—that’s the only way to become quotable by AI agents and trustworthy to both agents and humans.
• Invest in direct, authentic PR—founders’ voices and direct communication now build more trust and visibility than agency-run corp-speak.
• Capitalize on the AI transformation wave—help businesses integrate AI and you’ll be in high demand.
• Stay curious—the future is abundant for those ready to learn, adapt, and help others do the same.

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For more details, listen to the full conversation or check the show notes for resources and tools mentioned.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Marketing against the Grain. Today we are going through major, major things that are happening in the market. We've got updates from Google, Gemini and Agentic Browsing coming to Chrome. We're going to talk to you about whether SEO is dead and AEO is the next big thing. We're going to break down how PR is coming back in a big, big way and we're going to give you a blueprint to why AI transformation is the next big training and services unlock out there. All, all of those right ahead for you on this episode of Marketing against the Grain.

[B]

All right, Kip, I want to bring you through the latest launch from Google because Google are fresh out of their antitrust case.

[A]

They're ready to get going now. Huh?

[B]

So they come out swinging, they're ready to take down some companies. They've kind of replicated Perplexity comment, which I know you're a huge fan of. I'm a big fan of Perplexity. But they have disrupted search even more and they have added some functionality to the browser that I think changes completely how we use the web.

[A]

So you're basically saying once they got out of legal trouble, they're taking it to Perplexity and they're going all in on Chrome and trying to bring AI to Chrome.

[B]

Right. Chrome is an incredible front door for the average user to start to use AI and so expanded it to start to use Gemini as a no brainer. But what I thought was really interesting about this launch is just how much it changes the way we search. But also we've already gone through the death of clicks. We've talked about that and we're going to talk about that in future shows, which is no one clicks anymore because you get the answer from AI, this is the death of web pages. And I want to give you my quick hot take on why I think this is the death of web pages. So they have the ability now to just talk to Chrome in the URL box. And one of the core features is when you are on a web page and you are talking to Chrome, Chrome has that web page preloaded into its context window. So when you're a user and you're using ChatGPT or I'm using Claude or I'm using Gemini, I upload a document and then I start querying things around that document. Now when you're on a webpage, when I'm on a webpage and I ask like, when is Jordan Burrows coming back from his injury? At the weekend because he's One of my guys. He's one of my quarterback guys.

[A]

Joe, not Jordan. Joe Burrow.

[B]

Is it Joe Burrow? I always get his name. Joe Burrows. He's one of my guys.

[A]

Jordan Love. It's Jordan Love. Joe Burrow. You combined the Green Bay packers and the Cincinnati Bengals quarterbacks here. It's fine.

[B]

Right. And so I want to go find out how he's doing. I know my man had a bit of an injury last week. He came off. That's, you know, bad for him.

[A]

Turf tale. It's not going to be good.

[B]

And I go to the webpage and I don't need to read it anymore because it preloads the webpage into the context window. I can just ask Gemini, I can say, build me a table of Joe Burrow's injury record and tell me how long it usually takes him to come back from injuries. And so in that way, I don't need to click on things much anymore. But even when I want to do some research and visit all of these web pages, I don't need to read them anymore, which is amazing. So what I'm talking about here is I've gone because I really care about 10 team building ideas for any group.

[A]

Which obviously you care a lot about.

[B]

Obviously, anyone knows me, I don't care. And so I'm like, oh, I just really want to consume this page. This is one of the few webpages I even visit anymore because I get all of my answers from AI. And you see what's happening, right? I have a little box now up on the top right corner and it is Gemini in my browser, preloaded with this web page. And I can just start to talk to it about this web page.

[A]

It's opening web pages, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This demo that we're looking at is opening additional webpages based on what you're answering it, but you're not browsing to any of them.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's basically opening them, using the data from them to power this one chat you're still in.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Remember we used to go like, query, go to page, skim page. No, that's not it. Go back, Query, go to page, skim page. No, that's not it. Go back. And all of us SEOs were like, wow, look at the amount of traffic we're getting. Now I'm like, I go to page and I query about that page. I'm like, I've got 10 follow ups. And it's not just the fact that I can do the follow ups in Gemini. What's actually fascinating Is Google have this product called AI Max and we should do a whole show actually on AI Max. AI Max is a paid product where the AI crafts all of the paid advertising for you. Really all you need to do is budget and it's figuring out where you should go based upon intent and AI mode and AI overviews are part of that. So intent is really important because keywords used to be the thing that would trigger an ad. But clicks are going down, but questions are going up.

[A]

I ask way more questions now than I used to.

[B]

Yeah, way more questions. And so this is great for Google because if I can monetize question volume and intent in this little box, I'm making more money. Yeah. The publisher's not getting any organic traffic, but this is cool for me. Right. And so what it's doing is it's going to actually tell you the questions you should ask. So it's actually going to prompt for you.

[A]

What's fascinating about this, Kieran, is it creates this crazy paradox where if you're a publisher, you're going to get less visits but need to create more pages.

[B]

Right. Niche pages.

[A]

Because you need all these niche pages to fuel these conversational interactions. Because what you're really showing here, what it's saying is like, hey, I've got this AI agent and it knows everything about this page I'm on and any other pages I open in my browser. In this case, this is Chrome. Right. And that way I can just deep dive on a topic. I can keep open pages. I knew I was ahead of time, Kieran, in the fact that I always have like a hundred tabs open on my browser.

[B]

Like I knew give me headaches.

[A]

This era is made for me, baby. I am going to win this era. Either that or I'm going to break the AI because it's not going to be able to handle my tabs. But it's allowing you to go to a deep dive on a topic incredibly fast.

[B]

Exactly. Right, Exactly. All the user really has to do now is understand how to open up things in tabs. Like when I'm researching, I just need to open up all, all of the right tabs. I immediately actually thought of you when it did. The ability to pull everything in. So what we're talking about is it can pull in all of the data across your tabs into a context window so you can open up a hundred pages. And Jen just used Gemini to query those things. And so the thing I was thinking about was we're coming up into winter. Anyone who knows and has followed on the podcast. I like sweaters and so I need to start to research a bunch of new sweaters to buy. Now I can just open up tons and tons of different pages and create like a table and tell it my criteria and have like an actual table across hundreds of tabs built for me, sorted in the way I want of all of the kind of sweaters that I need to buy. So I think that is an incredible feature for users.

[A]

Kieran. I just as a complete side note, I have to go off that like, this is just a great time to be alive. I have essentially a robot that is going to pull together all the relevant information on any topic I care about in the moment. I'm here doing the pod and my vacuum robot just came back and docked behind me and it's incredible. Shout out to the Matic team and I'm about to get a cooking robot. And like, this is fantastic. Never been a better time to be alive.

[B]

You're getting a cooking robot. Oh, Pasha, please can you send me the link? I need to see a cooking robot.

[A]

I'm going to slack it to you now. It makes everything for you. You just put in the stuff in little containers and it's your own private chef in robot form.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Shout out team Pasha. I'm emailing with the founder. We got to figure out how to get involved with them.

[B]

Okay, so let me bring you through some of the other things I think you're going to love, and then let's get into how I'm going to transform my cooking ability.

[A]

Yeah, we can talk robots and everything else.

[B]

This one is really cool. Find web pages you previously visited. So what I do is I go around the web and I bookmark, bookmark, bookmark, bookmark. I've never, ever revisited a bookmark, ever. And so what this allows you to do is Gemini has memory, so it can recall any pages you've actually been on and you can easily bring them up. So again, an incredible productivity save. So you can see it here. It's able to pull up any kind of pages you've talked to before, and then they are really starting to bring the different systems together. So they are actually pulling together the ability to do things across YouTube, maps, calendar. So the example they give here is you can schedule meetings, you can see the location details. This is really cool. If you're looking for a specific spot on a YouTube video, you can ask Gemini in Chrome. So I'm, I'm watching video. I'm watching marketing against the Grain. I want to know when we start Talking about NFL or robotic cooking, these kind of important subjects. I can query that in my little browser that's so good with Gemini and go to the exact point on the YouTube video and I'll leave with this to see what you think. So here, you can see it here. It's searching right in the bar.

[A]

Yeah. So instead of putting keywords in the browser bar or a web address, you're just typing out whatever you want. And it's giving you the full deep dive right there.

[B]

And this is a big one, right. It allows you to ask more complex questions. People don't search in keywords anymore. So you can see here that you're able to just continue to search in AI mode. And one of the things it just continues to do is make it very different. It drastically changes the way we interact with content. Right. Like the way I would interact with a YouTube video. I might only watch two minutes of that YouTube video. Right? Because now I can go to the exact snippets I want and consume that snippet without having to consume the full thing. So it does really change how we actually consume content.

[A]

All right, so Google is basically out to kill perplexity.

[B]

It's going to really disrupt perplexity and perplexity comment. So here is incredible. In the coming months, they are going to be introducing agentic capabilities to Gemini and Chrome, which allows you to do tedious tasks. It is going to help buy things from Instacart for you. It can help you book flights. And so we can start doing tedious tasks right there in the browser. Very, very cool look. SEO has completely flipped on its head. AI Engine optimization. AEO is what's actually working right now. We just put together our early science guide to AI Engine optimization. And honestly, this is the playbook we're using internally. We're sharing the exact frameworks, like how to write content so AI actually quotes you, plus our AEO grader tool to measure what's working. Get it right. Now, scan the QR code or click the link in the description below. Now let's get back to the show.

[A]

So this all just got announced. We'll drop the link in, but it's still rolling out. We'll do a bigger, longer show and some tutorials on this once we both have access to everything. Kieran. In the coming weeks. But it's pretty wild. And I think one of the reasons we want to show you, we wanted to give you a quick glimpse into the future. But also SEO is changing and dying, my friends. If you're watching the show as a marketer, as a business owner, if you're looking at visits to your website, everything Kieran just walked you through should tell you that the visits to that website is going to go down, but the quality of the visits you do get is going to go up. So obviously, with everything we saw from Google, one of the biggest stories of the week, it's going to change the SEO game. And Kieran, I saw on LinkedIn you were maybe getting into the equivalent of a LinkedIn fight with someone on if SEO is dying. And so coming off the heels of all of this Gemini information and the agentic browsing, what the hell is happening with SEO? Maybe catch us up on your SEO debate that you were having.

[B]

Yeah. So, you know there's some good conversations on LinkedIn.

[A]

Are there?

[B]

There are.

[A]

I thought it was just people looking for jobs and trolling each other and showing videos of their day.

[B]

There's real conversation. There isn't like, weird stuff goes on as well.

[A]

Of all the apps I scroll, LinkedIn is my least favorite.

[B]

You are not alone in that, actually.

[A]

That's a hot take.

[B]

A lot of people feel that way about LinkedIn. Okay, so there's a really good thread here from Matthew Proctor and what he basically said was aio. We call it aeo.

[A]

We call it aeo. Yeah.

[B]

AI engine optimization is a scam. And he made some pretty good points, right? He said ChatGPT isn't stealing traffic from Google. He is correct. I think this gets lost. This isn't why you. And I think search is disrupted. Its search volume is going to go up. You said it yourself, it does. Never have I asked so many questions because I'm able to get such better answers and it's easier to do, but what's disappearing is clicks. And that's the thing that we should focus on. He said most AI engine optimization tactics aren't new. Rank trackers are bs. And on and on and on. And so what I told him was a couple of things on the metrics. He's somewhat right about that. And so the challenge with the metrics is if you search in ChatGPT, your desktop, let's say in a brand new account, if you search in ChatGPT in your desktop, it still isn't going to be exactly like the results the API will give you, right? So these trackers are querying through the API. And so that's like one small change. Now when you add in memory and I've done this, right, I've done searches with my ChatGPT memory. ChatGPT without memory. And then I've searched through the API. If you want to do that, you can go to OpenAI's playground and do prompts, and it will prompt through the API. And I did the same query for those three things. ChatGPT memory, ChatGPT, no memory on the desktop, OpenAI playground through the API. Each time the result was different. So there's some truth in that. And it's also very hard to replicate how a user asks questions of an AI assistant. So the way these AI search tools work is you'll pre program them with multiple ways that you think someone will ask a question about your product or service, and then every day it will ask that question of ChatGPT and see if you appear in that result. Then it aggregates them all together and says, well, you're visible for this many queries, so your visibility is like x percent. Now, the challenge with that is the way you probably ask questions of ChatGPT. The way I ask questions of ChatGPT is going to be very hard for anyone to predict, and so you likely aren't capturing anywhere near the amount of visibility you really have. To me, that is not a reason to not use those tools because they are at least some barometer of success. Like, I have a hundred queries. Am I more visible in the queries today than I was six months ago? I think that's worth knowing. So that's number one. I see what you think about that. And then I can get into the second one.

[A]

I told them, well, my first thought is, SEO Kieran might be dead, but he is reborn as Aeo Kieran. He's your back, baby. You dusted off the gloves. You were like, back in the arena, think they know how to do search. And I am back, and I'm going to mess them up back in the arena. That was my number one take. You were talking, I was like, I'm not even hearing what he's saying. He's just, you know, he's gotten the gloves up off the wall and he's like, he's ready to go. He's. He's ready out here. He's doing queries and OpenAI playground. He's like, doing his thing. You're in the arena, dude.

[B]

I'm trying to build synthetic memory at the moment to see if that is a way that I could replicate. Like, can I replicate Kip's search by trying to understand how someone like Kip would have built up memory within ChatGPT? The other interesting thing is you and I have personal and Work accounts.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So if you search for something in each account, I bet you it's different again because your memory is different in each of those accounts because you use them differently. Pretty fascinating, right? Like, it's very, very hard. The other thing is he's like, well, AEO is bullshit because Google search volume is growing. That's exactly what you would expect to.

[A]

Happen if AEO was good. That's exactly what you'd expect to happen.

[B]

This is the thing that Google bring out as well actually for their core talking point. They're like, hey, this is actually good for everyone because we're seeing search volume go up now. I would argue it's really good for Google because they're going to figure out how to monetize. Questions and intent. But what's disappearing is clicks.

[A]

So this is the point. The reason AO isn't bull and the reason that AEO should be something that every company is focused on is because Google, what they're doing right now is talking about all the search visits going up and trying to pretend that they're monetizing them the same way through AdWords. And they're not because they're not the same types of queries. And there are a lot of AI mode queries and everything, but in the background they're trying to figure out new ways to monetize. And as they do, we'll get a new level of leverage with their new ad products that they come out with. But all of this to me just is obvious, that these AI searches and AEO way more important than ever because it's better time to ask questions and because you get more personal answers thanks to memory. And that's the point you're making here, is that like, unless you're an idiot, you think memory is valuable to the search experience. And if you think memory is valuable to the search experience, then AEO is a big and important thing.

[B]

Yeah, and that's what I put at the end, which is this is a brand new channel that has 800 million weekly active users and people are actively using it to search for products and services. This is great for marketeers who are losing channels. It is probably the best brand visibility channel or one of the best brand visibility channels you have access to. So there is real upside in learning the nuance. And so one of the things I wanted to like stress for our audience because you say this all the time is is there a lot of difference between SEO and aeo? Not drastically different. Is there small subtle differences that if you really figure out those small subtle Differences like the nuance that you will do much, much better than people who just think, well, the SEO stuff should work for the AO stuff. Yes. Like we know that. Right. There's subtle differences in how you structure the pages. One of the subtle differences is you have to create many, many more pages to be visible. For all of the long tail of questions that people have about your products and services and from your and I experiences is finding those little nuances and, and perfect in those. And that's what I was trying to say here, is there are nuances and that's what's going to dictate who really wins in that space and who does not.

[A]

The ultimate mind bend of this AEO SEO shift is that you're going to get less visits but need more pages.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And that is counterintuitive, but the core opportunity here, lean into aeo, go direct with having more pages, which means you're going to need to make more of your ideas, more of your business content public, and you're going to need to parse it in very specific ways to deal with memory and even more nuance. Specific type of questions. Right, Kieran?

[B]

Right.

[A]

The world's getting more nuanced.

[B]

This to me is the best example of the first time we're creating marketing for agents versus humans. Yes, because the human is coming to your website more qualified because they're doing all of their research in ChatGPT. And so you want your website to be pretty dialed in. You don't need to give them a ton of information because they're pretty well researched, but you want to give it all of the closing information to make sure they actually convert. Whereas for the agent, you have to have all of these pages on your website, like really question and answer type pages about your products and services, but the human will not find those valuable because they are getting that information in ChatGPT. And so you've got two things here now where you're. I have to create all these pages for the agent, but I have to really dial my website in and make it like very conversion optimization orientated because the person's coming and they're way more qualified. And that's what's going to happen to marketing. Right? There's going to be marketing for the agents, marketing for the humans. And I think this is one of the first good examples of that happen.

[A]

I think that's the perfect closing here, which is like AEO is here in real, especially because of memory, especially because there's more questions. But those questions and the content to fuel Them are getting answered by agents. And this is the first step of like the true agentic next step of the web. The next thing we want to talk about, Kieran, is PR as its real true state. Public relations. I think it's back, baby. And I think it came back this week in a big way from a tweet I saw. Can I share it with you?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I'm gonna be salty because you traded this tweet and I did not.

[A]

I traded before this tweet.

[B]

You nailed that one.

[A]

I really, really killed it. Okay, so there's this company, kind of a meme stock Open door right now. But really Opendoor was founded on like a genius premise which was like, hey, these real estate agents make a lot of money. They don't do as much work as they probably should for the money they're earning and let's disintermediate them and disrupt this whole market. And the stocks had a bunch of issues. The companies had a bunch of challenges, but they just hired a new CEO, Kaz. Kaz was the chief operating officer of Shopify. He left Shopify, reportedly left hundreds of millions of dollars on the table.

[B]

300 million.

[A]

$300 million on the table at Shopify. Came over to Opendoor, has a comp package where right now he's going to make pretty much nothing. But if the stock goes up a lot, he'll make billions of dollars, basically. So he's trading the sure thing of $300 million for the risk of a 2 to 3 billion dollars. So very interesting bet and I'm sure we'll be talking more about Opendoor and CAS in the future. But this I thought was an important message. Kieran, which is, he said this morning we filed an 8k to say that mine Opendoor's X accounts will be used to talk with our investors. We've parted way with our formal external PR agencies. We want to talk. You will hear us. Not paid professionals who don't share our mission. So he's like, I'm going straight to the people I am managing the perception of my company directly as the CEO. This is what like PT Barnum, who started pr, this is what he did. This is what the best companies and executives at PR really do. And I think we are rotating back from outsourcing PDR to agencies and professionals who don't understand our business to the leaders who have clarity of story and want to tell that story directly. This is a big deal.

[B]

This is a direct to consumer content. Right. I think this ties into the trend we've seen which is most channels now skew towards individuals and personality led content. It's not branded content. People don't want that. They want real content. It's social channels, it's mediums like this, it's newsletters, it's podcasts. They all favor people who have things to say. And it's pretty cool. Now we're starting to see like founders, CEOs go direct to consumers across these channels and tell them what they should understand about their business and not kind of shy away in corporate speak. Like just do real speak. That's how people want to be talked to. No one wants to be talked to. Like they are some sort of person you can just regurgitate corp speak to. And it's interesting. It's an interesting time for pr. I'm interested to get your take right. Like PR is resurrected in these kind of ways where you have CEOs and founders go direct to consumers. But we're seeing maybe the profession of PR change drastically. But then you look at a topic we talked about just previously, AEO AI Engine optimization. And a big part of that is citations. And because of the way those platforms work, like a ChatGPT, a Claude, a Gemini, they look at these large trusted sources which you typically have to try to get visibility on through like pr, other than Reddit, which is like community, where I think it makes a ton of sense. I know ramp recently hired Redditors. A bunch of folks have hired Redditors to actually get more visibility in those platforms because they're used so much within the AI engines. But like traditional PR has traditionally been how you've got on those trusted sources. So how do you fit those two things together where you're like, hey, like this is much better because you can go direct through these channels, but then to get that visibility in those trusted sources for AI engine optimization, is it still like traditional PR is worth doing there?

[A]

So there's a couple things at play here and it's really important. What I'm about to tell you could completely change your business. You have to go direct because it used to be the old way of doing PR is you hired somebody with a bunch of relationships for these very specific meets, right? And if you could get those stories placed in those media outlets, hundreds of thousands of millions of people would see your brand and understand your story. Right now, an average episode of this podcast gets the same views as an average article on a mainstream media site. Those media sites are far less powerful. Where all the power is. Kieran is exactly where you just talked about it's on Reddit, it's on x, it's on TikTok, it's on YouTube. Let's do this. We'll come back in six months and we'll look at Kaz's direct tweets to the community, the investors, you know, the market right from X. And we'll correlate that with mentions of open door on Reddit. And you'll see that what he's really doing is he's talking to the community that's firing them up, they're talking more, that's getting them more referral traffic from Reddit, that's getting them more citations in aeo. This is just fundamentally how you build an awareness flywheel for your business in today's era. Do you agree?

[B]

So I agree. I think that is true. And when you look at what these platforms are using, Gemini skews very heavily towards LinkedIn, which I know you're not as much of a fan on, so hopefully I'm in the results a lot. Chatis skews very heavily towards Reddit. Claude isn't meant to be skewed heavily towards Reddit because they have a lawsuit against them, I think. But use gemini, you use chatgpt and gemini. One's LinkedIn, one's Reddit. So they're like, I agree this was going to work really well for them because it gives fodder for everyone to kind of talk about. But they also use these kind of financial times in there, right? These traditional, like, media outlets, they're looking for mentions in those media outlets because I was thinking through this, like, it feels to me that is just like pr or maybe those outlets now go.

[A]

To most of the mainstream media. They go to these channels I read anymore, they pick up tweets or videos or whatever, right? Those mainstream media outlets, they still matter and they're still important, but instead of being the audience, they're one of the audiences. Right? And you can get through them through this direct method. And so I think that you're going to see this dramatically. What you're going to see is the firing of external PR agencies who have less valuable relationships and less business context. You're going to see CEOs going direct. They'll hire some great communication professionals to work with them and package these stories on their own channels in a way. Doesn't mean that this profession is going away, but where the people work is going to change dramatically. We're doing this at HubSpot. We're seeing it at HubSpot. It's totally working. So PR is changing, but those internal.

[B]

People are not the typical people you used to have who water down the message.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

Who make it feel like Corpse Speak. They still try to keep the same tone and style. I think the thing that sticks out to me is the personality is back. Well, yeah, like founders, CEOs have personalities. They used to get watered down by.

[A]

Corpse Speak in the world we live in now, an AI world where an agent can get you any answer if what you're saying isn't super interesting. Nobody's going to care.

[B]

Yeah, nobody's going to care.

[A]

And so they need to hear it from an interesting source and it needs to be packaged in an interesting way, right?

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Yeah, that's what we're saying. If you're a founder, you have to get out in front and you have to take an approach like this versus I don't think it matters and I'm outsourcing it. It's just not going to work to outsource it anymore.

[B]

PR is not dead. But there's a different flavor of PR that's going to work.

[A]

I love that and I think that's totally true. We have one more story that we want to talk about today and this comes from friend of the pod, Alex Lieberman. He had a post on X that I thought was really interesting. This might go down as one of the most important, but in somewhat ironic tweets of this AI transformation era. And he's basically like, I can't hire fast enough for my AI transformation company. It's this company called 10X Labs that helps people adopt and transform AI. And he's like basically begging people to apply. And what Kieran this tells me is we need more humans than ever in this AI era and we need more humans to help other humans. I've spent a bunch of time talking with folks about AI and they really want some real human handholding. Are you seeing this? Is this something that is just seems like to me a massive opportunity. One, if you're a consultant to provide these services and two, if you're a business and you're not moving as fast in AI as you want, you probably need some of these services. Services.

[B]

This is what the optimists would have said, right? That there's just so much pent up demand for things that AI unlocks. So yes, AI can help people ship much more code, it can do works of engineers, but there's an unlimited want for software, there's an unlimited want for internal custom apps, there's an unlimited want for AI workflows. That you can integrate across your business. But that is a very new skill set and there's just not enough humans who know how to do it. I think the hardest thing isn't just like the building of the AI. You really need to be an incredible systems process thinker to figure out how to integrate AI across things that are actually useful for your business. And so yeah, I think the kind of weird thing is there's a lot of talk about how AI is going to disrupt the human job market. But for AI to be successful, you need more humans than ever to do that work. And I think that's what Alex is finding is you can't hire fast enough because the demand, there's so much pent up demand for internal apps, custom software, niche software. There's so much software people want to build. The reason it's not being built is because engineers are really expensive and really sparse and if they become more plentiful, it just means more things are going to get built.

[A]

I would posit to you that when we talk about AEO and we talk about the number of searches and questions going up on Google, that metric is not a metric of interest in stuff. It's a leading indicator of like curiosity and abundance and what people want to do. So you have to look at that like the Google search volume going up, which we've talked about a lot and say that also has to apply to all the things people want to do in their business. And that means exactly what you're saying. Everybody is trying with this new technology to do more and more. They see new opportunities that they would have never considered before, before AI, because AI now makes them possible. I could build these custom apps, I can build these lightweight things, I can build a workflow to actually do this thing that would have been too expensive or too hard before and that is transformative and it's opening up this whole new era of education where people are like, great, now I know this is possible, but how do I go and actually do it?

[B]

Right? It's the knowing what to automate with AI and what to integrate AI into, knowing what to actually build and then knowing how to enable folks who actually use those new things. They're really the three core skills. I know that's kind of what Alex's startup is trying to solve. We are so early there. I'm not surprised his company is on fire. There are such limited amount of folks who know how to do that at scale for businesses.

[A]

Well, you have told me that there are people who are literally just taking things that we are teaching on marketing against the grain on this show and just packaging them up into consulting services to help companies and making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is that right?

[B]

It is a huge opportunity right now. If you have curiosity, if you're technical, if you know how to work with businesses, there's just unlimited opportunity in being able to integrate AI across those businesses. Most businesses do not know where to start. They're still like, trying to figure out where do I even begin. Right. And if you are a person who can help them go from 0 to 1 in their AI adoption, you can kind of print cash.

[A]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. In this era, if you are a smart, curious person, you should have financial security.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Everything is at your disposal to have financial security. And what Alex is talking about is a process prime example of that. And the number one thing in having financial security is like being on the right side of the supply demand equation. And what we're telling you is that there's a lot of demand for businesses to learn how to do AI and not enough supply to help them.

[B]

Right? Exactly.

[A]

Okay, this was a fun new show, Kieran, where we got to go through a bunch of topics. I had a blast. I feel like we hadn't gotten to catch up in a little bit. Let's close out in our last minute. I got to show you the cooking robot real quick. There's this thing, Pasha.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And.

[B]

Oh, got it. Coming up.

[A]

It has a whole set of pre programmed recipes and all you do is you pick a recipe, you add the ingredients, either the liquid or the hard ingredients in here, and then you hit a button and that's it.

[B]

This is made for me. Oh, my God. This is.

[A]

This is literally your dream machine, baby. This is your dream robot.

[B]

Please tell me it has a camera.

[A]

And uses AI as like a professional chef to know when stuff is done.

[B]

Okay. I need to look into why I couldn't get this shipped to Ireland because I know it's probably not available here, but there's not like a technical setup I need to get or anything like that.

[A]

No, it's literally just.

[B]

Okay, this is dope.

[A]

Yeah. I've been emailing with the founders. We can get you on email and stuff with them. But shout out to folks who are doing this and team Pasha, because this is just an invention that just is so 2025. But also, I'm completely here for it.

[B]

I need this. This is life changing for me.

[A]

All right, thanks everybody for joining us on this new show of marketing against the grain. We'll be back with you real soon.