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- [00:00]
Benjamin Shapiro
The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com.
- [00:26]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
From advertising to software as a service.
- [00:29]
Scott Brinker
To data across all of our programs.
- [00:32]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
And clients clients, we've seen a 55.
- [00:34]
Scott Brinker
To 65% open rate. Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.
- [00:42]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.
- [00:47]
Scott Brinker
We're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action. Then it's just a matter of timing.
- [00:54]
Benjamin Shapiro
Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that you use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the MarTech podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.
- [01:16]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
I want to move on to our next topic. A lot has been talked about in 2025 about the death of SEO and the rise of AEO. And I know this is something that you've talked about publicly and relatively frequently. In 2026, are we going to continue to see the same narrative of SEO is dead, AEO is here. What happens in the SEO and content marketing space?
- [01:41]
Scott Brinker
I love this topic. Well, I'd say two things are true. One is AEO is here and it is only going to become more important in 2026. This was sort of the first year that people really started to get serious about it, but we have barely scratched the surface. I mean, partly is the, the AIs were trying to influence, they're not exactly standing still. This is, this is chasing a moving target at a much faster rate than anything we were with Google Search. But the thing I would say is SEO is not dead. You know, I look at AEO as very much an augmentation, like a layer above and beyond core SEO. But here's the thing. You know, these, these AI answer engines. When you ask them a question, you ask it to do research for you. It's not just going and looking at its training set that it, you know, hoovered up from the Internet like a year ago. Right, let's start with that. But it also then does reasoning and makes decisions of like, oh, I need to go out and search on the Internet to find like current updated sources, you know, to incorporate in this. What's it doing? It's actually, it's running searches, you know, I mean, like OpenAI was running searches with Bing, you know, Gemini, surprise, surprise, running searches with the Google, you know, search index, you know, and so your ability to actually, like, show up in these AI answers, like, part of your AEO strategy actually needs to be like, oh, yeah, you know, a lot of stuff we did for SEO that's still relevant. It's just now we have to do more things on top.
- [03:12]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Yeah. One of the things that I'm a producer of, a SEO podcast, I guess we have to call it an AEO podcast now. But to me, SEO is the foundation of aeo, and I struggle with what's the difference? Right? It was for the longest time, have great content, have backlinks, have internal links, have credibility from the author, build a reputation, know, like, trust, you know, E A T. All the other SEO terms like tla, word salad. But fundamentally it was about creating good content and having other people engage with it. Seems like AEO is relatively the same. How do you think about the difference between the two practices?
- [03:56]
Scott Brinker
I think conceptually you're absolutely right. I mean, it's all about the same things. The actual tactics and execution vary. So, for instance, here's a couple examples. So one is SEO. The core of it was originally based on the idea of backlinks. And following that map of backlinks is a way to create authority with a particular domain. It seems to be that the way these AI engines train is they're not really mapping the world through backlinks, but they are keeping track of references, you know, particular references in natural language. And so it turns out that, you know, things of having people talk about your brand out on the Internet, you know. You know, Reddit is often brought up as one of the examples of, oh, my goodness, all these conversations in Reddit, you know, they're helping the power, you know, the rationale that AI engines are using in answering these questions. That's different than backlinks, you know, I mean, again, it's conceptually same thing as, like, oh, how do we get our brand out there in more places? But now it's less about links and it's more about, like, where are the conversations being held and how do we make sure our brand is there and hopefully in a positive light. Another example would be the content itself that you're publishing. Again, AI engine. Same as, like Google Search originally. It. It wants content. It thrives on content, you know, but because of the way these LLMs think, you know, it turns out things like, for instance, FAQs, like sort of very structured question and answer content seems to resonate very well with the models that these AI engines are, you know, creating and then how they're going to be able to answer accordingly versus like with Google, again like they would have taken FAQs, but you know, it was again sort of like a different set of algorithms of like what they were looking for in content and how they use it. Maybe one third thing here is like Google used to really complain and dissuade you from showing one thing to Google and another thing to a human. It seems actually with these AI engines they don't really care about that. And actually one of the AEO recommendations these days is like, you know, actually if you identify something coming in as one of these AI agents, you know, you can actually serve up a simplified version of your page. Doesn't have all the user interface crap, it's like just a markdown version of the content. I mean, again, same thing. You don't want to be doing deceptive sort of things and showing one thing, you know, it's completely different from another. But basically tailoring the content in a format that's going to be facilitate how that AI engine consumes it. Again, but these are all things on the margins, your high level thing of produce good content, make it easier for the engine to absorb it. You know, show how you've got credibility and references externally. Yeah, those, those are as relevant as they are everywhere.
- [06:45]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
So what's a marketer to do when the strategy used to be create great content, publish it online, try to get other people to link to it. Right. Traditional SEO, now we have this AEO practice. Are people going away from content marketing as a channel? Are they thinking about expanding it? What's the balance look like? They're thinking about content?
- [07:09]
Scott Brinker
Yeah, no, I think content is as relevant as it ever was. And again now it's also like different kinds of content, being able to provide videos, things that humans love. But as it turns out, these LLMs also love. I think the challenge for content marketing is we got a bit spoiled with the Google era where we had these relatively short feedback loops where we could see, okay, we produce this really great content, it's going to show up in these search results. People are going to click, you know, on that search result, they're going to come and, you know, then we get to track them and we see what leads to, you know, customers, you know, and so it was this, you know, very well instrumented system. The problem we have now is not that this content isn't being used or, you know, leveraged by these AI engines. To and ultimately then like consumed by the end consumer. It's the fact that because now so much of that conversation with our content and the interaction with it is happening inside the AI assistant a the AI engine, and we don't have the direct visibility into that. It's not that the content isn't being used or it isn't valuable, it's that we just don't have as much visibility into the top of the funnel of that practice. And so I would definitely not say you should, like stop doing content marketing, but how you actually measure this and your expectations for what you can measure, they've got to shift.
- [08:35]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Shameless Plug Everybody should start a podcast instead of a blog. Take your video content, turn it into audio, use an LLM to turn it into text, and then put it on social. You get the best of all worlds. Iheareverything.com I'm sorry, I cannot help myself. It's absolutely shameless. And that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks again to Scott Brinker, the godfather of the Martech industry, for joining us. If you'd like to contact Scott, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martechpod.com you can always visit his website, which is chiefmartech.com it's chief M A R T E C dot com. If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a regular stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast appreciate or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed every other week. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.
- [09:54]
Benjamin Shapiro
Thanks for listening to the Martech podcast and I hear everything. Production Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iheareverything. Com.