Your first move to prepare for the Direct-to-Agent era

Summary

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Episode Overview

Title: Your First Move to Prepare for the Direct-to-Agent Era
Podcast: Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Date: December 20, 2025
Host: Tyson Stockton
Guest: Brian Stempak, Co-Founder and CEO at Evertune

This episode explores strategic SEO and content adjustments in anticipation of the emerging "Direct-to-Agent" era, where AI agents play an increasingly significant role in how consumers interact with brands. Tyson Stockton and Brian Stempak delve into how enterprise brands must adapt their content strategies to educate not just consumers, but AI models that influence purchasing decisions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Challenge of the Direct-to-Agent Era

• Shift in Audience: Traditionally, content was created with human consumers in mind. Now, the target is shifting toward AI agents and models that act as intermediaries between users and brands.
• Need for Increased Transparency: Brands must provide much more detailed, comprehensive, and accessible information about their products to ensure AI agents understand their offerings.

“The models really are insatiable to learn about any given product category, any use case, matching the right person to the right brand.”
— Brian Stempak (00:53)

Evolving Content Strategies

• From Curated Releases to Content Engines: Previously, brands—such as those in luxury fashion—might limit what they put online due to branding and approval processes. Today, there’s a push to drastically increase content volume and depth.
• Educating the Models: The volume and specificity of the information provided directly impacts how well an AI agent can represent a brand or product to potential customers.
• Broader Implication: This creates a new "audience" for marketers: not just consumers, but the AI intermediaries they increasingly trust to inform their choices.

“We've got to become content engines, we've got to turn out way more stuff. We've got to really educate the models about what we're about. This is a new audience to market to and it takes more volume than you had to use in the past because again, you have more of the model's attention than you do with the consumer.”
— Brian Stempak (01:40)

First Moves for Enterprise SEOs

• Information Sharing: Marketers must be much more liberal and proactive in sharing data about their company and products.
• Productive Content: Having a high quantity of content isn’t enough—quality and ability to inform AI models is key.
• Organizational Mindset Shift: This requires breaking out of restrictive approval cycles and embracing a "content engine" mentality.

“I think it starts with getting a seat at the table, being in the game, and then layering in those other optimizations on top of it.”
— Tyson Stockton (03:43)

Future Considerations

• Leveraging Agents for Content Creation: The discussion hints at a future in which brands use AI agents to generate content at scale, further increasing efficiency and sophistication.
• Starting Point: For now, the focus must be on simply “getting in the game”—providing enough input for AI agents to correctly represent the brand.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The models really are insatiable to learn about any given product category, any use case, matching the right person to the right brand.”
  — Brian Stempak [00:53]
• “We've got to become content engines, we've got to turn out way more stuff. We've got to really educate the models about what we're about.”
  — Brian Stempak [01:40]
• “I think it starts with getting a seat at the table, being in the game, and then layering in those other optimizations on top of it.”
  — Tyson Stockton [03:43]

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Timestamps for Highlights

• 00:43 — Introduction to the Direct-to-Agent challenge for enterprises
• 00:53 — Brian Stempak on the need to feed data to AI models and changing mindset
• 01:40 — The case for brands transforming into content engines
• 03:28 — Tyson reinforces the paradigm shift and hints at AI-powered content production in the future
• 03:43 — Key takeaways on where to begin in preparing for the Direct-to-Agent era

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Summary & Takeaways

• The Direct-to-Agent era brings the need for radically more content and transparency so that AI agents can accurately understand and recommend products and brands.
• Enterprise brands must adapt by increasing content volume, quality, and relevance aimed at educating not just people, but intelligent agents.
• The coming years will likely see brands deploying AI both as the audience and eventually as the content creators themselves. For now, brands must focus on visibility and data readiness to ensure their relevancy in AI-mediated purchasing decisions.

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Transcript

[Tyson Stockton]

The Voices of Search 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 welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search Podcast, Tyson Stockton.

Last question here is you're leading SEO at an enterprise brand. What's your first move to prepare for Direct to Agent era?

[Brian Stempak]

My first move as a brand is to share a lot more information than I did previously. As we've talked about today, the models really are insatiable to learn about any given product category, any use case, matching the right person to the right brand. But the starting point to that has to be that the agent or the AI model knows what it's talking about. And so I think that forces marketers to be a lot more forthcoming about the data they have and to be a lot more productive with the content that they produce. And so I think that's a real mind shift we're seeing in clients we work with. Where in the past, if like you're, let's say, a luxury fashion brand, it might be tough to get a couple press releases or a couple new ads to the website out every month. There's a bunch of approvals, brand guidelines, all this stuff you have to kind of stay close to. What we're seeing is brands very quickly say we've got to become content engines, we've got to turn out way more stuff. We've got to really educate the models about what we're about. This is a new audience to market to and it takes more volume than you had to use in the past because again, you have more of the model's attention than you do with the consumer.

[Sponsor/Pre Visible Announcer]

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[Tyson Stockton]

That'S such a great point. And I think that the framing of moving into these content engines is so key and that probably could be a whole nother conversation into how do we use agents to help fuel those and be more sophisticated in that production.

[Sponsor/Pre Visible Announcer]

But.

[Tyson Stockton]

But yeah, I think it starts with getting a seat at the table, being in the game, and then layering in those other optimizations on top of it.

[Brian Stempak]

Absolutely right.

[Tyson Stockton]

All right, so that's going to wrap up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thanks again to Brian Stempak, co founder and CEO at Evertune, for joining us. If you'd like to get in contact with Brian, be sure to check out a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes, as well as checking out his company's website at evertune.AI if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing knowledge in your podcast feed, hit that subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll show up in your feed in the following day. That's all for today. Thanks for stopping by and we'll see you in the next episode.