What Google Marketing Live 2026 Really Means for Marketers

What Google Marketing Live 2026 Really Means for Marketers

with Bill Buchanan and Nicole Jennings

Google Marketing Live 2026 dropped a wave of announcements that left the marketing world buzzing. In this episode, Brad Stephenson sits down with Level Agency President Bill Buchanan and EVP of Service Delivery Nicole Jennings to explain what actually matters, what brands should do right now, and what they'll wish they had started sooner.

Bill attended GML in person, including a rare behind-the-scenes session with Google's keynote team. Nicole brings her perspective from Brand Performance and her leadership over Level's full service delivery organization, which spans media, SEO, creative, and development. Together, they unpack why Google's pace of change is unprecedented even by Google's own standards, and what it signals for where search is headed. This episode was recorded just before Brad took the stage at SMX Advanced to speak on unifying the search experience.

The conversation covers how AI mode is reshaping the funnel from top to bottom, why the new ad formats are less important than the foundational infrastructure beneath them, and why the brands that get the data foundation right now will have a compounding advantage heading into the back half of 2025. Bill and Nicole also walk through what CMOs in higher education, healthcare, home services, and financial services need to prioritize, and close with the one thing everyone will wish they had done sooner when they look back at this moment a year from now.

What You'll Learn:

• Why Google's shift to AI mode is unprecedented even by its own historical standards, and what "ripping the Band-Aid" really means at this scale
• The three things Bill says every brand will wish they had done earlier: fix the data foundation, compete for AI citations, and treat SEO, paid, and content as one unified solution
• Why YouTube strategy and AI Max are the two things Nicole says to pressure test your agency on immediately
• How AI is blurring the line between SEO and PR, and why brand mentions are the new backlinks
• What QFCs, attributed brand searches, and Meridian mean for CFOs who still believe in last-click attribution
• Industry-specific takeaways for higher education, healthcare, home services, and financial services
• Why Nicole's single highest-leverage move for a CMO this quarter is a scalable, repeatable YouTube strategy

Featured Guests:

Bill Buchanan is President of Level Agency. With decades of experience in digital marketing and a front-row seat at Google Marketing Live 2026, Bill helps shape the strategic direction that guides how Level partners with clients across SEO, media, data infrastructure, and AI adoption.

Nicole Jennings is EVP of Service Delivery at Level Agency, responsible for the full range of client-facing services including media, SEO, creative, and development. Nicole brings a practitioner's perspective to big-picture platform changes, translating what Google announces on stage into what brands actually need to do on Monday morning.

Connect With the Guests:

Bill Buchanan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wbuchanan

Nicole Jennings: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolejennings/

Connect With the Show:

Level Agency: level.agency

How to Support the Show:

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone on your marketing team who is trying to make sense of AI search.

Transcript

Brad Stephenson 0:00

Hello. So I am excited to be joined by Bill Buchanan, president at Level Agency, and Nicole Jennings, our EVP of Service Delivery. Um, thank you both for spending some time with me today, really appreciate it. Um, we are here to talk about, um, the big news, um, over the last couple weeks, which is all the announcements from Google Marketing Live 2026. Um, so I'm just gonna start by saying, what happened and how big of a deal was it? You were both there, correct?

Nicole Jennings 0:29

Just Bill.

Brad Stephenson 0:31

Just Bill. And you were at- I was- Brand Performance. You were at Brand Performance- Correct right, Nicole? Okay, cool. Um, so, so Bill, we'll start with you. How, how big of a deal really is this? Everybody's talking about it right now. We're gonna be at SMX Advance next week. W- how big of a deal is it?

Bill Buchanan 0:44

So on one level I would say it was, you know, groundbreaking. On another level I would say it was, um, ho-hum, um, nothing too exciting. And so let me tell you what that mean, what, what I mean by that. So- I think anybody who's been involved in the space and watching stuff closely over the last year fully expected Google to, like, continue to lean into AI answers and AI mode. It was a question of when and how deeply they were gonna do that. Um, and so the fact that they chose now to sort of say that they're jumping in this deep this fast was a shock. The fact that they did that, not a shock at all. Um, but they have really accelerated their thinking about this and where they are. And so that's the part that was shocking to me, is like how fast they're going, and honestly, how unprepared Google is for what they're doing. So like we're all unprepared, but they're-- they usually make these sorts of moves in a very deliberate way. Mm-hmm. And you can see they've got deep Q&A, they've got deep research, they got lots of stuff. They are, they are seeing that customer behavior is moving so fast that they're needing to move with the customer behavior even though they're not prepared. Um, and that to me was the most shocking thing out of all of it. Yeah. Um, where I'm really kind of excited.

Brad Stephenson 2:09

Isn't there sort of a history, though, like Google does rip the Band-Aid sometimes, like with PMA- the PMax launch and things like that. I remember that it w- there was a lot of, like, black box stuff that they had to work through, and that was really stressful. Like, don't they, don't they tend to, when they have big things that they wanna launch, they, they sometimes do that rip the Band-Aid approach?

Bill Buchanan 2:27

They have definitely done a rip the Band-Aid approach from time to time, but it's generally rip the Band-Aid on your big toe, not rip the Band-Aid like, you know, that was a massive Band-Aid, like that it sort of- Not

Brad Stephenson 2:41

rip the bandages off the

Bill Buchanan 2:42

mummy. So, yeah. Like it- like they went, like yeah, they went all in, but they went all in on their core revenue-generating item, the thing that most people use all the time. And so that to me is, like unprecedented.

Brad Stephenson 2:57

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 2:58

I don't know what you would say, Nicole.

Nicole Jennings 3:00

Yeah. I think your PMax example is hilarious because it was a disaster, right? I mean, it truly was. It, it impacted so many advertisers in such a big way. Um, Google was great about partnering on getting feedback on that in real time. Right. Right? They opened up a lot of avenues for that, and so we got there. Um, but it was painful. This is bigger than that, to Bill's point, and so how many things are gonna be hard, right, is a little bit daunting.

Brad Stephenson 3:34

So I, I guess, you know, jumping from there, if, if you, you know, Nicole, you, you lead our service delivery team, which means all of the various services, the, you know, creative and dev and SEO and media. How, you know, when, when talking to CMOs or VPs about this, if they're like, "Nicole, what, what, what's going, what, what do I really, really need to know?" Like, what are the one or two things that you would say, like, this is the thing that you really need to know about this-

Nicole Jennings 3:59

Yeah

Brad Stephenson 3:59

today?

Nicole Jennings 4:00

Um, I am excited that it does touch, uh, this year at GML, what they announced touched almost all of the services that we deliver to clients, which is rare. And so that's exciting for me. It's one of the reasons I'm at Level, is that we get to impact clients and partner with them, um, in so many areas, right? Um, if I was talking to a CMO, though, I would get pretty tactical. Um, they don't have to know all the details, but they have to make sure that their agency is entirely focused on their, their YouTube strategy and their AI Max strategy. Like, if that was the one thing I had to say, go yell at your agency about or go, um, pressure test your own internal team on, those are the items.

Brad Stephenson 4:43

Cool. Bill, any, any, any difference there, um, from you in terms of what

Bill Buchanan 4:47

you would share? No, zero difference, but I would just sort of add, um, the, the, the, the plus one I would make to that is do those two things. Um, also get your data right, right? So- Yes um, more and more importantly than ever before with Google and with, for that matter, Meta, anybody else, any other advertiser you're doing, in a world of AI, it's a garbage in, garbage out. And so the more real meaningful signals and data you can be sending, and so having that platform in place, which wasn't as important 10 years ago when you were doing basic search, but is now super important in a world of AI Max, where we're really dealing in a keyless world, a keyless, keyword-less world. And so how it was really super easy when somebody said, "I want to buy soap," to then serve up a soap ad.

Nicole Jennings 5:42

Right.

Bill Buchanan 5:42

Right? Um, in, in today's day and age where Google is forced to try to in- Infer intent from multiple signals and deep often, like they're talking about serving ads on the third or fourth or fifth turn of a question in-

Brad Stephenson 6:01

Yeah

Bill Buchanan 6:01

AI mode.

Nicole Jennings 6:02

Mm-hmm.

Bill Buchanan 6:02

Like, how those, how those ads get served at the right time when they think somebody has the right intent, they're not just doing general discovery and then it's time to serve an ad. That is really gonna be based off of how much- Yeah deep data can be sent. And so getting those data layers right, doing things like Google, Google Tag Gateway, um, enhanced conversion for leads, um, really dealing in first-party data, getting all of that to a really strong level, uh, with all of your platforms is more critical today than it ever has been, and I would say it's more critical probably by a factor of 10. The, the real winners and losers on this battle is gonna be who's got the best data.

Brad Stephenson 6:40

Yeah. Now it's, now it's why do I get itchy, dry patches on my arm sometimes, right? Right. And then it's like, okay, this person probably needs a different soap, but you've got a, you've got a long path to get there, right?

Bill Buchanan 6:51

Right.

Brad Stephenson 6:51

Um, so speaking of that, like the AI search, Google said Google search is AI search. Um, how real is that claim, and how does it, how quickly does it actually affect marketers and the brands that we- we're working with?

Bill Buchanan 7:06

I think it's going to, um, you know, Google always makes things sound as if it's immediate today. Um, that's never the reality. Um, you can still go find on Google, you go search something today, you're still gonna see blue links. Um, but more and more, those blue links are gonna be vanishing, and that's just not the world we're going to be in. Google is really setting up a world where they are delivering a answer-based solution for people, and taking out that step that we all used to do as humans, which is, "Here's the choice of answers. Let me go do all the research and combine it in my head, and now figure out what to do with it." They're taking that work on, and the more they take that work on, which is what AI Max is, or that's what AI mode is for a, a Goog- a Google user, as more as they're taking that on, users are loving it and asking more questions and digging deeper into the platform. And so that is actually where what the consumer wants, is the consumer is more and more saying they don't wanna go do all that compilation. They don't wanna go read 17 different blogs to figure out what the best vacation spot is.

Brad Stephenson 8:16

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 8:16

They want somebody who takes them down and shows them, cites the actual example, isn't just making stuff up, but takes them down through that in, as a journey. And so, um, I think you're seeing that has already started to happen in some industries. Um, you see it really heavily in travel. We see it really heavily- Yeah um, in the, what I would call the death of the, you know, the top 10 websites. Um, what's the top 10 what da, da, da, da, das. Um, that's quickly going down. Um, and I think you're gonna see it across the board. Shopping is one of the places that Google really is looking to, um, disintermediate everybody else, um, of let's have a conversation about your, your scratchy arm and they're going to now be able to serve up a, um, a soap commercial for you to buy the new soap, and then you can put it into a Google checkout, a Google- Mm-hmm Google shopping cart, and check- check out without ever having gone to the retailer's site and ever having left that Google experience. And so the Google experience is going to become more and more all-inclusive of, you know, all of your end-to-end needs, where you never have to leave that to go somewhere else.

Brad Stephenson 9:28

Yeah. And Nicole, how is this impacting the brands that we're currently working with? I know, you know, obviously this has had an impact, um, even without all of the changes being implemented that they talked about. So what are we seeing, and how are we addressing it?

Nicole Jennings 9:41

Yeah. I think the, the idea of- Um, thought leadership in a space, right, for a lot of the verticals we work with. And, um, leading the conversation, which used to be only for SEO, traditional SEO, has really changed, right? Can you be, um, the answer and the expert, right, when everyone asks? Right. I think that is a really big game changer and no longer a nice to have. Um, impacts paid too, like, that's a huge change for our brands to think about where that strategy on the brand side lives, right? It lived in PR. What does that mean now? Um, because it impacts paid marketing. That's a big change.

Brad Stephenson 10:29

Yeah. So what, what is that practical implica- you know, that we, Google announced that we hit the billion monthly users on AI mode, which is a big number, and it's doubling every quarter. What's the practical implication of that to paid search, for instance?

Nicole Jennings 10:43

Yeah. Um, well, the new ad formats, right- Yeah which I hope we get quickly and not at 10% impression share. Um, if we think about the, uh, business agents for leads, that is huge for our clients- Mm-hmm and very exciting. The idea that Google could help us have a conver- help our brands have a conversation with a brand and result in driving a lead, um, that is a game changer. So we're really hoping for, uh, the ramp up of that impression share, but I'm nervous that it's gonna be 10% for a while.

Brad Stephenson 11:18

Um, Bill, you saw live the, the unveiling of the new ad formats. There's ads in AI mode, direct offers, business agent, as Nicole mentioned. Which, which one do you think, and maybe it's business agent, but which one do you think is gonna hit our clients hardest in, over the next six months and, and why do you feel that way?

Bill Buchanan 11:39

I don't think it's any of the ones they announced. I'll, I'll, I'll do the hot take and go contra- I, I think Google is quickly prototyping all different kinds of ones, and I don't know that any of the ones that they have announced so far are gonna be the single game changer. I think what you're gonna see is a proliferation of modes that Google's gonna come out with the rest of this year as they keep seeing where user intent is going and user experience, and then it will start to consolidate back into one type of, um, one more consolidated type of ad format. I think the basic AI, AI Max format of what's there is going to be the predominant piece. I think where advertisers are going to be really super uncomfortable is that what Google is finding is that them being able to take basic ideas, basic content, basic guardrails that a brand gives them, and recrafting that message in real time on a micro personalized basis for that individual person, brand combination, is, is what is by far the most effective, but it's also gonna make brands the most uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. Certainly for highly regulated brands, but even for non-highly regulated brands of how they want to prepare. And so the whole idea of, um- Mm-hmm the brief process that Google has introduced is super, super important as sort of the foundation for all of those ad formats that they're gonna have, and really being leaning into how you wanna show up, not just in say this, but what kind of ads you wanna show up, how you wanna target, and, and you can now do that in natural language. I think that is super interesting, but I don't think- Yeah anybody really understands how that's going to impact the algorithm, how it's gonna impact the creative process, how it's gonna imp- impact the targeting process, and that whole process is actually not an ad format itself, but it's the foundational level layer they've put in place for all of the formats, I think is the biggest thing that we all have to wrap our a- our heads around, around as marketers that I think is, um, gonna be where we succeed or fail, both on the brand standpoint as well as effectiveness standpoint.

Brad Stephenson 14:00

Yeah. And Nicole, Bill mentioned highly regulated industries, which we know a little bit about, um, working in higher education, working in, um, healthcare areas, working in financial services. Um, what industries-- Are those the industries that you think are gonna be hit the hardest by these changes? Or are there other industries that you feel like, uh, this is either for the positive or, or the sort of challenges?

Nicole Jennings 14:23

Yeah. Um, I think as always it'll be a balance. Um, there's a lot of opportunity for, um- Content and thought leadership in those regulated areas and to be part of answers, right? Um, that is truly something that exists when, when you're talking about buying products that are considered and people need advice for to get there, right? So there's opportunity there. Um, yeah, whether or not we'll be able in execution to take advantage of every piece, there's, there's definitely always that to worry about in a regulated area.

Brad Stephenson 15:00

Yeah. Um, Philipp Schindler, who is the SVP and chief business officer at Google, in his keynote, I believe it was, uh, said there's a large gap between what AI can do and what marketers are actually doing with it. Um, Bill, you were there. You know, what's your impression of that? What does that gap actually look like inside some of the brands that, that we're working with? I know that there's a lot of cool stuff that can be done with AI, basically, and are, are brands not keeping pace with that at this point?

Bill Buchanan 15:30

I mean, I think, I think honestly it's a struggle for anybody to keep pace with that, and I think that was sort of his-- The big thing he was talking about is like, you know, it is incredibly frustrating in the AI space that you think that you're running a thousand miles an hour trying to implement this, and you turn around and like, okay, like today they dropped, um, Anthropic drops 4.8 and it changes everything, and you're like stuck thinking about a whole different world all of a sudden, and like you're behind. Um- Yeah and so those, the changes are coming out and the pace of change is coming out so rapidly, um- It creates a lot of fear. It creates a lot of people get stuck going down-- I think we've gotten stuck, I think brands get stuck going down a certain funnel and it's like, okay, well, we really got really, really good at embracing N8N for automation. And it's like, well, okay, that's like so not only last, last year, it's like feels like last century at this point, um, of sort of like how we think about workflows. Um, I think AI, what it can do, there's so much preconceptions of I tried it three weeks ago, I tried it to do this a month ago and it couldn't do it, and so I don't do it. And now all of a sudden I've-- it is possible. And so it's about consistently going back and saying, "I couldn't do this before, but I can do it now." Um, I was playing around with Google Flow over the weekend and, um, the ability with Google Flow as an example, it's a new tool that Google has put out there for video editing, um, it's got some amazing capabilities that I didn't think were possible and weren't possible two or three months ago. Um, and but there are competitors of Google Flow who actually do it better today. Yeah. Um, and like I don't know that that would be the tool I would choose for certain types of things and, but it is cutting edge for where Google is. And so it's like as the different applications are building out different things, it is, um, hard to keep pass, pace with what's possible in what tool in the right use case. Um, my urging to brands and my advice to brands is really to continue to experiment, continue to engage with partners and agencies that continue to experiment, and find out where that, what's possible- Yeah at any given moment. Um, but don't give up on your good ideas. Keep trying them. There's a way to do it, um, or the AI will change and make it possible two or three weeks from now, so.

Brad Stephenson 18:08

Yeah. And Nicole, like, I guess that, you know, piggybacking off of that, we have nervous clients sometimes who come to us and say, "Look, I can't..." We are fortunate because we have a whole, a whole AI team here at Level, right? I feel very fortunate because they're constantly sharing, everybody across the agency is experimenting. I don't have to, like, have all these things active for me. I can just be following certain channels in Slack, for instance. Brands that come to us and have a three-person marketing team and say, "I'm so nervous about this. It's overwhelming." What advice, because we are often asked to be strategic consultants, not ju- Uh, we're always asked to be strategic consultants, but even around things that are not directly related to marketing sometimes. Yeah. What do you say to the clients that come to us and say, "It's overwhelming. What do I do? Where do I start?"

Nicole Jennings 18:52

Yeah, I think that it, it goes back to the interesting spot we're in, where we have these multiple engagements with clients across multiple parts of their business, and it allows us to become experts in the tools and in the paths you can take in those different categories, right? Um, we've been talking this week internally of how our development team went through their agentic transformation last year, right? And they're helping guide the rest of, of our team. And so they have their best practices, they have their tools really locked down because they're done. I think the biggest thing that we're seeing throughout the rest of the company is We were, a few months ago, I think we were all bucketing the AI tools into their categories, and I think that that's not staying the same. So I think that's one of the important things we have to talk to our clients about, right? Um, and I think that's what Google worked on really hard this week to make Gemini a through line. Two months ago, I had decided Gemini was for images, right? Mm-hmm. And I felt like that became a thing. If you're just gonna chat, go here. If you're gonna do an image- Yep go here. And- If you're

Brad Stephenson 20:03

gonna code, go to Claude.

Nicole Jennings 20:04

Correct.

Brad Stephenson 20:05

Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole Jennings 20:05

And I think this week Google was trying to say, "Wait, Gemini starts here at a briefing process and goes through to the end, um, and, and versioning creative." Right? So that sounds great. To Bill's point, in between there, all of the steps of the tools and what's best of the best today, um, we're able to stay on top of in a lot of ways because we have, um, those different engagements with our clients, but it should probably be a monthly conversation, Brad. You might have to, uh- Yep have that ongoing series in the podcast.

Brad Stephenson 20:40

Yeah, no, it would be... That ac- actually is a really good idea. I was, you know, I often would say, like, h- if you have a good idea for a thing, build the thing, and you can always swap out the components of the thing-

Nicole Jennings 20:49

Yep

Brad Stephenson 20:50

as you, as you continue to do your research and experimentation, right? These are just modules that help you, that you can chain together to get a thing done, and if s- if one's better someday, you can always swap, swap it out. Yeah. Um, the AI, AIM- AI Max and PMax thing, um, so Google said that, you know, every new format that they're launching only runs in those two campaign types, right? Mm-hmm. That's gonna be a big thing for brands. So for brands that haven't migrated yet, what's the cost of waiting, and then what are the ri- you know, for brands that get too excited, what are the risks of pushing too quickly into the, those areas?

Nicole Jennings 21:22

Yeah, they are established, um, they are established formats and campaign types, right? So there is very little risk to get started, um, and so go. I think the risk of not going as far as they want us to is I always think about this in terms of missing a season- Like, if we don't embrace this summer all of these new ad formats, we won't know what happens in before back to school season, right, with these ad formats. And so that's how I'm always positioning it, learning from an entire quarter or an entire season, which will impact next year's planning. That's what you're giving up if you're not leaning all the way in. And like we talked about with PMax, when that first launched, we had to learn a lot through the process. Yeah. But we got there, and so there's very little risk to me in leaning all the way in and making it work for you. The risk is- Yeah is not doing it.

Brad Stephenson 22:22

Yeah. Bill, anything to add to that? Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 22:24

Yeah, I'd dovetail on that, and I was listening to... I had a behind-the-scenes moment the day after, um, at GML, and I got together with, um, a lot of the folks who were on stage in a very, very small casual setting, um, to be able to ask them more direct questions, um, that we can't make public. Um, but one of those conversations was fascinating to me, which, um, someone asked, "Gosh, we have clients who aren't really comfortable in this whole AI space. Um, what should we tell them?" And Google's answer was very non-typical of them. They basically said, um, "That's where your customers are." Um, so we're not changing. We're going to where the customers are.

Nicole Jennings 23:19

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 23:19

And the customers are there, and so if you don't come, you're missing out on now 50, 60, 70, 80% of your customers are over here. And so if you wanna stay behind and just be over here, you're gonna be in a diminishing pool, and you're going to miss out on most of your potential customers.

Brad Stephenson 23:39

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 23:40

And so- That's a really

Brad Stephenson 23:41

good... Yeah.

Nicole Jennings 23:42

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 23:42

That's great. Um, it's less about ad formats and it's more about the, um, user experience that customers are going through today, and they've abandoned a typical blue link driven customer experience, and they're embracing a question and answer session with Google that's getting them a far richer experience. And if customers weren't liking it, they wouldn't be using it.

Nicole Jennings 24:11

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 24:12

Cause at, so far to this point, it's all been an opt-in basis. Mm-hmm. Now Google is slowly saying, "So many people are opting in, we're gonna make it the, the, the default."

Nicole Jennings 24:20

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 24:20

Yeah. I think the risk question, though, is real. Um, I think there is going to be, because Google has yet to fully figure out what the ads are in this new space, there's going to be stuff that's gonna be hit or miss. There's going to be failures, and we have to embrace those failures and learn from them, and learn how to better give Google the right data, how to give it the right guardrails, um, how to get the right feedback. One of the big things that I and many others, when we were there, talked with Google about was, "You need to be giving us back more information about what's working and what's not."

Brad Stephenson 24:53

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 24:53

How do we know when this... If, if you wanna take all this random information, all this content that is unstructured and sort of feed that into your algorithm and say, "This is what's working and what's not working," and then creating ads, we need to know what's working and not working so we can figure out how to feed that better. We all have gotten really super comfortable in a world of, okay, for this keyword, we wanna have this headline and this description and these, these, um, um, ad extensions or whatever the pieces are. Mm-hmm. We know how to configure those, and we've all got 20 years of history understanding what they all mean, and that's all changing, and we don't know what this, in this new world, what are all the information bits and what's important and what isn't important.

Nicole Jennings 25:40

Mm-hmm.

Bill Buchanan 25:40

And how to give that right information that's gonna get, make the most connection with a prospect and get that information back. We have years of history of like- headline one versus headline two versus description one, two, three, four, five of this is the results and we, you know, we expect this sort of click-through rate when we do this. Right. And that just doesn't, we don't have that same level of data and we're not getting that data back from Google, and so until we do- Yeah we're gonna pivot the wrong way invariably. And so the risk is, you know, how do we quickly monitor what's working and what's not working so that we can provide those feedback loops? And not to give another commercial for data, this is where data comes in so important and, you know, this is one of the core beliefs that we have and why we've embraced so heavily sort of the Google Data Manager, Google, Google Tag Gateway, enhanced conversions for Google. I'm just gonna be on a commercial for this. This allows us to really push that data back to Google so that we can make the most informed decision and make sure Google has all the information when it's serving those ads to serve it to the right people at the right time to make the right connection, and really make sure that the brands we represent are, um, having the best revenue opportunities they possibly can.

Brad Stephenson 27:01

Yeah. I hope nobody listening is playing the game where you take a shot every time we say Google. Um, that's very dangerous today. Um, it's not a real word anymore. Um, the, uh, the split between SEO and AI visibility, let's talk about that for just a second. Um, ranking number one in Google no longer means showing up in those answers and, and vice versa, right? There's, there's a split between I'm searching for a thing, I'm asking a question, and the, what you get from the links from traditional SEO and what you get in AI answers is, is vastly different. What does the work look like, uh, to be cited inside Gemini or ChatGPT? What does that work look like today, um, and how do brands need to be thinking about what, what should I do to show up there? Nicole, I don't know if you wanna take that first, leading the, uh, the SEO unit

Nicole Jennings 27:47

Um, sure. I will tell you this, I played around this morning thinking about this, asking so many random questions. None of them were about an itchy arm, but just to be clear. Um, I asked a lot of questions and I got a lot of Reddit back in my AI answers- Okay and that I'm thinking about a lot, right? Um, it's again, when you think about who's going to be the expert, so that, that will be in the response. What looks like the best answer doesn't live in, um, in just a press release on your site. And so I think, I think that really changes the game. Um, I'm really worried about that, Bill.

Brad Stephenson 28:32

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 28:33

Yeah, I mean, I just to pull apart a little bit what Nicole's saying, I think we're moving from a world where of backlinks- Hm that are structured, um, on the internet into a world of brand mentions, which is- Yep opens up the universe a lot, right? So it used to be you, in the AI world, you, you know, the number one currency was sort of around backlinks and getting mentions and getting connections between other sites. Um, in an AI-driven world, none of that matters. What matters is mentions, and the reason Reddit has jumped up so much- Right and other things is because people mention brands there a lot- Yeah um, but they're not linking to it, and so they've uncovered that big thing, and I think what that's gonna open up the possibility to is a melding of SEO and PR in ways that we've already started to see, but it's even gonna be more so. It's gonna be more important that your brand gets mentioned than that you have that press release-

Brad Stephenson 29:38

Yep

Bill Buchanan 29:38

it's got a link to your website announcing the thing. It's gonna be like how do you get that, how do you get the organic? So I think organic social, I think PR, I think reputation management, I think those services are gonna be far more integrated to SEO than they ever, than they ever have been, and far more integral to that. That being said, good SEO is still gonna be good SEO. Yeah. It is still the core of what Google's using, and so like there is no new magic hack or something else that you need to do in this world. What you need to do is pro- be providing amazing, authentic content-

Brad Stephenson 30:19

Mm-hmm

Bill Buchanan 30:20

that answers people's questions. Yeah. Right? And that's what's getting cited, and so- When I look at the, the stuff, the reason why Reddit pulls up to the top so much in a lot of things is you have a lot of really authentic voices on Reddit being represented that are answering real world questions. I personally use Reddit a lot. I'm a huge Reddit fan-

Nicole Jennings 30:42

Yeah

Bill Buchanan 30:42

because I feel like it's not people shouting at each other. Um like other, um, social media platforms- Yeah or other social media platforms where people are talking to themselves.

Nicole Jennings 30:55

Mm-hmm.

Bill Buchanan 30:55

Um, and you know, got X on one side, Meta on the other there. Um, but in Reddit, what I really feel like is you really have a sense of community where people generally go and ask questions of each other and are there- Yes to help each other answer those questions and not go down a path. And so it's, like in my personal life, it's not unusual for me to go in and say like, "I'm looking for a phone system for my house, and here's what I got. What do you guys rec- recommend?" And I'll find a subreddit on home phone systems, and I put that in there and like 17 people will all come back with very thoughtful comments about who they think is best, right? Yeah. And those are the kinds of things that Google's serving up because it's really authentic content that is answering a specific question that I asked, that, you know, if somebody else asks that, Google's gonna go find that similar question and bring it together, as opposed to, um, brands being, trying to think of what the question is and trying to come up with answers. It's, um, Reddit community is really all around helping people answer questions. And so.

Brad Stephenson 31:54

Yeah. Yeah. A couple, couple nice plugs for us, for Level. We had our previous podcast episode, if you listen to it, it's, uh, with Matt B, one of our, uh, SEO directors. Um, and we had a conversation specifically about brands- Mm-hmm um, and SEO and, you know, reputation and things like that, and how important that is. We also did a virtual insider session, uh, which is our fancy way of saying webinar, with our partners from Reddit, where they talked about how brands should start to engage. And it is a scary place for brands. You don't just wanna jump in there. So there's a lot of like w- they call it lurking and listening, which is, I think, really fun. Like you, you pick those subreddits that you wanna, that are important to your brand, you lurk, you listen, you do that for a period of time before you engage in anything and understand how your brand's being mentioned, how it's being talked about or not, right? Because that's also the case. So I would just say if you wanna find that, go to our website, level.agency, or you can also ask whatever, uh, AI answer engine you use. You can say, "Hey, where do I find the Level Agency, uh, virtual insider session with Reddit?" So, um, just a couple plugs there. It's really good content, really, really valuable, useful stuff, so I'm, I'm excited for people to access it. Um, so in addition to all these changes, we've, we've been talking about data. Um, let's get to measurement just a little bit. Um, Meridian, QFC, qualified future conversions, ABS, attributed brand searches, as if in marketing we needed more, um, acronyms for things. The industry is saturated. But if, if you had to explain to a CFO why all of this matters, all of these things matter in plain English, what, what would you say?

Nicole Jennings 33:27

I'm really excited about those new KPIs. We don't get new KPIs very often, right? We get new data and lots of data, right? Um, poor brands, they have the platform data, they have, um, their own internal systems, and they have their GA data. Um, but we don't always get new KPIs, and these are KPIs we need, right? These are KPIs that can be looked at, um, before larger studies are done, before MMM is up and running, right? And can really help you understand, hopefully, um, what your upper funnel media is doing and help you make predictions, which is always good. Um, I have some anxiety about how many brands will actually get access to that data, and is there enough volume for that data to be served, right? Mm-hmm. Um, within GA, I am nervous about that. Um, but I think the idea of having new KPIs that are easy to absorb versus an MMM, I don't really wanna bring MMM to my C- CFO, I don't think. But I'm happy to bring a KPI that tells me something that I'm doing is impacting the business, if that makes sense. Yeah. Easy to consume.

Bill Buchanan 34:49

Yeah. So I would take, um, um- A more fundamental, everything that Nicole said is right. I would add to it that what's changing dramatically right now is customer behavior. Customer behavior used to be very linear. Right? It was very, I would see an ad on TV, it would get me interested in something, then I would go and I would do a search for it on Google. Um, and maybe I remembered the brand name or maybe I just remembered what it was like, and I would get into non-branded search, and then I'd get into branded search, and that would kind of take me down, and I kind of understood what that looked like. Um, the mediums are mixing so much now, and where you're doing discovery versus where you're doing, you know, the ads are appearing, my ability to interact with things directly has really changed that world. And so my ability to be able to measure I did this, I got this, has, is being really disruptive in this space. It was disruptive, it's been disruptive before, and so this isn't the first time. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when you used to put ads on TV with 800 numbers and you-- people would call, and you could literally say it was this one spot because this was the spot you were running, and like all of a sudden there was 50 phone calls coming in and like you had to like staff the call center because you were gonna run a spot at 3:00 this afternoon. Um, and so that direct causality is now so fragmented that the measurement tools we have allow us to do that. I would say the biggest thing that I would try to explain to a CFO is, um, not to stop fixating on last click attribution. The last thing that got somebody to a sale is not everything that impacted them along the journey, and that we need to figure out how to, um Measure other parts of the journey funnel, uh, whether it's, you know, awareness, whether it's consideration, whether it's discovery along the way. Um, and there is lots of good modern tools to be able to do that, and that measurement, while it sounds very scientific, is more art than it is science often at times of sort of, "This tells us this, so we should go do this." It is, um, less, um, put a quarter in the slot machine, you get out a payout. It is- Yeah you know, when I do this and I also t- tilt my head this way and I do this- Yeah this comes out over here, um, is where the tools are today. They're getting more and more scientific. They're getting more and more, um, precise, but, um, last click attribution is the kind of world is very 10 years ago kind of thinking at this point. And it, more and more we see brands that are, if they're still in that space, are stuck in a, um, last click attribution loop, which is causing them to do the wrong things over and over again and spend their money in the wrong ways, and are not seeing growth. Folks who are- Yeah embracing other things are seeing actual business growth, which is actually the success we want to see regardless of what all the measurement pieces are.

Brad Stephenson 38:09

And you're only speaking to a group of people who know exactly what they're looking for, exactly what your brand is, and you're not expanding that pool at all. Yeah. Right? Um, so, uh, s- if a CMO is listening to this, and I hope they are, hello. Um, and they, they have a quarter, the next quarter to make one change, what's the highest leverage thing they can do, and what do you think is the worst possible thing that they could spend time on in terms of burning energy and resources? Go ahead, Bill

Bill Buchanan 38:38

I'll give you a hot take on both sides. The first one's gonna surprise you. Um, data, data, data, data, data. Uh, you know, I'm gonna keep going down the data path. Um, get, um, enhanced conversions for leads up, get Google Tag Gateway, get a server-side GTM going. Whatever it is, get data back into the platforms at a more robust level about who your buyers are. Um, it will give all the platforms far more, far more information. The worst move, trying to chase AI visibility hacks, prompt gaming- Mm trying to figure out how to, how to, how to hack the system. You know, don't believe the snake oil salesman who's, you know, "I got five ways to hack the new AI blahdy blah." Um, really figuring out instead how to embrace that is the thing. The worst move is, like, trying to chase... It's the equivalent of the old world keyword stuffing or- Yeah things like that. I mean- Yeah stay away from that.

Brad Stephenson 39:39

Yeah. Nicole?

Nicole Jennings 39:40

Yeah. I would say, um, if there's one thing he can do... I said he. He or she can do- as a CMO, um, a scalable, repeatable YouTube strategy would be my next priority for the quarter. Um, when it comes to the data piece, because obviously I don't disagree with that, I think, um, not saying no to things that are hard, because I consider Level Agency to be Google editors, right? Google always tells us everything we can do with them, but we're telling our clients what they have to do or should do, and the data piece is a really good example of that, right? We would not be having those conversations if it wasn't so important. Sure. And so if resources are hard or, um, something about that is hard, don't say no because of that because we wouldn't be suggesting it if it wasn't so critical.

Brad Stephenson 40:39

Yep. And we have very good partners at Google- We do um, that work with us because they do not say, "Do everything." They say, "Try these things, experiment with these things, test these things." Yeah. Yeah. And they're, they're very good about making sure that it's about, they know that if the customer gets value from the thing, they will continue to use the thing, versus if the customer sees something fail, they're gonna walk away from it. So we, we, we love our, our partners. Um, different industries are facing different versions of this, so I would love to do, like, a quick lightning round across a f- few industries. Um, what does this mean specifically for someone? And we'll start first with higher education. So Bill, I'm gonna go to you because you've been in the higher education space- Mm for a lot, m- much of your career, right? And so what does it mean for higher education?

Bill Buchanan 41:28

S- students shop for programs, outcomes, not schools. Make sure your institution is the answer to what is the best program for X.

Brad Stephenson 41:41

Yep. Cool. Uh, Nicole, I'll go to you on, uh, multi-location healthcare or home services, which are similar types of, of industries in terms of how they operate and how consumers behave. What do you think about those, those sp- that space?

Nicole Jennings 41:55

Yeah. It's actually a similar, similar answer all around, right? I mean, the data shows us that that's how people are searching, um, for guidance, right, on a place to start. So it really... It's a little bit universal in terms of, of how people are searching and therefore what we need to show up for. Um, and I think, um, again, just to go back to some of those new ad formats, in some ways they, they feel very helpful to those consumers, right? If we think about, um, the ability to then submit a lead within a lead form that's part of a conversation where you've asked what is the best school for, right?

Brad Stephenson 42:35

Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, uh, for home services, multi-location, also thinking about the local piece of, like, making sure you have really strong content about Pittsburgh or Cincinnati or whatever the case may be for people who are specifically looking for that thing in your area. Make sure you've got pages specific to those and you're, you're answering the questions that are relevant and thoughtful for the people in those areas too. Yeah. It's critical.

Nicole Jennings 42:56

You cannot underestimate if there is, if there is a local angle to driving your business of having as much of that content- Yeah available, that there is nothing more powerful than- Yeah than that local result filling the SERP, right?

Brad Stephenson 43:14

Yeah. So let's go to financial services to end this lightning round here. Uh, obviously very regulated. I'm, I'm a nervous VP of marketing for a financial services, a, a lender or insurer. Um, what, what, what are the implications for me? What do I need to be thinking about?

Bill Buchanan 43:32

I think it's now is the time to invest in authoritative, compliant, citable content that you can lean in on, um, both from a paid as well as, um, organic perspective to answer people's questions.

Brad Stephenson 43:49

Yeah.

Bill Buchanan 43:49

And the sooner we can The sooner folks can get to that spot and make it use- useful across the board, that'll be super helpful.

Brad Stephenson 43:59

And that, that goes to, to your point about the YouTube thing as well. Like, that's a great industry for YouTube content because you can have somebody really, really specifically answering, "Hey, I know getting insurance is challenging and can be difficult. Here are the things you need to know about that," or specific questions, right? That's a great industry for, for YouTube content.

Bill Buchanan 44:17

Yeah.

Brad Stephenson 44:17

Um, all right, last, last question. 12 months from now we'll look back at GML 2026 fondly, uh, with nostalgia, and everything else will be changing at that point. What, what's a thing that we'll all wish we'd done sooner when we look back? And Bill, I bet I know what you're gonna say, but

Bill Buchanan 44:37

I won't- I got three- I won't say it I got three things.

Nicole Jennings 44:39

Go.

Brad Stephenson 44:39

Okay. You wanna go?

Bill Buchanan 44:40

The first one is gonna be exactly what you said. Fix the data foundation earlier. Like, that's- Yeah number one. Like, um, two, um- We didn't start, you know, we didn't start competing for AI citations when it was easy and cheap, which it is now. Um, it's gotten waiting for it to be proved, waiting for it to be a thing. Um, we just waited too long. And the third, which will be a little bit of a, um, hot take, I guess, um, hadn't treated AI search as one unified solution, combining SEO, paid, and content earlier. They're all trying to answer the same question. It's getting more combined now than it ever is. I think thinking about that as one set of things is gonna be super important.

Brad Stephenson 45:32

I, I'm gonna be speaking at SMX Advanced about that next week, actually. I don't know when this podcast will be up very soon, but, uh, uh, unifying the search experience. Um, so, but gosh, it's almost like we planned these types of things, uh, a- as an agency, isn't it? It's, yeah. Uh, Nicole, what are your, uh, what are your, uh, things that you wish we'd done sooner?

Nicole Jennings 45:53

Um, I, I'm gonna tell you the honest truth of what my first reaction is to that. Higher level agency, right? Is that what everybody will wish that they had done a year from now? Literally, that's the first thing I thought of. Um, you know, I think, um, going for it, right? Because I can see, um, some brands by October being like, "Okay, let's start testing X," and that-

Bill Buchanan 46:22

Yeah

Nicole Jennings 46:22

that will feel bad, right? So, um, if it's new and, and we are aligned on it, just start, right? There's very- Okay little risk. We're so spoiled in, in the digital land with performance, but we can turn things off. We can turn parts of things off. I think a lot of times the... what I see happen are sweeping decisions. PMax doesn't work, right? No, none of those- Okay sweeping decisions, I don't want any of those in the next year. We'll keep trying and tinkering to get something to work t- and get things to work- Yeah for our clien- based on our clients' goals.

Brad Stephenson 46:57

And I think to your point, Nicole, like, y- you know, obviously we would love for everybody to work with Level Agency. Um, but I think, you know, h- having come from the client side, from the brand side, I, I know how valuable it is to work with an agency partner because you've got a bunch of people thinking about the things that are, that are keeping you up at night, who are experts in those things. It's not just about, like, having somebody who runs your paid media. It's about having a giant team of people who are constantly thinking about the, the, these things. That's more important now than it ever has been in, in the marketing space with AI and everything else. So to your point, please work with Level, but if you don't, consider, consider a partner that has those additional resources for your team. So yeah, I would never, I would never bring marketing in-house if I were at a brand today. I, I think that that's a really challenging thing to do.

Nicole Jennings 47:46

Yeah.

Brad Stephenson 47:46

Um, unless you have a big budget for a giant team of experts, but yeah.

Nicole Jennings 47:50

Um- I think the biggest opportunity is perspective always, right? Mm-hmm. And having tried things here and there, um, in real time with four other clients- Yeah that perspective-

Brad Stephenson 48:01

Right is real. Yeah.

Nicole Jennings 48:02

Yeah.

Brad Stephenson 48:02

Um, thank you both. Um, obviously a lot to think about. Um, really, really great information. Uh, appreciate your time today, and, uh, we'll look forward to seeing how these things sh- uh, shake out over the next several months.

Nicole Jennings 48:15

Thanks.

Bill Buchanan 48:15

Thanks, Brad.

Brad Stephenson 48:16

Thank you.