Is SEO for AI all about vectors?
Instead of relying on exact keyword matches, search engines now use vector embeddings – a technique that maps words, phrases, and even images into multi-dimensional space based on their meaning and relationships.
3 strategies mentioned:
- Add semantic topic modeling to your keyword research mix
- Focus on where topic meets intent over keywords
- Make good content (which means make it for humans, not bots)
Of course, the best way to find out what AI might think about your content is to use AI to tell you.
YouTube is making changes to avoid the most annoying ad placement occurrence on the platform, a midroll ad cutting off a sentence.
Starting May 12, 2025, We’re improving the quality of mid-roll ads on YouTube. That means we’ll show more mid-roll ads at natural break points, like pauses and transitions, and fewer ads where they may feel interruptive or cause viewers to abandon the video, like in the middle of a sentence or action sequence.
Another example of AI (I’m assuming) turbocharging contextual features.
As a follow up to my post about Alexa+, this is the inflection moment for voice assistants.
Adding “true” AI capabilities will either expand their use cases and, therefore, adoption. Or it will prove that they’ll merely be an extension of other tech and not a new platform of sorts.
GenAI as customer lock in
Alexa Plus is $19.99 per month on its own or free for Amazon Prime members — a better deal, considering Prime costs just $14.99 per month or $139 per year.
Prime is the digital version of Costco or Sam’s Club. People pay a membership fee with the expectation of receiving more value through savings. Then a bunch of secondary benefits sweeten the deal.
By paying a fee, members are more likely to spend money to justify the initial fee to themselves.
Amazon’s primary retail customer is Prime. Everything else funnels there.
via The Verge
Promotions and sales are a lever. But if pulled too often they become your brand. (See: JCPenny)
discounting and promotions in general is a place where retailers all too frequently get caught up in the short-term goal of juicing sales, get caught up in the short-term goal of taking advantage of promotional environments by using promotions as a lever, again, to drive conversion and the short-term.
what gets very dangerous there is that you can really erode the value of your brand.
Competing on price is hard.
Compete on something that makes you unique and use sales and promos as sprinkles.
The 2024 holiday shopping season proved splintering is still the trend.
One other thing that I saw was this growing divide between higher and lower, and middle income consumers.
There really is a growing divide between people who feel pretty good, are spending, they’re going out to eat and those who are pinching pennies.
you see a growing split on the haves and have-nots within retailers.
…
It sounds like the haves and have-nots are really maybe going to be the water we’re all swimming in as we enter this new year.
Like when a frozen pond cracks, the splinters are still spreading.
Brand vs. Performance marketing? Trick question.
Brand equity is the foundation—it’s Job #1 for any marketing team.
Brand marketing is now discovery marketing. Discovery leads performance.
Without a brand, there is no performance.
Performance marketing can drive quick sales, but it’s brand-building that gives consumers a reason to buy again and again.
Brand marketing and performance marketing aren’t two different disciplines. They’re just measured on two different timelines.
Advice from the guy behind the Gorillaz videos, Pete Candeland:
You always try to build entertainment almost like a ladder — or steps — going up to a climax. Like a little story. You want to keep people involved by giving them just enough to want to know what’s going to happen next.
In a short video, it’s about what comes in the next 20 seconds, and then the next 20 seconds, and then the next. It’s an escalating ramp-up of interest, and sometimes a ramp-up of activity and richness of imagery.
Research has shown that rhymes are more memorable. But I much prefer this way of saying it from the Weird Studies podcast
Sound—rhyme and meter, or musical measure—whether we’re talking about poetry or whether we’re talking about music is absolutely the handmaid of memory. Of how things get into the heart.
The function of your message is important. The content must be worth the attention.
But the form determines its reach. This is the vehicle of transmission.