Zero‑Click Era Ends Google Discover’s Traffic Reign
The last bastion of traffic-referring platforms was Google Discover. In 2025, it too cut ~20% of referalls to websites thanks to AI summaries, lack of product investment, and users' preferences for in-app consumption. The era of web traffic is nearly gone, replaced by zero-click everything.
Press Spike Amplifies SEO, AI Mentions, and Sales
What happens when you get a big spike in press coverage? Changes to your Google SERP? Yup. Changes to how AIs talk about you? Yup. Changes to sales? Yup, that too. 😎 This past Sunday, Geraldine and I joined Caitlin...
Where Agency Revenue Is Heading: Fewer Big Retainers, More Mid-Market Retainers, and Longer Engagements
The 2025 State of Digital Agencies survey shows agencies are holding clients longer, with 31% retaining them for over three years and 19% for two to three years. Retainer contracts dominate, rising to 85% of engagements, yet 86% of monthly...
Five 2026 Marketing Predictions Shaped by Emerging Trends
NEW: https://sparktoro.com/blog/the-5-big-trends-that-will-dominate-marketing-in-2026/ I made 5 predictions for the marketing world in 2026 based on these 5 big trends we're seeing. Feel free to fight with me in the comments AFTER you've read the piece 😉
I Grade My Own Predictions—Read & Challenge Me
Unlike every other prognosticator in your feed, I don't just make industry predictions, I **grade myself** on them. Otherwise, how the @#$% would you know if you could trust me?! Anywhoodle, I made 5 predictions (related to each of the...
Social Platforms Are Essential for Sustainable Marketing
The degree to which social platforms dominate discovery and top of funnel can't be overstated. I'd argue that, in many fields, it's unrealistic to think you can build a sustainable marketing practice without social.
Accuracy Isn’t Enough: Reliability Drives AI’s Economic Success
This post by Kushal Chakrabarti opened my eyes to why AI adoption has been so slow, and why I've often sided with the naysayers: "Accuracy is hitting the bullseye on average but reliability is hitting the same spot repeatably. You...
Zero‑Click Marketing Shows Algorithms, Not Humans, Drive Reach
"If the problem of the future is Zero-Click Marketing, then the solution is just to be human-centric; make great content and a great product." OH MY SWEET SUMMER CHILD, NO. Anyone telling you Zero-Click Marketing is about optimizing for people...
Leverage Authentic Mentions for Visibility in ChatGPT
Some great analysis from the AHrefs team deserves more attention -- because it shows you how to spam, er... authentic-mention-build your way to visibility in the zero click marketing platform that is ChatGPT. Respect to Glen Allsopp for this banger...
YouTube Searches Double ChatGPT Sessions—Boost Marketing Effort
Just got some new data showing that YouTube gets ~2X more searches than ChatGPT gets prompt sessions, so... Maybe search marketers should put 2X as much energy into that? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (publishing hopefully next week)
Zero‑Click Surge Shows Search Impressions Aren’t Conversions
Open up your email. Search "your november search performance for" Compare this year to the last few and you'll see just how obvious the zero click trend is. E.G. our impressions have doubled while clicks fell by more than half....
200+ Agency Owners Reveal Industry Health, Growth, Threats
NEW post: https://t.co/fMrZMJxj34 Thanks to the tireless work of @paddymoogan, our survey of 200+ digital agency owners is now live featuring answers to critical questions about the field's health, growth, and threats. https://t.co/O1PWZVpqWV
Agency Survey Reveals Benchmarks, AI Perception, Growth Trends
Agency owners, don't miss: https://sparktoro.com/blog/the-2025-state-of-digital-agencies-its-still-rough-out-there-but-slowly-improving-and-is-ai-really-a-threat/ How does your revenue, leads, margin, growth compare to other agencies? Do your fellow agency owners perceive AI as a threat? Opportunity? Both? What's happening with juniors, remote work, pipelines? Thanks to @paddymoogan's survey of 100s of agencies, we've...
The 2025 State of Digital Agencies: It’s Still Rough Out There, but Slowly Improving; and Is AI Really a Threat?
The 2025 State of Digital Agencies survey shows a mixed but improving picture. Half of agencies reported revenue growth, while net margins rose for roughly a third. Concerns about AI as a business threat increased to 53%, and two‑thirds worry...
Human Voice Beats AI: A Linguistic Superpower
Sent this email to SparkToro subscribers this morning and received ***the most*** replies to an email we've had all year. My takeaway: NOT sounding like an AI is a linguistic superpower.
Buyer Journey Now Pinball, Not Funnel: 7 New Problems
NEW post - https://lnkd.in/g9mxMCt3 This week's #5MinuteWhiteboard is a follow-up to last week's exploration of how the clean, funnel-shaped buyer journey of years past no longer exist (and today that journey looks more like a pinball machine). It's not just...
Buyer Journeys Are Pinball, Not Linear Funnels
The marketing "funnel" isn't dead, at least not from the perspective of site owners seeking an analogy of the business-side experience. BUT... if you're seeking analogies for buyer behavior, the funnel really doesn't work anymore. IMO it's more like a...
The Pinball Customer Journey Has Replaced the Marketing Funnel
The author argues that the classic marketing funnel no longer reflects how modern consumers navigate a fragmented, multi‑channel landscape, likening today's journey to a pinball machine where prospects bounce between apps, newsletters, social feeds, AI tools, and peer recommendations before...
Stop Manual AI Prompts—Let SparkToro Handle It
"Can't someone else do it?" We talk to a lot of digital marketers, and hear about the same process over and over: - Run a report - Export - Upload to ChatGPT - Prompt engineer over and over until you...
NEW: Upload Your Agency’s Logo and Customize Your Audience Research Graphs
SparkToro’s new feature lets Agency and Enterprise users upload their own logo and generate white‑labeled, high‑resolution PNG graphs for audience research reports, which can be exported directly from the browser. This upgrade streamlines branding for consultants, agencies, and in‑house marketers...
NEW: AI Tool & Social Network Usage Graphs Are in SparkToro
The post announces a major upgrade to SparkToro’s data visualizations, now showing the exact percentage of a target audience that uses specific search engines, AI tools, and social networks rather than just country‑level averages. It highlights the ability to customize...
AI Grows, Yet Search Share Holds; Gemini, ChatGPT Lead
If you somehow missed our joint report with Datos, A Semrush Company from 2 weeks ago: - AI tools continue to grow - But they're not taking market share from traditional search - Zero-click searches continue to rise (based on...
Seeking UX Feedback on AlertMouse Interface Design
UX friends (and anyone who's using @alertmouse)... Does this make sense to you? Any language or layout things you'd do differently?
NEW in SparkToro: Take Action Combines Real Audience Data with LLM Magic to Give You Actionable Marketing Takeaways
The post introduces SparkToro’s new "Take Action" feature, which merges real audience data with LLM prompts to turn research insights into concrete marketing recommendations across 16 pre‑built tasks. By embedding smart prompts, a short questionnaire, and automatic saving/sharing of outputs...
Track Your Name, Company, and Key Products
Everyone should, imo, track at least: 1) your name 2) company name 3) name of key products I also track some industry terms (like "zero click marketing") but you don't have to unless opportunities arise from those mentions.
Twitter Traffic Surge Is a Deceptive Growth Hack
No. Your Twitter traffic did NOT double overnight. Here's what happened: Twitter's been stagnating/declining since 2023, so the "growth" team executed this hack to make folks think they should pay attention. It's nothing more than smoke & mirrors. Honestly, since...
Turn Brand Mentions Into Powerful Marketing Assets
Why bother tracking brand mentions if you're not gonna use 'em?? Last week, I caught a mention of SparkToro 's subReddit data from the folks at DEANLONG.io . They talked about how useful it is for finding the right subreddits...
Platforms Dominate, yet Your Website Still Matters
We've entered a world in which platforms dominate influence... not websites. But does that mean your website is irrelevant? Or less important than they once were? 🤔🤔🤔👇
AlertMouse: Better Monitoring, Filtering, and Insights Than Google Alerts
What an absolutely lovely article to read today: https://coywolf.com/news/social-media/alertmouse-is-a-google-alerts-alternative-with-better-monitoring-filtering-and-insights/ Nothing better than finding out your friends appreciate the things you make ❤️❤️❤️
AlertMouse Beats Google Alerts, Generates Real Revenue
Another day, another SHINING example of why https://alertmouse.com gets that cheddar, while Google Alerts is
Launching AlertMouse: Superior Real‑Time Web Mention Tracking
I've got a new job. Not leaving my old ones, but... alongside my friends @adamdoppelt & Nathan Kriege, we're launching https://alertmouse.com today -- just think "what if Google Alerts was really good at tracking web mentions, instead of completely useless?" We built...
Stop Asking Your Guest Speakers to Do Your Marketing for You
Marketing leaders should stop relying on guest speakers to drive signups and treat them as content partners rather than unpaid acquisition channels. SparkToro recounts that its most successful webinars—like a GA4 session that drew 2,647 signups—succeeded because the host did...
Agency Owners: Share Insights in 2025 Survey
AGENCY OWNERS! Help yourself & your fellow agencies out 🤗 Paddy Moogan is once again running the Digital Agency Owner Survey for 2025. Last year's results were incredibly compelling, and I know they helped a ton of folks compare their...
AI Boosts Marketing Efficiency with New SparkToro Feature
"You need to use AI to make your marketing tasks more efficient." - everyone's boss right now I've been notably skeptical of AI, but begrudgingly admit... sometimes it's helpful. So, we built a "Take Action" SparkToro feature. If you're up to...