AI in communication infrastructure is crossing the threshold
AI-powered communication is moving from experimental to production-ready. The quality is now good enough that the realistic comparison is not "AI vs. perfect human" but "AI vs. voicemail, hold times, and inconsistent staff." For most businesses, AI wins that comparison.
Implications
- -First-mover advantages in AI communication will compound
- -Customer expectations for response speed and availability will rise
- -Businesses relying on human-only communication will face cost and coverage disadvantages
Updated January 2026
Marketing measurement is getting harder, not easier
Privacy changes, cookie deprecation, and platform fragmentation are making attribution less reliable, not more. The dream of perfect measurement is moving further away. This has implications for how we should think about marketing investment.
Implications
- -Reliance on last-click attribution will become increasingly misleading
- -Marketing investment will need to be evaluated more holistically
- -Brands with strong mental availability will have advantages that are hard to measure but real
Updated December 2025
Local search remains underinvested
Despite Google being two decades old, most local service businesses still underinvest in search presence. The opportunity cost is enormous: demand exists, is being expressed through search, and is going to competitors who show up.
Implications
- -Well-executed local search strategies still produce outsized returns
- -Competition is increasing but remains below what the economics would suggest
- -The gap between sophisticated and unsophisticated advertisers is widening
Updated December 2025
Follow-up remains the biggest conversion leak
Speed to lead, follow-up persistence, and handoff quality continue to be the largest sources of conversion loss for most businesses. This is not a technology problem. The tools exist. It is an operational discipline problem.
Implications
- -Infrastructure that makes follow-up automatic provides competitive advantage
- -Leads are expensive to acquire; losing them to poor follow-up is economically irrational
- -AI will increasingly fill follow-up gaps that humans cannot sustainably address
Updated November 2025
Marketing science remains underappreciated
The evidence base on how brands grow, built over decades of empirical research, remains poorly understood outside academic circles. Most marketing practice contradicts what the research shows works.
Implications
- -Operators who understand marketing science have structural advantages
- -Loyalty-focused strategies will continue to underperform acquisition-focused ones
- -Mental availability will matter more as channels fragment and attention becomes scarcer
Updated November 2025