The AI Marketing Companion

AI is moving faster than ever. Here is what you need to know from the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference (MAICON). In this session, Sandy Carter recaps the most critical takeaways, trends, and strategic playbooks shared at MAICON. From agentic AI to the evolving role of the CMO, explore the key lessons modern marketing leaders need to stay ahead. What we cover in this episode:  • The big...

Bots are clicking your ads, and AI is making buying decisions you never approved. How do you benefit from AI agents without losing control of your ad budget? In this episode of The AI Marketing Companion, Sandy Carter talks with Brad Wardell, founder and CEO of Stardock and creator of Clairvoyance AI, about bot traffic, click fraud and what happens when Google, Microsoft and Meta turn AI-run ad bu...

What happens when your personal AI agent starts shopping with a brand's AI agent? Sandy Carter talks with Diaz Nesamoney, CEO of DaVinci Commerce, about the shift from GEO to Agentic Commerce Optimization, why "mentioned is not bought," and how personal agents, brand agents and richer product context could reshape the customer journey. They explore what Meta Muse, OpenAI Dots, ChatGPT and the rise...

CMOs are putting more than 15% of their marketing budgets into Al. But 70% say their own marketing processes aren't ready for it. Where Does Your Next Marketing Dollar Go? Before you spend your next marketing dollar on Al, look at what Gartner found when it asked 401 CMOs about their budgets this year. They are putting more than 15 percent of the marketing budget into Al, and 70 percent of them sa...

Andy Crestodina has asked more than a thousand content marketers the same questions every year since 2014, which makes him the only person holding a twelve-year record of whether content marketing works. This year's answers are the worst he has ever published.   Only 13.9% of marketers report strong results from their blog, down from a range of 20% to 30% that held for nine straight years. Another...

Creators are dead. Long live creators. The experimental era of creator marketing is over, and 40% of marketing budgets now flow to creators. The brands still treating that spend like a test are already behind. Jeff Barrett has lived every side of the creator economy: Shorty Award winning creator, creator partnerships lead for Fortune 500 brands like Adobe and Oracle, It's No Fluke columnist on Yah...

What is the real AI status symbol in 2026? It may not be what you think. Artificial intelligence is changing how we work, create, communicate and compete. But beyond simply using AI tools, there is a bigger shift happening in how people and businesses think about AI, productivity and the future. In this video, we explore the real AI status symbol and what it reveals about the changing relationship...

TIME Top 100 creator Shira Lazar shares her creator playbook. Before "creator" became a career path, Shira Lazar was already building one. In this episode of The AI Marketing Companion, Shira shares the lessons she's learned from more than 15 years of building media brands, identifying trends, and helping creators navigate a rapidly changing digital landscape. Timestamps 00:00 Introduction and Shi...

Cathy Hackl on what AI is doing to brands. Fewer than 10% of the sources AI assistants cite rank in Google's top 10 for the same question. Your brand equity moved and nobody sent a memo. Cathy Hackl has spent a decade being early. She was calling the metaverse before most boardrooms could spell it. USA Today named her one of the best predictors of tech behavior in the world, Newsweek named her a t...

The biggest disruption in marketing history isn't coming for your job. It's coming for your customer. In this episode of The AI Marketing Companion, Sandy Carter sits down with bestselling author, keynote speaker, and marketing thought leader Mark Schaefer to explore one of the biggest shifts happening in business today: AI isn't just changing marketing—it is fundamentally changing the people we m...

America turns 250 this year. Every brand on the planet is reaching for the moment. And most of them are about to miss it completely. Michael Quinn has spent years studying why, and what to do instead. He is a 3x LinkedIn Top Voice with a following above 360,000, a Forbes Coaches Council member, and the founder of Tenova LLC, with a monthly social reach that exceeds two million people. He knows wha...

A few weeks ago, I was talking with a marketing leader who summed up the challenge facing most teams in a single sentence: "We need to create three times more content with the same number of people." I suspect that sounds familiar. Every platform wants more. LinkedIn wants consistency. Short-form video is consuming marketing calendars. Leadership wants greater visibility. Customers expect faster r...

Anthropic's Claude has officially surpassed ChatGPT in enterprise adoption—but that's not the biggest story. The real shift is happening beneath the surface. In this episode of AI Marketing Companion,  Sandy Carter  sits down with Shawn Reddy of Team Nebula to explore why businesses are moving beyond prompts and chatbots toward dynamic AI workflows that can execute real work. From content creation...

AI has solved one of marketing's oldest problems: creating content at scale. Now it may be creating a new one. In this episode of  The AI Marketing Companion ,  Sandy Carter  welcomes  Simon Davis , Co-Founder and CEO of wearemighty, to discuss the growing challenge of maintaining originality in an era of unlimited AI-generated content. Simon shares how a request for  25 million branded assets  le...

Will AI take your marketing job? That's exactly what this conversation explores. In this mother-daughter discussion, we talk about how AI is changing marketing, creativity, and the future of work. Instead of fear, we focus on understanding how AI can actually help marketers think better, move faster, and create smarter. We discuss: • How AI is transforming marketing jobs   • Why AI should be used...

Described AI is changing marketing faster than any technology shift we've seen before. The question is no longer whether marketers should use AI. The question is who will use it well enough to win. In just 30 minutes, you'll learn the five AI First lessons every marketer needs right now to stay relevant, drive measurable business outcomes, and lead in a world where agents, automation, and intellig...

Everyone is talking about agentic commerce. DaVinci and OpenAI just shipped it. Sandy Carter sits down with Diaz Nesamoney to unpack what the news means for marketers who are still chasing clicks while the storefront moves into ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Diaz breaks down the brand control crisis, the content architecture overhaul every CMO needs this quarter, and the zero-party intent data hidin...

Dan Nestle, founder of Lilypath, joins  Sandy Carter  on The Marketing Companion to unpack a shift most professionals have not noticed yet. AI systems are now interpreting, ranking, and recommending people before any human ever clicks a profile. Dan calls this Authority Intelligence, a new category he built Lilypath to define. Inside the episode, Dan and  Sandy  cover the Gemini Deep Research mome...

If your ads are being skipped, your emails are going unread, and your campaigns are blending into the noise, this episode is your wake-up call. What do Disney, a pool full of sprinkles, the United Nations, and the world's first AI film at Tribeca Film Festival have in common? Michaela Ternasky-Holland. And every single one of those experiences holds a lesson for how you market your brand. Michaela...

What happens when marketing moves beyond campaigns and becomes  experience, emotion, and intelligence (AI) combined ? In this episode, I sit down with Kenny Lauer, one of the most dynamic leaders in modern marketing. From early roles at Apple and KPMG to leading global digital experiences at George P. Johnson, serving as VP of Marketing for the Golden State Warriors during their championship era,...

She built a 75,000+ member community. Then she shut it down. What she did next reveals the 5 secrets every community builder needs to know. Dana Malstaff turned Boss Mom from a book into one of the most recognized community brands online, growing a massive movement of entrepreneurs and mothers who refuse to choose between ambition and family. In this episode, Dana shares 5 community building secre...

Should you be first or a fast follower? Digital pioneer Mark Schaefer breaks down 3 critical rules for marketers navigating AI and discusses why the 85% solution isn't good enough.      

OpenClaw is the hottest open source AI agent in marketing and in this episode Shawn Reddy from Cliqk pulls back the curtain. He walks us through the OpenClaw dashboard live, demonstrates social media scraping in action and shows the complete setup process so you can see exactly what it takes to get started. This isn't another episode about AI theory. Shawn shows us the real marketing use cases wor...

One of the Top Marketing Trends in 2026.  AI search is about to overtake traditional search by 2028, and the implications for marketers are massive. In this episode, Sandy Carter sits down with content strategy expert Andy Crestodina to unpack the rise of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and why it is radically different from the SEO we all know. You'll hear why AI-generated recommendations co...

Marketing is scaling faster than humans can adapt—and most leaders are underestimating the shift. In this conversation with Sandy Carter, Ray Wang, CEO and founder of Constellation Research, and Liz Miller, former leader of the CMO council, and analyst at Constellation Research, reveal what's changed in just two years: AI agents embedded in org charts, accountability rising as decisions digitize,...