The Campaign | A Marketing Podcast by 97th Floor

The attribution model marketers have relied on for years was never as reliable as we wanted to believe. Sam Brown, VP of Strategy at 97th Floor, makes the case that the zero-click era isn't just changing how we measure marketing, it's forcing us to finally do marketing the right way. In this conversation, Sam breaks down why the obsession with credit and channel-specific metrics has made marketers...

Blake Nielson sits down with Head of Content Rachel Bascom and Enterprise Account Director Jasmin Bennett to break down how the team at 97th Floor has moved from AI chatbots to agentic AI workflows, and what that shift has meant for content quality, efficiency, and process design. Key Takeaways: Agents act. Chatbots talk. That gap is where most teams get stuck. Break your process into small skills...

David Meerman Scott coined newsjacking, wrote the book that redefined B2B marketing, and had a Hollywood film based on his work. Now he's back with a clear take on what AI actually changes and what it doesn't for marketers who want to stay relevant. In this conversation, David ranks AI against the content revolution he helped spark in the 90s, explains why the middle layer of marketing is disappea...

Most people know they should be building a personal brand, but they're stuck. Brandon Smithwrick, content strategist and founder of the newsletter Content to Commas, didn't study marketing, didn't have a roadmap, and didn't go viral overnight. What he did have was a fashion student's competitive instinct and a relentless obsession with figuring out what makes content actually work. In this convers...

Google I/O just dropped a wave of search announcements,  and the implications for marketers are massive. In this episode, Paxton Gray sits down with 97th Floor's Head of Search, Mike Witham and Head of Content, Rachel Bascom to break down what's actually changing. From AI-powered personalized results to agentic search that browses and buys on behalf of users, they cover what these shifts mean for...

Wikipedia became one of the most visited websites on earth without ads, VC money, or a top-down editorial team. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and author of The Seven Rules of Trust, joins the show to share what actually built that, and why the lessons apply far beyond a nonprofit encyclopedia. Key takeaways: The accidental innovation advantage: The dot-com crash left Wikipedia with no money...

Personas have earned a bad reputation in B2B marketing—and for good reason. Most sit unused on hard drives, filled with irrelevant demographic data like "married with two kids, drives a Volvo." Ardath Albee, author of Digital Relevance and a pioneer in buyer persona development since 2000, explains why most personas fail and what actually makes them work. Key takeaways for marketing leaders: Why 1...

When Whitney joined Gorilla Logic a year ago, she inherited a team facing the same pressure every marketing organization feels right now: prove you're using AI or fall behind. But instead of chasing efficiency metrics, Whitney asked a harder question: "If we can't definitively say why it's making progress and showing up better and making incremental change that helps the bottom line, why are we do...

Organic traffic is down. Click-through rates are dropping. And every marketer is panicking about whether their SEO strategy is dead. Mike Witham and Blake Nielson from 97th Floor's AI Task Force are here to set the record straight: 80% of what worked in SEO still works for AI search—but that 20% difference is critical. In this tactical breakdown, Mike and Blake share what they're seeing across doz...

What does it take to build groundbreaking companies across three decades of tech evolution? Daniel Nissan, founder of Structured (formerly Structured Web), made the first internet phone call in 1993, launched the first nationwide grocery delivery service before Amazon, and is now rebuilding his 26-year-old platform from for the AI era. In this episode, Daniel shares hard-won lessons from the front...

Most B2B marketers are stuck playing it safe, following "best practices" that guarantee mediocre results. Udi Ledergor, former CMO of Gong and author of Courageous Marketing , has spent his career doing the opposite—running Super Bowl ads for 5% of the expected cost, getting Times Square billboards for $500, and building a marketing machine that made Gong impossible to ignore. In this conversation...

Most early-stage startups fail at the same place: they can't figure out marketing. Sterling Snow, former CMO at Divvy (acquired for $2.5B), has cracked the code on what actually works when you're searching for your first scalable channel—and it's not what the playbooks tell you. Sterling calls it "the haystack phase"—that brutal early period where you're testing everything, burning through budget,...

The Apple-Gemini announcement changed everything—but not in the way most people think. Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO, explains why this partnership doesn't signal the death of SEO but rather Google's complete dominance over search for the foreseeable future. In this wide-ranging conversation, Eli challenges nearly every assumption marketers hold about SEO in 2026. From why your thin cont...

With AI making it easier than ever to launch startups, B2B SaaS companies are facing an unprecedented wave of competition. Bill Macaitis, former CMO of Slack and Zendesk, shares exactly what marketers need to do in 2026 to not just survive—but dominate. Bill brings decades of experience taking companies from startup to IPO, and his perspective on what's coming is both sobering and energizing. The...

While everyone's talking about AI, very few are actually making it work. Marie Haynes, renowned SEO expert and AI experimentalist, is one of the rare practitioners who's gone beyond the hype—building 50+ custom AI tools (gems), testing workflows daily, and learning what actually ships versus what crashes and burns. In this candid conversation, Marie shares the unglamorous reality of AI implementat...

A staggering 41% of marketers admit they don't do audience research nearly enough, and over half do it very infrequently. In this conversation, SparkToro co-founder Rand Fishkin breaks down why audience research has become marketing's orphaned responsibility and what it's costing companies in missed opportunities. From Fortune 500s sitting on unused data to marketers relying on ChatGPT for audienc...

Matt Frisbee went from Disney performer to marketing executive, and is one of the best storytellers around. In this conversation, Matt breaks down the art of storytelling in marketing, shares how he built breakthrough campaigns at Little Giant Ladder Systems, and explains why "feeling understood is the sexiest feeling in the universe." This is a masterclass in taking calculated risks, doing the de...

Most B2B marketers are missing a goldmine of audience insights hiding in plain sight. While everyone flocks to LinkedIn, 68% of Reddit users aren't even on the platform—meaning there's a massive chunk of your audience having authentic conversations about their real problems elsewhere. Deep tech CMO Kiersten Gaffney has cracked the code on mining Reddit for content that actually converts. In this e...

Most marketers think they know their audience — but they stop at surface-level demographics and wonder why their campaigns plateau. In this conversation, Rachel Bascom and Paxton Gray break down what it really means to be audience-first, why the “big research lift” mindset is holding you back, and how to turn existing knowledge into exponential results over time. If you’ve ever felt stuck in the “...

CMOs are more optimistic about AI than ever—yet many organizations are still stuck at the starting line. In this episode, Aby Varma, founder of Spark Novus, joins us to share how marketing leaders can move from AI curiosity to meaningful adoption. Drawing on real-world examples from Fortune 500 companies, Aby reveals why asking “Can AI do this?” is the wrong place to start, how to build a strategy...

In this conversation, Pax and Nick Cawthon explore the evolution of technology, particularly focusing on the impact of AI on workplaces and team dynamics. They discuss the importance of adapting to new technologies, the challenges of AI adoption, and the need for collaboration and skill augmentation within teams. Nick emphasizes the significance of understanding the hype cycle surrounding new tech...

In this conversation, Patrick Kajirian shares his extensive experience in enterprise SEO, particularly in large organizations like Walmart and Disney. He discusses the unique challenges and strategies involved in managing SEO at scale, including the importance of product management, indexation, and internal linking. The conversation also explores the impact of AI and new agentic browsers on the fu...

Everyone wants to be “data-driven.” But what does that actually look like when you’re a marketer without a data warehouse, a team of analysts, or endless resources? In this episode, we talk with Gallant Chen, a marketing strategist who helps companies make better decisions with imperfect data. From messy attribution models to marketing CRMs that don’t talk to your ad platforms, we get honest about...

If your messaging isn’t clicking, your conversions won’t either. In this episode, we’re joined by Chris Silvestri—conversion copywriter, SaaS strategist, and founder of Conversion Alchemy—to talk about how AI is changing the way top teams do message-market fit. With a background in both engineering and UX, Chris has helped companies like Moz Crimes turn deep customer insight into high-performing S...

Clicks aren’t enough. Today’s marketing funnels need to account for real user behavior, changing customer journeys, and how people find and interact with your brand in AI search engines. In this episode, Adam Gunn, VP of Marketing at FullStory, joins 97th Floor CEO Paxton Gray to break down what a modern, optimized funnel really looks like. You’ll hear how to identify friction points, rethink old...