If there’s one thing keeping Zola’s new CMO up at night, it’s search — or rather the messy reinvention of it.
Barely two weeks into the role, Briana Severson is already navigating a marketing minefield, where the old playbook is fading fast and the new one is still being written.
“Were someone to ask me to sum up what’s on my mind as a marketer these days, it would be search,” said Severson.
AI is uprooting the original search bargain — slowly but surely shifting it away from the familiar model where search engines crawled publisher content, served up snippets and rewarded publishers with traffic they could monetize. Now, the exchange is starting to fray. AI-powered search still feeds on publisher content but it keeps users on its ecosystem, cutting off the referral traffic that once made the whole thing worthwhile.
Naturally, that has big implications for a brand like Zola. Wedding planning almost always starts with search — for venues, for sites, for budgets. It’s a foundation moment, and it’s a long been where Zola shines. The brand showed up early in the journey — whether through organic results or paid placements — and had a good shot at turning those queries into customers.
But that visibility, and the predictability it brought, is fading — especially among Gen Z couples now entering the wedding planning stage. As Severson explained: “Gen Z is searching in a very different way compared to how millennials search. A lot of that arguably stems from an increased reliance on human perspectives and an increased distrust of brands being brands.”
Rather than overhaul Zola’s search strategy in response, Severson is investing in creators. Younger couples aren’t sifting through Google searches; they’re scrolling TikToks, watching Instagram testimonials and curating Pinterest boards.
“We are very invested in showing up on those platforms where that new search is happening, and we’re working with influencers of all sizes in particular to tell the story of their wedding in those places,” said Severson.
Case in point: the recent wedding of creator Jaz Smith and her fiancé Kevin Callari. Over the course of the day, Smith posted more than 20 TikTok videos, flooding feeds with moments from the celebration. Zola was woven into that story as the partner for the couple’s wedding paper.
More partnerships like this are already in the pipeline, and they’ll form the foundation of what Severson called Zola’s “creative creator program”. Details are still light, as she’s only just settling into the role but the goal is clear: build a trusted roster of creators who can speak to the brand’s role in the lead-up to one of life’s biggest moments.
Some creators will have massive followings, others will be more niche. What matters is that Zola shows up throughout the full wedding journey, from planning and paper to parties and honeymoons.
“Finding more of those types of partnerships, both organically and in an influencer partnership context, is really central to our strategy,” said Severson.
Marketers have been mulling this shift for a while — that search doesn’t start with a query box anymore. It just took AI to make the move. Suddenly, anyone could produce articles, images and videos, flooding the web with content. While that unlocked scale, it also triggered a crisis of trust. People started tuning out over-optimized, lifeless content. In this new era of search, creators have emerged as the signal in the noise, offering one thing algorithms can’t fake: authenticity.
“For all these reasons, it’s becoming increasingly important to have a good product that people talk about and are loyal to,” said Severson. “That means marketing will become a lot less reliant on the brands themselves doing the heavy lifting from a marketing perspective.”
It’s why creators are permeating into more facets of marketing, from affiliate to outdoor advertising, the upfront negotiations to programmatic.
“It’s no surprise that the “socialverse” is spilling beyond social. The lines between online and offline are blurred,” said Steph Ross, vp of social and influencer at Born Social. “Formerly ‘social-only’ creators are now becoming major players across the advertising landscape. If we’re watching TV while scrolling our phones, seeing those same creators on both screens just makes sense; it brings cultural moments full circle and meets audiences where they are.”
In an increasingly digital creative world full of influencer endorsements and AI ads, it’s refreshing to see a campaign that embraces traditional art mediums. Among my favourite recent examples is Corona’s ‘Fisherman Storytellers’ campaign, featuring a stunning handcrafted book that tells immersive tales of the sea.
While Corona is known for creating some of the best billboard ads, this tactile work demonstrates how thoughtful campaigns can carry just as much resonance as a typical OOH campaign. Featuring intricate artwork, illustrations and mixed media creativity, this beautiful book embraces the spirit of storytelling, demonstrating its powerful place in advertising.
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(Image credit: Corona/Black Madre)
(Image credit: Corona/Black Madre)
(Image credit: Future)
Google has shared new details about how it designed and built AI Mode.
In a blog post, the company reveals the user research, design challenges, and testing that shaped its advanced AI search experience.
These insights may help you understand how Google creates AI-powered search tools. The details show Google’s shift from traditional keyword searches to natural language conversations.
Google built AI Mode in response to the ways people were using AI Overviews.
Google’s research showed a disconnect between what searchers wanted and what was available.
Claudia Smith, UX Research Director at Google, explains:
“People saw the value in AI Overviews, but they didn’t know when they’d appear. They wanted them to be more predictable.”
The research also found people started asking longer questions. Traditional search wasn’t built to handle these types of queries well.
This shift in search behavior led to a question that drove AI Mode’s creation, explains Product Management Director Soufi Esmaeilzadeh:
“How do you reimagine a Search gen AI experience? What would that look like?”
Google’s UX research team identified the most important use cases as: exploratory advice, how-to guides, and local shopping assistance.
This insight helped the team understand what people wanted from AI-powered search.
Esmaeilzadeh explained the difference:
“Instead of relying on keywords, you can now pose complex questions in plain language, mirroring how you’d naturally express yourself.”
According to Esmaeilzadeh, early feedback suggests that the team’s approach was successful:
“They appreciate us not just finding information, but actively helping them organize and understand it in a highly consumable way, with help from our most intelligent AI models.”
While Google presents an optimistic development story, industry experts are raising valid concerns.
John Shehata, founder of NewzDash, reports that sites are already “losing anywhere from 25 to 32% of all their traffic because of the new AI Overviews.” For news publishers, health queries show 26% AI Overview penetration.
Mordy Oberstein, founder of Unify Brand Marketing, analyzed Google’s I/O demonstration and found the examples weren’t as complex as presented. He shows how Google combined readily available information rather than showcasing advanced AI reasoning.
Google’s claims about improved user engagement have not been verified. During a recent press session, Google executives claimed AI search delivers “more qualified clicks” but admitted they have “no data to share” on these quality improvements.
Further, Google’s reporting systems don’t differentiate between clicks from traditional search, AI overviews, and AI mode. This makes independent verification impossible.
Shehata believes that the fundamental relationship between search and publishers is changing:
“The original model was Google: ‘Hey, we will show one or two lines from your article, and then we will give you back the traffic. You can monetize it over there.’ This agreement is broken now.”
For SEO professionals and content marketers, Google’s insights reveal important changes ahead.
The shift from keyword targeting to conversational queries means content strategies need to focus on directly answering user questions rather than optimizing for specific terms.
The focus on exploratory advice, how-to content, and local help shows these content types may become more important in AI Mode results.
Shehata recommends that publishers focus on content with “deep analysis of a situation or an event” rather than commodity news that’s “available on hundreds and thousands of sites.”
He also notes a shift in success metrics: “Visibility, not traffic, is the new metric” because “in the new world, we will get less traffic.”
Esmaeilzadeh said significant work continues:
“We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, but we know there’s still a lot of work to do, and this user-centric approach will help us get there.”
Google confirmed that more AI Mode features shown at I/O 2025 will roll out in the coming weeks and months. This suggests the interface will keep evolving based on user feedback and usage patterns.
You know you can buy groceries and soap at Walmart, but what about saunas, dentures, and dancing shoes?
That’s the premise of Walmart’s new ad starring actor Walton Goggins. The ad touts how Walmart sells half a billion products, including some quirky ones used by Goggins himself. There are the shoes that Goggins uses for clogging, a real-life skill that he showed off while hosting Saturday Night Live in May. He also needed bear spray while on a hike, and a set of new teeth just because.
“Who knew?”—set to The Who’s hit “Who Are You” repeats throughout the spot.
The ad is part of a bigger initiative that started in January with a brand refresh, including a new logo. The newest iteration of the work is called “Walmart. Who knew?” to inform people that there are tons of products the retail giant sells that they might not have been aware of.
“It’s for everyone who’s been shopping with us for years—and for those who think they know what we’re all about,” Walmart wrote in a blog post.
Walmart wanted to work with Goggins because his unexpected charm would help bring home the retailer’s message, a company spokesperson said.
For a separate Spanish-language ad, Walmart tapped actress Stephanie Beatriz at a gender reveal party gone wrong.
Walmart has steadily expanded the products it sells by investing in its third-party marketplace that allows merchants to sell products directly on Walmart’s website and app—similar to Amazon’s program.
Walmart has also invested in its loyalty program, called Walmart+, and added services like one-hour delivery for customers. The retailer has also beefed up its technology investments by adding technology like generative AI and augmented reality to its stores and website.
Joana is a Portuguese graphic designer and art director with a soft spot for social goodness. She is currently studying for an MA in Graphic Design and Editorial Projects at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto.
I managed to scrape right past the dream-crushing, soul-sucking creative industry I always read about – which is a privilege, but also a fate more accessible than ever. All we need to do is scroll far enough to reach the people we want to surround ourselves with, so why wouldn’t we?
For this corner of the community (or internet, for the sake of my argument), identity and connection hold as much value as output. Take this: sometimes I’m scrolling and find myself thinking “I could never come up with something like that!”. And I’m right! I couldn’t. Our work is rooted in our lived experiences; not as a trend any more, but as the norm. I didn’t come up with it because it doesn’t belong to me, and that’s a liberating thought for an over-achiever.
Scrolling, however, becomes overwhelming often. What we share is inherently creative and bleeds into online personas, with designers becoming niche online content creators and the rest of us left to wonder when our portfolios stopped being enough. It’s a conundrum, really – when did comparison become competition? Is my sense of joyfulness from a second ago performative? And if not, why am I feeling so behind?
Choosing to believe in a progressive creative industry for everyone is not sustainable if I’m naive (I got rent to pay!) – so, for now, I’ll allow myself these doubts and apply that thinking to how I navigate it: with softness, but strategically. Online and offline. The rest will follow. And I’ll stop the doomscrolling.
WordPress security company Patchstack announced a new security tier called managed Vulnerability Disclosure Program platform (mVDP), which offers both human and advanced AI plugin reviews to help plugin developers keep their software resistant to vulnerabilities and provide greater trustworthiness.
One of the biggest problems with WordPress is vulnerabilities from third-party plugins. An enormous amount of plugins are discovered with vulnerabilities every day and it doesn’t matter if the developer is a one-person shop or a large multinational organization, vulnerabilities happen and when they do user trust goes down, especially if it happens on an ongoing basis.
PatchStack offers a way for software developers to build trust with their users with two tiers of protection, a free and a paid tier that help plugin developers focus on creating high quality plugins that are free from vulnerabilities.
With more and more software being generated by AI, we’re seeing a significant increase in new vulnerabilities and an equal increase in AI-generated security reports, which makes managing the security of plugins more important than ever.
Patchstack offers a standard managed VDP and a new Security Suite that costs $70/month.
According to the announcement, the new paid tier comes with the following benefits:
“$40 worth of AI tokens for code security reviews per month
Team management feature with 5 seats included
Discussion board for direct communication with the reporting researchers
AI code review and human research
The new Security Suite tier combines the best of both worlds. Your plugins will receive boosted visibility (100% AXP bonus) in the Patchstack Alliance ethical hackers community, which encourages security researchers to report significantly more bugs and help plugins fix more vulnerabilities faster.
Additionally, our AI code review tool can scan through your entire codebase to find WordPress-specific security issues and highlight potential improvements. We are currently launching this in beta, but we’ll have much many releases to share in the coming months.”
Security Suite customers will receive security recommendations from their internal security experts, helping developers be proactive about building safe to use WordPress plugins.
Read more at Patchstack:
NEW: Patchstack AI code review tool and Security Suite for plugin vendors
Featured Image by Shutterstock/STILLFX
Over the course of my career, I’ve worked with hundreds of teams using CRMs, and I’d sum up
the experience like this: technology moves fast. Humans? Not so much.
We’re busy, messy, skeptical creatures of habit. Marry that with today’s constant change, and
you’ve got a perfect storm for adoption issues, where tools are purchased with good intentions
but struggle to reach full potential.
Thankfully, there are some simple ways to blend platform features with a behavioral nudges to
improve adoption, understanding, and ultimately, performance.
In the video above, I walk through five simple, practical ways you can boost your
team’s CRM adoption (specifically within HubSpot) but these ideas can be adapted for almost
any modern CRM platform.
Below is a quick breakdown of each tip to help you drive better outcomes from your investment.
Instead of directing users to training portals or cluttered shared drives, bring the resources into
the platform itself (less context switching).
Using dashboards, you can create an internal learning center with embedded videos,
documentation and even slide decks from previous training sessions or summits. This keeps
onboarding content accessible and eliminates the friction of toggling between tabs or tools.
Plus, it builds the habit of logging into HubSpot regularly.
Dig deeper: Is your CRM lying to you? The hidden costs of dirty B2B data
Misunderstandings around lifecycle stages, deal pipelines and lead statuses are one of the
most common sources of friction in CRM usage.
That’s why we recommend building a “Definitions and Stages” dashboard. Use it to visualize
how your company defines lead stages, where prospects sit in the funnel and which fields or
properties matter most. Embed buyer journey diagrams, helpful explainer videos or short blurbs
right into the dashboard.
Think of this like your internal playbook — one that removes ambiguity and ensures everyone’s
speaking the same language.
One of the fastest ways to frustrate your team? Ask them to fill in 37 fields that may or may not
apply to their deal.
Instead, show the right information at the right time by using conditional properties. If a user
selects “Referral” as a lead source, surface only the fields that apply to that choice. This creates
a dynamic, context-aware experience that removes clutter and makes data entry feel more
purposeful.
You can do this on any object in HubSpot — deals, contacts, companies — and even prefill
default values to maintain consistency.
Dig deeper: How to apply your lead scoring strategy in HubSpot and Monday.com
Data overwhelm is real. When every contact record or deal view includes every possible
property, your users are more likely to ignore important fields than engage with them.
To solve this, configure record layouts and property cards based on what’s most relevant to
your users based on role or group. For example, a sales rep might only need to see fields
related to deal status, while a customer success manager might need access to renewal and
onboarding details.
HubSpot allows for conditional visibility within record views. You can even empower users to
personalize their own layouts without affecting the rest of the org, giving them a sense of
ownership without chaos.
We all know clean data matters — but adoption improves when users can see the cost of
inaction.
Build a simple cleanup dashboard with reports like:
Use this dashboard in team meetings or 1:1s to spark conversation and action. The goal isn’t to shame, but to empower: show each team member what’s within their control and let them take ownership of improving the data.
This also builds the connection between daily usage and bigger-picture results. Clean records = clearer forecasts, better reporting and fewer surprises.
Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.
The world of branding is constantly developing, and no agency knows that quite like JKR. Founded in 1990, Jones Knowles Ritchie has been at the epicentre of branding excellence for decades, shaping leading design as we know it, but as consumer tastes evolve and technology rapidly advances, today’s creative sphere is more variable than ever.
Ahead of this year’s Brand Impact Awards, I sat down with JKR’s executive creative directors, Stuart Radford and Ricardo Bezerra, to explore the evolution of branding. Together, we discussed how social media has influenced the industry, how brands need to embrace evolution, and what it takes to create iconic brands in 2025.
(Image credit: JKR)
Stuart: When Blur and Oasis were battling for Britpop supremacy, branding was a very different beast. It was all about visual identity: logos, straplines, and strict brand guidelines ruled. The goal? Recognition and recall. The best brands were clever, playing with negative space and visual puns to deliver that elusive “smile in the mind.” Smart? Absolutely. Emotional? Not really.
Fast forward to today, and branding is an entirely different game. It’s no longer just about what you see – it’s about what you feel. The focus has shifted to emotional consistency across every touchpoint, both physical and digital. We now live in a world of expressive identities, emotive tone of voice, and immersive brand experiences. Brands aren’t static logos anymore; they’re living, breathing stories. Our ideas must carry further and meet more complex emotional needs rather than just raising a one-off smile.”
Where brands once controlled their narrative, now the audience decides whether or not to believe it
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Stuart: Let’s skip the ongoing AI debate for now. Instead, let’s focus on how technology is reshaping branding and design.
We’re in a new era. Technology has turned the design world into a playground of possibility. Many of the old constraints – format, consistency, and scale – have fallen away. Generative tools now allow us to build identities that aren’t fixed but adaptive, with multiple expressions. In-house teams aren’t just implementing a brand anymore, they’re actively creating and interpreting it.
Variable fonts make typography more expressive. Real-time data visualisation turns raw numbers into grounded, evocative stories. Algorithms enable tailored, responsive experiences. And AI? It opens up endless possibilities, many of which we’re only beginning to grasp.
What makes this moment especially exciting is the timing. Much of this technology is still relatively new, which means the opportunity to do something original and distinctive is very real. But there’s a catch: it only works if the tech is used with purpose.
The bottom line? Technology, when used with intent, can elevate a brand from forgettable to unforgettable. But it must always serve the story – never distract from it.
Riacardo: A standout brand is one that has the ability to be itself, or as we say at JKR, to be distinctive, everywhere and at all times.
We live in a highly competitive market where businesses have to move fast to keep up with people’s evolving needs. In that context, it’s easy for brand managers to lose sight of what makes their brand truly unique. A brand shapes the way a business connects with people – through its product or service, its relationships, its culture, and its symbols.
So, what makes a brand stand out today is its ability to be consistent across everything you can see and feel. Every business decision, whether it’s tactical or strategic, serves as an opportunity to move the brand forward, always considering how people interact with it over time and across touchpoints. To make this happen, branding and design must work hand in hand.
(Image credit: Future)
One of search marketing’s SEO Rockstars recently shared his thoughts on SEO for generative AI, calling attention to facts about Google’s search results, explaining how the new AI search really works, and calling out fear-based marketing that overstates disruption in order to sell so-called “GEO” services.
Greg Boser is a search marketing pioneer with a deep level of experience that few in the industry can match or even begin to imagine.
His post was in response to a tweet by someone else that in his opinion overstated that SEO is losing dominance. Greg began his SEO rant by pointing out how some search marketer’s conception of SEO is outdated but they’re so new to SEO that they don’t realize it.
For example, the practice of buying links is one of the oldest tactics in SEO, so old that newcomers to SEO gave it a new name, PBN (private blog network), as if giving link buying a new name changes it somehow. And by the way, I’ve never seen a PBN that was private. The moment you put anything out on the web Google knows about it. If an automated spambot can find it in literally five minutes, Google probably already knows about it, too.
Greg wrote:
“If anyone out there wants to write their own “Everything you think you know is wrong. GEO is the way” article, just follow these simple steps:
1. Frame “SEO” as everything that was a thing between 2000 – 2006. Make sure to mention buying backlinks and stuffing keywords. And try and convince people the only KPI was rankings.”
The second part of his post calls attention to the fact that Google has not been a ten organic links search engine for a long time. Google providing answers isn’t new.
He posted:
“2. Frame the current state of things as if it all happened in the last 2 weeks. Do not under any circumstances mention any of the following things from the past 15 years:
2009 – Rich Snippets
2011 – Knowledge Graph (things not strings)
2013 – Hummingbird (Semantic understanding of conversational queries)
2014 – Featured Snippets – (direct answers at position “Zero”)
2015 – PPA Boxes (related questions anticipating follow-up questions)
2015 – RankBrain (machine learning to interpret ambiguous queries)
2019 – BERT (NLP to better understand context)
2021 – MUM (BERT on Steroids)
2023 – SGE (The birth of AIO)”
The next part is a reaction to the naive marketing schtick that tries to stir up fear about AI search in order to present themselves as the answer.
He wrote:
“3. Overstate the complexity to create a sense of fear and anxiety and then close with “Your only hope is to hire a GEO expert”
I think it’s reasonable to say that AI Search is complex because Google’s AI Mode and to a lesser extent AI Overviews, is showing links to a wider range of search intents than regular searches used to show. Even Google’s Rich Snippets were aligned to the search intent of the original search query.
That’s no longer the case with AIO and AI Mode search results. That’s the whole point about Query Fan-out (read about a patent that describes what Query Fan-out might be), that the original query is broken out into follow-up questions.
Greg Boser has a point though in a follow-up post where he said that the query fan-out technique is pretty similar to People Also Ask (PAA), Google’s just sticking it into the AI Mode results.
He wrote in a follow-up post about Query fan-out:
“Yeah the query fan thing is the rage of the day. It’s like PAA is getting memory holed.”
I agree with Greg to a certain extent that AI Mode is not a threat to SEO. The same principles about promoting your site, technical SEO and so on still apply. The big difference is that AI Mode is not directly answering the query but providing answers to the entire information journey. You can dismiss it as just PAA above the fold but that’s still a big deal because it complicates what you’re going to try to rank for.
Michael Bonfils, another old timer SEO recently observed that AI search is eliminating the beginning and middle part of the sales funnel, observing about AI search:
“This is, you know, we have a funnel, we all know which is the awareness consideration phase and the whole center and then finally the purchase stage. The consideration stage is the critical side of our funnel. We’re not getting the data. How are we going to get the data?”
So yeah, AI Search is different than anything we’ve seen before but, as Greg points out, it’s still SEO and adapting to change is has always been a part of it.
Read Greg Boser’s post on X:
If anyone out there wants to write their own “Everything you think you know is wrong. GEO is the way” article, just follow these simple steps:
1. Frame “SEO” as everything that was a thing between 2000 – 2006. Make sure to mention buying backlinks and stuffing keywords. And try… https://t.co/Eqy0spIj8B
— Greg Boser (@GregBoser) May 29, 2025
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Thomas Christoph
Today’s marketers spend sleepless nights puzzling over how much of their budget is lost along the mazelike programmatic supply chain, if they can trust CTV middlemen, or whether supposedly epoch-defining AI tools are in fact Mechanical Turks.
The disinfectant of sunlight, in theory, provides a means of resolving those concerns. But as more agencies put proprietary software tools and data platforms (like Havas Media Group’s Converged or WPP Media’s Open Intelligence) at the center of their appeal to new clients, agency execs are toying with the shades.
How much credibility can they gain from proximity to tech kingpins, when most marketing services groups work with the same big firms? How transparent should they be around vendor partnerships, their own commercial deals, and how they develop the tools giving them an edge? How much information is too much for marketers burdened with their own workload?
Let’s talk it out.
U.S. media agency Horizon is betting that clients want to know how the sausage gets made. It’s staging an open request for information (RFI) process as it considers the tech vendors required to develop the next phase of Blu, the agency’s proprietary data platform software.
Rather than hold its cards close while it plans and develops the platform, it’s gone public with the desire to add new vendors to the tech stack behind Blu.
Partially, that’s in the hope it’ll attract the best tech companies available, according to John Koenigsberg, the agency’s evp and head of product partnerships (he is also, in the spirit of transparency, the son of agency CEO Bill Koenigsberg). “The more open we are, the greater the likelihood that we’re gonna unearth matches or opportunities,” he said.
Koenigsberg said the company currently works with up to 15 vendors on the platform (the figure can vary depending on clients’ own vendor arrangements), including TransUnion and Snowflake. It’s expecting to double that number by the end of the RFI process, and has already heard from 175 companies.
There’s a secondary element, though — the hope that by building in the open, Horizon can attract clients that want a cutting-edge service. It’s not alone in that belief.
“Being open and upfront builds trust and it also gives clients a unique perspective that they can use [on] their own journey,” said Sander Stromph, global svp AI & change management at Monks.
The stance makes sense given the continued, constant presence of procurement teams — which are likely to assess an agency’s capabilities in more black-and-white terms than a CMO might — in agency reviews.
When WPP Media launched its new Open Intelligence platform this week, the company’s executives pointed to the pedigree of the tech and data partners involved in building it, from Google and Snap to Experian.
On Thursday (June 5), it released an announcement highlighting the publisher and ad tech partners involved with the platform, including Disney, PubMatic and The Trade Desk. Like Horizon, WPP Media designed its platform to operate with clients’ existing partners as well as its own.
“We aren’t incentivized to force you to consume a data asset and to buy through a specific platform in a black box, non-transparent, potentially poor quality way,” said InfoSum CEO Lauren Wetzel, one of the executives fronting Open Intelligence, in an interview with Digiday.
At the end of the day, clients come to agencies for help growing their sales. For many clients, how that growth happens is less important than the fact that it happens at all.
Transparency itself is a subjective term in an industry where there’s little common ground on measurement or meaningful KPIs. And in a global economy wracked with geopolitical uncertainty and when decision-making is being deliberately delayed, CMOs don’t have the time to scrutinize every minute detail. A little packaging or editorial judgement on the part of the agency isn’t unwelcome.
One area that has implications is agency pricing. Looking for a way to account for the time saved by the use of AI tools, Monks previously attempted to shift away from charging for its services based on hourly fees, providing clients with breakdowns of its own AI, data and labor costs (the company didn’t provide a specific cost example).
Based on client feedback, that approach had proven “too complex,” co-founder and chief AI officer Wesley ter Haar said, given the time it takes to calculate. “They’re really just buying the end products, and I don’t think they’re necessarily looking for that level of granularity,” he added.
Stromph also noted that the RFI process used by some clients only allowed for hourly-based pricing models, meaning Monks would have to calculate its price based on the old way to compete for new business.
Monks is now in the midst of reviewing that model and moving toward an output-based means of charging for its work.
Its experience holds lessons for marketers and agencies — that full transparency can lead to information overload.
Horizon’s “north star”, according to Koenigsberg is “how these technologies can help drive growth for our clients.” Given that, perhaps it’s better that agencies remove some of the details that can get under marketers’ feet.
