The Architecture Behind the Handshake: What 15 Years in Partner Marketing Taught Me
There’s a version of this article where I could walk you through the frameworks, the funnel metrics, the attribution models. I could give you the playbook. But the truth is, the most important things I’ve learned about partner marketing didn’t come from a deck. They came from the moments where the deck stopped mattering. That’s…
Read MoreDuckDuckGo made sunglasses that do nothing. They sold out in a week.
There is a pair of sunglasses you can no longer buy. They cost $35, had no camera, no microphone, no AI, no battery, and no electronics of any kind, and their marketing described them as “the first smart glasses guaranteed to never record nude videos of you.” They sold out in under a week. The product is…
Read MoreThe people who killed the form are coming for the rest of your funnel.
In 2017, a company called Drift told B2B marketers to do something uncomfortable: kill the lead form, stop gating content, stop making buyers wait, and let them talk to you in real time or lose them. Drift hit a billion-dollar valuation by 2021, put conversational marketing on 150,000 websites, and sold to Vista Equity Partners for $1.2…
Read MoreLinkedIn is grading your posts now.
LinkedIn has added a reporting option that lets users flag a post as AI slop, available from the three-dot menu on any post in the feed. Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan announced it on Thursday, July 30, alongside a set of upgraded classifiers built to identify machine-written and low-quality content. Flagged material will appear less often…
Read MoreThe ad platforms rewired themselves this month.
Three platform changes deserve a spot on every B2B marketer’s radar right now. One rewrites where ads can live, one rewrites how bids behave, and one quietly hands B2B brands a distribution unlock. ChatGPT ads: the last resort now has a roadmap. Two years ago, Sam Altman told a Harvard audience that combining ads with…
Read MoreHubSpot just bought the answer to B2B’s oldest blind spot
HubSpot has acquired Warmly, the AI platform best known for identifying anonymous website visitors at the individual level and engaging them automatically. The deal was announced this week, and financial terms were not disclosed. Warmly’s technology will be embedded directly into HubSpot’s CRM. To understand why this matters, start with the gap it closes. HubSpot’s…
Read MoreIs there an ideal AI-to-human ratio for content or are marketers debating the wrong variable entirely?
AI adoption among content marketers has grown from 65% to 95% in just two years, according to Orbit Media data, which means almost everyone is using AI in their content workflow now. The question the B2B marketing community is still working out is how much AI to use and what the right balance looks like in practice. A recent Reddit thread posed…
Read MoreNew research confirms AI disclosure labels have no negative impact on creative performance
As AI-generated advertising becomes standard practice, a new regulatory reality is taking shape alongside it. New York’s AI Transparency in Advertising law took effect in June 2026. The EU AI Act introduces binding disclosure obligations in August. Marketers who are already utilizing AI for content have begun thinking about whether they should be disclosing when and how they’re using AI, and whether doing…
Read MoreThe marketing philosophy behind McDonald’s new strategic plan has a B2B lesson inside it
McDonald’s just unveiled a new strategic plan called McDonald’s NEXT, built around four pillars: menu innovation, restaurant reimagination, hospitality, and marketing that makes customers feel part of the brand rather than just targeted by it. While most of the plan covers operational fundamentals, the marketing philosophy behind it is worth pulling out separately because McDonald’s has…
Read MoreNew Gartner data show that marketers are spending more on acquisition and less on loyalty than ever before
Marketing budgets are increasingly tilting toward customer acquisition and away from retention and AI optimization is accelerating the trend. New data from Gartner’s annual CMO Spend Survey show that nearly two-thirds of media spend in 2026 is being directed toward conversion and awareness, a 10% jump from 2024. Meanwhile, loyalty and retention now accounts for less than 15% of overall media spend, a…
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