Today, we’re bringing you the latest in AI-powered marketing and business strategies. Here’s what’s inside:
🚨 AI Top Story: AI influencers are breaking into an $11B market, but questions of cost, trust, and authenticity are keeping humans in the game.
🔧 AI Tool Of The Week: See how Conductor AI helps marketers track visibility in generative search and uncover where brands really show up in AI-driven answers.
🌟 Creator Spotlight: Jean-Baptiste Isnard shares a simple 3-part framework to translate AI projects into clear ROI that wins over your CFO.
💬 AI Use Case Of The Week: Discover how a small LA tamale shop used ChatGPT and Pika Labs to create a viral video with 22M views - proving AI can deliver big results on a tiny budget.
🎥 YouTube Resource Of The Week: This YouTube creator shares 13 strategies to automate up to 80% of your marketing with AI.
Human vs. Synthetic: The Battle for Influence
$11B Industry Splits Between Real and AI Influencers
It was bound to happen. Influencers have been curating “perfect” lives for years, but now there are influencers who don’t exist at all. AI-generated personalities are moving into an $11 billion industry, offering brands cheaper, more controllable alternatives to their human counterparts.
The appeal is obvious. Virtual creators can be designed from the ground up to fit a brand’s aesthetic, tone, and values. They don’t push back on creative direction, and every post can be scripted to the last detail. Some brands are even co-developing avatars with studios, securing complete ownership over how these digital personalities look, sound, and interact.
That puts pressure on human influencers, whose growth is already slowing. U.S. influencer revenue is projected to rise just 15% this year, down from 24% last year. At the same time, audiences are showing signs of fatigue. A McKinsey survey found that nearly two-thirds of fashion consumers feel oversaturated with sponsored posts. If followers can’t tell the difference between AI and human, or worse, stop caring altogether, it could accelerate the shift away from human creators.
But people still have an edge. Building high-quality avatars isn’t quick or cheap, often taking months of development before they can be used in campaigns. And total polish can backfire. Synthetic personas may look flawless, but they risk feeling sterile. More than half of Gen Z already say they dislike engaging with AI-generated influencers. If consumers discover a personality they assumed was human is actually artificial, trust can erode quickly.
AI may reshape the economics of influencer marketing, but it doesn’t erase the human advantage. In a space built on connection, authenticity still carries weight — and that remains harder to fake than any algorithm can currently manage.
💳 WPP Media notches ‘landmark’ win with Mastercard as AI fuels interest - Mastercard shifts its $180M media account to WPP, betting on the group’s new AI-powered tools.
🌐 Google expands AI Mode in Search globally, introduces new agentic and personalized features- blog.google - AI Mode can now book restaurants, events, and tailor results to your preferences.
📓 Google NotebookLM to add Deep Research feature, enabling web and Google Drive source integration - NotebookLM adds “Deep Research,” pulling insights from the web and Google Drive.
🧩 Marketers are drowning in tools and content, and only orchestration can pull them out - Disconnected tools and AI noise are draining budgets — orchestration offers cohesion.
🤖 This one phrase from ChatGPT drove me nuts – so I made it stop - A quick prompt tweak shows how to cut ChatGPT’s most annoying habit.
🎯 The Artificially Intelligent Enterprise - AI Skills Are The New Compound Interest
💡 AI CIO - Compression of Software & Analysts
☕ AI Tangle - Meta's Next AI Reshuffle, Character.AI's Money Troubles & Google's "Gemini For Government"
📻 AI Confidential Podcast - Agents Are the New API Client with Marco Palladino
Get AI-Ready Visibility With Conductor AI
Generative search is changing the rules of discoverability, and Conductor AI is one of the first platforms built to help marketers adapt. It’s an AI-powered content intelligence tool designed to track how brands appear in traditional search and in AI-driven answers across engines like Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Instead of focusing solely on keyword rankings, Conductor AI surfaces when and where your content is being cited in AI-generated responses. It highlights competitor visibility, reveals content gaps, and scores your assets for “AI readiness,” flagging missing schema, FAQs, or location signals that could improve your chances of inclusion. The platform also provides topical authority insights so teams can prioritize content that has a higher likelihood of surfacing in both search and generative engines.
That makes it especially valuable for marketers trying to bridge the gap between SEO and what’s fast becoming GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). In a landscape where customers might never even reach a traditional search results page, Conductor AI gives you the visibility you need to understand and influence how your brand shows up.
Why It’s Gaining Traction
Marketers are paying attention because Conductor AI isn’t just retrofitting features into a legacy SEO platform. It was purpose-built for the AI era, with tools that help brands move beyond impressions and clicks into understanding visibility within AI-driven discovery. Early adopters point to its ability to connect search optimization with generative search performance, turning an emerging challenge into a measurable opportunity.
Key AI Features
Generative Search Visibility: Tracks if and where your content appears in AI-generated answers.
Content Gap Analysis: Identifies missing topics or assets competitors are ranking for in AI and search.
AI Readiness Scoring: Flags schema, FAQs, and signals that improve AI inclusion.
Topical Authority Mapping: Shows where your brand has credibility—and where you need to build it.
Unified Dashboard: Merges traditional SEO metrics with generative search insights.
JEAN-BAPTISTE ISNARD - This post shows you how to turn AI from a “nice-to-have” into a CFO-approved investment with a simple 3-part ROI framework.
How a Tamale Shop Went Viral with a Little ChatGPT and Pika Labs
The Original Tamale Company in Los Angeles didn’t have a big ad budget, a creative agency, or even a marketing team. What they did have was curiosity about AI. In just 10 minutes, they combined ChatGPT (to write the script and narration) with Pika Labs (to generate the visuals) to produce a quirky 46-second video.
The spot featured a skydiver falling from a plane, with a narrator humorously warning him not to land in water—and instead suggesting he land at “The Original Tamale Company.” Simple, scrappy, and a little absurd.
The payoff? 22 million views, 1.2 million likes, and a flood of new customers. Celebrities like Emmanuel Acho and Peter Gadiot amplified the video, pushing a small family business into viral territory usually reserved for major brands with big agencies behind them.
What’s most valuable here isn’t just the views—it’s the speed and accessibility. A family restaurant with no marketing team created a national moment using free and low-cost AI tools. That’s a glimpse of how AI levels the playing field: giving small businesses access to creative storytelling, rapid experimentation, and viral reach without the traditional barriers of time or money.
Tap here to watch the video
How I Use AI to Automate 80% of My Marketing | 13 Strategies for Success
The em-dash: 1600 - 2025 💀
