Key Takeaways
- The AI hype has cooled, and the room at Digital Summit was more uncertain than confident.
- Data is no longer a differentiator. Access is harder and everyone has a dashboard.
- Brands with human faces and specific points of view are the ones gaining ground.
- The test that stuck: don't post anything that could be posted by someone else.
- Newsletters, email, and agency-owned MCPs came up repeatedly as areas to watch.
I just got back from Digital Summit in Minneapolis; and I need to talk about what I heard, because it wasn't what I expected.
Everyone's Selling Certainty In A Room Full Of People Who Don't Have Any
I heard "the AI hype has died." I heard people say they're exhausted trying to figure things out. I heard that agencies are shrinking, and that more of them are leaning on partner support to stay lean without losing capability. Businesses don’t have a consistent idea of where to spend money right now. Paid ads Ads are dying. Social media is harder than ever. Influencer is great. SEO is impossible. Take your pick - someone in the room will tell you your channel is broken.
And here's the thing: there was a lot of finger pointing to get people to invest in what they do. Everyone's selling certainty in a room full of people who don't have any.
The Line I Can't Stop Thinking About
The conversations that really stuck with me were the ones about being human. Brands that have human faces and personalities - that aren't doing generic ads and generic social - are where there's winning happening right now. Someone said something I can't stop thinking about: "don't post anything that could be posted by someone else." That's it. That's the whole test.
Which was an interesting thing to hear in a keynote, because we published a version of it in 2025. Content homogenization is what happens when templates, SEO checklists, and AI drafts flatten every brand into the same voice. The idea we landed on then was nearly identical: if your content could be mistaken for a competitor's, something is wrong. Hearing a room of marketers land in the same place as us was a good sign that we're already pointed in the right direction.
Data Is No Longer A Differentiator
Big takeaway, and I mean the biggest one: data is no longer a differentiator, and it's not easy to get anymore. The people winning right now aren't the ones with the best dashboard. They're the ones building stories and natural content and ads that feel like a person made them. Our industry has leaned into data and performance for years like it was the whole answer. More and more, that's starting to feel antiquated.
We saw this with Sierra Nevada. Their long-form pillar content was slipping, and the fix wasn't better keyword data, because everyone has that. We pulled more than 100 real questions from Reddit, People Also Ask, and ChatGPT, then rebuilt the pages to answer one question each, in the words people actually used. Organic traffic went up 490%. The work got shortlisted for a 2026 Grand Indies award. What moved it was paying attention to how people ask, not having a better dashboard or aesthetic presentation.
A Few Other Things I Picked Up Along The Way:
Newsletters and email are all the rage again. Everyone's talking about them like they just discovered the wheel. Maybe there's something there.
I also heard agencies talking about launching their own MCPs - agency-owned infrastructure for security and data control - so they can feed more data through AI tools without taking on a ton of risk. Not something I know a lot about yet, but it's clearly coming.
What Our Clients Are Actually Sitting In
Here's what I keep coming back to: our clients are constantly being fed uncertainty. Budgets are being cut. Marketers don't know where to spend. Every channel is being told it's dying by somebody trying to sell a different one.
Nobody has this figured out. That's the actual state of the industry right now, and I'd rather say that out loud than pretend otherwise.
Where I Land
I see the uncertainty and the concern, I felt it in that room. But I also see a moment of unbridled opportunity. We just have to pace ourselves so we don't burn ourselves out as agencies chasing every shiny new thing.
So let's not chase the AI hype. Let's use it to make our jobs better, more fun, less mundane. And let's be human. Let's lean into humanity; the personal connection, the personal stories, the realness. That's where the opportunity is.
Figuring out search and AI visibility together
If your team is sitting in the same uncertainty, that's usually where we're most useful. We help brands and agencies work out what's actually worth doing in organic search and AI-driven results, then execute it without chasing every new thing. Let's talk about what's next.
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