Materials

Newsletters to subscribe to, and the theses, market maps, reports and talks on marketing tech, newest first.

Newsletters

Services as Software by Nikola Lazarov (Weekly): Why every services business can reach software margins, scale and valuations, with editions on AI-native services and how they get built and valued.
chiefmartec by Scott Brinker: Blog, newsletter and research hub on the martech landscape and its annual State of Martech reports.
MarTech by : Trade publication and conference series covering marketing technology.
Marketing Brew by (Weekday): Newsletter and site covering brand strategy, social media and ad tech, with a weekly show.
Digiday by (Daily): Media and marketing trade news with a morning email and paid Digiday+ research.
ADWEEK Daily by (Weekday): Five-minute morning email of marketing, media and tech headlines.
The Drum by : Marketing, advertising, digital and media news site with an events calendar.
ExchangeWire by : Data-driven advertising and martech news, research and podcast, with a global events series.
Search Engine Journal by : News site for SEO and AI search practitioners.
The Rebooting by : Free newsletter on the business of media, covering AI use at publishers.
The Artificial Intelligence Show by Paul Roetzer, Mike Kaput (Weekly): Podcast on AI news and practical use for marketers and business leaders.
Exit Five by Dave Gerhardt (Weekly): B2B marketing podcast and newsletter with operators, founders and CMOs.
Growth Unhinged by Kyle Poyar (Weekly): Data-led advice on startup marketing, pricing and growth.
The Growth Memo by Kevin Indig (Weekly): Weekly organic growth and SEO memo with case studies.
MKT1 by Emily Kramer: Newsletter, podcast and MCP server for B2B startup marketers.
The AI Marketing Generalist by Kieran Flanagan (Weekly): Substack on putting AI to work in marketing workflows.
SparkToro blog by Rand Fishkin: Audience research tool maker's blog with original studies on search and social.
Mark Ritson column by Mark Ritson: Regular Marketing Week column on brand and marketing strategy.

Reading

ChatGPT's ad growth is outrunning the proof that it works by Krystal Scanlon, Digiday (news, 5 Nov 2026): Digiday charts ad reach on ChatGPT across countries and how the advertiser mix is widening beyond retail, using Similarweb, Graphite and Sensor Tower data.
IntentGEO: Intent-aware Generative Engine Optimization for Recommendation by arXiv (report, 2 Nov 2026): Preprint on tailoring generative engine optimization to the intent behind recommendation queries.
Do GEO Gains Survive the Live Web? by Runze Kong et al., arXiv (report, 31 Oct 2026): Study testing whether generative engine optimization gains hold up against live AI search engines.
AI Search News: October 2026 by Darrell Mordecai, Similarweb (article, 21 Oct 2026): Monthly Similarweb update that includes a ChatGPT citation study comparing click rates for recommended brands and footnote citations.
Inside Un_prompted: Seven Lessons on Marketing & Growth When Agents Are the Customer by Craft Ventures (thesis, 20 Oct 2026): Event write-up on how to market to AI agents as buyers, using a developer-tools company as an example.
Causal Value Attribution of Marketing Labels in LLM-Generated Ads by Danhong You; Wei Jiang; Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng, arXiv (report, 16 Oct 2026): Working paper on valuing the expertise that goes into prompting AI-generated ads, noted by its authors as under review at the Journal of Marketing Research.
Location, Location, Generation: Where You Ask Matters for Generative Engine Optimization by Mahe Chen; Nick Koudas, arXiv (report, 16 Oct 2026): Paper showing how the location of a query changes which sources generative search engines cite.
Winning the Relay Race: Long-Running Agents in High-Value Customer Journeys by Andreessen Horowitz (thesis, 14 Oct 2026): Uses outsourced sales operations as a historical example to discuss agents that carry a customer through a long purchase journey.
OpenAI's Vijaye Raji on the architecture behind a $1B ads business by ICONIQ (video, 8 Oct 2026): Video conversation about the technical design needed for a large advertising business inside an AI product.
Who Gets Paid When AI Does the Shopping? by Alex Immerman; Santiago Rodriguez, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) (thesis, 29 Sept 2026): Argues marketplaces must weigh agent-driven orders against the ad and commission revenue agents could erode; platforms with fulfilment and large customer bases can negotiate better terms.
How marketers are measuring AI search by Bessemer Venture Partners (thesis, 1 Sept 2026): Looks at how marketing teams track their visibility in AI-driven search.
2026 Outlook Study: September Update by IAB (report, Sept 2026): Revised US ad spend forecasts by channel for the rest of 2026, with a look at how AI-driven discovery is changing marketer plans.
Brandtech's Pencil launches Scribble, an AI orchestration layer for marketers by The Brandtech Group (news, Sept 2026): Announcement of an agent that routes a marketing brief to the right models and tools, with the Pencil CEO's move to group technology chief.
The Next Phase of AI: From Adoption to Accountability by IAB (report, Jul 2026): Two IAB studies on consumers' everyday AI use and publishers' push for control over how AI systems use their content.
AI Doesn't Make Boring Companies Interesting. by Earlybird (thesis, 19 Jun 2026): Cautions that AI-generated content adds noise and asks whether a content strategy builds a lasting growth engine.
In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click by Rand Fishkin, SparkToro (report, 8 Jun 2026): Study reporting that 68% of Google searches in early 2026 ended without a click, up from about 60% in 2024.
AI in GTM: What's actually working by Notion Capital (thesis, 27 May 2026): Says most companies claim to use AI across go-to-market but real use is much narrower, and reviews what is working.
The Listicle Rank Effect: What 200K AI Responses Across 8 AI Engines Reveal by Peec AI (report, 14 May 2026): Peec AI's analysis of how ranked-list articles are cited by AI engines in commercial categories.
Nectar Social: Rewriting the Modern Marketing Playbook by Amy Wu Martin, Menlo Ventures (thesis, 14 May 2026): Contends buying decisions now happen in DMs, group chats and communities that ads and email cannot reach, so brands will need autonomous agents tied to revenue.
State of Martech 2026 by Scott Brinker; Frans Riemersma, chiefmartec / MartechTribe (report, May 2026): Annual free report sizing the martech landscape and examining build-versus-buy choices in marketing's AI stack, with a framework it calls Golden Context.
State of Marketing Attribution 2026 by CaliberMind (report, May 2026): Vendor-published 2026 report on how marketing teams approach attribution.
The New Martech Stack for the AI Age by Databricks (report, May 2026): Ebook on how data platforms fit into an AI-era marketing stack.
The AI-Forward GTM Tech Stack by Joe Chernov; Bill Binch, Battery Ventures (thesis, 26 Mar 2026): Says foundation models and coding tools let go-to-market teams build what they used to buy, and presents an interim AI-forward stack with less reliance on central databases.
Of course they're putting ads in AI by Andreessen Horowitz (thesis, 9 Feb 2026): Reasons that AI products will follow earlier internet platforms by monetising through advertising once they reach scale.
Martech for 2026 by Scott Brinker, chiefmartec (report, Feb 2026): Forward-looking trends report from chiefmartec for the 2026 martech year.
Leading Flora's $42M Series A, The AI-Native Creative Platform Rethinking How Design Works by Redpoint Ventures (video, 28 Jan 2026): Video on Redpoint's lead of a creative-AI platform's Series A. Date taken from the round announcement; the page showed none.
AI ads, agentic interfaces, and the future of internet monetization by NEA (thesis, 15 Jan 2026): Discusses advertising and agent-driven interfaces as paths to monetise AI services beyond subscriptions.
The AI Ad Network by Scale Venture Partners (thesis, 13 Jan 2026): Describes what a next-generation ad buying platform could look like when the interface is a conversation, since advertising funds much of the internet.
2026 State of Marketing Report by HubSpot (report, Invalid Date): HubSpot's annual survey report; it says 61% of marketers see AI as marketing's biggest disruption in 20 years and 80% use it for content creation.
State of Marketing, tenth edition by Salesforce (report, Invalid Date): Salesforce's survey of 4,450 marketers in 26 countries on AI, data and personalisation, grouped by how satisfied teams are with their marketing returns.
Internet Advertising Revenue Report: Full Year 2025 by IAB (report, Invalid Date): IAB's annual tally putting US digital advertising near $300 billion in 2025, up 13.9% on the year.
2026 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report by IAB (report, Invalid Date): Full report on US TV and digital video buying, putting digital video spend above $80 billion in 2026.
How Brands Stay Visible When AI Decides by Kleiner Perkins (podcast, 22 Dec 2025): Conversation with Profound's CEO about brand visibility when AI systems choose what to recommend.
Beyond SEO: The State of AEO, According to Vendors, Agencies, and Marketers by Battery Ventures (report, 24 Nov 2025): Research on answer-engine optimisation drawn from vendors, agencies and marketers.
We raised $21M Series A to help brands win in AI search by Peec AI (news, 18 Nov 2025): The Berlin company's announcement of its Series A and 1,300+ brands and agencies onboarded since February 2025.
Our Investment in Flint: Marketing Superhuman-as-a-Service by Accel (thesis, 14 Oct 2025): Explains Accel's seed lead in Flint, an AI marketing tool pitched as giving a startup the marketing capacity it lacks.
Galton's Law of Mediocrity: Why Large Language Models Regress to the Mean and Fail at Creativity in Advertising by Matt Keon et al., arXiv (report, 30 Sept 2025): Paper arguing that language models drift towards safe, generic phrasing and testing what that means for advertising creativity.
MAI: Automating Performance Marketing with AI Agents by Kleiner Perkins (thesis, 30 Sept 2025): Portfolio note on MAI, which uses AI agents to run performance marketing work.
Investing in Koah: Recreating Ads Rails For the AI Era by Forerunner Ventures (thesis, 9 Sept 2025): Argues that the traditional ad stack does not work inside AI apps, so new advertising rails are needed.
Bluefish: The AI Marketing Platform for the Agentic Era by NEA (thesis, 20 Aug 2025): Announces the Series A in Bluefish, noting rapid revenue growth and use by large brands.
Measuring and Moving How Models Talk About Your Brand by Peter Deng; Tobi Coker, Felicis (thesis, 13 Aug 2025): Says marketers cannot see the tone with which chatbots describe their brands, and backs a tool that samples many model answers and traces them to sources.
Felicis's Series A in Evertune: Measuring and Moving How AI Models Talk About Your Brand by Felicis (thesis, 13 Aug 2025): Investment note arguing that brands need statistically sound measurement of what AI models say about them, not noisy daily snapshots.
Profound secures $35M to connect brands with one new customer: Superintelligence by Profound (news, 12 Aug 2025): Profound's announcement of a $35M round to build marketing for AI answer engines.
Partnering with Profound: Winning on the AI Stage by Anas Biad; Alfred Lin; Brian Halligan, Sequoia Capital (thesis, 12 Aug 2025): Argues that as buyers ask AI assistants instead of search engines, brands need ways to measure and shape their place in single synthesized answers; explains the Series B lead. Page metadata gives a conflicting date.
We Studied the Impact of AI Search on SEO Traffic by Semrush (report, 21 Jul 2025): Semrush's study of how AI search is affecting organic traffic.
Profound: Brand visibility for the generative internet by Kleiner Perkins (thesis, 18 Jun 2025): Explains the firm's Series A lead in Profound on the view that every marketer will need a way to see and shape how AI describes their brand.
The Rise of AI-Native User Research: From Scheduled Interviews to On-Demand Insight by Greylock (thesis, 10 Jun 2025): Title-level only: on AI changing user research toward on-demand insight. Body not read.
Faster, Smarter, Cheaper: AI Is Reinventing Market Research by Andreessen Horowitz (thesis, 3 Jun 2025): Looks at how AI changes consumer and market research, which has been slow and costly, through faster synthetic and automated studies.
Designing an AI-Native Marketing Team: A Guide for Founders by Battery Ventures (thesis, 28 May 2025): Guide for founders on structuring a marketing team around AI tools and workflows.
How Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Rewrites the Rules of Search by Andreessen Horowitz (thesis, 28 May 2025): Describes the move from classic search optimisation to optimising for answers produced by AI engines, and what that means for tools and agencies built around SEO.
Daydream's Julie Bornstein and Vlad Loktev on How AI is Transforming Shopping and Search by Vlad Loktev, Index Ventures (thesis, 14 May 2025): Interview on how natural-language, real-time inventory search changes consumer discovery; relevant to brands but about shopping rather than marketing.
AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5% by Ahrefs (report, 17 Apr 2025): Ahrefs analysis of how an AI Overview above the results changes the clicks the top organic result receives.
Actively AI is Launching a New Era of GTM Superintelligence by Bain Capital Ventures (thesis, 2 Apr 2025): Investment note on AI for go-to-market precision in sales.
State of Martech 2025 by Scott Brinker; Frans Riemersma, chiefmartec / MartechTribe (report, Feb 2025): Previous edition of the annual martech landscape and survey report.
Unlocking revenue insights for GTM teams: HockeyStack raises $20M Series A by Bessemer Venture Partners (thesis, 28 Jan 2025): Investment note on HockeyStack and why go-to-market teams need revenue attribution insight.
Investing in the Future of Creator-Driven Commerce: ShopMy's $77.5M Series B by Menlo Ventures (thesis, 24 Jan 2025): Explains the investment in ShopMy as digital marketing shifts toward creator-led commerce.
What GTM Leaders Are Saying About AI by Felicis (report, 15 Jan 2025): Summarises a survey of go-to-market leaders on how they are using AI.
Investing in Raspberry AI by Zach Cohen; Bryan Kim; Alex Rampell, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) (thesis, 13 Jan 2025): Backs a generative design platform for apparel on the grounds that fast trend cycles expose slow manual design work. Fashion design, not marketing as such.
Marketing's self-driving moment: Systems of Agents will put an industry on autopilot by Foundation Capital (thesis, 26 Nov 2024): Argues that AI agents suit digital marketing because it is built on pattern recognition, live optimisation and round-the-clock content.
Redpoint Radar: The State of Search and AI's Prosumer Proliferation by Redpoint Ventures (report, 21 Nov 2024): Survey-based look at how consumers use AI for search, discovery and planning.
The Hidden Goldmine in Marketing: Why Smart CEOs, CFOs, and CMOs are Embracing MMM by Khosla Ventures (thesis, 18 Nov 2024): Makes the case for marketing mix modelling as a way for finance and marketing leaders to judge spend.
For Postscript, the Future of Marketing is AI-Powered and Delivered Via Text by Kaitlin Durkosh, Greylock (thesis, 3 Sept 2024): Describes how a text-message marketing company found personal replies lift purchases and plans to use AI to scale one-to-one texting and fast message testing.
For Postscript, the Future of Marketing is AI-Powered and Delivered Via Text by Greylock (thesis, 3 Sept 2024): Describes Postscript's use of AI for one-to-one text-message marketing for online stores.
AI Workflows for Creatives: Artists vs Scientists by Bain Capital Ventures (thesis, 2 Jul 2024): Looks at how AI creative tools are shaped by the split between artist-style and engineering-style workflows.
Say Hello to My New AI Marketer: How Gen AI-Based Software Is Advancing Marketing and Sales by Andreessen Horowitz (thesis, 3 Jun 2024): Argues that generative AI software will take over large parts of marketing and sales work, citing productivity estimates and a brand that reports cost savings from AI.
AI Has Killed the Traditional SaaS GTM playbook by Viviana Faga, Felicis (thesis, 29 Feb 2024): Argues that costly compute and impatient buyers leave AI startups no room for slow go-to-market, so brand, instant trials, usage pricing and community matter.
AI Has Killed the Traditional SaaS GTM playbook by Felicis (thesis, 29 Feb 2024): Argues that the usual software go-to-market approach no longer fits AI products.
Why Creativity is AI's Number One Use Case by NEA (thesis, 14 Feb 2024): Argues that creative work is where generative AI is spreading fastest.
State of Martech 2024 by Scott Brinker; Frans Riemersma, chiefmartec / MartechTribe (report, Feb 2024): 2024 edition of the annual martech landscape report.
Room with a View: How Linda Lian and Common Room Are Shaping the Future of Go-to-Market by Index Ventures (thesis, 25 Jan 2024): Profile of a go-to-market data platform founder and why unifying customer data matters. Adjacent to marketing.
2024 Zero-Click Search Study by Rand Fishkin, SparkToro (report, Invalid Date): Earlier SparkToro study estimating how many clicks per 1,000 Google searches reach the open web in the US and EU.
GEO: Generative Engine Optimization by Pranjal Aggarwal; Vishvak Murahari; Tanmay Rajpurohit; Ashwin Kalyan; Karthik Narasimhan; Ameet Deshpande, arXiv (report, 16 Nov 2023): The paper that introduced generative engine optimization as a field and tested ways to raise a source's visibility in AI answers.
Menlo's Investment in OfferFit: Building the ML-Powered, Automated Experimentation Platform Marketers Need by Menlo Ventures (thesis, 14 Nov 2023): Backs OfferFit's Series B on the view that marketers are ready to adopt AI for automated experimentation.
The New Creator Stack by Andreessen Horowitz (thesis, 18 Oct 2023): Maps the AI-powered and financial tools that creators now use to ideate, produce, distribute and get paid.
Generative AI, SEO, and what leaders should know: Google search in the future by Insight Partners (thesis, 20 Sept 2023): Explains to portfolio leaders how generative AI search could change SEO and content channels.
Actionable approaches for GTM teams to drive generative AI impact by Insight Partners (thesis, 29 Jun 2023): Practical approaches for go-to-market teams adopting generative AI.
Create what you dream: The emerging Generative AI video and 3D landscape by Unusual Ventures (market map, 25 May 2023): Maps the generative AI video and 3D landscape and argues open-source video models could loosen the grip of large platforms.
Partnering with Tavus: AI-Personalized Videos by Sequoia Capital (thesis, 20 Mar 2023): Sequoia's note on backing Tavus, explaining its early use of the product and why AI-generated personalised video is promising.
Partnering with Apollo: Intelligent, Data-Driven GTM For Everyone by Sequoia Capital (thesis, 3 Mar 2022): Announces Sequoia's lead of Apollo's $110M Series C and frames data-driven go-to-market tools as something for every company.
Democratizing Market Research with AI by General Catalyst (thesis, 2 Apr 2018): Early note on backing Remesh and automating consumer market research.
The AI Ad Gap Widens by IAB; Sonata Insights (report): IAB research finding that Gen Z and Millennial consumers feel less positive about AI-generated ads than ad executives assume, and that disclosure helps close the gap.
AI Search Visits Surging in 2025, but Organic Search Remains the Cornerstone by BrightEdge (report): BrightEdge research on the growth of AI search referrals compared with organic search.
The AI Agent and AEO Organizational Readiness Gap by BrightEdge (report): BrightEdge research on what separates enterprise teams ready for AI search from those still catching up.
The Artificial Intelligence Show by Paul Roetzer; Mike Kaput, Marketing AI Institute (podcast): Weekly podcast from the Marketing AI Institute on AI news and use cases for business and marketing.
Exit Five podcast by Dave Gerhardt, Exit Five (podcast): Weekly conversations with operators, founders and CMOs on demand generation, brand and content.
Mark Ritson column by Mark Ritson, Marketing Week (article): Long-running Marketing Week column from a marketing professor on brand and marketing strategy.
From SEO to Agent-Led Growth: Profound's James Cadwallader by Sequoia Capital (podcast): Podcast with the Profound CEO on how brand discovery shifts from search engines to AI agents and what marketers need to track.
What GTM Leaders Are Saying About AI by Viviana Faga, Felicis (report): Seven findings from a Felicis survey of go-to-market leaders on AI. Date not shown on the index page.
You Can't Hack Product Positioning by Viviana Faga, Felicis (thesis): Says breakout products in crowded markets usually define a new category through positioning. Date not shown.
How Generative AI Will Revamp Go-To-Market by NEA (thesis): Says generative AI will have a structural impact on marketing, sales and customer service.
Building With Typeface by Lightspeed Venture Partners (thesis): Investment note on Typeface as an enterprise generative AI application that combines a brand's own assets and voice for personalised content.
From Legacy to AI-Native: Partnering with Attio to Reinvent the World's Largest B2B Software Market by GV (thesis): Explains the investment in Attio and a view that go-to-market teams will build and iterate their own processes and tooling.
Argil raises EUR 4.9 million to empower everyone to become a creator using their own AI video clone by Seedcamp (thesis): Announces a round for Argil, which lets people make video with an AI clone of themselves at low cost.

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