Ross Hudgens sits down with Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro and co-author (with Amanda Natividad) of the book Zero Click Marketing, for a frank conversation about why most of the ways marketers measure their work are broken, and what to do instead.
Rand explains why he soured on “How did you hear about us?” surveys, including the experiment where 30% of a brand’s customers credited a well-known food personality who had never mentioned it.
He makes the case that incrementality testing and correlation modeling are the real path to measuring AI’s impact, and walks through the unanswered questions undermining AI visibility tracking, from guessed-at prompt volume to too few prompt runs and invisible personalization.
Show Notes
0:00 – Why self-attribution fails
2:26 – The fake influencer experiment
6:58 – Incrementality testing for AI
11:55 – Correlation modeling with AI
16:03 – The prompt volume problem
18:44 – Prompt runs and personalization
24:31 – Why ChatGPT should sell prompt data
27:52 – Why the UK clicks least
31:14 – Dark traffic and walled gardens
38:24 – Are nonfiction books still worth it?
41:47 – Product problem, not marketing problem
44:07 – AI for customer research
47:43 – The book’s two big takeaways
49:06 – Turn off your ads
Show Links
- Grab “Zero Click Marketing”
- Rand on LinkedIn
- SparkToro
- Preorder “Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO” by Ross Hudgens
- Chuck Klosterman interview on the Plain English podcast
- Subscribe for weekly episodes
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