Ross Hudgens welcomes Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and CMO of Orbit Media, to unpack the most alarming finding from 13 years of Orbit’s annual content marketing survey: after a decade of 20–28% of marketers reporting strong results, that number crashed to just 14% in 2026.
Andy explains why AI use shows zero correlation with performance, why the strategies that have always driven results (original research, influencer collaboration, human editors, keyword research, highly visual content) are being abandoned, and why he’s never once tracked word count despite averaging 2,400 words and 10–12 hours per article.
They also get into why great content should look like a social stream, why you shouldn’t fear quoting competitors, and how Goodhart’s Law explains the long-article era.
Show Notes:
0:00 – Content performance crashed to 14%
1:52 – AI is table stakes, not an edge
2:58 – What still works (and fewer people do)
5:34 – Back to the human basics
6:48 – Make content look like a social stream
8:16 – Should you quote competitors?
10:48 – Article length & Goodhart’s Law
14:50 – Why search and conversion must combine
16:19 – Pages that emulate a sales call
21:15 – Cognitive biases & loss aversion
23:15 – Winning the AI recommendation
28:01 – Home pages get 15x more AI bot visits
29:52 – Put proof points in text
33:12 – The future of the website
37:16 – Predictions for next year’s study
