If last year was about experimenting with AI, this year is about surviving its fallout.
Google’s AI Overviews are wrecking publisher traffic, Meta is tightening the screws on targeting, and everyone is scrambling to optimize everywhere at once.
The upside is that new playbooks are emerging for growth leaders who adapt faster than the platforms change.
I’ve been digging into AI feedback loops lately. The idea is that models can learn continuously if you build the right scaffolding.
It’s not just technical. It’s organizational. If you don’t sponsor and enforce the loop, the gains vanish.
Same with brand building. Generative AI can flood the zone with content, but does it move the needle for brand equity? Not yet.
This week’s stories point to one thing: the rules are shifting under our feet.
Attention is scarcer, data is shakier, and execution speed matters more than ever.
Let’s get into it.
Patrick Patterson
CEO at Level Agency
What's interesting this week
Google AI Forces Smarter Growth Plays Google’s new AI summaries are brutal for publishers, with referral traffic tanking by 25%. For growth leaders, the lesson is simple: don’t rely on
Google’s generosity. Build direct channels, own your audience, and treat organic traffic as borrowed, not guaranteed. Read more
Growth Leaders Win by Optimizing Search Everywhere Search isn’t just Google anymore. YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Amazon are becoming major discovery engines. Optimizing across these channels isn’t optional. It’s survival. Your SEO budget should already be split beyond the big G. Read more
Designing Feedback Loops for Smarter LLMs AI doesn’t get better by magic. It learns through structured feedback. Companies that treat AI like a static tool will plateau. Companies that design feedback loops into workflows will see compounding returns. Read more
Meta’s Ad Shift Rewards Bold Creative Meta continues consolidating ad targeting. Translation: you’ll rely more on creative and AI optimization than micro-targeting hacks. If your edge was in picking the right niche audience, it’s gone. Read more
Claude Becomes a Teacher for Teams Anthropic just rolled out Claude’s “learning mode” beyond education users. Instead of spitting out answers, it guides you to think through solutions. For growth leaders, this matters because AI is shifting from being a shortcut to being a teacher, helping teams upskill while they work. Read more
Grammarly’s AI Glow-Up Grammarly just launched a full redesign and new AI features. This isn’t about fixing typos anymore. It’s morphing into a writing co-pilot, which makes sense in a world where “good enough” content is infinite and standout content is rare. Read more
Deep dive: AI
Why generative AI struggles with brand building
I’ve seen AI unlock incredible speed for marketing teams. It lets you test messages, explore directions, and spin up assets in minutes instead of weeks. That speed is real leverage. But speed alone does not build a brand.
A brand is built on memory, emotion, and a point of view that cuts through the noise. AI is trained on what is common, and brand value comes from what is uncommon. Left on autopilot, AI will deliver work that sounds fine but forgettable.
That’s where leadership comes in. Leaders set the north star. They define the voice and the perspective that only their company can own. Once that is clear, AI becomes a force multiplier. It can draft, adapt, and remix content at scale while humans focus on strategy and storytelling.
The smart move is not to fear AI or hand over the brand entirely. The play is to pair human creativity with AI’s speed. That is how you amplify your story faster than competitors while staying true to what makes you different.
Why active sponsorship is the only way to make AI work
Here’s a pattern I’ve seen: teams roll out AI pilots, get some quick wins, then stall. Not because the tools failed, but because no one owned the change. Active sponsorship is the missing ingredient. Without it, the novelty fades and people drift back to old habits.
Sponsorship is not cheerleading. It is resourcing. It is carving out budget, giving cover for experimentation, and holding teams accountable for adoption. When a senior leader owns the outcome, AI moves from side project to operating system.
The ROI is not in one flashy win. It is in the compounding effects: faster cycle times, tighter insights, and smarter allocation of people. But that only happens when leadership enforces the loop and keeps the pressure on. AI is too easy to ignore if you don’t.
The leaders who win will treat AI as a strategic priority, not a tech experiment. They will keep the focus, remove the roadblocks, and make sure adoption sticks. That is how AI turns into a durable advantage instead of another tool collecting dust.
Claygent turns your lead list into a living research machine. It crawls the internet to pull real-time intel on prospects: LinkedIn bios, recent funding, company news, tech stack, even tone of voice. Then it pipes that info straight into your CRM, ready to power outbound in minutes.
Forget manually Googling execs or cobbling together personalization from stale data. Claygent handles that legwork at scale. It’s like having a research assistant on every contact who never sleeps and doesn’t need a training manual.
We're using it to build smart account briefs, launch sequenced campaigns that still feel personal, and score accounts by signal strength. It’s not perfect. But it’s fast, flexible, and far better than what most SDR tools promise.
This is what AI sales enablement should look like:
High volume, high context, low lift.
Help shape this newsletter
Each week, I share what I’m seeing in AI and growth. But I want this to reflect the questions and challenges you care about most.
Take a minute to tell me what topics would be most useful, and I’ll shape future issues around your input.
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