It’s been a minute since I’ve hit send on one of these, and honestly, I’m fired up to be back in the rhythm.
A lot has changed while we’ve been quiet. Not in the “new tactic” way, in the “the whole playing field tilts a few degrees” way. Automation is moving from optional to assumed. Search is turning into an answer layer. Creative cycles are getting shorter. Feedback loops are getting tighter. The best part is that the gap between “team that experiments” and “team that compounds” is getting easier to see.
That’s the energy I want for 2026. More momentum, fewer mysteries. Better inputs, cleaner signals, faster iteration, stronger leverage. When you build the right system, every new platform update becomes an advantage instead of a distraction.
Also, expect this newsletter to evolve this year. New perspectives, new sections, and a few new areas of focus as the digital marketing landscape keeps stretching. Same mission though: send you the stuff that’s actually useful, and give you a POV you can apply.
Let’s get into it.
Patrick Patterson
CEO at Level Agency
Virtual Insider Session: Unlock AI visibility in 2026
Quick heads up if AI-driven search is on your 2026 radar. We’re hosting a short Virtual Insider Session with Profound, a leading AI search visibility platform that helps brands understand and improve how they show up inside AI-generated answers.
It’s on January 22 at 1:00 PM ET (30 minutes, plus a 15-minute live Q&A). If you’ve ever had the feeling that you’re doing “good SEO” and still getting ghosted by answer engines, this session will be useful. We’re going to talk through what actually gets a brand cited, what gets ignored, and the handful of things you can change that move the needle fast.
You’ll walk away with:
A clear model for how AI answers get built and why citations happen
A simple way to spot your citation gap before it shows up in pipeline
A short priority list for content and credibility signals that help you get picked
If organic demand is part of your plan this year, this is a solid 45-minute investment.
Reddit’s Max Campaigns: What They Are, What You Can Control, and What You Can’t Reddit just introduced Max Campaigns, an automated campaign type that pushes more decisions into the platform while simplifying setup. If you’re testing it, the leverage comes from strong inputs: clear conversion events, creative variety, and a landing page that matches the promise. Read more
Google’s Recommender Breakthrough: Semantic Intent Gets a Serious Upgrade Google researchers shared a recommender system advance aimed at better detecting semantic intent, meaning it understands what a user is trying to accomplish, not just what they typed. If your content doesn’t make the “why” obvious, this is a nudge to tighten structure, clarity, and the path from question to answer. Read more
Consumer AI Trends for 2026: How People Will Search, Shop, and Create Adweek lays out a set of consumer-facing AI behaviors that are shaping how people discover products, compare options, and make decisions. It connects AI tools to new expectations like faster answers, more guided shopping, and easier content creation. Read more
PPC Prompt Templates You Can Actually Use, From Basic to Advanced This piece is a practical library of prompt ideas for PPC, with examples marketers can adapt for keywords, ads, extensions, and strategy work. It includes easy prompts for speed and more advanced prompts that aim for structure, testing, and performance-focused outputs. Read more
Enterprise Social Engagement in 2026: The Operating System Hootsuite’s guide focuses on how enterprise teams run social engagement at scale, from response workflows to governance, tone, staffing, and measurement. If social is part of retention and trust, this is a solid blueprint for making it run like a real function. Read more
List Building That Works: The Tactics, the Tools, and the Mistakes to Avoid Crazy Egg walks through list-building strategies, including what to offer, where to place forms, and how to use tools that make signups easier. Treat the list like a compounding asset and it turns into one of the most reliable growth levers you have. Read more
Deep dive: AI
The 2026 AI trends that actually change your day-to-day
Most “AI trends” lists read like a wishlist. This one is more useful because it focuses on what’s already becoming normal inside marketing teams: AI embedded into workflows, faster iteration cycles, and higher expectations for personalization and measurement.
The big shift for 2026 is operational. Teams that win will treat AI like infrastructure. That means choosing a few high-leverage workflows (creative iteration, research, on-site personalization, reporting synthesis) and making them reliable. Define inputs, ownership, QA, and the success metric. Then run a weekly loop that values the system over the output.
This is also where bad data gets exposed fast. AI systems amplify whatever you feed them. If your definitions are fuzzy or your tracking is inconsistent, you get confident output that does not help decisions.
The takeaway: pick the workflows that touch revenue, build guardrails, and ship improvements weekly.
The metric that tells you if growth is actually working
If you want one number that forces clarity, the Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) is it. It’s a simple relationship between what you spend and what you get back, and that simplicity is the point. It cuts through channel politics and “we feel good about it” reporting.
HubSpot’s breakdown is helpful because it connects the calculation to actions you can take. You can improve MER by tightening targeting and creative so wasted impressions drop. You can improve it by fixing conversion friction on landing pages so the same traffic converts better. You can improve it by aligning spend to offers that already show demand, instead of forcing the market to care.
In 2026, MER becomes even more important because automation makes activity easy to generate. MER keeps the conversation on outcomes.
If you want to scale confidently this year, start by making MER the scoreboard.
Profound is an AI search visibility platform built for the new reality where buyers get answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other answer engines before they ever hit your site. It helps teams understand where they show up, where they don’t, and what’s driving citations when AI is constructing an answer.
Why I like it for growth leaders: it gives you a way to measure and improve visibility in the places traditional SEO tools barely touch. If organic demand is part of your plan for 2026, you want a clear view of your citation gap and the levers that close it.
Ready to turn AI visibility into pipeline?
AI platforms are shaping how buyers discover and vet brands. But most marketers don’t know if their brand even shows up.
Level’s AI Visibility Scorecard shows how often your brand appears in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, how you’re described, and how that compares to your competitors.
You'll get:
A visibility score and share of voice vs top competitors
Sentiment analysis of how your brand is framed in AI answers
A tactical roadmap to improve your citations, content structure, and authority signals
Used by leading brands and fine-tuned across real buyer prompts, this scorecard is your opportunity to drive real visibility in the zero-click search environment.
