Remember when disruption came in waves? Now it just feels like background noise: court cases, hardware rumors, and AI tools misbehaving before the ink on the press release is dry.
Google’s lawyers are fighting for the future of paid media, OpenAI wants to put a super-assistant in your glasses, and Notion released agents that could probably book your flights but also accidentally email your strategy deck to Russia.
Funny, but also deadly serious.
Because beneath the chaos, two truths are clear: AI is rewriting the rules of SEO and transforming research into a live feed. And the risks that come with speed are real.
Forget best practices. We’re in the no-playbook era, where the boldest experiments become the rules everyone else scrambles to copy.
Let’s dive in.
Patrick Patterson
CEO at Level Agency
Higher ed in the age of AI: Rethinking relevance and results
This week, Myles Biggs and I sat down with Dr. Michael Hageloh and Dr. Bruce Fraser of Indian River State College to talk about how they’re leading transformation in higher education with AI.
They shared how Apple’s product philosophy influences leadership in the classroom, how students are guided from curiosity into enrollment and success, and how new approaches like apprenticeships and stackable credentials are shaping the path forward.
The conversation is full of lessons for any leader navigating massive change and looking for new ways to create value with AI.
Google’s Antitrust Trial Could Reshape Paid Media Overnight Google’s ad empire is in the crosshairs, and depending on the verdict, we could see a seismic shift in media buying. For anyone running performance campaigns, the real strategy is preparing for fragmentation. Read more
Turning Data Into Experiences Customers Don’t Forget We’ve hit the point where personalization isn’t about first-name email greetings. It’s about real-time data activation feeding AI systems that tailor every touch. If you’re still thinking in terms of segments instead of signals, you’re behind. Read more
10 Growth Shifts You Missed at September’s MarTech Conference The playbooks from this year’s MarTech gathering weren’t about shiny tools, they were about stitching them into systems that scale. The big takeaway: growth leaders need fewer pilots and more end-to-end adoption. Waiting for perfect clarity means you’ll be late. Read more
7 AI Market Research Tools That Outpace Old-School Insights Market research used to be slow, expensive, and mostly backward-looking. The new AI stack flips that, real-time insights at startup speed. If your team isn’t experimenting here, your competitors are. Read more
Notion’s New AI Agents Show Why Guardrails Matter AI agents sound magical until someone uses them to pull your data out the back door. Notion’s new agents show how easily these tools can be misused. Growth leaders need guardrails, not just enthusiasm. Read more
Why OpenAI Wants to Put GPT on Your Face and Desk If OpenAI launches hardware, it isn’t about gadgets, it’s about distribution. A wearable assistant tied into GPT could reset how customers interact with brands. Ignore this at your own risk. Read more
Deep dive: AI
Politeness as prompt engineering: A growth hack you didn’t see coming
Here’s a fun one: politeness might actually make your AI tools work better.
Recent experiments suggest that adding “please” and “thank you” to prompts can influence tone, reduce refusal rates, and sometimes even improve accuracy. Sounds silly until you realize that prompt engineering is mostly about framing.
I’ve seen this firsthand. When drafting executive summaries with ChatGPT, polite framing produced outputs that read closer to professional correspondence, without me needing to rewrite every line. Same model, different results.
For growth leaders, the takeaway isn’t about etiquette, it’s about leverage. Small tweaks in how you phrase inputs can mean big changes in quality and usability. Don’t just type commands into your AI systems. Test phrasing, tone, and structure. The ROI is in the iteration.
Forget backlinks: Why AI citations are the new SEO currency
The SEO game is tilting. For two decades, backlinks were the coin of the realm. But in an AI-first search environment, “citations” (references that models can validate) may become the new trust signal.
Think clear sourcing, consistent schema, and credibility signals baked into copy. Early results show stronger visibility in AI-driven summaries, even when backlink volume lags.
The practical takeaway: don’t just chase links. Build content that’s reference-ready for AI. That means prioritizing clarity, trustworthy sourcing, and formatting that machines can parse.
As the search landscape changes, this could be the edge that keeps your brand discoverable.
Profound Profound is one of the first tools tackling AI visibility.
It shows you how your brand and content appear in AI-powered answer engines, tracks how bots crawl your site, and helps you optimize for visibility where search is headed.
Why I recommend it: most teams are still obsessing over backlinks while the real battle is shifting to AI summaries and conversational results.
Profound gives you the map of how AI sees you so you can shape it instead of guessing. In the no-playbook era, this is the kind of edge that compounds fast.
Ready to turn AI into ROI?
Level Agency is conducting a research study to understand how organizations are preparing for and adopting AI.
We’re collecting insights from teams across industries and we’d love your input. The survey takes 5 minutes and is designed to give your team a pulse on your AI readiness.
Once we’ve wrapped the study, we’ll share a full report with key findings and industry benchmarks to all respondents.
Special Bonuses:
Complimentary 90-day Action Plan: Organizations with at least 5 respondents will receive a free current-state assessment and a 90-day action plan to accelerate adoption.
Free 30-Minute Consultation: The first 10 responding organizations will receive a complimentary 30-minute consultation to discuss a use case and explore potential solutions.
