Welcome and happy new year!
Updates by Brett Woodward, Sr. SEO
It’s been a year and a half since Google launched AI Overviews (AIO). The LLM-driven outputs in AIOs dramatically changed the search engine results pages and kickstarted a seismic marketing pivot.
SEOs and marketers in general have been hardwired for measuring performance with numbers. So it makes sense that our industry is now attempting to shift to measuring mentions and citations in LLM outputs.
The validity of the models that aim to measure those mentions and citations is another conversation entirely. Putting that aside, what we do know for sure is that we want more of them. Right now the million dollar question is how.
The “easy” solution is to be a better known, more reputable brand. While absolutely true, that answer can feel like staring at a blank sheet of paper with only a vague idea of how to get to your end goal in mind. Fortunately there are lots of studies and experiments being conducted that we can lean on to help guide our efforts. Let’s take a look at this month’s new insights.
A study from AirOps, a content marketing software company, found that the vast majority of brand mentions in LLM outputs were not citing the brand’s own domain as the source for the information.
Their analysis of over 21,000 brand mentions across 500 commercial-intent queries performed on GPT-5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and Perplexity Sonar showed that “brands mentioned in AI search for top-of-funnel commercial queries are 6.5x more likely to come from third-party content than the brand itself.”
The idea that what others say about you is more valuable than what you say about yourself has been on marketers’ radar for some time. And many good SEOs have been viewing external sites as an integral part of their strategies well before this LLM-mention gold rush began. But the last couple years of AI answer advancement has now made the external site focus a mandatory consideration for any company who’s serious about visibility.
SEO tool Ahrefs is constantly coming out with interesting data from their own tests. This study “analyzed 75,000 brands to see which search factors are most likely to influence brand mentions in ChatGPT, AI Mode, and AI Overviews.”
From 0 to 1 they determined how strongly different types of content, site attributes, branded search volume, and ads data correlated with mentions and citations in the three tested LLMs.
The study found that YouTube mentions had the highest correlation with AI visibility at an average of (0.737) among the tested LLMs. The study also showed branded web mentions in general correlating highly, especially in AI Mode (0.709). Other factors like branded search volume (~0.403) and the number of referring domains (~0.291) had a lower correlation.
Are you having a blank-sheet-of-paper moment in regards to improving your brand’s visibility? Investing in YouTube content could be a solid start if that makes sense for your audience and your team has the capability.
Updates by Casey Anderson, Paid Media Director
Want to get the top-of-feed spot on LinkedIn? Well, now that premium placement is available for maximum visibility at a cost.
For a fixed rate, advertisers can secure that top of feed slot with what they are calling “Reserved Ads”, which promise predictable delivery and a stronger share of voice.
They are Sponsored Content ads that include all the mainstay ad types (video, single image, carousel, document, thought leader and event ads), but are sold through a LinkedIn account representative (like traditional ad-buying).
This is a great new opportunity for B2B advertisers to get the engagement and visibility they need to start building remarketing audiences. Early results show up to 75% higher dwell time, 88% higher view-through rates, and 99% of forecasted impressions delivered, according to LinkedIn, which means a better chance of stronger mid-funnel performance in a platform with a lot of B2B noise.
Too often we’ve been prevented from creating well-qualified audiences because they haven’t met Google’s minimum of 1,000 users. Now Google has lowered that number to just 100, which started first with customer lists, but has now progressed further into other networks and audience types including Display, Search and YouTube audiences. Only 100 active users in a 30-day period are necessary to create the segment.
This is a great move by Google and now allows smaller accounts and businesses to hone in on the audiences that really matter and create more precision targeting that will benefit their remarketing strategy.
Apple announced that it will be expanding its ad inventory in 2026. While top of search ads will remain the same, the expanded inventory will include sponsored ads mixed in with organic results. But, the same rules apply to these new ad placements—your content must be relevant to what the user is searching for. Advertisers won’t be able to bid higher or pay more for a better chance at sponsored inventory. Strong keywords and creative will still be the deciding factors in who wins out.
In our January Analytics Roundup of updates and ideas in the world of marketing analytics and AI, read about a kintsugi philosophy for marketing data, new GTM & BigQuery features, and great marketing analytics ideas from around the web.
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