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A rigorous citation study just raised the bar for the whole field. It still never asks whether a citation becomes a recommendation. Petra Labs published two research papers this year on how AI assistants cite sources. Read them and it is hard not to respect the work. They resample whole

Ask an AI assistant for a premium car rental in a major US city and there is a good chance it will suggest Silvercar by Audi. The service does not exist. Audi shut it down in September 2024. The model recommends it anyway, often ahead of several live, bookable competitors

Digiday reported this week that CMOs cannot link AI visibility to sales. The piece, published August 13, surveyed marketers and agency leaders across the industry. The conclusion was consistent. Every team is triangulating. Nobody has a clean line from AI presence to revenue. Roast managing partner John Barham put it

A brand can appear in the first response of an AI reasoning chain and still lose the sale. This is the finding that keeps surprising the marketing and communications teams we talk to. It is worth explaining clearly, because it redefines what "AI visibility" must mean for any

A vendor sits down with a prospect and hears something familiar. I've seen something like this before, the prospect says. Spent a lot of time on it. Couldn't sell it internally. The vendor asks what would actually work. Not a resale arrangement, the prospect says. That

Summary Most predictions about TikTok Shop compare it to Amazon on Amazon's terms: fulfillment speed, catalog depth, trust infrastructure built over two decades. On those terms, Amazon wins comfortably, and will for years. That comparison asks the wrong question. Amazon and TikTok Shop are not competing to be

AIVO Journal · companion piece to AIVO Standard working paper, "The Influence Layer." Ask most people what "AI in commerce" means right now and they will describe some version of an agent quietly buying things on a shopper's behalf. Ask them how much of retail