HBR: How Gen AI Is Disrupting B2B Buying Decisions
Harvard Business Review drops a must-read: Generative AI is fundamentally shifting B2B buying into AI-mediated environments that companies neither own nor fully understand. Discovery, evaluation, and recommendation are moving to AI — and most vendors are unprepared. The implication: your buyer's first touchpoint may now be an LLM, not your website.
Read on HBR →The AI Marketing Readiness Gap: 15% Budget, 30% Ready
Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey confirms the uncomfortable truth: CMOs now allocate 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI, yet only ~30% of organizations have the maturity to scale it effectively. The data also shows AI "super-users" are 3x more likely to get promoted. The gap between AI spend and AI readiness is where 2026's winners are being decided.
Read on Digital Applied →Google I/O 2026: Gemini 3.5 Flash Goes Global, Spark Becomes Your 24/7 Agent
Google's biggest AI week of the year delivered: Gemini 3.5 Flash is now the default model globally, AI Mode in Search rolled out wider, and Google Spark launched as a 24/7 personal AI agent. The takeaway is clear — Google is building an agent layer between you and your customers. Optimize accordingly.
Read on Anicca →300 Enterprise Marketing Execs on AI Search: Bullish on Change, Woefully Unprepared
Search Engine Journal surveyed 300 marketing executives from large enterprises. The findings: AI search is growing rapidly, most execs are bullish on change — but infrastructure is "woefully unprepared" for the technological upheaval. The disconnect between optimism and operational readiness is the theme of 2026.
Read on Search Engine Journal →Optimizely + Conductor: Agent Visibility Analytics Arrives
Optimizely launches Agent Visibility Analytics in partnership with Conductor's enterprise AEO platform. The combo lets marketers evaluate AI discovery from multiple angles — citations, mentions, crawl behavior, referral activity, and page-level visibility trends. AEO (AI Engine Optimization) is officially a discipline now, not a buzzword.
Read on Solutions Review →💡 My Take
Read this one: The HBR piece on AI disrupting B2B buying decisions. It's the clearest articulation yet of how AI is inserting itself between you and your buyer. If your brand isn't showing up in AI-mediated discovery, you're invisible to an increasingly large portion of your TAM. This isn't theoretical anymore — it's happening now.