From SEO to Agent-Led Growth: Profound's James Cadwallader

We've now reached a point in marketing where if your marketing team is not using agents and in particular profound agents to do marketing then you are failing.

It's gone from a nice to have to a must have. And I think the big misconception

have. And I think the big misconception with using agents to build marketing is that it's just a way to automate the work that we've been doing in the past.

Yeah.

And the reality is quite different. And

it's that you can now because of agents and because of LLMs, you can do a type of marketing that just frankly was not possible before.

Hi and welcome to training data. Um

excited to welcome you James uh co-founder and CEO of Profound. Um so

Profound is a marketing platform for the AI era. You help companies understand

AI era. You help companies understand how they show up in AI search for agents like ChatgBT and Claude, what to do to improve their rankings and visibilities.

And also you help give a single marketer the power of an agency. And I think it's especially timely to have you on the podcast today given that chat GPT is rolling out ads, given that every

marketer is now trying to figure out, you know, how do I rank uh in the in the generative search engine rankings and everyone's trying to figure out this brave new world of agentled growth. So

I'm very excited for the conversation.

Um let's start with so you serve 10% of the Fortune 500. You have a great sense of your customer and what the average marketer is facing today. Maybe take us

through through their journey. um what

did marketing look like in the old days before Chat GPT and what are marketers having to respond to now?

Yeah. Um well, thanks for having me on Sonia. Um

Sonia. Um I mean I think you know what we're what we're witnessing is the biggest platform shift in the history of marketing as the

world turns from blue link search like predetermined blue link search to probabilistic AI responses. Um, and it's and it's more than that as well. It's

not just kind of a case of do you show up when someone asks chat GPT about your category. Um, it's, you know, what does

category. Um, it's, you know, what does chat GPT say or how does Claude, you know, recommend your software, for example, if you're talking about coding

tools. Um it's it's it's the these

tools. Um it's it's it's the these models are really replacing you know it's the agents and super intelligence is replacing the role of the consumer.

It's not so much that the front door of the internet has changed. It's actually

the person that's going through the door has changed. It's gone from being a

has changed. It's gone from being a consumer that is using a list of blue links to discover your website and click into it to an agent is now using you

know a similar index and discovering your brand products and services and then coming back through the door and you know maintaining that relationship with the consumer.

That's so fascinating. Okay. So your

your point is you know chat may be the new front door but the thing that's important for marketers is you know you now have an agent walking through that door and making a big part of that buying decision for you.

Yeah it's this I think that's the that's the fundamental difference. It's that

the internet has remained the same. It's

just who is using the internet. When you

ask chatpt a question or Gemini a question what you're essentially doing is asking an agent to go and crawl the internet on your behalf. Mhm.

And it's an agent that's going to visit all of those websites that you used to visit.

And it's an agent that's going to determine if that's useful or this is useful and remix all of that information into an answer that it spits out to you

as uh you know, here you go.

Yeah. What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about what it takes to to show up well for this new agentic paradigm? I think the biggest

agentic paradigm? I think the biggest misconception is that it's just SEO.

You know, there there's a reason why that misconception exists because yeah, of course, you still, you know, in in any world of marketing

and discovery, there is an impetus on a brand or you know, the yeah, you said we work with is close to 12% of the Fortune 500 now, their marketing teams use profound.

And in any world, the solution to a problem is to create content, distribute content on your own own channels or, you know, earned media or social channels,

etc. They're very similar levers to what we've seen with SEO. And yes, ranking on the index still matters. It's just that the human consumer is no longer using

the web and you are building content that may quite literally never be consumed by a human.

And I think the fundamental difference between SEO and this new world is that in SEO, you were building content that was designed to be, you know, picked up

by an algorithm, but fundamentally consumed by a human. Whereas in this new world, you are building content that is frankly designed entirely to be both

discovered and then consumed by an agent.

H and what does that mean? So I would imagine humans are less patient than agents. Um I imagine humans are more

agents. Um I imagine humans are more prone to emotional biases and being swayed by language than agents. Like

what are the what are the biggest differences between how humans and how agents consume the internet that markers should keep in mind?

It's understanding that an agent crawling the web looking for an answer or providing an answer frankly um will discover information differently to a

human and so it uses the index differently to us. In the old world of SEO, you know, 95% of the value is being in that top four blue links.

Y the top five blue links. And that really is a function of our scarce cognitive energy and patience and our our lack of time.

Yeah.

Where an agent is using that index. It's what we've seen is

that index. It's what we've seen is chatbt or Gemini or Claude are far more prone to using the long tail of the internet. And the amount of surface area

internet. And the amount of surface area that an agent will use to answer a question is orders of magnitude wider than a human. Hm.

Like for instance, probably about three or four months ago, um I was looking for a shower head for my apartment in New York City and I used chat GPT to help me find a new shower head and it used 65

different web pages to answer that question.

Wow. I think I probably went through 65 web pages on my own for that query.

It's a very important purchase.

But I think it's and and it's that you know marketers need to understand that you are building marketing for a super intelligent agent with

infinite bandwidth with you know as the cost of inference goes down as well and we you know experience Mo's law mos law continues we're going to see agents only use more and more of the internet to

build rich answers.

Yeah totally um fascinating. Are there

certain categories? You you mentioned you serve 12% of the Fortune 500. Are

there certain categories where people are seeing more success in terms of these agentic search results actually driving meaningful traffic to them and then certain categories where it's

really more still traditional SEO world?

Um I mean this is across the board now.

So you know I think when we began we saw more demand from software companies and I'd say today we yeah we work with every single category every single sector you could imagine finance

consumer CPG um software and that's B2B as well that B2B direct to consumer um and is the impact relatively consistent

across the board or are there certain categories or subcategories that are you know much more influenced by agentic search I Consumer consideration is an important

vector here. So if you have a high

vector here. So if you have a high consideration or a high ticket purchase, you know, think consumer electronics or you know, auto cars, white goods, uh

anything that would typically require a fair amount of research.

I think we see AI being used more and more by end consumers because it's frankly just better at doing all that deep research.

AI is so brilliant for researching product. I mean, have you ever used AI

product. I mean, have you ever used AI to research for find a product all the time using it right now to to buy a car?

Cool.

I'm not going to out myself for the specific car, but it's been very helpful. Uh

helpful. Uh um across the board, do you see that the different, you know, Chat GPT versus Claude versus, you know, Grock and Gemini, do you see them recommending

things differently and and and and if if so, what what's the root cause?

Yeah, I mean, we see huge differences between the platforms. Okay. Um, and frankly, you know, as a

Okay. Um, and frankly, you know, as a shameless plug, that's why marketers are using uh software like Profound because what we're able to do is help you understand

not just how your brand or product shows up across different platforms. So, you know, okay, do you show up more frequently in Gemini responses or claude responses or chat GPT responses, but also we extract the sentiment and

the themes around, you know, so when Claude surfaces your brand or product, what are the other things that it says alongside the answer?

Yeah. But then we also get to the root cause. So we show we expose to

cause. So we show we expose to marketers. Okay, these are the citations

marketers. Okay, these are the citations and sources that the different models are using to answer questions about your brand, your products, your category or your competitors.

Yeah. So once you understand the what and the why then in profound what you're the next step is you're building and deploying your own agents

to sort through all of that data and build a new type of marketing that and is the primary root cause that they have you know different harnesses is the prim primary root cause that they have different training data mixed primary

root cause some of them you know bias for let's say Reddit data over you know company owned uh platforms like what's the root has for why these platforms are so different in terms of how companies show up.

Think of them, this sounds very reductive, but think of them as just different, you know, different species.

If the, you know, what we've seen is Gemini will lean on YouTube content a ton, which makes sense because Google owns YouTube. So that we we see

owns YouTube. So that we we see you know YouTube being a huge lever for brands or marketers that want to appear in Gemini responses whereas chat GPT yeah we see typically

pulls from Reddit if it's consumer uh or if it's B2B it will typically pull from LinkedIn we see as a huge source of truth um claude uh is yeah claude is has been

changing a lot recently you know I think what and why is that I noticed this um it seems like between 45 and 46 even like what it's recommending has changed a Why do you think that is?

I think Claude has typically or Claude has historically relied more on the pre-trained LLM to answer questions and is now I think they've updated their classifiers or

something that's you know basically the classifier seems to have become a bit more sensitive to you know real time information. So Claude will use the web

information. So Claude will use the web more to answer questions is what we're finding.

Okay. But I think you know the the next paradigm here we're so we're such humans are such creatures of huristic that when we think about this new world we really want to pattern match it to

the old world of search and SEO which was just information retrieval.

Mhm.

Yeah. Whether you was it was ranking it was do you show up versus now the the new era you know I think you coined this

nicely with ALG agent growth. is that

Claude doesn't just represent a new channel of discovery. Claude represents

a user.

So, you know, if I'm vibe coding um with Claude or Claude Code, you know, does it recommend MongoDB or Versel? Like what

what is the what is the weapon of choice that that Claude goes to and why and where does it get that information from?

And then if I say if we so you know if we choose to go with MongoDB, how does Claude navigate that interoperability?

Where does it get that information from?

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to chat about what this means in terms of content and content marketing. Um you told me

content marketing. Um you told me earlier that agents will consume 100x more internet, which I thought was a really fascinating way to put it, which means that marketers will need to create 100x more content. Um, is the solution

just like everyone's going to be like spamming marketing slop to cover all the longtail queries so that you know when I ask for what's the right shower head for like I need this specific uh

specification and I am you know this exa exact demographic um that there's a landing page to to kind of cover for that um for that use case and we're just are we just going to be covered by you

know content marketing slop for lack of a better word. I mean, I think there was a recent study that said it's estimated about 50% of the web is now

utilizing AI written content.

Yeah.

Uh the New York Times uh recently published an experiment where they created two articles, one written by a human like a journalist and the second

written by by AI. And it was like 53% of readers voted afterwards on a blind test that they preferred the AI written content.

Wow. I think slop is a red herring that is going to be quite quickly disproven.

You you can, you know, it's it's a really I'm not saying you're suggesting this, but I do think that this idea of if it's written by AI equals slop, uh is a stupid one. Um

yeah, I think AI is more than capable of writing highquality content, high quality marketing. It's just that the

quality marketing. It's just that the way to think about it is that the consumer is super intelligent now.

So you as a brand or a marketer, you need to tell Claude something it doesn't know.

How do you tell a super intelligent being something it doesn't know already when it's been trained on the entire internet?

How do you what do you say?

I think you have to have original insight. You know, really humans are

insight. You know, really humans are this kind of uh fleshy API between reality and uh the internet at this point right?

Man, I'm just a fleshy API. Okay.

So, what are the is first principle marketing? is thinking from first

marketing? is thinking from first principles, okay, if I'm marketing the new Nike Alphal, like what can I tell Claude about this new product that it

wouldn't be able to get from the internet already because it's it's it has access to the internet. It has access to everything. It's been pre-trained on

everything. It's been pre-trained on everything that exists.

And that's that's, you know, that's more mysterious if you're talking about an existing product. But if we're launching

existing product. But if we're launching a new product, of course, Claude doesn't know anything about that product.

Yeah. Okay. for launching the Alphal 2.

It's your imperative as a marketer not to poison the models or manipulate what chat GPT says about that new product, but as a marketer, it's your responsibility now to equip super intelligence to be able to answer any

question about your product, brand, or service.

Okay. So, it's fundamentally a question of legibility.

Yeah, I'd say to an extent.

Yeah. How do you make your how do you make your company and your products legible to an agent?

I think that's correct. Yeah. And if if if you're building software, it goes way beyond legibility. It's, you know,

beyond legibility. It's, you know, usability, interoperability.

Yeah. Huh.

Like how does how does Claude troubleshoot that issue?

Yeah. Very interesting. Um do you think that people are trying to game the system? And is trying to game the system

system? And is trying to game the system effective?

I mean, yes. Like of course. Yeah.

People you see, you know, there's there's this huge wave around like comparative listicles for example. I

mean, frankly, dare I say this, and I'm going to, you know, make a disclaimer here and say that, you know, I wouldn't advise people do this, but frankly, we still see it working very effectively.

Um, but I'm sure this will change over time and get punished by the models or, you know, the I'm sorry, what exactly works very effectively?

Sorry. Yeah, the comparative listicles.

So meaning that you know if I were Sequoia I would create uh a you know 10 best VCs in Silicon Valley and place Sequoia

at the top and maybe pick you know some of your less formidable foes and rank them as second, third, fourth, fifth and basically shun out your real competitors.

You know self-erving content designed to give impartial advice.

Yeah. And what we found is because of the way that these models reason, they're very attracted to pieces of content that have already done the the hard work because they don't want to use the first

principal thinking of like, okay, let me go and check out everything about Sequoia and then everything about Kleiner Perkins and actually compare the two. I'd much rather find

two. I'd much rather find a piece of content that exists and seems impartial and has compared the two against each other.

I guess the models aren't infinitely patient then. They're a little bit lazy,

patient then. They're a little bit lazy, too. Yeah, I think yeah, it's a path of

too. Yeah, I think yeah, it's a path of least resistance maybe. Um, but I do think over time, you know, going back to my 65 websites for a shower head, I think over time we can expect that to change and we'll see a lot more kind of

like first principle reasoning coming from the models and I think that it can right now it can be prompted as well.

Yep. Yep. So when I mean it's funny when I use models to discover if I use chat GPT or claw to discover a product or to research a product or service I'll quite

often say ignore any listical articles or yeah or I'll say you know ignore any uh content published by the brand itself.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Um, I'd love to chat about dead internet theory. Like, at what point do you think the internet is just

primarily being browsed by agents? And

at that point, you know, does a company's marketing website matter at all? Does a company's, you know, ranking

all? Does a company's, you know, ranking in the search engine in the traditional search engines matter at all? Or should

we all just have a readme file for the agents to crawl? I mean, at the risk of sounding a little dramatic, I think that we could experience a dead internet outcome in the next three years. Um, I

do think it's possible. Um, you know, maybe not likely. Um, but you know, what does that mean? It means that in a world where humans just speak to AI to get the

responses that they need, the incentive to publish content diminishes to the point of zero.

Meaning, you know, we rely as humans today and AI, frankly, so humans and AI rely we underestimate just how much we

rely on first party reporting to to feed the information that AI uses to answer questions or to feed the information that appears in a search

engine that we rely on every day. And I

think in a world where humans no longer click into websites, the majority of the internet is still funded by advertising for a start. So, you know, most publishers rely heavily on advertising

revenue to to fuel all of the content that is being more and more consumed by AI.

In a world where consumers, humans, aren't visiting those web pages anymore, well, what's the, you know, what's the point in advertising on a web page that a human isn't visiting? Then their

business model breaks, the economics of the internet break, and the incentives to create editorial content are removed.

Yep.

And then in that world, you start to ask the question, well, where does AI go to answer these questions?

So the read me files.

But then who why would you publish a readme file?

Because the agent needs to go somewhere to answer a question, right?

It works if you're a brand or a marketer, but why would you, you know, would you publish a blog? What's the

point?

I'm publish. Hi, I'm Sonia the the VC and these are the companies I've worked with and and like as a you know founder is trying to reason through which venture capitalist should I work with

like it finds my read me file.

I think that's correct for you know uh commercially driven content.

But you know a lot of the internet is just people yapping and sharing ideas.

Fair enough.

And that's what we rely on. And the

reason why this has worked so well in the past is because humans are very incentivized by um money and status.

You know, if I publish a really good blog post and put advertising on it, I can earn money from that blog or I'm recognized and I become famous. But in a world where AI just goes into that piece of content, vacuums all the good stuff

out of it, and then remixes it. And

maybe I get a little citation at the bottom of the article, but who cares? No

one's clicking those citations. the incentive

to create that rich original content, you know, that the fleshy API that we're talking about, it diminishes to zero.

Yeah. Huh. What do you think is the likelihood of this scenario?

I mean, I've thought about it quite a lot and I think it's quite possible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think the the place, you know, if you ask kind of, okay, well, what are the second order outcomes? Like what

happens after that? I think a theory I have is that every AI lab will eventually vertically integrate with a social media network. So I think you

know social media will become more and more human. I think you know already I

more human. I think you know already I mean meta is actually probably leading the way here. It's like it's very hard to build a bot uh and post on Instagram.

Y right now it's very human. So I think social media networks become more human over time and that's the place where we can exchange ideas for status or money. you

know, you see X's doing lots of uh, you know, YouTube X, the the economics are starting to shake out where you can get financially rewarded. Yeah.

financially rewarded. Yeah.

For creating good content and so social media will become the platform where we share ideas. And if you vertically

share ideas. And if you vertically integrate that with an AI like, you know, what we've seen with Grock and X, Grock very skillfully uses all of the

rich content and data from X to answer questions in quite a thoughtful way.

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So, you're

saying that, you know, the internet as we know it has kind of been this like economic social status game machine that just works.

If more and more and more of the content is just consumed by agents, it kind of breaks some of those fundamental assumptions. And so, therefore, both the

assumptions. And so, therefore, both the economic engine and the social status game will kind of move into these like biozones, these social media networks.

Yeah. We're seeing that with Reddit now is that Reddit is Reddit is truly embracing its humanity and saying, "Okay, we this is a precious place." And it is precious. I think it's

place." And it is precious. I think it's really important. I think the we take

really important. I think the we take the internet for granted. It's a

wonderful thing.

Yeah.

Um and yeah, I think we need these human environments so that we can share ideas.

Yeah.

Original ideas. Yeah. that will be it will be these places where AI, you know, understands reality. That's

how AI taps into what's actually going on in the world.

Couldn't you imagine that these platforms just ban, you know, agents from scraping their platforms and then the business model then becomes, you know, a revenue share from the original

creator of the content to, hey, chat GPD, if you want to scrape this, it's going to cost you a lot of money. And so

doesn't that kind of solve the economics challenge?

Yeah. I mean X has obviously just opened up their API, right?

Yeah.

And Reddit has got a big deal with OpenAI for example. Yeah. So that all of that Yeah. That that could work. And I

that Yeah. That that could work. And I

think that speaks to my idea of the sort of like vertical integration.

I mean I you know nothing so I'm saying this purely on vibes but I've always had this theory that maybe OpenAI would acquire Reddit for example.

I think that'd be interesting.

Yeah. And you need this source of human data.

Yeah.

In real time.

The alternative is robots. I suppose you know because if there, you know, if you said we end up with 50 billion robots walking around, you know, maybe they're bipedal, maybe

they're drones or something, but it allows AI to capture first party data.

Y and it undermines that idea of humans being a fleshy API. Yeah.

Because the AI can directly understand the world.

Very interesting. I'd love to talk about advertising since we've been talking about ads in the context of the internet. Um, now that ads are coming to

internet. Um, now that ads are coming to some of these um, generative AI agents, how do you think that changes the

consumer relationship to the engines?

I think people will get over it very quickly as we did with Google.

Yeah.

Um, yeah. I think advertising or generative advertising I should say in a conversational interface with higher levels of personalization will be the most effective form of

advertising the world has ever seen.

There's so much rich consumer intent captured inside of these conversations. Y

that and and also in in addition to that point, AI is so good at synthesizing and personalizing language to the needs of Sonia in that exact moment because it

understands you so deeply that I think you know once chat GPT is able to append a super personalized ad in the exact moment in a conversation

where you would be the most responsive to it. it will be extremely effective.

to it. it will be extremely effective.

They've got a great team working on ads.

Um, what do you think the ad unit of the future looks like?

I think I mean OpenAI have alluded to this. This isn't original thought from

this. This isn't original thought from me. Um,

me. Um, but yeah, I think you will just prompt AI. So, you'll build a system prompt as

AI. So, you'll build a system prompt as an ad campaign.

So, you will just say, "Hey, I really want to target, you know, women in Minnesota between the ages of 35 and 40." like, "Yeah, if you could make sure

40." like, "Yeah, if you could make sure you me whenever they're talking about photography, I want you to mention this, this, this, but don't mention this and make sure you really, you know, you utilize this this knowledge base of

understanding so you know how to talk about a brand, products, and services, but obviously tailor it to their tone of voice, and that's probably how you'll deliver an ad campaign." Yeah.

You'll say, "I want to make this much money ideally."

Yeah. Do you think it's less relevant in the B2B context?

The nuance with B2B or just coding agents, people using AI to build things Mhm.

So this is particularly relevant to you know dev tools or software for example is that the agent is really steering the the purchase decision.

Yeah.

And when it comes to advertising we rely you know we we we really want our agents to be objective and unsuable. You know, if

you if you were using Claude and it was like, "Hey, I actually went with insert name of database because they showed me a really good ad." You're like, "Dude, dude, no. Use whatever's best."

dude, no. Use whatever's best."

Yeah.

Um, we we as humans are not objective creatures, but we we like to think we are.

Mhm.

So, you have been swayed by the incredible branding of Versel. You have

been swayed by that podcast you watched with the founder of MongoDB.

Y you just don't know it. And because of that we like we you know we we demand that our agents are objective too.

But it will the yeah the the relationship we have with advertising as it pertains to agents shopping on our behalf is going to be quite different.

Fascinating. Um, okay. Parting wisdom

for for marketers that are trying to figure out how to make sure that they're well positioned for this new era. Um,

perhaps with bosses sending them screenshots every day of like, hey, I put in this query. Why why are you not number one on the list? What wisdom

would you impart on them?

Uh, use profound.

I'm serious.

Um, okay. Use profound aside. Like what

what what should they be like what what should they be doing? I know there are no silver bullets, but what are the most important things to remember to equip themselves for this new world?

Um, I mean, look, like actually real like no shilling. Uh, genuinely, you need to use a platform like profound to understand how you show up because otherwise you're just guessing. You

know, you could these the there are these like reductionisms around, oh yeah, LinkedIn or Reddit really matters, but if you are just going on vibes, you will fail.

Yep. Each category is quite specific and you need to look at the sources and understand the sources and citations to determine how and why AI is mentioning

you in its responses. M

but then the second part is that we've now reached a point in marketing where if your marketing team is not using agents and in particular profound agents to do marketing

to build content to build marketing distribute marketing then you are failing as a marketer. I think this is it's gone from a nice to have to a must have. And

I think the big misconception with using agents to build marketing is that it's just a way to automate the work that we've been doing in the past.

Yeah.

And the reality is quite different is that you can now because of agents and because of LLMs, you can do a type of marketing that just frankly was not possible before. So you could build an

possible before. So you could build an agent that you know, for instance, we have an agent that we've built in house, a marketing agent that plums in all of

our gong transcripts from our sales calls and then captures all of the objections, buckets the objections into themes.

Mhm.

And then builds battle cards that we then that utilizing a knowledge base of our product that it then spits back to the sales team.

Nice.

In real time. And you know, 18 months ago, that would not have been possible or it would have taken a human. You

would have done it like once a quarter.

Yeah.

Now, now it runs every day in real time.

Yeah. Okay. So, the advice is you need visibility because you can't optimize what you can't see and to like fully embrace agentic marketing. If you're if you're

agentic marketing. If you're if you're not using it, you're just you're you're incredibly behind.

Yeah. I think it it'd be like not using the internet or something.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it would be like, hey, we're going to stick to print and TV.

Yeah.

Thanks. I don't believe in this internet thing.

Awesome. James, uh, thank you for this conversation. I really loved uh kind of

conversation. I really loved uh kind of peeling back the onion on how exactly agentled growth works and you've been at the forefront of so much of it. So,

thank you for joining today and sharing your hot takes and advice with with our audience.

Yeah, thanks for having me.