TUNOMATIC Quarter Notes | Vol. 5
The latest & greatest hits since April 2025
Hi all,
Another 90 days or so doing my best to “live, laugh, eat, pray, drive growth, and love” are now behind me.
For this update, I want to try something new and go a little deeper here for you all on a timely growth topic and hopefully bring you some clarity amidst all the AI noise.
After that, I’ll share what my clients and I have been up to, and end on a personal reflection about staying centered on unstable ground.
This edition is sponsored by the letter P.
People Perusing Products
(aka SE-OMG-eddon?)
Let’s kick off with something all brands are (or should be) thinking about: the rapidly shifting search landscape.
First off - what did Google do in the last few months?
They continued to expand the release of AI Overviews for more search queries, which effectively suppresses paid and organic search links lower, often lower “below the fold” of your desktop browser screen.
They announced the release of AI Mode at Google I/O 2025 in May in an attempt to more directly compete with LLM-based search experiences like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity (which I now use as my primary search engine).
They released a Core Update to the search algorithm in late June which is now also starting to impact brands’ baseline search volume for better or worse.
AI Overviews are starting to show up in the YouTube app too.
Before we jump into the implications of all this, it is important to be clear on our terms. AI Overviews and AI Mode are not the same thing. See below for how the experiences differ for a sample search query. The latter is rolling out for users over time. You should expect it to be available to everyone very soon (if it isn’t already) as an option (it is not yet a default experience, though who knows when/if that will happen). Time will tell…
And what about those other LLMs?
They are continuing to gain traction and adoption amongst the general public. The below data from EMARKETER shows that as of April, over 48% of US adults were already somewhat to very likely to use AI tools for shopping research, and the trend has only accelerated since.
So how is it impacting customer behavior?
For brands I work with, we’re now starting to look at specific referral traffic from LLM search within Google Analytics 4 and are seeing continuous MoM increases in both absolute referral traffic and share of referral traffic. It is still in the single-digit percentage points of traffic share but the MoM share rates are also rising; in one specific business I partner with, the April → May MoM increase in share was 20% and May → June MoM increase was 27%. I suspect this will only continue to ramp exponentially.
Ahrefs also shared some great data showing that overall search impressions on the SERP (search engine results page) are going up for brands, but clicks to brand sites are going down due to AI Overviews, which have scaled by over 116% for many industries. To clarify what is exactly happening here:
Impressions are going up because your brand can be featured both in an AI Overview citation AND as a traditional link on the SERP below the AI Overview at the same time (Impressions may also up when your brand is featured in AI Mode too).
Clicks, however, are going down because of “zero-click” behavior, meaning when customers get the answers they need up front and stop there without clicking on any websites…or opening up another tab to directly searching for the site or typing in the URL directly.
The result: 35% reduction in net click-through rates for some brands from search queries.
SEMRush identified as well that traffic coming from LLMs converts at up to a 4.4x higher than average rate, which makes sense when you put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Customers are getting exactly the answers they need, quickly, during a state of high-intent, and so they continue the momentum to purchase or sign-up faster than if they would have had to comb through potentially less-relevant content filled with bad display ads, pop-ups, and other distractions.
So what does this mean for brands?
First off, it is important to note that for now, these changes are impacting industries differently.
In an physical goods shopping context, Google often continues to promote paid shopping ads right at the top of the search because it provides a customer exactly what they want…and it continues to make Google lots of money.
Other industries, like health and finance (remember Google’s “Your Money Your Life” aka “YMYL” category for select guidelines for advertising?), may continue to be impacted less significantly in the immediate term due the category sensitivity, but don’t count on it for long.
Either way, the way most customers will find you is going to be dramatically different in the near future.
SEMRush has gone so far as to predict that LLM search will completely overtake traditional SEO search by 2027. I disagree. I think it will happen before the end of 2026.
This will be the biggest transformation to the marketing landscape since Apple released iOS 14.5 and broke the mobile app advertising ecosystem (and my mental health) in mid-2021.
So what should you do about it?
There are a range of tactical and strategic things you should consider to build a resilient search marketing practice, with #5 being the most important.
Include broad keywords in your Google Ads search ads so that you can potentially show up in “AI Overview” placements and get above the fold for relevant search queries.
Stay (and get more) engaged in your digital social communities. Quora is the most cited website for AI Overviews right now and Reddit is highly sited across all the LLM-based search engines as well. Instagram business profile posts will now also be able to be crawled by LLMs for consideration as well.
Continue to focus on quality content. 89% of ChatGPT citations are above position 21 for search queries, not just the top 5 or the first page of the SERP, so go deep on topics leveraging your EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, & Trustworthiness) to make content that is high-quality, valuable, and based on your direct personal knowledge. LLMs are generating multiple types of queries in parallel to answer questions so the more you focus on digging into areas you are most equipped to provide comprehensive value, the better.
Keep an eye on your data trends. Track AI Mode search trends in Google Search Console.Build custom channel groups in Google Analytics 4 to monitor “LLM search” trends over time too. So far, I’ve been grouping the GA4 “sources” of Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini together for quick monitoring. Look at aggregate traffic patterns too given the channel groups like Direct & Organic are going to be wonky for a while as customer behavior changes; people went from clicking on search result, to opening another tab and searching for the brand. It may take a while for Google and others to evolve how to report on this in a more useful way given these changes. Also consider 3rd party tools to evaluate your share-of-voice across various LLMs (It’s too early for me to recommend any but I’d love to hear your suggestions!).
LAST BUT NOT LEAST: Diversify & build your brand. The search experience across organic and paid strategies is changing dramatically, but one thing will remain true: customers will search for what they want, will be influenced by the results they get back, and then buy. One of the best ways to win is to influence them before that search happens so that any distracting results don’t matter. I like to think of search as “pull” marketing, and channels like podcasts, digital video, TV, and direct mail as “push” marketing. Find your target customers, tell your story, present a solution to their problem, and push them into that search funnel with so much momentum that they can’t stop to smell the competitors’ roses.
When I discussed these trends and strategies with one of my clients, he said “This sounds just like the fundamentals of marketing”…and he’s right!
There was an era where it was reasonable to execute lots of tactical digital marketing hacks to find wins as the internet was still maturing. But as we now move towards a more intelligent and more natural search experience, it’s clear that the winners will be those that 1) develop great products and services that people love and want to share and talk about and 2) meet their potential customers where they are at, across a diversity of mediums, to tell their story.
Now go market! You got this!
People Presenting To Other People
Last quarter was a busy one for travel, taking me to Vegas and New York City to present (twice somehow) at Mobile Apps Unlocked (MAU) conference and participate in some NYC Fintech Week events & panels. I got a chance to share insights across everything from measurement, onboarding, and channel diversification, to the biggest retention levers across fintech, mobile, and subscription industries.
You can watch my full MAU presentation with my client GOHUNT on how we delivered incredible YoY growth for them so far in 2025 here. A key part came from mapping their growth model and key levers below:
The great
, who runs Retention.Blog, was also kind enough to share some of his favorite takeaways below from the talk (as well as some other great sessions) which you can check out below:
People Partnering With Other People
Making new friends…
Instrumentl
I’ve had the great pleasure to start working with the team at Instrumentl on their next phase of growth until they find a full-time VP, Marketing.
If you are interested in scaling B2B SaaS that helps non-profits discover, apply for, and manage grants to deliver impact for their communities, let me know and I’d love to connect you to the team. CEO and founder Gauri Manglik and the team are great!
They have strong product-market fit, an incredible mission, are female-led, and are well-capitalized. Does it get better than that??
Mora
I also spent some time supporting the inspiring Murti Hussain on his family focused-fintech Mora. One of the fastest shipping teams I’ve ever seen! I highly recommend reading Murti’s story of building 15 startups in 21 months (check out Part 1 here). It’s wild!
…while continuing to support the old.
Earlybird
After advising EarlyBird co-founders Caleb Frankel and Jordan Wexler for about 8 months, I introduced them to Acorns CEO Noah Kerner that kicked off what eventually led to Acorns acquiring Earlybird (TechCrunch article) as they continue to advance their vision of a building the best multi-generational family financial wellness system. Congratulations again team!
Flora
Also proud of Aabesh De, Founder & CEO of Flora (and fellow Indiana University B-School Hoosier alum) who made it onto CNN recently to share his perspective on how tariffs has impacted his business. This man can do it all - building hardware, building software, making deals on Shark Tank, meeting with government leaders on tariff policy at the White House, fundraising, and starting a new family. He simply can’t and won’t be stopped!
Presence in a Peculiar, Painful Paradise
When you are an infant, you cry sometimes because you just need something to change (perhaps your diaper) and you don’t know how to communicate you need help in a less intense way.
When you are a young child, you cry sometimes because someone has stripped some agency from you (…perhaps losing the right to choose what to watch on TV once your dad gets home from work at a company he has been committed to since he was 18 years old so he could climb his way up and build a family and five mouths to feed with at least one of them not grateful in that moment because they were right in the middle of BattleBots!….just me?)
When you are young adult, you cry sometimes because you’re insecure about things that probably don’t matter (…such as moving to a new exciting role in a Fortune 250 company after you spent over 60 hours a week building out what you believed to be a fully-optimized direct response print advertising marketing program for them only to hand it off to and train someone who is far less enthusiastic about it and even told you they may intend to quit in a few months, which in your eyes means all that hard work could fall apart…just me again??)
When you’re an older adult, you cry sometimes because you are confronted with something much deeper: the unpredictability and impermanence of all the aspects of your life.
The habits, the traditions, the people, everything. The only constant in life is change. Entropy rules the universe.
Sometimes the tears you cry are happy tears. Other times they are less than happy.
This last quarter, I experienced a few stories of increasing gravity that gave me what I choose to call a gift. Gifts that have cemented my appreciation for every moment.
I’ll bucket them under three categories: The Great Gifts, The Not-So-Great-But-Actually-Still-Great Gifts, and The Terrible Gifts.
The Great Gifts
Three amazing weddings in Florida, Indianapolis, and New York
A trip with my partner’s family to Puerto Rico
These were the gifts that brought me right into some of the most special moments of life that I get to witness, celebrate, and play some small part in.
Some were celebrating newly committed lovers surround by the most important people in their lives, which included college best friends, former bandmates, and distant relatives (plus one of my favorite places on earth: a wedding dance floor).
Others included homecomings and celebrations of heritage and tradition. In one case, a son’s trip back to Puerto Rico to further understand and appreciate his parents early beginnings and hard work that brought them to NYC to give him the best life they could. In another, a wedding held in the same historic 100-year old church where the groom’s grandparents also shared their vows decades earlier.
All were transformative, singular, and precious moments that will never happen again.
The Not-So-Great But Actually Still Great Gifts
The Bonnaroo Music & Arts festival cancelled after Day 1 of 4
Multiple flight attempts to a wedding cancelled due to bad weather
These were the gifts that reminded me how far I’ve come with focusing on what I can control. Both were cases of exciting plans I’d been looking forward to for months that got extremely derailed fast.
While I could’ve sulked in the misfortune, I was able to find joy in the parts of the experiences I had, calmly adjusted my plans accordingly to make the best out of the situations, and came out the other side without carrying any anger or resentment.
In a weird way, I was glad this is how these events went, because they gave me an opportunity to test myself and see if I was able to truly live my values - and pass!
The Terrible Gifts
My young friend in his 30’s got diagnosed with ALS shortly before proposing to his girlfriend
A family friend in her 60’s died of cancer right before she was set to retire and spend time traveling with my parents
These were the gifts that reminded me just how delicate and precious life is. When devastating news like this hits, you mourn. But then you must move forward.
My young friend did; he still proposed to his partner, moved back to London to be closer to family, and now is rooting on McLaren with his closest friends and family.
There’s no time to waste. The time will always be now.
Move to do the things you’ve been holding off on doing because you were afraid of failing, getting hurt, or hurting others.
While reading “The Courage To Be Disliked”, I learned of the Rabbil Hillel the Elder quote: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?"
Pursue what you want in life before it is too late.
And if that little negative self-talk voice is still in your head, remember the oft-quoted line (with mixed origins):
When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks.
When you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks.
When you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.
And if that didn’t shake you, and you remain dead-set on being the most financially successful and accredited person in your field at the sacrifice of your relationships and joy, keep in mind this exchange from the late great Kurt Vonnegut:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer…and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
I wish your next three months are filled with enough: the people, the work, and the activities that light you up.
Stay kind and stay curious,
Anthony
Thanks for the mention, Anthony :)