Bonus: Top of Funnel Collapse: How AI & AEO Are Changing Consumer Behavior & How Marketers Can Adapt

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This episode, Kemberly Gong, VP of Marketing at Contentful, joins Eric to walk through what some marketing leaders are calling “The Great Content Collapse”, and what marketers can actually do about it.

The setup: 60% of Google searches now result in zero click-through, and replaced by GenAI models like AI overviews. LLMs already account for 5% of traffic and climbing. Marketing budgets are flat or shrinking. Companies are flooding consumers with AI slop to hit KPIs. And consumers can smell it. 50% lose trust in a brand when they think the content was written by AI.

Explore Contentful: https://www.contentful.com/?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=fy27-q2-global-tl_awareness&utm_content=gcc

What you'll learn:

• What is the "great content collapse" and why traditional content strategy is breaking
• AEO vs SEO: where they overlap and where they diverge
• Why agentic agents prefer structured, query-aligned content with third-party validation
• How buyer behavior is changing and what marketing teams can do to stay ahead
• Where brands over-rely on AI and how to keep the human voice
• The 30-day content audit for the agentic web
• The Pets Deli case: 50% conversion lift from one personalization change
• The Ruggable BFCM case: 7x CTR and 25% conversion lift from personalized hero banners + homepages
• How Bossard scaled its content across 18 languages and 38 countries with AI workflows using personalization software
• What On Running does to drive 40% of sales online
• Plus: Kemberly Gong's 30-day content audit checklist for the agentic web.

Timestamps:

00:00 The Great Content Collapse

05:38 AEO vs SEO Explained

10:08 Why Personalization Wins in 2026

13:27 Where AI Actually Helps Marketing Teams

22:23 Building Brand Trust Across Channels

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