Hosts Laura Hill, Amanda Boatright, and Nisha Bagepalli kick off the new year by digging into a widely shared B2B go to market report from Growth Unhinged. The report covers where companies are placing their biggest bets for 2026, and the hosts use it as a jumping off point for three questions: is AEO really the new SEO, is AI actually moving pipeline, and what does scaling look like this year.

Summary

Nisha flagged the report the week before, and Laura spent time digging into the details ahead of the conversation. The first question the group tackles is whether AEO is a genuine shift or just another hype cycle. The consensus is firmly that it is real. Search behavior itself is changing, and there is growing talk that a meaningful share of future buyers will be AI agents rather than people, which changes what it even means to write content that gets found. The group is candid that they felt behind on this a year ago and have since restructured how content and websites get built specifically to show up in AI driven search.

One data point genuinely surprises the group: the report ranks PR near the bottom of planned investment increases even though it directly feeds the third party validation that AEO depends on. The hosts spend real time picking apart what looks like a disconnect, questioning whether companies are simply already invested in PR and are not counting it as new spend, or whether it is a genuine blind spot in how teams are prioritizing their 2026 budgets.

The conversation then turns to whether AI generated content is translating into actual pipeline, or just more volume, more of what the group bluntly calls slop. Nisha argues for quality over throughput, and pushes back on the idea that today’s AI generated content quality is a permanent ceiling, pointing out how quickly models are improving at pulling from a company’s own proprietary data and messaging. The group agrees on one non negotiable though, the quality of what comes out is still entirely dependent on the quality of the human doing the prompting, reviewing, and refining. Several hosts share their own experience catching content that read as too automated and pulling it back toward something more authentically human, especially for more conservative buyers like health systems who are still building trust in letting AI run any part of the process unsupervised.

The final stretch covers scaling, and specifically the temptation to cut testing when budgets and time get tight. The hosts push back hard on that instinct. Testing is described as inseparable from the marketing process itself, not a nice to have that can be trimmed. One host shares a concrete example: after stepping away from Meta for B2B for a while, renewed testing showed it actually outperforming LinkedIn for a specific client and project, a result nobody would have found without continuing to test.

Key Points

• AEO is a real, lasting shift, not hype. The panel agrees search behavior is fundamentally changing, and the idea of AI agents doing meaningful buyer research on a company’s behalf is close enough that teams need to be building for it now, not waiting to catch up later.
• Getting ahead of a trend pays off. The team that acted on this a year ago, restructuring content and site architecture to be more discoverable by AI search, describes a meaningful shift in how their content performs, even if it is not yet a huge share of total traffic.
• PR’s low ranking in the report was the biggest surprise. Despite PR being a key source of the third party validation that feeds AEO, the report shows companies planning to invest far more in channels like LinkedIn than in PR, a disconnect the hosts think is worth a second look.
• Quality over quantity is the right frame for AI generated content. Rather than chasing more output, the better goal is better output, since improved lead quality drives real conversion gains further down the funnel.
• AI content quality is not static, it is improving fast. Concerns about generic or low quality AI content are already being addressed as models get better at pulling from a company’s own proprietary data and voice, rather than generic training data.
• The human in the loop has not gone away, it has moved. Even as AI handles more of the process end to end, the quality of the final output still traces back to the quality of the person prompting, reviewing, and refining it.
• Trust in AI varies a lot by audience. More conservative buyers, including health systems and other large, risk averse organizations, are still building comfort with letting AI run any part of the customer relationship unsupervised, which shapes how much automation actually makes sense per client.
• Do not cut testing to save time or budget. Testing should not be treated as a separate, trimmable activity. It is described as baked into the marketing process itself, and reducing it risks missing real shifts in what is actually working.
• Channel performance can surprise you if you keep testing. After stepping back from Meta for B2B work, renewed testing on a specific project found it outperforming LinkedIn, a result that would have been missed without continuing to test previously deprioritized channels.

A Note From the Hosts

Have thoughts on where you are placing your own 2026 bets? The hosts want to hear from you at CMOsOffScript.