I started this newsletter mostly to force myself to keep up with all the new AI marketing news. Things are moving fast! I figured other people might want to learn about it too, so here we are. If there are topics or companies you’d like me to cover, please send them over. I’m a team of one person, so I’ll do what I can. If you want to connect, you can find me running the fractional CMO arm of Foxtown Marketing on most days.

Welcome to today's edition of AI Marketing Geek, your daily dose of the latest AI developments, tools, trends, and actionable insights shaping marketing in 2026. As AI shifts from experimental hype to pragmatic, ROI-driven reality, we're seeing agentic AI take center stage. Autonomous agents are handling media buying, personalization, and commerce, which is wild to watch.

Two independent research studies landed this week confirming something that should prompt every B2B marketer to rethink where they spend their content energy. LinkedIn has become the number one cited source for professional queries across every major AI platform, and most brands have not noticed yet.

LinkedIn has become one of the top sources for AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, according to new data from marketing platform Profound. Since November 2025, LinkedIn's citation frequency has doubled and it is now the number one domain cited in professional search queries. LinkedIn posts, long-form articles, and newsletters account for 35% of all LinkedIn citations within ChatGPT, while profiles are cited 14.5% of the time.

The speed of the rise is what makes this remarkable. Between November 2025 and February 2026, the platform surged from outside the top 20 to rank among the most cited sources on ChatGPT and is now the number one most cited domain for professional queries across all AI search platforms, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity.

A separate SEMrush study covering 325,000 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity confirmed the pattern from a different angle. The study found that LinkedIn ranked as the second most cited source in AI-generated answers overall, just behind Reddit. Community and creator-driven platforms like Reddit, Wikipedia, and YouTube have all emerged as some of the most cited sources in AI responses because they host real, conversational human insights that models latch onto when answering nuanced queries.

There is also a detail in the data that reveals something about what AI systems are actually rewarding. Profile page citations declined from 33.9% to 14.5% during the period studied. Articles between 500 and 2,000 words are the most frequently cited LinkedIn content. For feed posts, mid-length content between 50 and 299 words performs best. The shift reflects a broader pattern: AI systems are increasingly referencing published content rather than static profile data when answering professional queries.

For law firms and professional services in particular, this is directly actionable intelligence. When a potential client asks ChatGPT or Perplexity who the best attorneys are in a given practice area or city, the AI is pulling largely from LinkedIn content. A firm whose attorneys publish nothing on LinkedIn, or whose posts are generic reposts of articles, is effectively invisible in that answer. The firms building authority through consistent, specific, expert-authored LinkedIn content right now are accumulating a citation advantage that will compound over time.

NPR published a piece today that is genuinely interesting for anyone thinking about niche audience marketing and what happens when you design a campaign to exclude the majority of people who see it.

Ads bearing slogans like "Agents don't work without evals," "Too much B2B SAAS," and "Intelligent AF" have sprung up across San Francisco over the past couple of years, placed by AI startups flush with venture capital cash. Billboard rental revenue in the city grew by around 30% between 2023 and 2025, according to data provided by the outdoor advertising company Outfront Media, with advertisers waiting many months for spots in the most desirable locations.

The deliberate unintelligibility is the strategy, not a failure of it. "The goal is intentional in a kind of 'if-you-know-you-know' type of way," said Mike Bilodeau, head of marketing at AI infrastructure startup Baseten, which runs ads bearing slogans like "Own your models," "Own Your SLAs," and "Own Your Nines." "For a lot of folks, the ads don't really mean anything. But we're selling to engineers. They're like, 'Oh, we know exactly what this is.'"

The outdoor advertising company's west region senior marketing director described the distinction this way: "Traditional campaigns often try to clearly explain a product to a defined audience. These cryptic tech ads assume the audience already understands the context, and rely on shared language, inside jokes, or cultural cues, rather than specific messaging."

There is a real upside that PR and marketing consultants acknowledge. PR and marketing consultant Michelle Garrett said billboards signal legitimacy and that insider-baseball language creates buzz beyond the target audience. "There's kind of a mystique almost about it. And that almost adds to the viral piece of it, because people want to share it and talk about it."

But the research on exclusive language in marketing cuts the other way too. Marketing professor Karen Anne Wallach, who has studied how exclusive language in campaigns influences business outcomes, noted that the tech companies' approach divides people into an in-group and an out-group. "Long term, you tend to remember that kind of negative branding. And negative language then becomes part of what you associate with the brand."

For B2B marketers, this is a useful tension to sit with. Jargon-dense messaging can build deep credibility with a narrow, high-value audience while actively alienating everyone else. That trade-off might make sense for an AI infrastructure company selling exclusively to engineers. It makes less sense for a law firm trying to appeal to business owners with varying levels of legal sophistication. The discipline is knowing which audience you are actually optimizing for, and designing accordingly.

The Profound data is specific enough to act on directly. Here is what to do this week.

The most cited content types on LinkedIn are articles between 500 and 2,000 words and feed posts between 50 and 299 words. That is a very specific target. If you are writing 2,000-word LinkedIn posts or 50-word articles, you are outside the sweet spot the data identifies. Adjust accordingly.

Lead with the most important information. According to LinkedIn's own marketing team, the first line of your post or the title of your article is often your key takeaway and what gets cited by AI systems. Make it count. Posting regularly also helps build momentum, and including specific dates signals to both your audience and AI systems that the information is current.

The data shows profile citations are down sharply while article and post citations are rising fast. That means investing time in writing and publishing beats investing time in perfecting your LinkedIn profile for AI visibility purposes. A detailed profile is still worth having for human visitors, but the AI citation returns are coming from content, not credentials.

Finally, a note on authenticity that the research surfaces: 95% of all citations of content on LinkedIn come from original posts, not reshares. Publishing authentic content rather than fully AI-generated text can also help you avoid being flagged or blocked from indexing. AI systems are increasingly able to distinguish between original expert insight and generic AI-generated filler, and they are rewarding the former. Write like a person who actually knows what they are talking about, because that is what gets cited.

2026 is the year AI moves from "cool demos" to real and measurable business use cases. Expect more agentic tools, voice-powered targeting, and a focus on privacy-first data.

Stay ahead of the game by treating your AI reputation like your website. It would behoove you to make your brand easy for agents to understand and cite.

What AI experiment are you running this week? Reply and let me know. I'll feature top stories in future editions! (Everybody loves a good story)

Stay sharp,
Jon
@mistersterling
Chief AI Marketing Geek