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Welcome to The Brief by Kuro House, where we bring you the sharpest insights and the most compelling stories from the world of marketing, tech, and media. Today, we’re diving deep into the evolving landscape of SEO in the age of AI, the existential questions facing publishers as browsers get smarter, why brand-led growth is outpacing performance marketing, and a timely reminder that marketing’s “dead” tactics are very much alive. Let’s get into the details.
First up, from Digiday, let’s talk about the biggest SEO lessons of 2025 for publishers. This year, AI-powered search has fundamentally changed the rules of SEO. Gone are the days when optimizing headlines and keywords was enough—now, publishers are focusing on brand visibility and attribution to appear in AI search results. Ed Hyatt, director of newsroom SEO at The Wall Street Journal, emphasizes the importance of being intentional with your content and audience, and building authority in key topic areas. The old KPI of traffic is no longer the main measure of SEO success. Instead, publishers are tracking more holistic metrics like subscriber growth, free registrations, and deeper reader connections. For example, Forbes introduced an AI-powered dynamic paywall to reduce reliance on search-driven programmatic revenue, and The Economist is experimenting with ways to convert social followers into registered users. Tools like Profound, Semrush, and Similarweb are helping publishers track AI-driven discovery, prompt data, and citation tracking. But the learning curve is steep—publishers are still figuring out how to make sense of all this new data. Another key shift is the decline of evergreen content: AI now favors recently updated material, and Google’s AI Overviews often answer queries directly, bypassing publisher links. The real “hot topic” is agentic search, where AI browsers can search, compare, and even book things for users—without ever sending them to the source site. This means publishers must rethink how their content is structured to stay discoverable and relevant in a world where agents, not humans, are doing the browsing.
Staying on the topic of AI, Digiday also reports on the rise of “agentic browsers”—a new breed of AI-powered browsers like Perplexity’s Comet, OpenAI’s Atlas, and The Browser Company’s Dia/Arc. These tools don’t just show users web pages; they can read, summarize, and act on information inside the browser itself, further cutting publishers out of the direct audience relationship. While agentic browsers haven’t yet reached mainstream scale—Chrome still dominates with about 70% market share—publishers are wary after seeing how quickly AI Overviews changed search behavior. The big concern? When browsers become agents, publishers lose not just traffic, but the ability to connect directly with their audience. There’s also the issue of advertising: agentic browsers can’t be easily differentiated from human visitors, making it hard to measure ad effectiveness. Some, like Perplexity’s Comet, even block ads and trackers by default. To adapt, publishers are moving their ad stacks server-side, using frameworks like the IAB Tech Lab’s Trusted Server to maintain addressability and reduce exposure to browser-level blocking. The key takeaway: publishers need to get ahead of these shifts, understand what data agentic browsers are collecting, and develop strategies to ensure their content—and their business models—aren’t left behind as AI agents become the new gatekeepers of the web.
Switching gears to brand strategy, Adweek’s interview with Caryn Wasser, chief brand officer at Little Spoon, offers a masterclass in why brand-led growth is beating performance marketing. Wasser built Little Spoon from a two-person startup in a windowless WeWork into a $150 million business and the largest online baby and kids food company in the U.S. Her approach? Treat brand as the core growth engine, not just a halo effect. Wasser argues that separating brand and performance marketing into silos limits growth; instead, every marketer should understand their impact across the full funnel. She stresses the importance of rooting marketing in consumer truth—focusing on real customer needs, not just conversion metrics. This means every data point should be seen as a proxy for an actual person, ensuring campaigns are both authentic and effective. Wasser also highlights the need for regular cross-functional meetings to prevent “insight leakage” between teams, ensuring that feedback from community managers, performance marketers, and creatives informs strategy across the board. When it comes to influencer partnerships, Wasser’s rule is simple: only work with those who genuinely need and use the product, even if that means passing on high-profile opportunities. Authenticity, she says, is what compounds brand equity and drives sustainable growth.
On a more philosophical note, Adweek’s Mark Ritson reminds us that marketing loves to declare the end of things that still work. Last week, Sir Martin Sorrell claimed “there is no such thing as PR anymore,” arguing that digital storytelling is about flooding the internet with content, not traditional earned media. But as Ritson points out, Sorrell made this claim on a flagship radio program—a textbook PR move. Marketing has a long history of pronouncing tactics dead: from the “end of brand” to the “death of TV advertising,” and even the supposed extinction of traditional marketing. Yet, radio, email marketing, and TV ads are all still thriving, having evolved rather than disappeared. The lesson? Nothing in marketing truly dies; it adapts and finds new forms. As we head into 2026, Ritson urges marketers to focus less on headlines about the death of their craft and more on the persistence and evolution that defines the industry. PR professionals, SEO specialists, brand managers, and email marketers will all still be here in the new year—adapting, evolving, and continuing to drive results.
And that’s a wrap for today’s Brief. As we close out the year, it’s clear that marketing’s core principles—authenticity, adaptability, and a relentless focus on the audience—are more important than ever, even as technology and consumer behavior shift beneath our feet. Whether you’re rethinking your SEO strategy for an AI-powered future, preparing for the rise of agentic browsers, or doubling down on brand-led growth, remember: the tools may change, but the fundamentals endure. Thanks for tuning in, and here’s to a smart, successful year ahead.
