Selling to SMBs? Make this your Thursday read

AI recommends local businesses on review volume rather than star rating, ChatGPT's ads manager goes self-serve with the $50k minimum spend scrapped, the highest-converting pages are boring "X vs Y" comparisons rather than blog posts, ChatGPT cites Reddit and Wikipedia four times more than the press, and the social accounts actually growing are the ones willing to be a bit cringe.

A newsletter writer who sent 366 daily emails without missing one, the newsletters hitting 55% open rates through nothing cleverer than showing up on schedule, why AI search cites listicles and comparison pages more than anything else, Google's new AI Overview impressions report and why it isn't a scoreboard, and our own benchmark of 10,000 local businesses proving ChatGPT 'knowing' a business is worth roughly nothing if it never recommends it.

Kevin Indig's data shows 89% of AI search demand sits in categories with no clear owner, Telepathic's technical checklist for getting AI crawlers to actually read a site, how Notion's growth came from unglamorous community grunt work rather than luck, why the AI ad that converted for HiBob was deliberately made to look less like AI, and where AI actually earns its keep in a newsletter workflow.