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Welcome to Volume 279 👋
Happy Thursday!
In this week’s newsletter, we cover:
- 🔍 B2B Buyers Are Asking AI First. Is Your Brand Ready for That?
- 📊 ChatGPT Has 12% of Google’s Search Volume — But CTR Lags
- 👀 The Latest in B2B SaaS This Week
- 🧠 This Week’s Brain Food
- ➕ The Best Content Across the Web
- 📣 We’re Hiring: Check Out Our Open Positions!
Let’s get into it.
🔍 Buyers Are Asking AI First. Is Your Brand Ready for That?
We ran the same query — “What are the leading platforms for account-based marketing?” — across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Adobe Marketo Engage, a platform acquired for $4.75 billion, appeared in zero out of three responses. Meanwhile, 6sense and Demandbase showed up in all three.
That’s not a ranking failure. It’s something worse: total absence from the conversation where buyers are forming their shortlists.
New data from the 6sense 2025 Buyer Experience Report confirms why this matters: 95% of buyers purchase from their Day One shortlist, 94% rank that list before ever talking to a seller, and the first vendor contacted wins ~80% of deals. Among enterprises with 1,000+ employees, AI search has already overtaken Google as a research source.
We break down what this pre-intent layer means for your content strategy, your attribution model, and how you define “early funnel” in 2026.
Read the full breakdown → https://foundationinc.co/lab/buyers-ai
📊 ChatGPT Has 12% of Google’s Search Volume — But CTR Lags
ChatGPT has quietly surpassed Bing in search volume. But the traffic story tells a very different tale.
New research from Ahrefs found that while ChatGPT now handles roughly 12% of the queries people traditionally typed into Google, it sends 190x less traffic to websites.
Google accounts for nearly 40% of all website traffic. ChatGPT? Just 0.21%.
It’s a staggering CTR Gap. While Google sits around 29%, ChatGPT lands at roughly 1.3% — a 96% drop.
From this angle, it’s hard to argue that these are competing search engines when really they are fundamentally different models: one connects people to websites, the other keeps them inside the conversation.
This adds a new layer to what Semrush found last August. Their study of 260 billion rows of clickstream data showed ChatGPT wasn’t replacing Google — it was expanding overall search behavior. Google usage held steady even after people adopted ChatGPT. Both platforms coexisted.
The Ahrefs data doesn’t contradict that. But it sharpens the picture: ChatGPT may not be stealing Google’s users, but it is absorbing intent without passing traffic along. People are searching more across both platforms — but only one is sending visitors to your site.
🗽 We’re Headed to SEO Week NYC
Ross Simmonds is taking the stage at SEO Week in NYC this April to break down exactly how modern brands earn real attention and lasting visibility across search, social, and AI systems in 2026.
If SEO, GEO, AI optimization, and smart content distribution are on your roadmap, this is the must-attend event.
Get 5% off your ticket with code SEO-SIMMONDS at seoweek.org
👀 What’s the Latest in B2B SaaS This Week?
💰 Vega raises $120M Series B to rethink how enterprises detect cyber threats | TechCrunch
📚 Amazon Discusses AI Content Marketplace With Publishers | The Information
🤖 OpenAI details how ads will work in ChatGPT | Search Engine Land
📈 Former GitHub CEO raises record $60M dev tool seed round at $300M valuation | TechCrunch
🚨 New Podcast Alert: From Founder to CEO — Stop Doing More and Start Leading
In the latest episode of The Ross Simmonds Show, Ross gets real about the shift every founder has to make but few talk about this: the skills that built your business in the early days will eventually hold it back.
He breaks down why scaling is all about scaling yourself. Ross shares the frameworks, mindset shifts, and hard truths behind going from doing everything to leading through others.
Here’s what Ross covers:
- Your hustle got you here. It won’t get you there. The founder instincts that created early traction become bottlenecks at scale. Growth demands delegation, systems, and a new identity.
- Scaling has three core levers: Trust, Team, and Time. Ross walks through a simple framework for CEO-level decision-making that reduces stress and drives long-term performance.
- Trust is built through clarity, not control. Micromanagement kills momentum. Defining what success looks like, setting boundaries, and giving real autonomy is what unlocks your team.
- Hire people who are better than you. If you’re the smartest person in every room, you’re the ceiling. The discomfort of being surrounded by sharper talent is a sign of leadership maturity.
- Protect your time like a high-leverage asset. The highest-impact thing a CEO can do is shift from tactical reviews to strategic thinking — hiring, direction, and long-term bets.
- Every growth stage demands a new version of you. What got you to $1M won’t get you to $10M. Ross breaks down why founders must shed the “hustler” identity and evolve at every milestone.
Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcast or Spotify to learn how to stop being the bottleneck and start building a company that scales beyond you.
🧠 This Week’s Brain Food
I read a systematic review last week of 20 peer-reviewed studies on AI in academic research. It painted a conflicted picture. It turns out the same tools that increase productivity are eating skills that are paramount to quality researchers.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. The productivity gains are real. One study claimed ChatGPT cut writing time by 64.5%. Another showed professionals completed tasks 40% faster with higher quality output.
But the problem is that people aren’t even looking at what they (or it) write. 68% of participants in one study submitted completely unmodified AI-generated content. Only 7% of ChatGPT-generated citations were accurate. And despite all this, just 28% of postgraduate programs offer formal training on responsible AI use.
The researchers who wrote the review propose a three-pillar framework — institutional oversight, human-AI collaboration, and ethical use — to close the gap. But their core conclusion is the one that matters: GenAI is spreading faster than the judgment and guardrails needed to use it responsibly.
In an environment like academic research, that’s a ticking bomb.
Want to sponsor our next issue? Reply to this email, and we’ll share how you can reach more SaaS founders and marketers today.
🏅 Reddit Post of the Week
Content that gets cited by ChatGPT vs Perplexity vs AI Overviews In r/DigitalMarketing
🎖️ LinkedIn Post of the Week
The Reddit vs. Perplexity lawsuit reveals an uncomfortable truth about AI search By Jan-Willem Bobbink
🤳🏽 Nice Finds You Should Binge
- ChatGPT Shopping Could Get Complicated Fast | The Information
- Anonymized Queries Make Up Nearly Half of Google Search Console Traffic | Ahrefs
- ByteDance’s next-gen AI model can generate clips based on text, images, audio, and video | The Verge
- AI-First Agencies Will Eat The Conglomerates For Breakfast | Ross Simmonds
💻 Job Postings Worth Checking Out
Looking for a new opportunity? Here’s a round-up of some exciting job openings in the B2B SaaS space.
- Foundation Marketing | GEO Partnerships Coordinator (PT)
- Foundation Marketing | Senior Account Manager
- Foundation Marketing | Reddit Specialist
- Foundation Marketing | Content Creator
- Foundation Marketing | Senior Account Coordinator
- Foundation Marketing | Senior Content Strategist
- Foundation Marketing | Executive Marketing & Outreach Assistant
Want us to include your job postings in our next issue? Reply to this email, and we’ll share how you can reach more SaaS professionals today.
🎧 What We’re Wired Into This Week
This SaaS news smattering is brought to you by Ethan Crump!
If you have any feedback, suggestions, or ideas you want to see in this newsletter, feel free to email me at ethan@foundationinc.co. We’re always looking for ways to improve and provide the best B2B SaaS marketing resources.
Have a great weekend!
