From Paid Search to Influence Marketing

A CMO Confidential Interview with Mike Walrath, Chairman and CEO of Yext, Inc., formerly CEO of Right Media, and SVP at Yahoo! Mike discusses what he believes is the collapse of the marketing funnel, the need to understand how AI consumes data while judgement stays with consumers, and how an "influence marketing" mindset is emerging. Key topics include: why CMOs will need to be both great brand strategists as well as scientists, the need to constantly distribute information and "tend it like a garden," and why Reddit is great for training AI, but not as important in building brand influence. Tune in to hear a story about why you shouldn't let ChatGPT talk in an unsupervised forum and why Land Rover should send me a polo shirt.

This week, Mike Linton sits down with Mike Walrath, Chairman & CEO of  @yext  (and founder of WGI Group), to unpack why the classic awareness–consideration–conversion funnel is collapsing—and what CMOs must do next. From zero-click discovery and AI agents “front-ending” consumers to why structured first-party data now beats pretty websites, Walrath maps the new rules for brand, distribution, and measurement in an AI-led marketplace.

We cover: how consideration gets outsourced to AI, why marketers will “market to agents” (without controlling the ad copy), the coming arms race in citations and data distribution, and what organizational fixes boards and CMOs should make now. If you own brand, growth, or P&L accountability, this is a playbook for the next chapter.

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Highlights

* Why “zero-click” compresses awareness and consideration inside AI experiences—and how to win the AI bake-off.

* The end of marketer-controlled ad copy; influence shifts to data quality, recency, and distribution.

* Memory and context change everything: agents know the consumer—and your brand—better than you think.

* Brand matters more, not less; without brand salience you won’t make the answer set.

* From content to data: make every spec, price, menu, inventory, policy, and promo machine-readable and syndicated.

* Citations, not vibes: first-party sites and listings dominate AI references; keep them fresh and authoritative.

* Org design: hire the data athletes, upgrade infrastructure, and instrument real conversion milestones (tests, visits, units).

New episodes every Tuesday on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. If you find this useful, please like, subscribe, and share with your team.

**Guests**

Mike Walrath — Chairman & CEO, Yext; Founder, WGI Group.

Host: Mike Linton — former CMO of Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance; former CRO, Ancestry.

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