Business of Story #517: Where to Find The Right Audiences for Your Brand Stories With Rand Fishkin
May 26, 2025
Rand Fishkin, Cofounder and CEO of SparkToro, shares his expertise in audience intelligence. He explains how brands can escape the Google/Facebook monopoly to find their ideal audience more effectively. Rand discusses the importance of knowing your audience's preferences for impactful storytelling and introduces data-driven tools that simplify audience analysis. He also highlights the evolving landscape of digital marketing, addressing the role of AI in extracting insights while emphasizing the necessity for genuine human connection in brand narratives.
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SparkToro Breaks Ad Duopoly
- SparkToro reveals detailed audience behaviors by scraping publicly available online data.
- This bypasses costly ad spend and third-party research dominated by Google and Facebook.
Ads Often Just Extraction
- Most of the customers targeted by Google and Facebook ads would have bought anyway.
- Ad platforms extract margins by charging businesses for reaching their own customers.
Google Dominates Search Today
- Current search volumes show Google vastly outpaces ChatGPT.
- ChatGPT may gain share over time but is far from replacing Google in many sectors yet.
