Thinking that earns its place.

Research, analysis, and strategic commentary on marketing attribution, AI search visibility, and data-driven performance. Published by Arcalea practitioners with active client work in each area.

The 5 Cs Framework: A Strategic Guide for Business Leaders

The 5 Cs, Company, Collaborators, Customers, Competition, and Context, give leadership teams a complete picture of the forces shaping their competitive position. Understanding all five, and the relationships between them, is the prerequisite for any durable strategy.
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AEO Industry Index

Harvard Leads. Wharton Dominates Volume. The Other Five Are Competing for What's Left.

Arcalea tracked 40 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude to measure which M7 business schools appear in AI-generated answers to MBA applicant queries. The composite scores reveal a 9-point gap between the top three and the bottom four, plus a platform-level split no one saw coming. 

7 M7 schools ranked 767 AI mentions analyzed 4 platforms
Arcalea Research Team
Higher Ed · March 2026
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AEO Industry Index

The Agencies Winning on Google and the Agencies Winning in AI Are Not the Same Companies.

73 prompts. 247 AI responses. 15 surrogacy agencies tracked. Arcalea's surrogacy AEO Index reveals a fundamental split: of 15 agencies in the index, exactly one wins on both Google and AI. Every other agency is winning on one channel and losing on the other.

15 agencies tracked 247 responses 4 platforms
Arcalea Research Team
Surrogacy · March 2026
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AEO Industry Index

Ferguson Dominates. Hajoca Doesn't Exist. The $40B Distribution Market Has an AI Visibility Problem.

62 prompts. 21 distributors. The largest private plumbing distributor in the US operates under 60-plus regional trade names, and AI engines have no idea who they are. Arcalea's commercial distribution index documents the entity fragmentation problem hiding inside the industry's market structure.

21 distributors ranked 62 prompts 4 platforms
Arcalea Research Team
Commercial Distributio · March 2026
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Industry Report

Twelve Predictions for Digital, Data, Analytics & AI in 2026

Six global practitioners. Twelve expert-backed predictions across digital infrastructure, data architecture, AI governance, agentic workflows, and ROI frameworks. Download the D2A2 2026 Insights Report to see where enterprise leaders are placing their bets.

12 predictions 6 practitioners 2026 outlook
Arcalea Research Team
Enterprise AI · March 2026
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Framework

The Architecture of Authority: How SEO, AEO, and GEO Work Togethe

The three disciplines that determine which brands get cited by AI engines versus which get ignored. A structural overview of how authority is built in the AI search era.

Arcalea Research Team
Research · 2025
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Business Intelligence and Predictive Revenue Modeling: The Arcalea Revenue Clarity Framework

Predictive revenue modeling connects advertising spend to projected revenue by tracing conversion paths from initial investment through customer lifetime value. Arcalea's Revenue Clarity Model structures this process into three implementation layers that any organization can deploy against existing marketing and financial data.

Chris Larkin
13 min read
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B2B Attribution: Measuring Impact Across Complex Sales Cycles

B2B attribution fails when organizations apply B2C logic to enterprise sales. This guide covers how to select the right multi-touch model, configure HubSpot or Salesforce to capture account-level data, measure marketing credit at every pipeline stage, and map the buying committee in ABM programs.

Chris Larkin
27 min read
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A Complete Guide to Attribution Models

Marketing attribution distributes conversion credit across the touchpoints in a customer journey. There are 7 primary attribution models in use today, from first-touch to algorithmic data-driven, each producing meaningfully different channel ROI numbers from the same underlying data.

Chris Larkin
9 min read
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Independent Cookieless Attribution

Learn how to measure marketing impact in a cookieless world. Discover strategies for first-party attribution that don't rely on third-party cookies.

Chris Larkin
12 min read
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GA4 Data-Driven Attribution: What It Measures Well and Where It Falls Short

GA4's Data-Driven Attribution model uses machine learning to assign conversion credit across touchpoints, a meaningful step beyond last-click. But it has real constraints that affect how reliable its outputs are for budget decisions. Here is what marketing and analytics teams need to understand before relying on it.

Chris Larkin
14 min read
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Privacy-First Advertising in 2026: What Actually Replaced Cookies

Google reversed its plan to deprecate third-party cookies after 4 years of announced deadlines. Apple’s ATT framework reduced measurable iOS conversion data by 30 to 50% for most advertisers. This article covers what actually changed in the privacy-first shift, which predictions came true, and how to measure advertising without relying on platform-reported attribution.

Chris Larkin
22 min read
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