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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most PR programs are built around the wrong success metric. Coverage volume, domain authority, and general brand recognition don't tell you whether the sources you're landing in are the ones AI actually reaches for when someone in your category asks a buying question. They aren't. The source sets AI trusts are topic-specific, tier-driven, and largely invisible to strategies designed for a different search environment. This post explains what the research shows and how to realign your earned media investment around the sources that actually move AI citation rates.
The 61% drop in organic CTR from AI Overviews is real, but it's only half the story. Brands earning citations in those summaries are seeing higher click-through rates than before AI Overviews existed. The divide between cited and uncited brands has calcified, and which side you're on comes down to whether Google's AI systems can find, parse, and trust what you've published.
Weekly. Opinionated. For people who make decisions with data.