Articles

Storyblok JoyConf ’26: ‘Content Confidence’ Stole the Show, but Human Connection was the Real Magic

matt-garrepy

<hr /> “We’re turning insight into action and that action into revenue, so marketers can work at the level of their ambition.”That’s how <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-stine-ceo-sitecore/">Sitecore CEO Eric Stine</a> introduced MarketingIQ, a new module now available in its next-gen <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/shock-and-ai-awe-sitecore-unleashes-sitecoreai-its-next-gen-ai-powered-dxp">SitecoreAI platform,</a> designed to help marketers bring their ideas to life by connecting brand intelligence with AI agent orchestration.The solution was officially unveiled at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Sitecore Symposium 2026</a> yesterday in Orlando, a fitting backdrop as the capital of “The Experience Economy.” At last year’s event, which was held in the same location, the company made a seismic shift – ushering in a bold agentic roadmap that is now positioning it as a global leader in AI-enabled digital experience software.When it comes to change, a year might be a decade in this new era. For the first time ever, automated bot and AI agent traffic has <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/agentic-web">officially surpassed human web traffic</a>, representing a larger audience of website visitors that's only growing.At the same time, AI discovery and visibility have become hyperbolic boardroom concerns as AI answer engines like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://claude.ai/login">Claude</a>, and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_Overviews">Google AI Overviews</a> represent more of the top-of-funnel consumer search behavior. The answers consumers receive are now driving decisions – and brands are often missing from the conversation. But it’s not enough to simply see or monitor what’s happening in these channels. Marketers are hungry for solutions that can help them act on those insights with greater speed and precision, and ultimately impact the bottom line. Unlocking that potential has become a serious focus for brands: according to a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-11-09-gartner-survey-finds-42-percent-of-cmos-are-monitoring-brand-misinformation-in-ai-generated-content">recent Gartner study,</a> 61% of marketing leaders have adapted their strategies to support AI-assisted buying motions.If you’ve been following my coverage of the burgeoning categories of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_engine_optimization">AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization),</a> it has become a noisy sector both up and downstream, with new players entering the field on a regular basis. In the race to deliver real value, vendors have been expanding their portfolios with an array of solutions, and I’ve looked at (almost) all of them. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:89.27%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/11/scrunch-screenshot.png" /></figure>Source: Scrunch website <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/crunch-time-for-ai-visibility-sitecores-acquisition-of-scrunch-gives-brands-an-edge-beyond-aeo">Sitecore’s acquisition of Scrunch</a> back in June stands out as one of the more potent power plays. I was already keen on Scrunch’s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://scrunch.com/platform/agent-experience/">Agent Experience Platform</a> as it was speaking the LLM love language by “scrunching” websites for AI traffic. But it was also making its intelligence more useful for marketers, providing tangible recommendations to help brands increase their visibility. There’s always been an echo of “smoke and mirrors” across the caverns of search engine marketing, and AEO and GEO have been harangued by a similar albatross. Some of the enterprise customers I've spoken to have seen mixed results from their investments. But Scrunch has garnered compelling results, where customers like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.akamai.com/">Akamai</a> (a leading cloud and content delivery provider) have notched an impressive 364% increase in visibility across non-branded prompts.And that’s not a blip. Scrunch has delivered similar outcomes for other brands and use cases, reinforcing why Sitecore has made it central focus of its go-to-market strategy. But there’s more to this digital explosion than what we see in the surface metrics. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:77.71%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/11/eric-chris-sitecore.jpg" /></figure>(Left to right) Sitecore CEO Eric Stine and Scrunch CEO and Cofounder Chris Andrew. Source: LinkedIn “This isn’t just about marketing, and it’s not just about technology,” Eric told me back in June. During an interview where we were joined by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswandrew/">Scrunch CEO Chris Andrew,</a> we discussed how this new platform was transforming the marketer’s toolkit and giving them a decisive edge on this new battlefield for brands – one where human judgment is playing a critical role.With so much data and decisioning, brands and teams have been saddled with cognitive overload and tightening bottlenecks. This is where MarketingIQ is making its value play as marketing that builds, runs, and improves itself – spotting opportunities, staging responses, and learning from the results. It harnesses the foundational understanding that Scrunch provides, turns it into action, and renders brand content and information readable for AI agents.“Conversational AI has redefined how customers discover information and make decisions about brands and their products and services,” Eric continued. “That’s why we brought Scrunch into Sitecore, and it’s why MarketingIQ now takes it further.”For brands to compete in this brave “New Web,” velocity is paramount. This is where platforms like Sitecore are crafting a strong position as a unified agentic ecosystem that encompasses AI discovery. MarketingIQ crystallizes this value, maintaining a source of truth for the evidence, planning, content, approvals, and measurement of visibility across the engine landscape. It also provides an authoritative system for branded content and assets for both people and agents.<h3 id="how-marketingiq-works">How MarketingIQ Works</h3><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/seasons-of-love-sitecore-symposium-2025-sings-putting-ai-and-marketers-in-the-spotlight">At last year's Symposium,</a> SitecoreAI was launched as a doorway to true one-to-one personalization, and the central hub for Sitecore’s ambitions in a world where AI engines were consuming more search traffic than ever. This new platform promised an agentic framework for automating tasks at scale, and helping marketers get real work done.MarketingIQ fits right at home in SitecoreAI, combining contextual intelligence around your brand and business with its native AI agent orchestration. That layer of agentic fuel is what powers insight into action, helping marketers identify opportunities worth pursuing, then orchestrating the entire response.With MarketingIQ, a marketer starts by identifying a specific goal or spotting a signal worth acting on. This can be a creative spark about reaching an audience, or a competitive opportunity that Scrunch surfaces. With a few simple prompts, a marketer can trigger an entire campaign, with MarketingIQ acting as a powerful lever to coordinate, execute, and ultimately learn and improve from the results.  <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:93.42%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/11/marketingiq-2.jpg" /></figure>Source: Sitecore website Because MarketingIQ connects to your broader marketing stack, it gathers brand and business context across SitecoreAI’s CMS or DAM, as well as through Scrunch, analytics, and the organization’s approved knowledge and content. This can also include key objectives and evidence about customers and previous results. MarketingIQ can decipher which facts support a claim, which audiences and products they apply to, and what content is suitable to use. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:92.4%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/11/marketingiq-1.png" /></figure><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:92.29%"><img /></figure>Source: Sitecore website MarketingIQ then coordinates with SitecoreAI’s agents, marshaling everything from product research, brief development, relevant content, and more. It also interfaces with your brand kit and asset library to ensure that everything is on point. From there, it can assemble assets into targeted campaign deliverables like landing pages with FAQs, all designed to reach specific customers, segments, and markets – and built for AI agents. Once completed, a human marketer can review, edit, approve, and launch with confidence – and measure whether a campaign improves discovery, attracts qualified customers, or increases conversions. Sitecore employs strong guardrails, ensuring that nothing leaves a staging area without human involvement,MarketingIQ is designed as a module within SitecoreAI's native agent orchestration platform, but it can also be harnessed to your AI assistant of choice (like ChatGPT or Claude). This provides greater flexibility and control for marketers based on their goals and preferences.One other key benefit of MarketingIQ is its raw extensibility. The solution works across Sitecore and third-party CMS, DAM, CRM, or other business apps – allowing organizations to connect the content, customer data, and capabilities they already have without replacing their underlying systems.<h3 id="agentic-automation-meets-human-judgement">Agentic automation meets human judgement</h3>Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts of AEO and the intersection with Scrunch – which is where MarketingIQ has the real potential to shine.Here’s a common use case: An AI answer omits your brand or lists outdated pricing for one of your products. Scrunch surfaces the issue, but MarketingIQ can examine the brand’s approved product information and existing content, then craft and stage a proposed resolution.Once the response is approved, MarketingIQ coordinates both the people and agents needed to complete the resolution. A marketing team can then measure if the response impacts visibility and qualified traffic, and whether that traffic actually converts. Here’s one of the best parts: MarketingIQ then uses the results to inform its next recommendation and action.As pitched, it’s marketing that builds, runs, and improves itself. And that elevates the value beyond simply identifying the gaps.“It’s one thing to understand how we show up in AI-based search results, but it drives little value unless you act upon it,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pilgerstorfer/">Oliver Pilgerstorfer</a>, Chief Marketing Officer at IFS, and a Sitecore customer. “That’s the real value of MarketingIQ, which combines the insights of Scrunch with the publishing capabilities of Sitecore. Now we can act on the findings, see the work turn into qualified pipeline and, ultimately, drive revenue growth. It’s an investment in outcomes.”Like all AI tools, human judgment is an essential component – and MarketingIQ makes it a key ingredient in the recipe. Marketers set both the strategy and priorities, and make all final decisions that require any human interaction. But in between, MarketingIQ does the heavy lifting, facilitating the handoffs and routine executions that can burden teams with coordinating disconnected work.<h3 id="the-verdict">The verdict</h3>MarketingIQ just rolled out, but it is – in a word – slick. It's where all roads have been leading in the agentic transformation of digital experience tools and the intersection with search, and it squarely elevates marketers at the pivotal points in the journey. Combined with Scrunch, it completes the picture of what a next-gen marketing toolset looks like in the AI era.As Sitecore pointed out in its announcement, MarketingIQ was built in collaboration with partners that know a thing or two about marketing technology and delivery. This includes <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perficient.com/">Perficient</a>, a leading global AI and technology consulting firm. The company is a testament to the acceleration effect of SitecoreAI, having launched its new website in just under 10 weeks by leveraging an AI-enabled experience platform.“Perficient is its own first client,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carriegrapenthin/">Carrie Grapenthin,</a> Perficient's Chief Marketing and Communications Officer. "We apply the same AI-accelerated approach to our own front office, delivery, and digital experience that we bring to clients, across the platforms they’ve already invested in.” What I like about MarketingIQ is that it meets marketers where they work, from ChatGPT to Claude to Teams to Slack. Users can work in their preferred environments, or in Sitecore, while maintaining the vital content, permissions, and approvals that their work depends on. I talk to a lot of marketers who are leaning on Claude, for example, and this reinforces the freedom to create and execute on your own terms.AI discovery is, of course, central to the value proposition – and this is where MarketingIQ is amplifying the signals from Scrunch and turning it into real action. Program pages are designed for humans, but also for agents, so you can reach both audiences. This also stacks your deck across the answer engines, improving your competitive position when it comes to critical questions and decisions. Both Scrunch and MarketingIQ are a natural evolution for Sitecore's ecosystem. At the edge, it's enabling brands and marketing teams to be more ambitious. Behind the scenes, it's providing the deep governance across content operations to coordinate the right assets and publish with control and confidence. This is where Sitecore's integrated legacy comes in, providing a secure agentic plane that is reinforced by structure around approved assets, usage rights, and custom workflows.From here, Sitecore is looking to expand the functionality of its agents, so marketers can endow them with permission to take action on a brand's website (such as requesting a demo or registering for an event). There's an implicit “trust factor” that comes with this automated horizon, but this is where a quarter-century of proven innovation and partnership comes in – and where Sitecore continues to raise the IQ for marketers and brands. <hr />MarketingIQ will be available to all customers of SitecoreAI. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sitecore.com/marketing-iq">You can learn more here.</a>

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ai12z Takes AI Visibility from Scoreboard to Playbook, Turning AI Search Insights into Action

<hr /> It was just a few months ago that I did a deep dive into <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/meet-the-agents-kentico-fields-an-ai-dream-team-to-win-the-new-game-of-marketing">Kentico’s bench of specialized AI agents</a> (more appropriately referred to as “teammates”) as they took to the field. It was the first big play for its ambitious <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/platform/agentic-marketing-suite">AIRA Agentic Marketing Suite.</a>Now, as we roll downhill towards 2027, the company just reported that it has <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/discover/newsroom/aira-adoption">nearly quadrupled adoption</a> of its new AI platform and capabilities – exploding by 292% with monthly active customers increasing by 220%. That’s not all. According to Kentico, users who actively leverage three or more AIRA features each month are also growing by fiftyfold. That’s a huge testament to the expanding reliance on the platform and its slate of specialized marketing-focused agents. These are all impressive numbers by any measure, but they also reflect the market’s enthusiasm and demand for secure, scalable, and reliable AI solutions from proven enterprise vendors.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/is-schrodingers-agent-dead-or-alive-why-the-ai-black-box-is-elevating-governance-and-observability">In my recent piece on “Schrödinger’s Agent,"</a> I explored Gartner's dire prediction that 40% of organizations will decommission their AI agents by 2027, due to a lack of observability and control. I shared some prescriptions for enhancing our view into the “AI Black Box,” but Kentico is already designing around these principles. As customers add more capabilities and transactions each month, they're measuring what not getting decommissioned looks like – and supporting customer success with agentic transformation. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:43.35%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/dominik-pinter-kentico-heashot-2026.png" /></figure>Dominik Pinter, CEO of Kentico. Source: Kentico website “Organizations are moving beyond experimenting with AI and are now looking for practical ways to apply it across the marketing lifecycle,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominik-xperience-pinter/">Dominik Pinter,</a> CEO of Kentico. “The growth we’re seeing demonstrates that marketers want AI embedded directly into their workflows, helping them create better content, improve governance, and work more efficiently without sacrificing control.” This trend also reflects a broader growth curve for Kentico, which recently announced strong double-digit, year-over-year growth for its fiscal year, which ended on June 30th. They recorded this milestone amidst a slowing tech market and a DXP category facing a myriad of headwinds. The growth was fueled not only by the successful adoption of its AIRA Agentic Marketing Suite, but also by continued demand for its signature <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/platform">Xperience by Kentico</a> platform.  <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:44.74%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/bill-cunningham-kentico.jpg" /></figure>Bill Cunningham, CRO of Kentico. Source: Kentico website “Our growth is a direct result of the trust our customers and partners place in Kentico,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.kentico.com/discover/blog/bill-cunningham">Bill Cunningham</a>, Kentico’s CRO. “We're seeing strong momentum from organizations looking to simplify their technology stack, reduce operational complexity, and create more engaging digital experiences. Just as importantly, our partner ecosystem continues to play a critical role in helping customers modernize and achieve business outcomes.”<h3 id="beyond-ai-assistance-to-an-agentic-marketing-suite">Beyond AI Assistance to an Agentic Marketing Suite</h3>Marketers are in a digital vice grip. CMOs and executive leaders are shaping leaner organizations while enhancing productivity – all while maintaining governance, brand control, and consistency across channels. AI has presented solutions, but the challenge has been keeping humans in control with clear observability, so they can deliver meaningful outcomes. This is where AIRA has been a game-changer. Built directly into Xperience by Kentico, it provides marketers with an AI-powered team to support content strategy, creation, optimization, and governance.  <figure class="media"><div data-oembed-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIUKAIFv_08"><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:56.2493%"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HIUKAIFv_08" style="position:absolute;width:100%;height:100%;top:0;left:0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe></div></div></figure> During the first half of 2026, Kentico expanded AIRA with a range of AI content management and marketing capabilities. This includes four new agents designed to help marketing teams execute with greater speed and confidence:<ul><li>Content Strategist: Audits structure, taxonomy, and messaging against brand standards for faster, more confident content decisions, with clear, reusable scorecards</li><li>Customer Journey Optimization Specialist: Delivers in-context recommendations within journeys to improve performance faster and increase campaign ROI with less guesswork</li><li>SEO &amp; GEO Specialist: Optimizes metadata, structure, readability, schema, and AI extractability so every page is search- and GEO-ready, without developer dependency</li><li>Campaign Manager: Powered by brand intelligence and historical performance, it applies long-term memory and past learnings to deliver tailored recommendations that continuously improve campaign performance</li></ul>When positioned as a team, these agents form the front line of Kentico’s AIRA Agentic Marketing Suite, giving marketers access to specialized AI capabilities while putting human creativity and review at the center of every decision. For a deeper dive on each agent, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/meet-the-agents-kentico-fields-an-ai-dream-team-to-win-the-new-game-of-marketing">you can read our review.</a><h3 id="moving-from-experiments-to-everyday-use">Moving from Experiments to Everyday Use</h3>While customer adoption is just one measure of the platform’s growth, how customers are using AIRA is another strong signal of success. According to Kentico’s data, engagement metrics demonstrate that organizations are weaving more AI into their regular marketing workflows, and AIRA is reinforcing that trend. In fact, customers completing 10 or more AI transactions per month grew by a whopping 693%. Among AIRA’s most widely adopted capabilities is its AI-Powered Translation, which helps global organizations localize website content and marketing assets across multiple languages. It significantly cuts the time and effort required to create multilingual experiences, allowing teams to accelerate market reach while maintaining consistent brand messaging across different geographies and cultures. There are still aspects of modern AI that are nascent, but the trend line is clear: marketers are moving beyond the experimental confines of the sandbox and incorporating AI as an everyday tool for content operations, campaign execution, and digital experience management. This is where reliable, accountable partners with enterprise-grade solutions are delivering confidence to both marketers and the C-Suite.<h3 id="why-it-matters">Why it matters</h3>There’s a lot of noise in the AI echo chamber, and even more fragmentation as tools flood the marketplace. Enterprises are facing an uphill battle to place the right bets in their stack – where governance, accountability, compliance, and human control are critical considerations.Kentico’s growth indicates a clear preference among customers and evaluators that market-proven solutions provide an outsized advantage. Velocity is key, but so too are reliability and compliance. This is where Kentico’s reputation and the hardened performance of Xperience by Kentico provide a solid foundation for a performant agentic strategy. It's worth noting that Kentico is giving us a real picture of what adoption looks like across its AI capabilities. All of the leading platforms in the DXP category offer agentic systems and continue to ship AI features. But according to Kentico's research, none have disclosed any visibility around usage. This transparency helps fill a critical gap in trust. There’s also the growing Kentico footprint to consider. With over 500 partner agencies globally, the company has a strong channel for further cultivating adoption – all reinforced by enterprise-grade consulting, training, certification, and support to achieve customer success.Architecturally, there’s an advantage to Kentico’s approach with AIRA. Unlike third-party AI tools that operate outside established marketing processes and workflows, it’s built directly into the Kentico platform, enabling organizations to maintain governance, approvals, and brand consistency all while accelerating execution.Innovation always steals the spotlight, but growth metrics are where the rubber meets the road. With AIRA and its Agentic Marketing Suite, Kentico is activating its AI power into real results. If you’re evaluating tools, that combo is hard to beat. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf"><img style="width:34.57%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/07/joyconf-2026-logo.png" /></a><h4 id="storyblok-joyconf-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf">Storyblok JoyConf 2026</a></h4>October 28 - 29, Rheingoldhalle, Mainz (Frankfurt)JoyConf 2026 is where developers, marketers, and digital innovators come together from all around the world, united by one powerful idea: great content isn’t built by tools alone – it’s built by people who rely on systems to deliver their best work to the world. In an era where technology is increasingly shaped by AI, Content Confidence becomes your competitive advantage. When you can create, manage, and scale content that performs seamlessly across channels, platforms, and AI, you don’t just keep up – you win. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf">Book your seats today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/"><img style="width:36.36%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/07/sitecore-symposium-2026.png" /></a><h4 id="sitecore-symposium-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Sitecore Symposium 2026</a></h4>November 10 - 12, Orlando, FloridaWelcome to “Marketing Rewired” at Sitecore Symposium 2026! Sitecore's annual flagship global conference brings together customers, partners, developers, marketers, and digital experience leaders to explore the latest innovations in digital experience, content management, AI, personalization, and customer engagement. This year's event features keynote presentations from Sitecore executives and industry experts, product announcements, hands-on learning, technical sessions, customer success stories, and networking opportunities focused on helping organizations build more intelligent, connected, and AI-powered digital experiences. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Book your seats today.</a>

AIRA Arising: Kentico’s AI-Powered Platform Nearly Quadruples Adoption in First Half of 2026

Is ‘Schrödinger’s Agent’ dead or alive? Why the AI Black Box is elevating governance and observability

<h4 id="-"> </h4><h4 id="listen-to-the-full-episode-of-“the-critic’s-corner”-podcast-&gt;-"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://tinyurl.com/334p4ykt">Listen to the full episode of “The Critic’s Corner” Podcast &gt; </a></h4> <hr /> AI is now an intrinsic part of content operations, and teams are harnessing it at every level. AI agents are performing tasks across the content supply chain, and executives want more automation everywhere. Meanwhile, regulation and compliance are reshuffling the deck, putting risk front and center.In this new landscape, have the foundations of content really changed – or are they simply more exposed?On this episode of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cms-critic-the-critics-corner-podcast/id1801794414">The Critic’s Corner podcast,</a> CMS Critic’s lead analyst and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/matt-garrepy">Chief Critic Matt Garrepy</a> talks with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/mike-spenceley">Mike Spenceley</a>, a veteran of enterprise knowledge management and content operations at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.pwc.com/us/en.html">PwC</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jnj.com/">Johnson &amp; Johnson</a>, and other global, compliance‑heavy enterprises. Mike brings a rare blend of creative and operational perspective – from growing up as a drummer in a deeply musical family to leading large content programs in high‑stakes environments.Matt and Mike trace his journey from economics and finance into knowledge management just as big firms were standing up centralized functions. They unpack the familiar, persistent content cycle he’s seen for nearly two decades (centralizing, decentralizing and sprawling, then wrestling it back under control) and how AI could be the catalyst that makes content king again.<h3 id="the-human-factor-and-why-relationships-still-matter">The human factor and why relationships still matter</h3>Throughout the podcast episode, Mike argues that the foundations of content and content operations haven't changed. Institutions still want clear governance, defined ownership, and a strategy that solves real business problems. As he puts it, even as AI accelerates and tooling gets more sophisticated, the basics are non‑negotiable.“I think the important thing in this space is that the fundamentals don't go away," Mike says. "As the technology evolves and gets better, and we introduce AI to help support some of this work, the fundamentals are still there. Governance. Content ownership. You need subject matter experts from the business who have the knowledge to really contribute the content, review it periodically, and make sure it's accurate and up to date. They really play an active role in that whole process.”That human factor is just as critical on the change‑management side. Mike points out that content teams often know what “good” looks like, but can’t assume stakeholders will simply fall in line. Tools and workflows only go so far without relationships, storytelling, and a clear vision for why things must change. Content operations leaders, he argues, also have to be “relationship‑driven,” meeting business partners where they are and bringing them along on a journey rather than dictating new rules from the center. <figure class="media"><div data-oembed-url="https://youtu.be/UjYwXY2VXBc"><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:56.2493%"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UjYwXY2VXBc" style="position:absolute;width:100%;height:100%;top:0;left:0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe></div></div></figure> Drawing on nearly two decades in content strategy, Mike advocates for treating content more like structured data than just finished pages – providing a record that holds global rules and local nuance for delivering tailored experiences across websites, portals, search, and AI interfaces. Instead of rewriting similar information for every channel and audience, he frames a model where a single record becomes the source of truth, and technology handles how it’s assembled and rendered for different contexts.That philosophy leads directly to one of Mike’s favorite concepts: MVP content. Rather than starting with everything and trying to cover all the edge cases, he suggests flipping the approach and beginning with the smallest possible set of “minimum viable” content that actually solves a problem.“I've always had this idea that you should start with what I call MVP content," he says. "What is the bare minimum amount of content you need to solve this problem? And if that doesn't solve it, you can always add more later.”In large enterprises, that mindset becomes a survival skill. It reduces the volume that needs to be governed, lowers the maintenance burden on subject matter experts, and helps teams avoid the trap of sprawling FAQs and knowledge bases that no one can realistically keep current – especially when regulation and compliance are part of the equation.<h3 id="how-ai-is-making-content-king-again">How AI is making content king again</h3>From there, the conversation shifts squarely into AI. Mike and Matt examine the impact through three lenses: using AI to support the content lifecycle itself, making content readable and consumable by AI and answer engines, and governing the content that actually trains and powers generative chatbots and agentic experiences. In Mike’s view, this is where AI is putting the crown back on content in a very real, enterprise‑grade sense.“I've spoken and written about this concept of how AI is making content king again," Mike explains. “For those of us working in large enterprises, we've all known for years and years that there's just a lot of garbage content out there.”That “garbage” was always a problem, but in a search‑and‑browse world, the damage could be partially contained. Now, as organizations plug AI into those same intranets, portals, and policy libraries, the weaknesses are amplified. Slightly conflicting versions of a policy, audience‑specific nuances that aren’t labeled, or outdated documents that never got retired can all lead to risky or downright wrong answers when an AI becomes the interface.Finally, Mike and Matt dive into AI in 2026 and where it's helping to make content king again by supporting the entire lifecycle. They discuss the importance of rendering content readable for the new audience of answer engines, and governing the content that powers generative chatbots and agentic experiences. They also thread the needle with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://review.content-science.com/what-is-answer-engine-optimization-aeo/">AEO (Answer Engine Optimization),</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/mx-to-the-max-tom-cranstouns-new-book-decodes-machine-experience-for-humans-and-agents">MX (Machine Experience),</a> corporate risk, and why relationships still matter more than any tool.If you’re responsible for knowledge management, content operations, CMS strategy, or AI‑driven experiences, this episode is a practical guide to which fundamentals you can’t outsource to AI – and how these new automated technologies might be putting the crown back on content.<h3 id="articles-by-mike-on-cms-critic:">Articles by Mike on CMS Critic:</h3><ul><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/the-roi-trap-why-ai-needs-more-than-individual-productivity-gains">The ROI Trap: Why AI Needs More Than Individual Productivity Gains</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/an-operating-model-to-optimize-content-operations-and-probably-lots-of-other-stuff">An Operating Model to Optimize Content Operations (and Probably Lots of Other Stuff)</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/generative-ai-is-making-content-king-again">Generative AI is Making Content King Again</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/the-pressure-is-on-tips-for-content-teams-during-challenging-times">The Pressure is on: Tips for Content Teams During Challenging Times</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/what-it-takes-to-build-a-high-performing-content-team">What It Takes to Build a High-Performing Content Team</a></li></ul><h3 id="“the-critic’s-corner”-podcast-with-mike-spenceley">“The Critic’s Corner” Podcast with Mike Spenceley</h3> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-ai-is-making-content-king-again-with-mike-spenceley/id1801794414?i=1000783928633">Listen to the full episode &gt;</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cms-critic-the-critics-corner-podcast/id1801794414">Subscribe on Apple Podcasts &gt;</a> <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:69.05%"><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-ai-is-making-content-king-again-with-mike-spenceley/id1801794414?i=1000783928633" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/critics-corner-apple-podcast-mike-spenceley.jpg" /></a></figure> <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf"><img style="width:34.57%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/07/joyconf-2026-logo.png" /></a><h4 id="storyblok-joyconf-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf">Storyblok JoyConf 2026</a></h4>October 28 - 29, Rheingoldhalle, Mainz (Frankfurt)JoyConf 2026 is where developers, marketers, and digital innovators come together from all around the world, united by one powerful idea: great content isn’t built by tools alone – it’s built by people who rely on systems to deliver their best work to the world. In an era where technology is increasingly shaped by AI, Content Confidence becomes your competitive advantage. When you can create, manage, and scale content that performs seamlessly across channels, platforms, and AI, you don’t just keep up – you win. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf">Book your seats today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/"><img style="width:36.36%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/07/sitecore-symposium-2026.png" /></a><h4 id="sitecore-symposium-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Sitecore Symposium 2026</a></h4>November 10 - 12, Orlando, FloridaWelcome to “Marketing Rewired” at Sitecore Symposium 2026! Sitecore's annual flagship global conference brings together customers, partners, developers, marketers, and digital experience leaders to explore the latest innovations in digital experience, content management, AI, personalization, and customer engagement. This year's event features keynote presentations from Sitecore executives and industry experts, product announcements, hands-on learning, technical sessions, customer success stories, and networking opportunities focused on helping organizations build more intelligent, connected, and AI-powered digital experiences. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Book your seats today.</a>

The Critic's Corner Podcast: Mike Spenceley Brings a Creative Eye to AI and Its Impact on Content Operations

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<hr /> When <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://karpathy.ai/">Andrej Karpathy</a> coined the term “vibe coding” last year, it felt like a joke. Memetic, even. “Embrace the exponentials,” he said in a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383?lang=en">Tweet heard ‘round the tech world</a>.The co-founder of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://openai.com/">OpenAI</a> – who famously called English the “hottest new programming language” – evangelized in that post about giving in to the vibes. He said LLMs were getting so good that he could simply talk to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cursor.com/blog/composer">Cursor Composer</a> via <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://superwhisper.com/">SuperWhisper</a> and build while barely touching his keyboard.Little did he know that he was tearing at the fabric of modern development. In the nearly 18 months since its casual inception, vibe coding is now an accepted discipline. Today, a software developer rarely builds anything from scratch. They use a prompt window and natural language in almost every step of their work to automatically generate code.  “I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy-paste stuff,” Karpathy said. “And it mostly works.”That word mostly is the key, because as miraculous as AI is, it’s not infallible. And therein lies the problem: vibe coding has accelerated development tenfold, but it’s exacerbating technical issues. In other words, the magic is also making a mess.  Since last year, I’ve been tracking the precipitous sprawl of vibe-coded apps. The depth of the problem became material when <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.producthunt.com/p/general/a-new-high-watermark-over-600-products-submitted-to-product-hunt-for-today-s-leaderboard?utm_campaign=discussion_thread_created&amp;utm_content=26382172&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=notification">Product Hunt’s Chris Messina blasted an email</a> about the explosive increase in new apps to the platform. In a high-watermark moment, over 600 products were submitted in February (the previous record was just over 500 a month before). Chris told me this was a direct result of vibe coding, and competition for new apps on the platform’s leaderboard was intensifying.Sure, Product Hunt attracts the skunkworks, the earliest stages of proving out an idea. This is where vibe coding has been a godsend, enabling teams to deliver a prototype at incredible speeds and with less friction. But it’s not just downstream startups on a wing and a prayer. Vibe coding is now a part of every internal development practice. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://webdeveloper.com/news/jetbrains-survey-90-percent-ai-adoption/">90% of developers use AI coding assistants</a> at work, and 46% of developers say <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://claude.ai/">Claude Code</a> is their “most loved tool” among the many engines and harnesses.For enterprise teams that utilize AI, there’s a persistent question of reliability. There are countless reasons supporting this – just look at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-ai-models-from-openai-and-anthropic-went-rogue-a28e29ee">OpenAI and Anthropic’s recent model mishaps</a>. As such, proving the production safety of an app is becoming a critical requirement, and people are becoming a bottleneck for shipping with confidence. Often, it’s not talent holding back a product launch, but a lack of visibility into the blockers.Now, humans can get real help on this leg of the journey with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://rda-production-readiness.pages.dev/">RDA’s Production Readiness Review.</a> The digital consultancy – which has been <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/agency-of-change-rdas-world-class-nps-reflects-a-deep-focus-on-digital-and-ai-transformation">building technology solutions at the edge for almost 40 years </a>– recently launched an evidence-based process that provides a diagnostic of your internally vibe-coded app, giving stakeholders a scorecard for their app that reinforces its readiness to ship. The rubric for RDA’s system is a clear set of production requirements. The report identifies the hard blockers, prioritizes the fixes, and traces everything back to your code – so you have line-of-sight to the underlying problems. The report metrics are granular and substantive, so you’re not just getting a vague health check, but a performant roadmap.RDA is also offering the review at no cost. This makes it a no-brainer for any organization that’s driving an idea or application towards a real-world launch.   <img style="width:37.19%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/image-1786909600683.png" />RDA’s Director of AI Innovation, John Sedlak. Source: LinkedIn I recently spoke to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsedlak/">RDA’s Director of AI Innovation, John Sedlak,</a> about the gap that their Production Readiness Review addresses in the age of vibe coding, and why products tend to stall. The range of applications – and the state they’re in – underscores the need for a structured, neutral diagnostic.“It could be that a company is building a custom application, or even someone’s husband or nephew vibe coded this this POC for us,” he said, laughing. “Which we run into more often than you would expect. Then it comes down to a question of IT finding out, and now they want control. They want to lock it down, and everything comes to a grinding halt, and they don't know where to go for answers.”<h3 id="what-is-rda’s-production-readiness-review?">What is RDA’s Production Readiness Review?</h3>At its core, the Production Readiness Review answers a simple question: How close are you to done, and what’s left to fix? It provides a complete, in-depth analysis of an application from the inside out, keying in on what graduates a POC to a shippable, production-worthy solution.  The report distills everything into a legible scorecard that identifies the hard blockers and defines a roadmap for remediation. The scoring makes the overall intelligence more accessible for leaders while giving IT and technical teams an actionable path forward.“It gives you a high-level grade,” John explained, “A, B, C, D, E, F, and then breaks down a complete backlog of items that you should take a look at.”The process focuses on key “lenses” into code and architecture, AI/ML components, integration and legacy map, security and compliance, and operability and observability. Each category is weighted on a scale of 0-5, weighing the overall fragility versus robustness. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:78.72%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/image-1786909600600.png" /></figure>RDA’s Production Readiness Review scorecard. Source: RDA “It’s a composite analysis to understand the hard, technical dependency chain and the composition of your infrastructure,” John added. “It also looks at whether the application is assembled on the right building blocks.”The report details specific ship blockers that can be addressed. For example, if a build is missing vital authentication or authorization layers in the backend, or lacks a durable event store or read model resulting in a critical memory issue.  <img style="width:79.21%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/image-1786909600680.png" />RDA’s Production Readiness Review ship blockers. Source: RDA What I like is that it also prioritizes issues based on severity and classifies the effort needed to fix them as small, medium, or large. This remediation plan allows teams to cogently strategize around developer resources and utilization. Case in point: addressing LLM resilience issues could require a bigger lift than a basic problem with an MCP call – but both are ranked as high-severity issues. <img style="width:84.33%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/image-1786909600666.png" />RDA’s Production Readiness Review remediation plan. Source: RDA Finally, the report provides backlog alignment, comparing any findings against documented GitHub issues to define what’s well-tracked, partially-tracked, and untracked. It also provides a milestone assessment and recommendations for making the app ship-ready. <img style="width:84.56%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/image-1786909600660.png" />RDA’s Production Readiness Review issue alignment and backlog. Source: RDA The efficacy of the report leans on RDA’s engineering strength and depth. As John said, it’s not just box-checking or cursory oversight. They’ve baked in decades of wisdom to deliver sound outcomes. “I think this is where our 38 years of just pure engineering comes in handy,” he punctuated.<h3 id="who-the-product-readiness-review-is-for-–-and-when-to-use-it">Who the Product Readiness Review is for – and when to use it</h3>While you might not have a nephew vibe coding your prototype for you, there’s still a tremendous amount of risk associated with AI-generated code and assembly. Brands are moving faster than ever to push products into production while running lean teams, and this is where problems emerge. But it’s rarely the fault of AI. Agents are an easy scapegoat, but most problems occur due to a lack of governance and human judgement. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.ruh.ai/blogs/amazon-kiro-ai-outage-ai-governance-failure">Just ask Amazon about its Kiro assistant,</a> which is used by over 80% of its developers. Instead of fixing a minor bug, the autonomous agent decided the most efficient solution was to delete the live production environment and recreate it from scratch. That resulted in a 13-hour outage. RDA’s Production Readiness Review isn’t a silver bullet, but it can help product owners achieve greater confidence across both internal and external customers, and ultimately improve outcomes.“Where it makes the most impact is with the owners of a project who have to report to leadership that this is why we went to this platform, or this is how we're making the best use of all these integrations,” John said. “At the end of the day, they're under a lot of pressure to move fast and leverage these newer, modern systems. But they have to tell their leaders, ‘Hey, we moved to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/netlify">Netlify</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/storyblok">Storyblok</a>, and here's why. Here's the proof, and here's the report that says we're ready to go.’”From a practical perspective, the Production Readiness Review is designed to help engineering leads with complex builds or POCs that are facing real traffic and scrutiny. Obviously, you want to run the check before your product launches. When and where in your development cycle comes down to your prototype or MVP and how close it is to real-world delivery. The best bet is to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.rdadigital.com/contact">talk to RDA’s team</a> about where you are in your journey. Governance is perhaps the most urgent imperative. Tack on the complexity of AI sprawl, overlapping tools, a multitude of integrations, and sticky compliance requirements, and suddenly a new app is a powder keg waiting to ignite. That’s the most compelling reason to run this review.“It feels like overnight, everybody's using the terms ‘governance’ and ‘observability,’” John added. “Those come up everywhere. They're a part of our daily life now, because you have to prove that the systems and experiences you're creating meet a certain standard. That’s especially true with AI and generated content on a factual, quantitative level. Whether that's compliance with ADA, HIPAA, or just branding standards.”<h3 id="building-is-easier-than-ever-–-but-shipping-safely-is-hard">Building is easier than ever – but shipping safely is hard</h3>If you type in “Vibe Coding Cleanup Specialist” on LinkedIn, you'll find a long list of developers pitching that description. I'm not making it up. Here's what a quick search surfaced for me: <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:75.25%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/image-1786913662858.png" /></figure>Source: LinkedIn The listings go on for a few pages. It's funny. But also telling. AI has radically transformed our development practices, and we’re moving at a breakneck pace. At the same time, vibe coding has democratized app creation for citizen developers, checking code at the door and allowing almost anyone to stand up a working prototype using a wide range of tools. It’s not surprising that problems have surfaced, but we don’t always see them. That goes for novice builders and seasoned coders alike. Further, we’re not standardizing the right governance processes to address these issues before we ship our products – and that’s resulting in everything from bad CX to brand damage to legal liability.RDA’s Production Readiness Review is a triumphant step in closing this loop. It’s a safer bridge from POC to production, providing the missing, evidence-based step between “this works” and “this will hold up under real-world pressure.” It gives human judgement a shot in the arm, so organizations have a more solid foundation before they ship.“I think at the end of the day, it’s all about trust and confidence,” John said. Now that's a vibe we can all give in to.<hr /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://rda-production-readiness.pages.dev/">Learn more</a> about getting your own Production Readiness Review. <h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf"><img style="width:34.57%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/07/joyconf-2026-logo.png" /></a><h4 id="storyblok-joyconf-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf">Storyblok JoyConf 2026</a></h4>October 28 - 29, Rheingoldhalle, Mainz (Frankfurt)JoyConf 2026 is where developers, marketers, and digital innovators come together from all around the world, united by one powerful idea: great content isn’t built by tools alone – it’s built by people who rely on systems to deliver their best work to the world. In an era where technology is increasingly shaped by AI, Content Confidence becomes your competitive advantage. When you can create, manage, and scale content that performs seamlessly across channels, platforms, and AI, you don’t just keep up – you win. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf">Book your seats today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/"><img style="width:36.36%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/07/sitecore-symposium-2026.png" /></a><h4 id="sitecore-symposium-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Sitecore Symposium 2026</a></h4>November 10 - 12, Orlando, FloridaWelcome to “Marketing Rewired” at Sitecore Symposium 2026! Sitecore's annual flagship global conference brings together customers, partners, developers, marketers, and digital experience leaders to explore the latest innovations in digital experience, content management, AI, personalization, and customer engagement. This year's event features keynote presentations from Sitecore executives and industry experts, product announcements, hands-on learning, technical sessions, customer success stories, and networking opportunities focused on helping organizations build more intelligent, connected, and AI-powered digital experiences. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Book your seats today.</a>

Is your AI app ready to ship? A new diagnostic can help validate your vibe coding with confidence

<hr /> Every Thanksgiving, my father – our family’s resident storyteller and spinner of fish tales – revisits his 2011 trip to Brazil over a zesty slice of key lime pie. My favorite chapter takes place in the Amazon Basin, where he and an intrepid crew of tourists venture through the densely majestic canopy to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHayUyK-d94">Lago da Piranha</a>. This freshwater lake is a hidden gem, but it's also home to the world’s unfriendliest denizens of the deep. There’s video from the outing, and I think our paternally-carved turkey reminds him of a raw chicken being lowered into the darkly calming waters, where he and his group witness a little carnage. Tethered to some high-test fishing wire, the bird descends just below the surface of the lake. There's a scuffle. The water roils. Minutes later, the chicken is pulled back up – or what’s left of it.This snippet from <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Monsters">River Monsters </a>will give you an idea of what went down:  <figure class="media"><div data-oembed-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21hfQYJ5mfU"><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:56.2493%"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/21hfQYJ5mfU" style="position:absolute;width:100%;height:100%;top:0;left:0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe></div></div></figure> Right now, AI is eating clicks like the residents of Piranha Lake. It’s been vicious. The rise of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://search.google/ways-to-search/ai-overviews/">Google’s AI Overviews</a> and the proliferation of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://thedigitalbloom.com/learn/2025-organic-traffic-crisis-analysis-report/">zero-click searches</a> have decimated website traffic – and publishers have been hit the hardest by this shift.I won’t revisit all the gory details. There's plenty of data about AI answers replacing blue links and rewriting the search experience. Some sites are fighting AI companies in court, others are building partnerships and trying to adapt to the new normal. Either way, swimming in this lake is treacherous, and it feels more like treading water in a red, chum-filled sea.I just read <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/miannelli/">Michael Ianelli’s</a> dynamite article about <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://scrunch.com/blog/surviving-the-clickpocalypse-ai-eating-the-news/">surviving this “clickpocalypse,”</a> and it was every bit as harrowing as that chicken being lowered into the darkness. As the principal data scientist at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/crunch-time-for-ai-visibility-sitecores-acquisition-of-scrunch-gives-brands-an-edge-beyond-aeo">Scrunch (now a Sitecore company),</a> he’s working on the front lines of this existential shift for brands. He and his team did a deep dive into AI’s impact on human visits to news and publishing sites, analyzing millions of events between February and June of this year. This was done via an opt-in panel connecting anonymized AI conversations, Google searches, and publisher visits.What did they find? Well, in a word, weirdness. Yes, AI is devouring traffic – ferociously. But it’s also eating clicks in one place and returning visits in another.I found this revelation compelling, but it also exposed a bigger problem for marketers: conventional analytics can identify the last stop before a visit, but not necessarily the first source of influence. In other words, we’re back to chasing the shadow of attribution.I spent time reviewing this data, and I have a few reflections on what stands out and how we might adapt to it. One thing is clear: marketers are swimming with uncertainty. And it really bites. <h3 id="crunching-the-impact-of-ai-overviews">Crunching the impact of AI Overviews</h3>One of the first revelations in the research is perhaps the most profound: news searches with an AI Overview (AIO) convert to a publisher click roughly 20% of the time, versus 30% without one. As Michael suggests, that 10-point gap is the basis for this whole “clickpocalypse” narrative.But when Scrunch compared the same query appearing with and without an AIO, the difference shrank to around two percentage points. That’s awfully close to zero. In other words, Google isn’t so much reducing the clicks as deploying AIOs in searches where they were already sparse.Some other juicy nuggets surfaced in the research. For example, across news searches, AIOs appear roughly one time in four. But with low-value "almanac" queries – commodities like weather, market prices, definitions, and explainers – it’s much higher.  <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:86.02%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/scrunch-3.png" /></figure>Source: Scrunch But here’s the rub: these all had relatively low CTRs to begin with. Weather, for instance, had a 59% AIO rate, but only a 13% CTR when no generative overlay was present. Interestingly, searches about war and geopolitical topics hold the middle ground. A currently popular topic like elections, for example, gets an AIO 14% of the time, with a 26% CTR. Sports is a bit more anomalous; it's an almanac entry that only gets an AIO about 5% of the time. But it also appreciates 53% of publisher clicks without an AI overlay.This can feel like a lot to process, but the through line is reasonably clear. AI Overviews can reduce clicks on an individual search, but the gap is also influenced by the kinds of queries on which Google chooses to display them. We’re strangers in a strange land. Or… a piranha-infested lake. <h3 id="ai-referral-traffic-tells-only-part-of-the-story">AI referral traffic tells only part of the story</h3>And this is an important point. According to Scrunch, only 1.1% of the news site visits that followed an AI conversation carried a direct AI referral. Meanwhile, roughly three-quarters of the traffic arrived via direct navigation, with the rest coming from traditional search and referrals. So what about that 98.9%? Is it a result of AI?  <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:85.14%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/scrunch-2.png" /></figure>Source: Scrunch Not so fast. Referral analytics record the immediately preceding source, but not everything that shaped the decision. AI influence can disappear when someone later searches for a brand, enters its URL, uses a bookmark, or visits through another platform. As a result, traffic influenced by AI may be incorrectly credited.This is clearly an attribution blind spot. AI referral traffic measures delivery, but it doesn’t necessarily measure influence. It’s a real hardship for publishers, as modern referral dashboards simply can’t tell you if AI shaped a later search or a direct visit. <h3 id="ai-search-may-be-feeding-an-invisible-marketing-funnel">AI search may be feeding an invisible marketing funnel</h3>While it might not be altogether shocking, Scrunch discovered that when readers engage on a news topic with an AI assistant, they visit more news sites the following week. In fact, after comparing each reader against their own behavior (news versus non-news conversations), people are 20.5 percentage points more likely to visit a news site after talking to AI about news. As Michael says, the conversational AI story isn't that AI answers have completely replaced publishers – it's that the answer often becomes one step inside a larger news journey, one that doesn’t necessarily end on the open web. The problem is that conventional analytics can’t fully visualize this. There’s a key “causality caveat” here. Someone discussing news with an AI assistant already has an implied interest in the topic, and the research doesn’t prove that AI generated entirely new demand. What it does show is that AI conversations and subsequent website activity can be connected even when referral analytics can’t see that connection. And herein lies the challenge: AI may be eating the visible click while still feeding parts of the funnel marketers can’t see.<h3 id="brand-strength-matters">Brand strength matters</h3>There are some revealing metrics in the research about which news publishers are capturing readers after an AI conversation. It’s worth perusing the associations that Scrunch uncovered – particularly where a news site is or isn’t mentioned in a prompt and whether a reader was already likely to visit that news site.What stood out for me was this: being named by AI isn’t the same as being chosen by a reader. That plays out in the data. According to Scrunch, major publishers make up 82% of the names that AI assistants deliver. 17% are mid-sized, and just 1% are niche.   <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:85.2%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/08/scrunch-4-1786732542850.png" /></figure>Source: Scrunch But here’s the deal: of the visits that land on a named news site, 97% are major publishers. Mid-sized brands are getting decent exposure, but readers simply aren’t choosing them. A week later, those same big players see a 22.9% lift in site visits. Mid-size, a little less than 9%.Bottom line? Brand strength is the bomb. Readers are choosing news outlets they recognize or have familiarity with. Add existing preferences, perceived authority and trust, or even paywall access they’ve already procured, and major publishers win out.<h3 id="what-should-marketers-and-brands-focus-on?">What should marketers and brands focus on?</h3>Scrunch offers some sage advice for surviving this “clickpocalypse,” and it applies to publishers and non-publishers alike. As Michael observes, the general rule is that AI exposure doesn’t necessarily look like AI traffic. Write that on a Post-it and stick it to your screen. Marketers are in a bind when it comes to AI referrals and attribution. A news site or product can get mentioned or recommended in an answer, but a consumer might show up a week later through direct navigation or traditional search. We can’t count on an attribution dashboard to connect the dots. There’s no back door for controlling the answer engines. The best shot a brand has is through influence – and this is where an <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/answer-engine-optimization-aeo--what-brands-need-to-know/">AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)</a> platform can provide deeper intelligence. Tools like Scrunch provide detailed recommendations for enhancing answer position, but they also enable marketers to measure brand mentions, track citations, gauge sentiment, and monitor an influence score. Most importantly, they shed light on the “why” and enable marketers to take real action. If this research tells us anything, it’s that being mentioned in AI isn’t the same as being chosen. While it’s increasingly clear that <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://scrunch.com/blog/prompt-to-purchase-pipeline-how-ai-influences-buyer-behavior/">AI recommendations can have a direct impact</a> on how likely someone is to search for your products or visit your site, brand presence is the most important metric. Consumers make decisions based on credibility, reputation, and recognition across channels – so brands need to keep a watchful eye on more than AI.<h3 id="what-you-should-expect-from-your-cms">What you should expect from your CMS</h3>A big part of the AI visibility equation rests with your website’s content posture – and that waterfalls to the CMS. If it's worth its salt, your platform should help you control and maintain optimal structure and performance. In fact, some tools already provide a layer of AEO and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) readiness out of the box, helping marketers stay on point.First and foremost, audit the content in your CMS to ensure that you’ve addressed any outdated, contradictory, or incomplete information. The trouble with content debt is that it isn’t always visible, but AI has a way of finding it. The new breed of agentic CMS is making these audit sprints more efficient while streamlining the remediation.Along with governing a foundational content model and maintaining a source of truth across websites and channels, a modern CMS should allow specific content to be accessible to LLM crawlers and bots based on your internal policies (for example, gated publisher models might block certain pages). It should also support schema and machine-readable metadata without a lot of heavy lifting. Connecting your content performance with your analytics is going to be key. Some platforms have on-board visualization, but AEO platforms are aligning AI citations with the content assets that help influence them. Having this insight is becoming a non-negotiable.<h3 id="why-it-matters">Why it matters</h3>I wouldn’t recommend swimming in Lago de Piranha, but it’s comforting to know that these fish don’t generally attack humans. So we’re safe. For now.It’s true: AI is consuming traffic clean off the bone. But as Scrunch’s data points out, there’s more to the story than just a feeding frenzy. AI is shifting clicks, redistributing them based on different variables. Despite this phenomenon, AI is also driving demand – and the brands that show up in AI answers are best positioned to win.This whole chapter of AI transformation is frustrating for marketers. Yes, agents are unlocking a world of productivity. But the game has changed. While attribution has always been a challenge, we're in unknown territory, wrestling with new tools and new thinking. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://medium.com/@jane.fazackarley/heres-google-s-guidance-on-aeo-but-it-s-only-half-of-the-story-2b74275df397">Google might not be sold on AEO</a> as a separate discipline outside of search, but marketers are full speed ahead on adopting it. Whether you’re a news site or an e-commerce shop, AI needs to be able to understand you. That means getting your content house in top shape for the growing audience of agents that are visiting your site. But what people do after your brand is surfaced – whether they visit you next week or next month or via different routes – relies on your overall brand presence. That’s why building credibility, trust, and recognition in other channels is essential to surviving the “clickpocalypse.” So stay vigilant. Embrace the strategies and improve your odds. Gain actionable insight from reputable tools. And don’t get eaten. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf"><img style="width:34.57%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/07/joyconf-2026-logo.png" /></a><h4 id="storyblok-joyconf-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf">Storyblok JoyConf 2026</a></h4>October 28 - 29, Rheingoldhalle, Mainz (Frankfurt)JoyConf 2026 is where developers, marketers, and digital innovators come together from all around the world, united by one powerful idea: great content isn’t built by tools alone – it’s built by people who rely on systems to deliver their best work to the world. In an era where technology is increasingly shaped by AI, Content Confidence becomes your competitive advantage. When you can create, manage, and scale content that performs seamlessly across channels, platforms, and AI, you don’t just keep up – you win. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.storyblok.com/joyconf">Book your seats today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/"><img style="width:36.36%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/07/sitecore-symposium-2026.png" /></a><h4 id="sitecore-symposium-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Sitecore Symposium 2026</a></h4>November 10 - 12, Orlando, FloridaWelcome to “Marketing Rewired” at Sitecore Symposium 2026! Sitecore's annual flagship global conference brings together customers, partners, developers, marketers, and digital experience leaders to explore the latest innovations in digital experience, content management, AI, personalization, and customer engagement. This year's event features keynote presentations from Sitecore executives and industry experts, product announcements, hands-on learning, technical sessions, customer success stories, and networking opportunities focused on helping organizations build more intelligent, connected, and AI-powered digital experiences. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://symposium.sitecore.com/">Book your seats today.</a>

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