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AI Article

Press ‘Play’ on the Future: Vimeo Delivers AI, Data, and Genuine Creativity for Video

matt-garrepy

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/tom-cranstoun">Tom Cranstoun,</a> “The MX Guy,” is the principal consultant at Digital Domain Technologies Limited, author of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://mx.allabout.network/books/">MX: The Handbook</a>, and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> Content operations and content design are doing the right things. They're providing governance frameworks, taxonomy, structured authoring, and lifecycle management. Over time, the disciplines have matured.Up until now, content ops has focused on human readers. Now, in an era where <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/bots-now-outnumber-humans-on-the-internet-heres-what-that-actually-means/">bot traffic is outnumbering humans,</a> the dynamic has shifted. Machines have become the predominant audience, and they have different requirements. The gap is narrower than it looks – and more specific. That gap is where most organizations are going to get stuck. Cogs that don’t mesh don’t move anything. They just grind. But there's hope, and it starts by understanding the crucial role of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://mx.allabout.network/">MX: Machine Experience.</a><h3 id="what-machines-need-that-humans-don’t">What Machines Need That Humans Don’t</h3>A human reading a page infers context. They notice tone, recognize brand, and understand that a press release from 2019 probably doesn’t reflect current pricing. They bring judgment.Machines don’t. And they’re not one thing.An on-device model with a small context window reads raw HTML and sees nothing beyond what’s in the initial server response. A foundation-model agent with browsing tools sees the rendered DOM. A scraper never runs a model at all. A coding agent fetches once over HTTP and moves on. Each reads a different projection of the page, and none of them sees the visual rendering. The publisher can’t know which kind arrives, so designing for a specific agent is designing for a guess.Despite these differences, every machine type does one of two things: It finds a declaration, or it guesses. What is this document? Who made it? What’s it for? What can be done with it? What’s still accurate?Good content ops structures pages so humans can navigate them. That’s necessary. But it’s not sufficient. The metadata is in a database that the agent can’t reach. The relationships are implicit. The provenance isn’t embedded. The agent (whichever kind it is) fills the gaps with confidence it hasn’t earned.That’s not a failure of content design. It’s an extension that hasn’t been built yet.Now, take it one step further. A machine doesn’t always read your content inside your environment. For example, a PDF getting ingested by another organization’s LLM, or a page being scraped and stored in a vector database. A document travels through three systems before an agent even acts on it. At that point, the CMS is gone. The database is gone. The metadata that lived in the platform’s tables is gone. What’s left is the file. If the file carries nothing (no provenance, no authorship, no permissions, no declared scope), the agent has nothing to work with except the words. It guesses the rest.This is the old problem, made new and urgent. Documents have always lost context when they leave their environment. MX is built specifically for that moment.<h3 id="governance-built-into-the-document">Governance Built Into the Document</h3>A CMS isn’t just software. It’s a controller of a publishing point. It has an implicit contract with the data owner to make content visible to humans in a way that benefits the owner. That obligation now implicitly includes machines, whether anyone asked for it or not. When it fails, the data owner blames the vendor. The vendor blames the agency. Nobody owns the failure because nobody wrote machines into the contract.A plugin doesn’t close this gap. Neither does a model upgrade or an <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro">MCP (Model Context Protocol)</a> endpoint. Those wrap the content. They don’t change it. What makes the difference is governance built into the document itself. Not bolted on, not held in a separate system. That’s what a COG is: Community Owned Governance. It's a portable, self-describing document standard that carries its own context wherever it travels. It includes vital details like what it is, who made it, what it’s for, and what an agent is and isn’t permitted to do with it.Take a cog out of a machine, and it stops. Take governance out of a document, and the machine that's reading it stops working, too. It doesn’t issue an error. It hallucinates. And that's even worse. The work that content ops and content design have already done – the taxonomy, the schema, the approval chains – is exactly the right foundation. A COG is how that work travels with the content, instead of staying behind in a CMS database that the agent can never query.<h3 id="ownership-only-works-with-structure">Ownership Only Works With Structure</h3>The organizations getting real value from AI aren’t pouring content into shared infrastructure and hoping for the best. They’re running models on their own data and building agents against their own knowledge base.That only works if the data has structure – and as stated, that structure can travel. Ownership without portable structure is a hard drive full of files nobody can act on safely. A document with provenance (where the relationships are explicit and the records are verifiable) is something you can point a machine at and trust the result.<h3 id="the-asset-that-compounds">The Asset That Compounds</h3>Within a few years, most online content will be machine-generated. Volume is already cheap. So is velocity.What becomes scarce is authorship. Content that a human wrote, edited, argued over, and signed off on. Content that has a history. That doesn’t depreciate when generation gets cheaper. In fact, it appreciates – because it’s the thing machines can’t produce and audiences can distinguish.The right home for that content is a system where governance is built into every document: structured, provenance-intact, and verifiable. Pointing a model at well-governed content produces something qualitatively different from pointing it at an undifferentiated pile.Content ops and content design got us here. COGs take it the rest of the way. The organizations that understand this aren’t waiting for the next release note. They’ve already got the cogs turning.<h3 id="is-your-pdf-mx-compatible?">Is your PDF MX Compatible?</h3>See what the gaps are in practice! <ol><li>Visit <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://mx.allabout.network/tools/pdf-inspector.html">https://mx.allabout.network/tools/pdf-inspector.html</a> </li><li>Drop in a PDF sample where instructed. Your browser reads it locally, and the PDF never leaves your machine. </li><li>The inspector reports what the file carries, what it lacks, and what a regulator or AI agent would find if they tried to verify it.</li></ol> <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3>  <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26"><img style="width:41.96%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/cms-connect-logo-26.jpg" /></a><h4 id="cms-connect-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">CMS Connect 26</a></h4>August 5-6, 2026 – Montreal, CanadaThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Connect brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Montreal, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">so book your seats today.</a> <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> <img style="width:35.73%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/image-1778200565145.png" /><h4 id="contentstack-contentcon-2026">Contentstack <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">ContentCon 2026</a></h4>September 30 - October 1, Amsterdam  /  October 27-28, 2026 – ChicagoContentstack’s annual customer conference is the premier event for executives, marketing leaders, and developers to redefine their digital experience strategy. This is your opportunity to step out of the "status quo" and into "elite" status, learning exactly how the world’s most successful brands are using the technology you already own to do the impossible. Enjoy a full day of interactive workshops, certifications, and inspirational on-stage sessions designed to help you become an expert on cutting-edge digital strategies and how to turn Contentstack's CMS and adaptive personalization tools into your greatest competitive advantage.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> </a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">Book your seats today.</a>

Without Cogs, No Machine Moves

tom-cranstoun

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/leah-nurik">Leah Nurik</a> is CEO at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/brandi-ai">Brandi AI</a> and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/what-is-a-content-management-system-cms">Content management system (CMS)</a> and digital experience platform (DXP) teams face a new visibility challenge: buyers are no longer discovering information only through search results, website navigation, or traditional content journeys. They are increasingly asking AI systems for direct answers.The shift toward AI-mediated discovery changes what content has to do. It is no longer enough for brand content to be well-governed, well-designed, personalized, or optimized for search. Content also has to be easy for AI systems to understand, interpret, trust, and reuse.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_engine_optimization">Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)</a> helps content teams meet that challenge. By structuring content for AI extractability, brands improve the chances that their information is accurately represented, selected, and cited in AI-generated answers.For CMS and DXP leaders, content is no longer competing only for rankings or clicks. It is competing to become part of the answer. When content is difficult for AI systems to parse, even strong brand assets can become less visible. The result is not just lost traffic. It can mean less authority, less control over brand language, and fewer opportunities to shape how buyers understand the company.<h3 id="defining-generative-engine-optimization">Defining Generative Engine Optimization</h3>Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of creating, structuring, and optimizing content so AI systems can accurately interpret, trust, reuse, and cite it in generated answers. Traditional search optimization focuses largely on helping webpages rank in search results. GEO focuses on making content understandable and usable within AI-generated responses, where users may receive direct answers rather than lists of links.<h3 id="key-differences-between-generative-engine-optimization-and-traditional-seo-">Key Differences Between Generative Engine Optimization and Traditional SEO </h3>Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is related to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization">Search Engine Optimization (SEO),</a> but it is not just SEO with a new name. Traditional SEO focuses on helping search engines crawl, index, rank, and surface pages so users click through. GEO focuses more directly on whether the information inside those pages can answer a prompt.SEO is still heavily tied to rankings, clicks, backlinks, and page-level discoverability. GEO puts more weight on extractability, factual clarity, structural consistency, and alignment with real user questions. Put simply, SEO asks whether a page can perform well in search results. GEO asks whether a content block can survive contact with an AI system and still emerge intact, accurate, and attributable.<h3 id="three-core-principles-of-generative-engine-optimization-for-cms-and-dxp-operators">Three Core Principles of Generative Engine Optimization for CMS and DXP Operators</h3>For CMS and DXP operators, three principles matter most: trust, clarity, and usefulness:<ol><li>Content needs to be easy to verify. Strong content uses specific facts, clear attribution, named sources, dates, and evidence where needed. Unsupported claims are easier to ignore, misunderstand, or misrepresent.</li><li>Content needs to be easy to understand. A well-designed page is not always a well-structured page. Clear headings, focused sections, concise summaries, and direct answers help readers quickly grasp the point. They also make content easier to interpret and reuse accurately.</li><li>Content needs to match what people actually want to know. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) works best when content answers real buyer questions in plain language. The goal is not to force awkward search phrases into the copy. The goal is to anticipate the question, answer it clearly, and make each section useful on its own.</li></ol><h3 id="how-modular-content-architecture-in-a-dxp-enhances-ai-extractability">How Modular Content Architecture in a DXP Enhances AI Extractability</h3>Imagine a B2B software company launching a new automation feature. In a traditional workflow, the team might publish one long launch post supported by a landing page and a few campaign assets. In a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)-aware DXP workflow, the team still creates those assets. Still, it also breaks the information into modular, reusable content blocks within the CMS: a short feature explainer, a pricing block, an implementation how-to, a benchmark proof point, and an FAQ.Each block is written to answer a likely prompt. One explains what the feature does. Another question is how it integrates with an existing platform. Another addresses pricing or deployment requirements. The proof point is phrased with precision: a dated benchmark, a named test condition, a measurable result. Modular content structure provides AI systems with clear, extractable units of information. Instead of extracting fragments from a long, loosely organized page, the model can pull from precise units of content that are already built to stand on their own. That is where modern CMS and DXP architecture becomes an advantage rather than just an operational convenience.<h3 id="five-practical-generative-engine-optimization-strategies-for-a-content-operations-roadmap">Five Practical Generative Engine Optimization Strategies for a Content Operations Roadmap</h3>For teams that want to act now, five Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) moves belong on the roadmap.<ol><li>Start by understanding the questions buyers are actually asking. Look beyond keywords and listen to the language customers use in sales conversations, support requests, search behavior, and AI tools. Build content around those real questions.</li><li>Make your content easy to quote and trust. Use clear sentences, concise summaries, and direct answers. A strong sentence should make sense even when it appears outside the original page.</li><li>Break complex topics into smaller, focused sections. Long pages can still work, but each section should have a clear purpose and answer a specific question.</li><li>Keep claims current and supported. Attribute important facts, link to credible evidence, and show when content has been updated.</li><li>Connect related content across your site. Buyers rarely evaluate one page in isolation. Strong internal connections help people, search engines, and AI systems understand how your expertise fits together.</li></ol><h3 id="why-ai-citation-tracking-is-now-a-critical-kpi-for-digital-experience-leaders">Why AI Citation Tracking is Now a Critical KPI for Digital Experience Leaders</h3>Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is moving from theory to day-to-day content operations. As AI-mediated discovery becomes a larger part of how buyers find and evaluate information, CMS and DXP teams will need to measure success beyond rankings, sessions, and clicks. A growing part of content performance will depend on whether brand content is being recognized, trusted, and cited in AI-generated answers.Treating GEO as a gimmick would be a mistake. It is not about stuffing pages with question phrases or writing for machines instead of people. GEO focuses on making high-quality content easier for AI systems to understand, verify, and reuse without distortion. Brands that do this well will not only be easier to find. They will be more likely to shape the answer itself. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3>  <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26"><img style="width:41.96%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/cms-connect-logo-26.jpg" /></a><h4 id="cms-connect-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">CMS Connect 26</a></h4>August 5-6, 2026 – Montreal, CanadaThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Connect brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Montreal, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">so book your seats today.</a> <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> <img style="width:35.73%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/image-1778200565145.png" /><h4 id="contentstack-contentcon-2026">Contentstack <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">ContentCon 2026</a></h4>September 30 - October 1, Amsterdam  /  October 27-28, 2026 – ChicagoContentstack’s annual customer conference is the premier event for executives, marketing leaders, and developers to redefine their digital experience strategy. This is your opportunity to step out of the "status quo" and into "elite" status, learning exactly how the world’s most successful brands are using the technology you already own to do the impossible. Enjoy a full day of interactive workshops, certifications, and inspirational on-stage sessions designed to help you become an expert on cutting-edge digital strategies and how to turn Contentstack's CMS and adaptive personalization tools into your greatest competitive advantage.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> </a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">Book your seats today.</a>

How CMS and DXP Teams Can Use Generative Engine Optimization to Increase Visibility in AI-Generated Answers

leah-nurik

‘Crunch Time’ for AI Visibility: Sitecore’s Acquisition of Scrunch Gives Brands an Edge Beyond AEO

Where Native DXP AI Fits Within an Agentic Enterprise Strategy

dan-drapeau

No More Kicking the CMS Tires: As Salesforce Acquires Contentful, Can it Keep the Wheels on the AI Road?

Meet the Agents: Kentico Fields an ‘AI Dream Team’ to Win the New Game of Marketing

Is ‘specialization’ the future of CMS? These 3 vendors are embracing it – and finding success

Hotjar - Spot what confuses

Spot what confuses your users with Hotjar & AI

#ffffff

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/scottliewehr">Scott Liewehr</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dan-drapeau"> </a>is Global Vice President of Market Strategy &amp; Growth at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/sitecore">Sitecore</a> and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> In my <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/youre-writing-for-the-wrong-audience">last piece for CMS Critic</a>, I introduced the H2A→A2H framework and argued that the audience for your content has fundamentally changed now that LLMs are in the mix. AI now sits on both sides of the equation: one AI helps you create, and a second AI decides whether your brand shows up at all. If you haven’t read it, the short version is this: you’re writing for the wrong audience, and the invisible editor (the LLM) that mediates between your brand and your buyer rewards substance, structure, authority, and specificity, and ignores everything else.This piece is about what happens next. Specifically, it’s about one of the most sacred practices in digital marketing and why I think it’s about to collapse under the weight of its own logic.I’m talking about A/B testing.Here’s the argument: if the primary consumer of your content is now an LLM, why are you still testing it on humans?<h3 id="you’re-optimizing-for-the-wrong-audience">You’re optimizing for the wrong audience</h3>The entire experimentation infrastructure that marketing has built over the past 15 years assumes that human behavior is the metric that matters. You publish multiple versions of a page, split your traffic, measure which one earns more clicks, more time on page, more conversions. The humans tell you which version wins.That makes perfect sense in a human-to-human world, when a human creates content and another human consumes it. It even makes sense in an H2A2H world, where AI helps the marketer create or scale the content, but the audience is still human. But in an H2A→A2H world, where an LLM is deciding whether your content even reaches the human on the other end, you’ve got a measurement problem. You’re measuring human reactions to determine what works, but the LLM is the one separating signal from noise before any human sees it.Think about it this way. When a buyer asks an LLM to recommend a product, the model assembles an answer by evaluating sources across a range of factors, including the substance, structure, authority, and specificity of your brand content. It decides which brands to cite and which to ignore. If your brand doesn’t pass that filter, no human ever sees it. It doesn’t matter which headline variant tested better with your website visitors if the invisible editor never selected your brand in the first place.The experimentation question has to change. The old question was: which version does my human audience prefer? The new question is: which version does the invisible editor cite, and does it carry my brand position faithfully when synthesized into an answer? Those are fundamentally different questions, and traditional A/B testing was never designed to ask the second one.I said in my last article that in an H2A→A2H reality, the list doesn’t exist. There is only one single, synthesized answer. If you’re still optimizing for a list by testing on the humans reading it, you’re solving last decade’s problem.<h3 id="the-opportunity-cost-nobody-talks-about">The opportunity cost nobody talks about</h3>There’s a secondary argument here that I think is worth sitting with.When you build three versions of a landing page for multivariate testing, you believe in all three. The test is how you discover which performs best. But the discovery comes at a cost: two-thirds of your audience bounces, fails to convert, or disengages entirely. Those are missed opportunities; real prospects who encountered the weaker versions and moved on. The learning is valuable, but the tuition of missed pipeline is expensive.That cost would be easier to absorb if the learning were quick. A/B and multivariate testing demand statistical significance, which demands large sample sizes. For brands with massive traffic, this can happen reasonably quickly. But for the mid-market company with 15,000 monthly visitors? Running a rigorous test is a struggle. The sample sizes are too small, the test duration stretches into weeks or months, and by the time you have a statistically valid result, the market context may have shifted. For a meaningful number of brands, traditional experimentation has always been more aspirational than practical, and those brands that can’t reach significance are left guessing. The opportunity cost compounds on both ends. Large-audience brands pay a “learning tax” across a lot of visitors. Small-audience brands can’t afford to run the test at all. Neither situation is great, and both are artifacts of a model that requires real people as its crash-test dummies.In an AI-native model, both problems disappear. You generate hundreds of content variations using AI, then test every one against thousands of simulated buyer personas – AI agents that behave like real buyers with real intent, real objections, and real decision criteria – before a single real person ever sees any of it. The AI generates. The AI evaluates. The AI selects. And your entire audience gets the optimal version from the first impression.No humans interacted with the underperforming version. The mid-market brand with limited traffic runs the same caliber of test as the enterprise with millions of visitors. The learning happened upstream, in simulation, at machine speed, and prior to publishing.The experimentation paradigm inverts: you’re testing for your audience, not on them.<h3 id="the-assumption-that-needs-rethinking">The assumption that needs rethinking</h3>At this point, a reasonable marketer might think: “Okay, but don’t I still need experimentation infrastructure to evaluate all those variations? You’ve moved the testing upstream, but someone still has to figure out which version wins.”It’s a fair instinct, and it’s rooted in how we’ve thought about experimentation for years. But I think it reflects an assumption that doesn’t hold in an AI-native workflow.When the AI system that generated 200 variations can also evaluate them against simulated buyer personas, score them for likely performance, and select the winner, the “experimentation” has collapsed into the content intelligence layer itself. It’s a function of the orchestration system. The evaluation capability has been absorbed into an intelligent platform that does more. You don’t need a standalone experimentation product sitting between your CMS and your audience when the intelligence that created the content can also judge it.There’s also a scope issue. Traditional experimentation asks a narrow question: Which version gets more clicks, more conversions, more engagement? Those are optimization questions within a fixed frame. The AI-native model lets you question the frame itself. You can ask: Does this content earn citations from the invisible editor? Does it hold up when a buyer asks a follow-up question and the AI goes back to the well? Does it carry my brand position faithfully across different query contexts?That’s a different category of evaluation entirely, and it requires content intelligence, not experimentation tooling.<h3 id="what-this-means-practically">What this means practically</h3>If you’re running a traditional experimentation program today, I’m not suggesting you shut it off tomorrow. There’s still value in testing live experiences for behavioral signals that simulated personas can’t fully replicate, at least for now. Human beings are unpredictable (I have teenagers; I can confirm this), and the gap between simulated behavior and real behavior is still real.But the trajectory is clear, and the planning window is shorter than you might think. Here’s where I’d focus:<ul><li>Start running parallel tracks. Keep your live experimentation program, but begin building the capability to pre-test content against AI personas before publication. Measure the delta between what your simulated testing predicts and what your live tests confirm. As that delta shrinks, and it will, you’ll have the evidence to shift investment.</li><li>Start evaluating your content against AI consumption metrics alongside human engagement metrics. Your experimentation program should be measuring whether your content earns citations from LLMs, whether it surfaces in synthesized answers, whether your brand position survives the compression of the invisible editor. Traditional A/B testing was never designed to measure any of that.</li><li>And if you’re one of the many brands that never had enough traffic to run meaningful multivariate tests in the first place, recognize that the constraint just evaporated. AI-native experimentation doesn’t require a single visitor to your site. The barrier to entry that kept rigorous testing out of reach for mid-market and niche brands is gone.</li></ul><h3 id="the-bigger-picture">The bigger picture</h3>This connects back to the H2A→A2H framework in a way that I think matters. The old experimentation model was built for an H2H world; a world where you published content for humans, tested it on humans, and optimized it for humans. The H2A→A2H world adds a new constituency that sits upstream of your human audience and makes editorial decisions about whether they see your content at all. Experimentation has to evolve to serve both.The brands that figure this out won’t just have better conversion rates. They’ll stop paying the learning tax on their audience, they’ll unlock experimentation capabilities that were previously gated by traffic volume, and they’ll start optimizing for the audience that actually determines their visibility.The crash test dummies are about to be retired. And honestly, it’s about time. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3>  <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478"><img style="width:23.45%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/raise-logo-kontent.jpg" alt="" /></a><h4 id="raise-amsterdam"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">RAISE Amsterdam</a></h4>May 20, 2026 – Amsterdam, NetherlandsSponsored by Kontent.ai, RAISE Amsterdam brings together bold marketing and technology leaders to explore how agentic AI is reshaping the way ambitious brands create and deliver content and what it takes to use it safely, responsibly, and with proper governance. Experience the ideas that are shaping the future and dive into big thinking, innovative strategies, and expert insights. Held at the Klein Canvas, Volkshotel, you'll hear from world-class speakers in dynamic sessions that will reveal how AI-powered content operations are accelerating production, improving governance, and driving creative impact. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">Limited spots are available, so book yours today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26"><img style="width:41.96%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/cms-connect-logo-26.jpg" /></a><h4 id="cms-connect-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">CMS Connect 26</a></h4>August 5-6, 2026 – Montreal, CanadaThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Connect brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Montreal, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect26">so book your seats today.</a> <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> <img style="width:35.73%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/05/image-1778200565145.png" /><h4 id="contentstack-contentcon-2026">Contentstack <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">ContentCon 2026</a></h4>September 30 - October 1, Amsterdam  /  October 27-28, 2026 – ChicagoContentstack’s annual customer conference is the premier event for executives, marketing leaders, and developers to redefine their digital experience strategy. This is your opportunity to step out of the "status quo" and into "elite" status, learning exactly how the world’s most successful brands are using the technology you already own to do the impossible. Enjoy a full day of interactive workshops, certifications, and inspirational on-stage sessions designed to help you become an expert on cutting-edge digital strategies and how to turn Contentstack's CMS and adaptive personalization tools into your greatest competitive advantage.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> </a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.contentstack.com/contentcon">Book your seats today.</a>

Stop Testing on Your Audience

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<hr /> When I spun a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-tale-of-two-phils-exploring-umbracos-open/id1801794414?i=1000749874476">“Tale of Two Phils”</a> on an 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> earlier this year, I wasn’t prepared for how complementary my two guests would sound. If you listen to the conversation, there are multiple such intersections between <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/umbraco">Umbraco</a> CTO <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/filipbech/">Filip Bech-Larsen</a> and Staff Engineer (and resident AI guru) <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-whittaker-82481716/">Phil Whitaker</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/filipbech/">.</a> In many ways, the two complete each other, handing off thoughts like an MCP server connecting the dots. It elevated the knowledge on multiple levels.This makes the collaboration a solid one for Umbraco, an open source CMS that continues to diligently push forward on its agentic AI ambitions. The company’s steady pace of innovation just took another leap forward with the launch of new Backoffice Extension Skills, which are based on Anthropic’s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://resources.anthropic.com/hubfs/The-Complete-Guide-to-Building-Skill-for-Claude.pdf">Agent Skills</a>. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:32.52%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/phil-whittaker-2.jpg" alt="" /></figure>Umbraco Staff Engineer (AI) Phil Whitaker “We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how digital projects are delivered,” Whitaker said, driving home the key advantages of these new additions to Umbraco. “AI is becoming the starting point for new projects and is where developers explore ideas. Backoffice Extension Skills ensure that when your team uses an AI assistant, the correct Umbraco knowledge is available.”<img /><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:80.99%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/umbraco-ai-platform-winter-2026.png" alt="" /></figure>Source: Umbraco Winter Keynote 2026 Umbraco’s aggressive AI product horizon was teased during its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK-eGhzZYpw">Winter Keynote in February,</a> and several digital agency partners are experimenting with creating AI-based workflows. This includes some strong use cases, such as <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://digitalwonderlab.com/umbraco-agency/umbraco-lab-notes/alt-text-shouldnt-be-this-hard-so-we-fixed-it/">Digital Wonderlab’s automated Alt Text generator</a> for improving website accessibility.<h3 id="what-are-agent-skills?-">What are Agent Skills? </h3>In a nutshell, Anthopic’s Agent Skills are like “onboarding guides” that enable AI to execute specific, complex workflows – like data analysis or file creation – without overloading its context window. Agent Skills provide modular, reusable, and organized packages that contain instructions and scripts that help developers and users build, share, and deploy agents that are more effective and context-aware.Anthropic launched Agent Skills as an open standard in December 2025 under <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linuxfoundation.org/">The Linux Foundation.</a> Since then, they’ve been widely adopted, working across Claude and other AI platforms.<h3 id="maintaining-control-and-extensibility">Maintaining control and extensibility</h3>Umbraco’s Backoffice Extension Skills are like a roadmap for AI agents, guiding them to the most up-to-date Umbraco documentation, examples, and source code. Skills are exposed using a standardized endpoint that can be called by AI tools like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://claude.ai/">Claude</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a>, or custom <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.langchain.com/langchain">LangChain agents</a> – making it incredibly extensible.With this guidance, LLMs and agents use the most current version of the Umbraco software and the essential modern frameworks – where they can effectively customize the backoffice or complete tasks like building dashboards or property editors. All of Umbraco’s Backoffice Extension points are registered, documented, and supported, ensuring that customizations are maintained.According to Filip Bech-Larsen, Umbraco’s Backoffice Extension Skills are the first series of skills, aimed at supporting developers using AI agents for building and extending their digital projects. <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:32.75%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/filip-bech-larsen-1777422652939.jpg" alt="" /></figure>Umbraco CTO Filip Bech-Larsen “Agent Skills mirror the way that Umbraco’s Backoffice Extension points work,” he added. “Each Backoffice Extension point links AI Skills to the latest Umbraco documentation, source code, and examples. This supports safer development and positions Umbraco as one of the first major CMS platforms to deliver a comprehensive, agent-ready architecture.”Ready to level up your skills? <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://umbraco.com/blog/the-agent-ready-cms-introducing-agent-skills-umbraco-backoffice-extension/">Learn more here.</a><h3 id="building-on-an-agentic-ai-foundation">Building on an agentic AI foundation</h3>The proof is in the pudding, as they say – and Umbraco’s partners are putting its growing AI capabilities to work. Several use cases are nominated for the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/awards/">Umbraco Awards</a> at the upcoming <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Codegarden 2026,</a> which is being held June 10-11 in Copenhagen. Case in point: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-adolfi/">Dennis Adolfi</a>, head of technology at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/knowit-experience/">Knowit Experience,</a> a leading digital agency based in the Nordics, recently shared an innovative agentic solution for <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/bewigroup/">BEWI Group.</a> In the use case, agents assist or fully manage complete workflows in the dev cycle, from design to code to deployment – even through content creation. The solution relies on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://umbraco.ai/">Umbraco.AI</a> and Umbraco’s MCP to deliver transformative results, the kind that have earned Knowit a nomination for Umbraco’s Best Innovation with AI Award. “[Umbraco] really is a CMS built for AI,” Adolfi said. Another contender for this category comes from <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perplex.nl/en/">Perplex Digital</a>, which developed an AI-powered solution for <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/autolease-van-centraal-beheer/">Autolease van Centraal Beheer,</a> allowing users to literally “talk” to their website. The agency replaced the company’s static navigation with conversation, making it easier for customers to use the site when they’re unable to manually browse for information. They can fill out forms simply by using their voice, making the company’s services more accessible. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://nxtds.com">NXT Digital Solutions Ltd </a>is also nominated for a dynamic CMS migration project for <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.exclusive-networks.com/">Exclusive Networks</a>. NXT introduced Umbraco's Backoffice Agents to automate content tagging, publishing pipelines, and version control to resolve critical indexing failures that were affecting over 1,300 pages – making content more discoverable to search engines and users.<h3 id="why-it-matters">Why it matters</h3>Umbraco continues to introduce high-value tooling for its AI capabilities, and the alignment with Anthropic's Agent Skills is a sage move. By embedding an agent-ready architecture directly into its flexible and extensible CMS, it's moving beyond bolt-on assistants to guided, governed solutions – the kind that provide solid ground for faster and safer agent performance. As is evidenced by the use cases above, it's clear that Umbraco's partners are proving out the potential for how AI and agents can be successfully applied. My bet is that the “Two Phils” are seeing some innovative outcomes they weren't even anticipating. And I'm sure they would agree that's a good thing. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:34.15%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/logo_jday_hor.png" /><h4 id="joomladay-usa-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/">JoomlaDay USA 2026</a></h4>April 29 - May 2, 2026 – Delray Beach, FloridaBe part of the Joomla community in one of the most iconic cities in the world! JoomlaDay USA 2026 is coming to Delray Beach, and you can join us for a dynamic event packed with insights, workshops, and networking opportunities. Learn from top Joomla experts and developers offering valuable insights and real-world solutions. Participate in interactive workshops and sessions and enhance your skills in Joomla management, development, design, and more. And connect with fellow Joomla enthusiasts, developers, and professionals from across the world.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> Book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.06%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/cms-summit-26-logo.jpg" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-summit-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26">CMS Summit 26</a></h4>May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, GermanyThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Summit brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Frankfurt, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26/tickets">so book your seats today.</a> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478"><img style="width:23.45%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/raise-logo-kontent.jpg" alt="" /></a><h4 id="raise-amsterdam"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">RAISE Amsterdam</a></h4>May 20, 2026 – Amsterdam, NetherlandsSponsored by Kontent.ai, RAISE Amsterdam brings together bold marketing and technology leaders to explore how agentic AI is reshaping the way ambitious brands create and deliver content and what it takes to use it safely, responsibly, and with proper governance. Experience the ideas that are shaping the future and dive into big thinking, innovative strategies, and expert insights. Held at the Klein Canvas, Volkshotel, you'll hear from world-class speakers in dynamic sessions that will reveal how AI-powered content operations are accelerating production, improving governance, and driving creative impact. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/raise-amsterdam/?utm_campaign=awareness-fy26&amp;utm_source=cms-critic&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;pi_campaign_id=117478">Limited spots are available, so book yours today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <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>

Level Up Your Agent Skills: Umbraco’s Agent-Ready Architecture Promises Faster, Safer Development

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