What's Happening In Marketing Right Now
What's Happening In Marketing Right Now
/ What’s the Latest with GEO
The Attribution Gap Is Getting Wider
Something quiet happened in AI search, and your analytics dashboard probably did not catch it.
ChatGPT appears to have stopped tagging its outbound links with UTM parameters. That means visits that used to show up in your analytics as ChatGPT referrals are now landing as direct traffic.
Adobe analyzed roughly 500 pages and found ChatGPT referrals dropped by approximately 31,000 visits per day while direct traffic rose by about 26,000 visits over the same period. OpenAI has not confirmed whether the change is intentional.
For marketers, this creates a visibility problem. The traffic is still coming. The credit is disappearing.
AI is likely influencing more of your pipeline than your dashboard shows.
The brands that appear in AI-generated answers did not get there by accident. They built a credible point of view over time through consistent content, earned media, and thought leadership that AI systems could actually cite.
If your analytics show a dip in referral traffic alongside steady or rising direct traffic, that is worth investigating. The source of that traffic may have shifted, not the interest.
What This Means for Your Strategy
GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is the practice of structuring your content so it gets surfaced and cited by AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
The fundamentals are consistent with good content strategy: clear declarative statements, credible data points, defined expertise, and a point of view that is distinct enough to be worth citing.
But the attribution gap makes one thing urgent. Waiting for your analytics to tell you that AI is driving traffic to your site may mean waiting too long. The brands building GEO-ready content now are the ones that will own that visibility when measurement catches up.
ChatGPT appears to drop UTM tracking (Search Engine Land)
/ Brand to Watch: Meltwater
Intelligence Is Always in Style
Kim Cattrall is back, this time not as Samantha Jones but as the brand executive who always knows what is happening before anyone else does.
Meltwater, the media intelligence platform, cast Cattrall as the lead in a short film series set in New York as part of its 25th anniversary campaign. The tagline is Intelligence Is Always in Style, and the creative leans into glossy magazine aesthetics and the golden era of print media.
It is a smart move for a brand that has spent 25 years in a category most people outside the industry do not think about until they need it.
Why This Campaign Works
Meltwater is not selling software in this campaign but rather it sells a feeling: the confidence of always being one step ahead.
That is a brand positioning play, not a product marketing play, and it is exactly what a company with 25 years of equity can afford to do.
The choice of Cattrall is specific and intentional. She is associated with a character who was always informed and composed, and was never caught off guard. This association doesn’t need to be explained so it immediately lands for the target audience.
The print and editorial visual language reinforces the idea that media intelligence has always been valuable, long before AI made it a technology conversation.
The Takeaway for B2B Brands
Most B2B marketing defaults to product demos, feature lists, and ROI calculators. Meltwater’s campaign is a reminder that even in highly technical categories, the most memorable brands are the ones that make you feel something.
Heritage is an underused asset. If your company has years of experience and a track record, that history can be a creative asset, not just a credential to mention in an about us page.
Casting matters. The right voice, face or partnership gives a campaign instant context that no amount of copy can create on its own.
Intelligence Is Always in Style — Meltwater Campaign
/ From Our Desk
The common thread between these two stories is visibility. AI is reshaping how brands get found and credited, and the campaigns that break through are the ones built on a clear brand identity.
If you want to explore what that looks like for your organization, we would be happy to talk.
Velocitas is a Miami-based integrated marketing, PR, and branding agency. We help brands build visibility that holds up across every channel, including the AI-driven ones your analytics might not be capturing yet.