Digital Marketers Share Hot Takes at SMX Advanced

If you ever need a hot take, put a few hundred digital marketers in one place at the same time.

We know there's a lot of advice and opinions out there relating to our industry. So when we were at SMX Advanced in Boston, we decided to ask around and get takes from other marketers about the hot-button issues impacting our work.

As a disclaimer, these takes don't necessarily reflect our own views. We’re simply sharing what we heard from others at SMX.

Hot Take: AI Lies

Anu Adegbola of Search Engine Land, PPC Live, and the It’s New podcast had a take about the accuracy of AI, saying it straight-up lies.

“I know there was a time we were talking about ‘[AI] hallucinates,’” she said. “My new take is that AI outrightly lies.”

Adegbola told us her take stemmed from a conversation brought up during PPC Live: The Podcast, where industry leaders talk about mistakes that lead to improvements. One of the latest discussions involved mistakes people make with AI.

“One thing that was brought up that I thought was an absolute fact is the fact that we don’t question AI well enough,” she said. “We’re still in the learning curve of prompting.”

Her advice to marketers? Don't accept the first answer AI gives.

“We really need to keep pushing AI when we ask it those questions. And not stop at its first answer that it gives us,” she said, adding that, “You almost want to be angry at it, but what are you really going to do when AI’s just told you the wrong thing?”

Hot Take: You Can’t Actually Control AI for Ads

Amy Hebdon, the Founder and Managing Director of Paid Search Magic, called AI Briefs and other recent updates from Google Ads "controlled theater."

“Anything that’s trying to tell an AI-generated ad how to make an ad is controlled theater,” she said. “That is not actual control, and we cannot use that if we need to control the message of what our clients need to say.”

She believes these new "guardrails" aren't a big deal.

“There’s like a million things you don’t want to be saying, not just 25,” Hebdon noted.

Her advice? Don’t use AI if you need that much control.

“So making sure you’re not using ad types that you’re not able to run,” she said. “If you need to control the message, you need to not be using AI to generate your creative.”

Hot Take: Search Profiles is Google’s Olive Branch

While we were at the conference, Google announced new Search profiles in Discover – described as a “dedicated, shareable space” for creators and publishers to highlight their content from across platforms.

Barry Schwartz, the CEO of RustyBrick and Founder of Search Engine Roundtable, noted that this isn't the first time Google has tried rolling out profiles, pointing to Google+ as an example.

“It’s Google’s, basically, olive branch to publishers and creators to get them a little bit more traffic after taking everything from them, including their children and their bank accounts and their whole entire livelihood,” he said.

And while he doesn’t know exactly how the latest attempt at profiles will go, he did push people to subscribe to stay updated with his @rustybrick content.

Hot Take: Personalized Experiences Are Key

Crystal Carter, the Head of AI Search and SEO Communications at Wix, said brands need to make experiences more personal for customers.

“Google has been using Gemini and lots of other features, including personal intelligence, to try to add more personalization into the SERP and also into their experiences,” she said. “And this means that brands need to also pay more attention to how they are making their experiences more personalized and how they are harnessing their customer base.”

Carter noted that marketers often spend time trying to get new customers, but should also be focusing on building up “sticky relationships” with repeat customers.

“Because personalization builds on habits,” she explained. “And if you become part of their habit – if you are a brand they interact with every day, for instance – you’re more likely to show up in personalized results.”

This was also the subject of Carter’s presentation at the conference and a corresponding blog post on the Wix website.

Hot Take: Track the Size of Results

“If you care about rank, then the reason you care about rank is because you think it’s correlated with chance of a click,” Tom Capper from STAT and Moz, said. “You think if you rank higher, people are more likely to click.”

But rank isn’t the only thing that marketers should be paying attention to, according to Capper.

“What else is correlated with chance of a click? The size of the result,” he noted. “So you’re measuring that? You probably should be.”

SERP size and pixel-height data were the subject of Capper’s SMX presentation, “The SERP is sinking.” During his talk, he shared data breaking down pixel-height data in SERPs and provided takeaways on how to maximize visibility using rich results.

Hot Take: AI is a Bubble

Shawn Huber of Lastmile Retail noted that AI isn’t “everything they cracked it up to be.”

“Honestly, I think AI is a bubble,” he said. “And it’s gonna burst.”

Huber did acknowledge there are interesting parts of AI he uses, but noted, “as far as rank tracking or prompt tracking… it’s a fallacy, and I think it’s a waste of time.”

His take contradicts that of our own Greg Finn, who stated on a recent podcast that he believes AI is not a bubble.

Hot Take: We’re Not Actually Losing Control

Susan Yen of SearchLab Digital said while AI features have significantly changed Google Ads, the platform still gives advertisers levers they can pull to control it. The key, she noted, is learning how to use them to harness that control.

“We are not losing control,” Yen said. “We just need to figure out how to control it.”

Quick Takes

Hot Take: Stop Mixing Brand and Non-Brand

"Anyone still blending brand and non-brand across their performance media campaigns in 2026 shouldn't be allowed to log into the ad platforms,” Jeremy Krantz, Vice President of Paid Search Association, said.

Hot Take: Don't Do SEO Just for Google

“Doing SEO for Google is cute. But if LLMs do not know you exist, you’re basically doing SEO for nostalgia,” Timmy Walczak, Account Manager at LinkBuilding HQ, said.

Hot Take: Domain Authority is Overrated

“Domain authority and domain rating are the most overrated link-building metrics,” Resolve CEO Michael Johnson said.

If you enjoy hot takes, check out our weekly Marketing O'Clock podcast that recaps all the biggest digital marketing news. We feature a new hot take on every episode.