For two decades, digital marketing revolved around one sacred objective: climbing higher in internet search results. Agencies built businesses around it. Clients wrote checks for it. Search engine optimization specialists built entire careers on moving a blue link from position seven to position three.
According to the latest edition of The Mention Report, that battle increasingly resembles a war reenactment staged for tourists. The battlefield has moved. The winners are no longer the pages that rank first. They're the brands that artificial intelligence systems choose to mention.