Blog

At the Edge of AI

Fresh perspectives from the frontier of artificial intelligence, where breakthroughs happen and what they mean for the way we work.

A thick stack of printed pages in focus on a desk, with three colleagues blurred behind it, one making notes by hand, and a laptop to the right
Growth & Automation

The Supervision Tax: What Your AI Agents Really Cost

A RevOps lead walked me through an agent his team had shipped in the spring. It reads inbound leads, enriches them, scores them against the ICP, and routes them to the right rep with a summary note at...

Tracy ThayneOctober 8, 2026
A thick binder of assessment pages on a desk, with rolled blueprints and a hard hat behind it
AI Strategy

The Do Not Build List

I have never seen an AI assessment come back and say no. Think about how strange that is. A company...

Tracy ThayneOctober 6, 2026
Nobody in Your Company Owns the Context
Buyer Intelligence

Nobody in Your Company Owns the Context

I do some consulting as a fractional CMO. I sat in a room with company executives this past spring a...

Tracy ThayneSeptember 24, 2026
Your Freed Hours Are Not Money
AI Business Case

Your Freed Hours Are Not Money

A CFO once ended a business case I was sitting in on with one question. The deck said the automation...

Tracy ThayneSeptember 22, 2026
Your Context Should Outlive Your AI Vendor
Operational Intelligence

Your Context Should Outlive Your AI Vendor

A founder I talked with this summer had done everything right, or at least everything the market tol...

Tracy ThayneSeptember 17, 2026
How to Tell Which Work AI Can Actually Take
AI Business Case

How to Tell Which Work AI Can Actually Take

The most expensive AI mistake I see is not picking the wrong tool. It is picking the wrong process, ...

Tracy ThayneSeptember 15, 2026
When Your Best Person Leaves, What Leaves With Them
Buyer Intelligence

When Your Best Person Leaves, What Leaves With Them

A friend of mine who owns a distribution company had an operations employee with nineteen years unde...

Tracy ThayneSeptember 10, 2026
Stop Automating Decisions. Start Automating What Comes Before Them.
AI Strategy

Stop Automating Decisions. Start Automating What Comes Before Them.

An operations manager at a mid-sized company told me it takes her about two minutes to decide whethe...

Tracy ThayneSeptember 8, 2026
Sales and Marketing Don't Need More Meetings. They Need the Same Brain.
Operational Intelligence

Sales and Marketing Don't Need More Meetings. They Need the Same Brain.

I sat in on a pipeline review where the VP of Sales and the CMO gave two different answers to the sa...

Tracy ThayneAugust 13, 2026
The Buyer Journey Your Attribution Can't See
Marketing Understanding

The Buyer Journey Your Attribution Can't See

A demand gen lead I work with pulled up her dashboard last month and pointed at a single line: direc...

Tracy ThayneAugust 11, 2026
Your Business Should Be the Center of Its Own Intelligence
Operational Intelligence

Your Business Should Be the Center of Its Own Intelligence

I sat in on a quarterly review last month where the marketing lead had six browser tabs open before ...

Tracy ThayneAugust 6, 2026
Why Your AI Content Still Sounds Like Everyone Else's
Marketing Understanding

Why Your AI Content Still Sounds Like Everyone Else's

A CMO forwarded me three LinkedIn posts last month and asked me to guess which one was hers. One was...

Tracy ThayneAugust 4, 2026
The Correction Dividend: Why Fixing Your AI Once Should Fix It Forever
Transparency & Trust

The Correction Dividend: Why Fixing Your AI Once Should Fix It Forever

A head of demand gen told me about the moment she stopped trusting her team's AI stack. It was not a...

Tracy ThayneJuly 30, 2026
Your AI Should Tell You What It Doesn't Know
Operational Intelligence

Your AI Should Tell You What It Doesn't Know

A few months ago I watched a VP of marketing ask her team's AI tool a question about win rates in a ...

Tracy ThayneJuly 28, 2026
One Client, One Brain: The Operating Model for Agencies and Fractional Leaders
Operational Intelligence

One Client, One Brain: The Operating Model for Agencies and Fractional Leaders

Before Expona, I ran marketing for multiple companies at once as a fractional CMO. Monday morning me...

Tracy ThayneJuly 23, 2026
Every Output Is an Input: The Flywheel That Separates AI Tools From AI Assets
Growth & Automation

Every Output Is an Input: The Flywheel That Separates AI Tools From AI Assets

A few weeks ago I asked a marketing ops lead a simple question: show me the single best thing your A...

Tracy ThayneJuly 21, 2026
Your Company Doesn't Need Another AI Assistant. It Needs a Brain.
Operational Intelligence

Your Company Doesn't Need Another AI Assistant. It Needs a Brain.

A founder walked me through his AI stack a few weeks ago, and he was proud of it. A writing assistan...

Tracy ThayneJuly 16, 2026
Show Me the Receipts: Why Every AI Answer Should Prove Where It Came From
Transparency & Trust

Show Me the Receipts: Why Every AI Answer Should Prove Where It Came From

Last month I watched a director of marketing do something that has become the quiet ritual of the AI...

Tracy ThayneJuly 14, 2026
The Convergence of AI, Crypto, and IoT: The Machine Economy Is Quietly Assembling Itself
Industry Trends

The Convergence of AI, Crypto, and IoT: The Machine Economy Is Quietly Assembling Itself

A founder I know runs a company that services commercial HVAC systems. Over coffee last month he tol...

Tracy ThayneJuly 9, 2026
The B2B Webinar Campaign Framework: How to Stop Running Events and Start Running Pipeline
Growth & Automation

The B2B Webinar Campaign Framework: How to Stop Running Events and Start Running Pipeline

A few years ago I helped a B2B team run a webinar they were sure would be a hit. The topic was good,...

Tracy ThayneJuly 3, 2026
From Prediction to Preparation: Make the Forecast Cheap to Act On
Buyer Intelligence

From Prediction to Preparation: Make the Forecast Cheap to Act On

I once sat in a quarterly review where a data scientist presented a genuinely impressive churn model...

Tracy ThayneJuly 2, 2026
Blockchain, Trust, and Data Ownership: Why Provenance Is the Next Marketing Moat
Transparency & Trust

Blockchain, Trust, and Data Ownership: Why Provenance Is the Next Marketing Moat

At a dinner a few weeks ago, a SaaS founder spent ten minutes telling me how good his AI personaliza...

Tracy ThayneJune 30, 2026
The Marketing Intelligence Maturity Model: Where Is Your Team Really?
AI Strategy

The Marketing Intelligence Maturity Model: Where Is Your Team Really?

I asked a marketing leader recently whether her team was ahead or behind on AI. She paused for a lon...

Tracy ThayneJune 25, 2026
Agent Engine Optimization: Making Your Company Machine-Readable
AI Business Innovation

Agent Engine Optimization: Making Your Company Machine-Readable

A founder I advise did something last month that would have been unthinkable two years ago. He neede...

Tracy ThayneJune 23, 2026
The Intelligence Layer: Why the Next SaaS Moat Is Context, Not Features
AI Strategy

The Intelligence Layer: Why the Next SaaS Moat Is Context, Not Features

A founder I know shipped a slick AI feature last quarter. He was proud of it, and he should have bee...

Tracy ThayneJune 22, 2026
Death of the Martech Frankenstein
AI Business Innovation

Death of the Martech Frankenstein

The first thing I asked for at one of my early fractional CMO engagements was a list of the tools th...

Tracy ThayneJune 18, 2026
From Persona to Live Campaign in 5 Days
Buyer Intelligence

From Persona to Live Campaign in 5 Days

I have a folder on an old drive labeled "strategy." It is a graveyard. Beautiful persona decks, mess...

Tracy ThayneJune 18, 2026
From Task-Doer to Orchestrator: What Agentic Marketing Actually Changes
AI Strategy

From Task-Doer to Orchestrator: What Agentic Marketing Actually Changes

The first time AI changed how I worked, it looked like a better text box. I typed a prompt, I got a ...

Tracy ThayneJune 16, 2026
Why Most Companies Are Getting AI ROI Wrong
AI Business Innovation

Why Most Companies Are Getting AI ROI Wrong

A marketing leader told me last month that her team had quietly become an AI shop. Every writer usin...

Tracy ThayneJune 9, 2026
The Infinite Content Graveyard: Why More AI Output Is Killing B2B Differentiation
Marketing Understanding

The Infinite Content Graveyard: Why More AI Output Is Killing B2B Differentiation

Open any two competing B2B blogs right now and read the top post on each. Same structure. Same confi...

Tracy ThayneJune 3, 2026
The AI Buyer Is Already Here: How Agents Are Quietly Filtering Your Pipeline
AI Strategy

The AI Buyer Is Already Here: How Agents Are Quietly Filtering Your Pipeline

A marketing leader I work with ran a clean experiment a few weeks ago. She asked ChatGPT, Perplexity...

Tracy ThayneJune 2, 2026
The AI-Native Company: What It Actually Takes to Build One
AI Strategy

The AI-Native Company: What It Actually Takes to Build One

This post is about that distinction. What AI-native actually means at the operating-model level, and...

Tracy ThayneMay 21, 2026
Generative Engine Optimization: When AI Becomes the Buyer's Front Door
Marketing Understanding

Generative Engine Optimization: When AI Becomes the Buyer's Front Door

I was on a call last week with a B2B founder who could not figure out why his organic traffic had qu...

Tracy ThayneMay 19, 2026
Context Is the Whole Game: Why AI Marketing Without It Is Just Faster Generic
Agentic AI

Context Is the Whole Game: Why AI Marketing Without It Is Just Faster Generic

I got a note last week from someone in my network who has been chewing on a question about marketing...

Tracy ThayneMay 5, 2026
RAG Is Only Half the Story: How Private AI Builds Living Marketing Intelligence
Agentic AI

RAG Is Only Half the Story: How Private AI Builds Living Marketing Intelligence

If you've used any AI tool for marketing in the past two years, you've probably noticed the same thi...

Tracy ThayneMay 5, 2026
The 6-Stage Buyer Journey Framework Every B2B Marketer Should Use
Buyer Intelligence

The 6-Stage Buyer Journey Framework Every B2B Marketer Should Use

If you've worked in B2B marketing for any length of time, you've seen the standard buyer journey mod...

Tracy ThayneApril 29, 2026
Why Your Buyer Personas Are Probably Wrong (And How to Fix Them)
Buyer Intelligence

Why Your Buyer Personas Are Probably Wrong (And How to Fix Them)

I've built a lot of buyer personas over the years. Hundreds, easily, across SaaS, manufacturing, ene...

Tracy ThayneApril 21, 2026
AI Agents Aren't Coming for Your Marketing Stack. They're Already Here
Agentic AI

AI Agents Aren't Coming for Your Marketing Stack. They're Already Here

For the past two years, the marketing technology conversation has been dominated by generative AI: t...

Tracy ThayneApril 14, 2026
What Is Operational Intelligence, and Why Marketers Need It Now
Operational Intelligence

What Is Operational Intelligence, and Why Marketers Need It Now

We've never had more data about our buyers. We've never had better tools for reaching them. And yet,...

Tracy ThayneMarch 5, 2026