What our digital practice is working on: Navigating the media landscape with AI and innovation

As the media landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, our clients are increasingly turning to us at Madano to help them navigate these changes and make informed decisions about where to allocate their time and budget.

Our frequently asked questions (FAQs):

• Where is my audience online?
• How can I rank higher on search engines?
• How is paid media contributing to conversions?

We’re combining media sources, such as Meltwater and Pulsar, with our proprietary analytics tools as well as our deep connections with media partners to provide clients with the right answers to these questions.

1. Harnessing Artificial Intelligence (AI) for audience insights

With platforms like X causing division with their policies and leadership and Meta scaling back its DEI commitments, the question of where audiences are spending their time online has never been more critical. Are they flocking to Bluesky, Threads and Reddit, or are they moving away from social media altogether and returning to events and scientific journals?

To address this, we are combining our Insights and Digital capabilities, using quantitative and qualitative methods with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to provide deeper insights into audience behaviour.

Our AIMI approach to Topic Mapping enables us to visualise and classify the entire landscape at once at scale, helping us to pick out and quantify key narratives and themes. The map above shows individual articles as dots, and how they are clustered together based on semantic similarity. This then enables us to identify clusters of topics pertinent to a given area/landscape, while also allowing us to identify niche topics.

Using AI, we can analyse vast amounts of data from various platforms, including X, forums, online news/blogs and Reddit, to identify where your target audience is most active. This allows us to create tailored strategies that ensure your message reaches the right people at the right time.

We now work across more channels than ever and with more emerging each day, we are building more relationships to offer clients targeted reach and scale where appropriate.

Whether your audience is moving back to traditional channels like events and scientific journals or exploring new social media platforms, our integrated approach provides the clarity and direction needed to make informed decisions.

In today’s crowded marketplace, channel usage data only tells part of the story. While reach metrics remain important, savvy marketers are increasingly adopting attention-focused strategies to maximise ROI during periods of economic uncertainty.

The key insight is that some advertising mediums may show impressive reach and time-spent statistics but fundamentally lack the ability to drive meaningful engagement. This disconnect results in diminished message impact for target audiences, ultimately reducing advertising effectiveness—regardless of creative quality, placement, or platform selection.

For businesses aiming for optimal results, it is essential to understand the critical difference between reach and attention. Success now requires a thoughtful, balanced approach that strategically considers both variables rather than prioritising reach alone.

By embracing this nuanced perspective, marketers can better assist clients in achieving their business objectives in an increasingly complex media landscape.

2. Generative AI Engine Optimisation (GEO)

The way people search for information is changing (Google's search market share dropped below 90% for the first time since 2015 in the final three months of 2024), and so must our strategies. While Google has dominated the search space for decades, new generative AI search engines like ChatGPT, Deepseek, and Perplexity are emerging as powerful alternatives. Our second initiative, Generative AI Engine Optimisation (GEO), is designed to help our clients stay ahead of this search revolution.

GEO focuses on optimising content for these new AI-driven search engines, ensuring that our clients' websites are set up for success. We are training our clients on the nuances of these platforms and implementing changes to their websites to improve visibility and engagement. By staying at the forefront of this technological shift, we help our clients maintain a competitive edge in an ever-changing digital landscape.

For example, one of our clients observed that Google’s Gemini summaries, along with a shift in user behaviour towards using ChatGPT for succinct, intent-based answers, impacted their visibility. Despite expecting to rank for certain common queries, they found that their content was not appearing in search results.

This tells us that their website content might not be as relevant or comprehensive as other pages available, missing essential SEO elements (yes SEO still matters), issues with technical set up, or your website haven't answered the full user query in way that’s written for GEO.

Read more: How to Stay Ahead in the Age of AI Search - Magdalene Karipidou

3. Enhanced tracking and conversion attribution

As marketing budgets become more scrutinised, the need for accurate performance tracking and conversion attribution has never been greater. Our third initiative focuses on enhancing our tracking capabilities to provide a clearer picture of return on investment (ROI) across all channels.

The evolution from reporting on engagement metrics to demonstrating tangible business impact is fundamental to aligning with CFOs—potentially valuable allies but often perceived adversaries in budget discussions. This shift requires speaking the language of finance: ROI, revenue attribution, and bottom-line contribution.

Multinational corporations have traditionally relied on Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) to develop data-driven narratives about marketing's business impact. Now, these organisations are moving toward more frequent quarterly or rolling evaluations to maintain timely performance visibility during uncertain economic conditions.

This creates a significant challenge for marketers with limited organisational resources who simply cannot invest in sophisticated analytical frameworks to demonstrate their ROI contribution. Without these tools, they remain at a disadvantage during critical budget conversations.

Madano, in partnership with our AVENIR GLOBAL friends, Time & Space has addressed this market gap through an accessible MMM solution designed for organisations of all sizes. This offering helps marketers quantify investment returns across both paid and earned media channels, providing valuable leverage in internal discussions as businesses navigate economic uncertainty.

We are monitoring user behaviour across multiple channels and accurately attributing conversions (i.e. what channel(s) or touchpoint(s) contributed to an action). This means we can provide our clients with detailed insights into which channels are driving the most value and where adjustments need to be made. By ensuring precise tracking and attribution, we help our clients maximise their marketing s­­pend and best understand their return on ad spend (ROAS).

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In comparison to what CoPilot thought our media plan should look like.

At Madano, we are committed to helping our clients navigate the complexities of the modern media landscape. Through our innovative initiatives in AI-driven audience insights, Generative AI Engine Optimisation, and enhanced performance tracking, we provide the tools and strategies needed to stay ahead of the curve. As the digital world continues to evolve, we remain dedicated to delivering the insights and solutions that drive success.

Want to learn more? Let’s jump on Teams or have lunch. Contact us today so we can learn more about your challenges.

Disclaimer: We'll admit it, we used some of our AI tools to help create this piece of content.