Nick Cicero

The Universal Law of Media Attention = Every generation thinks it’s unique when it complains about saturation. It’s not. Scarcity → Oversupply → Fatigue → Consolidation → Renewal The mediums change. The complaint doesn’t. Because the cycle doesn’t. mondometrics.com/blog/universal…

@Jason @grok @Computer some startups yes, but definitely (and unfortunately) all politicians who need to break through should use this. clipping makes you appear ubiquitous. When you need frequency in market to make a message land it can't come just from your own channels/campaign channels or paid ads.

Are these social clipping services an effective marketing channel for start-ups and politicians? Educate me please @grok @computer

@deansguide @tbpn @RogerLynch

@nickcicero @tbpn @RogerLynch Yeah but at least your not homeless

After several years of declining search traffic, Condé Nast CEO @rogerlynch has directed all the company's brands to operate as if search traffic to their properties will be zero. He says the era of turning search and social media traffic into profitable businesses is gone. And that if you run a media business that doesn't have an authoritative brand, a very strong niche, or a direct audience, you're going to be fighting hostile algo changes all the way down. He describes a recent board meeting: "We took a snapshot of search results from seven or eight years ago. And what you saw were a few sponsored links, then the ten blue links." "Do the same search today, you get an AI overview, then you get rows and rows and rows of commerce links, then you get sponsored stuff." "Each of the last three years, we would do our budgets, and we'd put forecasts in of search traffic declining. Because we'd seen the pattern of algorithm changes. And generally those algorithm changes were negative." "Every year, our search traffic was down more than we had forecast. So last year I told our teams, 'Assume there's no search.' You have to have your businesses planned as if search is zero. We don't expect it to be zero, we expect it to be a single-digit percentage of our traffic."

@ashnichrist what's smart here especially w/@MrBeast is the ability to build a lifetime fan in a completely different and meaningful way. Random but the entire storyline in Hacks this season is about her Little Debbies and the power of the fan army. No one is driving that level of fan intensity today like Beast.

There is a signal here: - @AlexHormozi + Skool - @StevenBartlett + @stanforcreators - @lucy_guo + @Passes - @GadzhiIman + @whop - Soon, @MrBeast + (whatever he's building) Pattern: creators partnering/making their own meta creator/community platforms. They see the value more clearly than most. There is something there worth double clicking into.

@TVSportsUpdates @readDanwrite

Rookie mistake…

@denk_tweets we should talk podcast analytics for @mondometrics , love to support it! We already support @iHeartRadio @Simplecast and others, plus we're already doing multi-newsletter @beehiiv analytics for @Stocktwits and other pubs. Have some big, very recognizable pod clients now.

New on @beehiiv for podcasts: Episode-level deep links 🎧 Listeners can now jump straight to any episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube—no hunting required. Apple and Spotify connect automatically; just add your YouTube link before or after you publish. 👇

@greghkahn @beehiiv exactly what @mondometrics predicted. That's why we integrated @beehiiv + podcasts + social last year for clients

Creator-media (newsletter) portal @beehiiv is moving into podcasts Substack podcasts already offer creators a way to combine audio with newsletters to build subscriber bases Newsletters + podcasts + events appears to be the media trend of 2026.

@prsarahevans Preach!

Hot take for every PR pro getting overruled by a C-suite who declines “small” interviews: You can save this and send it to them. When your CEO declines a podcast because “I’ve never heard of it,” a Substack feature because “the subscriber count is too small,” or a YouTube show because “the reach isn’t there,” they are actively kneecapping your AI visibility and they don’t know it. The reach math does not account for what AI systems actually cite when they answer a question about your brand. Here is what’s true in 2026: → YouTube is now cited in 16% of LLM answers, beating Reddit (Bluefish, Jan 2026, reported by Adweek) → LinkedIn is the #2 most cited domain across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity (SEMrush, 325,000 prompts, Feb 2026) → LinkedIn articles drive 50 to 66% of LinkedIn’s AI citations, and the platform jumped from rank #11 to #5 on ChatGPT in three months (Profound, 1.4M citations, Nov 2025 to Feb 2026) → Substack is now an earned media engine that LLMs crawl as a trusted, high-engagement source (PR Daily, Oct 2025) → Content updated within 30 days gets 3.2x more AI citations than older content (Cross-platform LLM analysis, Q1 2026) Read that last one again. Recency is the multiplier! The newsletter you got mentioned in? Seen by subscribers who trust the editor enough to open the email. That is one of the strongest authority signals AI systems use to construct an answer about your category. The podcast with “only” 2,000 listeners? Transcript indexed. Spoken expertise. Original audio. AI loves it. The YouTube show you’ve never heard of? Long-form, transcribed, parseable, and currently outranking Reddit as a citation source. The editors at those outlets will remember when you said no. And the AI systems will remember when you said nothing. Three things to tell your leadership: 1.Reach is no longer quantifiable in legacy CPM math. The output that matters now is whether AI systems cite you when a buyer asks about your category. 2.First-mover advantage in newsletters, podcasts, and emerging YouTube shows is real and closing fast. Substack alone has 5M+ paid subscriptions feeding LLM training and retrieval. 3.The recency factor means saying yes today compounds. PR pros: I see you. Keep advocating. The receipts are finally upon us. #AIVisibility #PR #GEO #PublicRelations

Most teams do not have a content strategy. They have an asset calendar. The Future of Brand Social Is Programming, Not Posting open.substack.com/pub/nickcicero…

@HenryBelcaster Impressive! all organic?

The YouTube channel we built CeraVe hit 150M+ views in < 6 months. I think these brands have the same potential: For context, we partnered with CeraVe to build an explainer channel that made skincare feel simple, entertaining, and actually understandable. Any brand with overwhelmed, confused, or highly research-driven customers can win with this format. Here are the 6 I think can crush 👇

@TheWapplehouse Also paper towels are expensive that’s the biggest offense I see

In about 10-15 years we’re going to witness a slew of true crime documentaries about “content families” the depravity of which we’ve never seen

@AmirMushich love to see it

You can finally create REAL campaigns with GPT image 2 - from visual ref to the whole campaign system With a good prompting sequence, you can quickly one-shot brainstorming & turn it into slides to present to your boss or a client - and it's 80-90% ready to be presented This spec campaign concept of "Gucci x Crocs" was created with - 1 ref image from pinterest - 1 prompt to re-build it into my cross-brand idea - a sequence of a few prompts I don't mean to state it's a "final product", but damn, it's a huge leap to a real commerical concept-prototyping There are still weird artifacts, but it's very easy to fix in minutes. The point is - you go from zero to a quick and detailed promo-deck in ~1 one hour. In 1 working day you can generate 5-10 strong directions to present. Want prompts & "how to direct" such a project? Drop any comment - so I'll know Happy to share the article with all the details

@kyurieff yes! @DudePerfect hired a Chief Brand Officer which was basically their CMO role too but I think he left for a proper CMO role

Our Scalable newsletter on 3/12: “It may not be too long until we see a creator company hire a CMO.” Today: MrBeast is hiring a CMO 😎

@hernanlopez I would agree - I built the first analytics for Snapchat in 2014, Instagram Stories in 2016 and TikTok in 2017 (musically) - love this research

Film was the first audiovisual language. Television was the second. Vertical video is the third, and Q1 2026 data makes the trajectory undeniable. Mobile Time Spent, globally: → Instagram: +15% YoY → TikTok: +10% YoY → Microdrama apps combined: +4x YoY Meanwhile, horizontal-first streaming platforms as a whole lost mobile time spent in Q1. Even @YouTube, which relies more on horizontal than vertical, was slow off the gate (though it's growing time spent on TVs, as are the streaming platforms) This isn't a microdrama story; it's an audiovisual language story. Vertical video is professionalizing across every genre: comedy, news, sports, animation, reality. Studios are entering. AI is compressing the cost curve. The companies learning this language now are positioning for the same structural advantage early TV networks had in the 1950s. Owl & Co has been tracking this shift since 2024. We called vertical reality, vertical animation, and vertical comedy as emerging formats before they converged in the data. Vertical news, sports and reality are here, vertical podcasts are next. Short form is not the same as verticals and viceversa. The framework we use (vertical video as a third audiovisual language, with its own economics, aesthetics, and audience psychology) is what we'll bring to Los Angeles on June 3. The Vertical Media Summit is a half-day event for senior operators, investors, and builders. Proprietary data, structured debate, and limited seats. If your business touches attention, this is the conversation you want to be in (link in comments).

@zachwillis57 I remember my first job out of college making 23K as a social media coordinator. Not sure how old you are but 60K and you work at an NFL team? Pretty awesome for entry level.

60k is fucking bananas

Packed house at the Business of Women’s Sports Summit!

@Drakeparker03 @ByKellyCohen yeah that I know! I didn't see anyone credit the creator so I wanted to find out who did it.

@nickcicero @ByKellyCohen Probably. School usually have students that are creative team with usually some full time members that help over see them and schedule content

Maybe college creatives should also get to benefit from NIL?????

@DoctorYev YouTube, can double as a podcast if you plan it right. Monetization better on good pods right now though.

Podcast or Youtube channel to grow your media empire?

@marketecturetv @johnhoctor @ericfranchi this was a great explainer! As someone also building AI agents for media analytics I feel seen here. I wrote a little bit about this recently tvrev.com/news/one-bad-d…

@johnhoctor from Newton Research walks us through a step-by-step guide to using AI agents in media analytics.