Why Brands Need A Pause

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In Partnership with AirOps

Getting cited by AI is not the finish line. Getting chosen is.

Most teams now track citations like a rankings report. But a citation is a mention, and a mention does not build a pipeline. 

Buyers use AI to research, shortlist, and decide, so the brands that win give them a reason to pick them.

Three recent AirOps Growth Leader webinars point to the same shift. 

• Kevin Indig’s data shows that ranking #1 for your key fan-out queries earns 58% of citations, four times more than rank #10.
• Ross Simmonds found that Google’s AI surfaces lean on Reddit and YouTube, while the assistants favor off-site product and comparison pages.
• Eli Schwartz argues that every asset still needs a conversion path.

You’ll leave with practical tips on which pages to prioritize and how to give AI-referred buyers a clear next step.

Read the full takeaways to see where your content and off-site effort should go next.

💡 Why Repetition Works Better When You Space It Out

People remember things better when they encounter them repeatedly over time instead of all at once.

That’s the Spacing Effect, and brands can use it to make products, campaigns, and content easier to remember.

Here’s how to apply it.

1️⃣ Take Your Hero Product Away: Starbucks turned the Pumpkin Spice Latte into an event by making it seasonal.

Because the drink disappears and returns on a predictable cycle, each comeback refreshes familiarity while creating anticipation and scarcity.

For brands with a strong hero product, limited availability can sometimes create more attention than constant access.

2️⃣ Burst, Pause, Repeat: Coca-Cola’s “Holidays Are Coming” campaign returns every year instead of running continuously.

The repeated seasonal exposure strengthens memory without exhausting the audience.

Research also suggests advertising can be more effective when impressions are spaced apart rather than delivered too close together.

3️⃣ Ration The Experience: Wordle became habit-forming partly because users received only one puzzle per day.

The forced pause made each interaction feel more valuable and created a predictable reason to return.

Brands can use the same principle with weekly content, daily challenges, serialized emails, or limited drops.

Why It Works

Memory strengthens when people are reminded of something after time has passed.

Spacing gives the brain repeated opportunities to retrieve and reinforce the same idea without overwhelming it.

The Takeaway

Don’t always maximize frequency.

Sometimes the smarter strategy is to appear, disappear, and return at the right moment.

Spacing can make products feel more anticipated, campaigns more memorable, and content easier to build into a habit.

💡 Global Ad Spend Keeps Getting Revised Up

Advertising forecasts usually get more conservative as the year progresses.

WARC’s latest outlook is moving in the opposite direction, with global ad spend growth upgraded again.

Here’s what changed.

1️⃣ 2026 Growth Was Raised Again: WARC now expects global ad spend to grow 11.9% in 2026.

That’s up from 9.7% in its December forecast, a 2.2 percentage-point increase.

2️⃣ 2027 Was Upgraded Too: The 2027 forecast has risen from 7.9% to 8.4%.

Growth is expected to slow, but it is still building on top of an unusually strong 2026.

3️⃣ 2028 Still Looks Healthy: WARC’s first estimate for 2028 points to 7.9% growth.

That suggests the market may normalize rather than contract sharply.

4️⃣ The Growth Is Uneven: WARC notes that the AI boom is benefiting some platforms, sectors, and consumers far more than others.

The largest ad platforms, with stronger data and automation, may capture a disproportionate share of the growth.

5️⃣ Higher Spend Means More Competition: More money entering advertising doesn’t automatically mean better returns.

It can also mean more advertisers competing for the same audiences, driving costs higher.

Why It Works

Rising ad budgets usually follow where marketers see scalable performance.

Right now, AI-powered platforms and highly automated ad ecosystems appear to be attracting more of that spend.

The Takeaway

Plan ahead before competition gets more expensive.

Set 2027 budgets early, test smaller channels while costs are still reasonable, and avoid assuming that overall market growth will translate evenly across every platform.

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