Welcome to Franc Talking.

Growing something from nothing is what motivates me about my work. Obsero is less than six months old, but we’re already gaining traction in the space and have just signed a significantly sized client in the fintech category.

One key SaaS requirement is to try before you buy, which is why we were delighted to announce on Friday, via LinkedIn, that you can now signup for a free trial to get a feel for the platform and see how visible you are in AI.

I would really appreciate it if you could signup and give Obsero a spin or send this on to a colleague in marketing that is looking at investing in growing your brand’s presence in AI Search.

I also welcome feedback on how you find the platform and what we’re missing.

If you’re looking at Chatbot popularity, Claude is light years behind ChatGPT with your everyday consumer (although not in the s space). However, the AI company led by OpenAI alumni Dario Amodei has had a big week with a sneak peek at their Super Bowl ads and the launch of Claude Opus 4.6

As much as I am excited and intrigued to see how ChatGPT incorporates Ads and the return advertisers see from their spend, I admire Anthropic’s outrageous sass at taking a pop at OpenAI’s decision to integrate Ads within ChatGPT.

It will erode trust and Amodei is making sure users know that Claude will not follow suit. With both firms gearing up for an IPO within the next 18 months, the narrative over this period is crucial.

To make matters worse for OpenAI, Sam Altman responded on X with a War and Peace tweet, which clearly shows the ads have got under the skin of the ultra competitive Altman, despite stating “I laughed” (something tells me….he didn’t).

I’m no PR expert, but if you are - please, I’d love to hear your take on it, but I can’t see how making claims that Claude is a “product for rich people” (i.e. ChatGPT is all about making AI accessible to everyone - sure). Perhaps he should have just sat this one out?

I’ve just added Claude into my workflow with Obsero and Be Franc and I am blown away by its capabilities. I’m a tad embarrassed that it has taken me so long to embrace Claude over the other LLMs.

I opted for Perplexity last year (over Claude) as I wanted to test out Comet, but honestly - as an AI Companion to help you with your work, I would highly recommend investing in Claude.

A bumper edition today, with my full interview with Christian J Ward, the Chief Data Officer at Yext included below. 👇

Firstly, you should follow Christian on LinkedIn here and I 100% recommend you sign up to his newsletter, Be Datable.

I could have talked to Christian all day. He is a very likeable, a knowledgeable guy and you can clearly see he absolutely loves his work; living and breathing Yext and AI.

We covered memory, customer behaviour and ads in ChatGPT (which were announced after the recording of this video) and a whole lot more relating to the world of AI Search.

I found him funny, extremely insightful and shared his lived experience. Please check it out and leave any comments on the video. 🙏

Interested in seeing Obsero in action? Mike and I would be happy to run you through it - sign up for a free trial here.

If you’re not already following us on LinkedIn, you should. I’m more vocal on my personal account, so connect there as well and add “Franc Talking reader 👋” in your note.

The best articles this week on AI Search and how it affects business, marketing and tech.

Christian J Ward on why AI search is a shift from search to dialogue - and what that means for your brand

Christian J Ward has been Chief Data Officer at Yext for 13 years. He thinks about structured data, knowledge graphs, and how businesses show up in an AI-first world. We sat down to talk through what's really changing - and what marketers need to do about it.

Christian frames the shift simply: we're moving from search to dialogue. Search, he points out, comes from the Latin circo - to encircle. You cast a wide net, get a billion results, and that model works brilliantly for ads.

Dialogue is different.

It comes from the Greek dia and logos - through words. And as the conversation narrows, so does the opportunity to serve ads. The funnel and the metrics are definitely changing, he says, but that doesn't mean the throughput gets worse. It just means we've been measuring the wrong things - including all those accidental ad clicks we've been celebrating as engagement.

Christian draws on Google's own "messy middle" research to make a point that should reassure marketers seeing traffic drop. The explore phase - where people learn, compare, and narrow down - is shifting to AI.

But the exploit phase - where they take action and buy - still largely happens on brand sites.

The difference is that when someone does land on your page from an AI conversation, they've already done the research. They're there to verify and purchase. That means fewer visits, but potentially higher-quality ones. The brands that track the full journey from AI conversation through to checkout will see this first.

This is where Christian's thinking gets particularly sharp. He identifies three simultaneous fragmentations that marketers need to understand:

👉 Search fragmentation - the platform pie is splitting. It's no longer just Google. Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, DeepSeek - we haven't had this kind of distribution shift in 20 years.

👉 Rank fragmentation - because AI uses memory, both explicit and implicit, the order of results changes based on who's asking. You're not fighting for position one anymore. You're fighting to be part of the ongoing dialogue.

👉 Experience fragmentation - the way people access AI is diversifying fast. OpenAI's Atlas browser, Grok embedded in Teslas, voice assistants that actually work now. Each one is a different surface, a different context, a different behaviour.

These three are compounding, and they require different measurement approaches. Most marketers aren't thinking about them separately yet.

Is agentic AI a threat to retailers? Christian doesn't think so - at least not direct retailers. The real existential threat is to aggregators and marketplaces. Amazon is a unique case: with 600 million Alexa devices in households and Alexa Plus getting genuinely good, they have their own route to agentic commerce.

Walmart took a different bet, leaning into ChatGPT and Shopify-style integrations.

The difference in strategy comes down to whether you own the device or the data layer. For direct-to-consumer brands, agentic AI could actually help - as long as they're feeding structured knowledge into the system.

Sam Altman has said GPT-6 will be all about memory, and Christian believes this is the single biggest shift marketers need to prepare for. He shared a striking example: while in London, he asked ChatGPT in voice mode to recommend a sushi restaurant. Its first response? Are the kids with you? - because it knew about his daughter's tree nut allergy from previous conversations.

Memory changes everything. It narrows the circle, kills the need for repetitive searches, and makes the AI genuinely personal. But it also means fewer ad opportunities, because a system that remembers you're vegan stops showing you steakhouses. For brands, the implication is clear: if the AI can't easily find your structured data - your menus, your allergy options, your product specs - you won't be part of the conversation.

Where does AI search take hold fastest? Christian maps it on two axes: things people like versus dislike, and simple versus complex. Planning a family holiday to Disney?

That's complex and enjoyable - but it used to mean 27 Chrome tabs.

AI handles that brilliantly. Car insurance? Complex but nobody enjoys it. That's going to be fully AI-driven, and it already is. The takeaway for brands: if your product or service sits in one of those complex quadrants, the shift is coming for you first.

Christian doesn't mince words here. He argues the cookie-tracking, CDP-driven, de-anonymisation era was a bridge too far - and AI is what finally forces marketers to let go.

His analogy is sharp: imagine explaining to your grandkids that your job involved following people around to see what they read, who they talked to, and where they went. "Grandpa, you were a stalker?"

He thinks the AI era strips that data away, and marketers need to accept they won't have the same visibility into the consumer journey.

You won't get the conversation someone had with ChatGPT before they bought your kayak. You'll be happy they bought it, and you'll probably offer 10% to make sure they bought it from you. That's a healthier model, even if it's uncomfortable.

Christian sees the ad model inside AI evolving into something fundamentally different: offers.

As the dialogue narrows from "I need a backpack" to "it's for my son's Boy Scout camping trip in February," dynamic, contextual offers become far more valuable than broad-match ads. Brands need to structure their offers clearly so the AI can surface them at the right moment.

And then there's loyalty. Christian's advice? Put up signs telling customers to tell their AI they love your brand. It sounds almost absurd, but it works - because explicit memory in ChatGPT or Gemini changes how the AI prioritises recommendations.

The loyalty programmes that were clunky with punch cards and keychains become seamless when the AI remembers every brand relationship you have. For marketers, building structured data around loyalty tiers, membership benefits, and offers isn't optional anymore. It's how you stay in the conversation.

Watch the full conversation with Christian J Ward on the Franc Talking channel.