As of February 15, 2026, three major AI developments are reshaping the industry: (1) DeepSeek’s R1 open-source reasoning model released January 2026 proved Chinese firms can match frontier capabilities, (2) OpenAI’s operator agents now autonomously browse and interact with websites, and (3) context engineering has emerged as the critical skill for AI workflow optimization. These… Read More
Week 6 Intelligence Briefing: When Infrastructure Becomes the Product
by Pål Erik Waagbø | Week 6, 2026 THE 30-SECOND TAKE This week, three things converged that haven’t overlapped before. Models are now building models (OpenAI’s Codex debugging its own training runs). Agents are managing agents (Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 with agent teams, McKinsey running 25,000 AI agents among 60,000 total “workforce”). Infrastructure became the actual… Read More
Attribution Vacuum: What Happens When AI Sells But Nobody Can Measure
ChatGPT just launched ads at $60 per thousand impressions. For context, that’s three times what Meta charges. Basically, you’re looking at premium TV pricing for digital inventory. And here is the bit that matters. OpenAI isn’t sharing conversion data with advertisers. Not just “limited tracking”, no conversion data at all. They’re providing impressions and clicks,… Read More
AI Intelligence Briefing: Week 5, 2026
THE 30-SECOND TAKE ChatGPT launched advertising this week at $60 CPM with no conversion data. Read that again. Advertisers are paying 3x Meta rates for reach they can’t measure. This isn’t a temporary gap, it’s the new reality. The measurement system that built modern marketing assumed humans visited websites we could instrument. AI agents don’t.… Read More
The AEO Data Readiness Model: Why Data Infrastructure Determines AI Visibility
The Core Problem The AEO Data Readiness Model evaluates how an organization’s data infrastructure directly impacts its hvisibility and citation potential in AI systems. While many AEO practices focus on content optimization, they often overlook the foundational data architecture that is critical for success. Content optimisation cannot fix broken data architecture. Schema markup cannot reference… Read More
Weekly Newsletter Analysis: Week 4 2026
THE 30-SECOND TAKE AI is entering the physical world, and the race isn’t for the smartest model anymore. It’s for who owns your context. Apple just signed a multi-year deal to power Siri with Google’s Gemini while simultaneously racing to put AI in a wearable pin. The shift is clear: competitive advantage has moved from… Read More
What “Self-Service Marketing” Really Means
By Pål Erik Waagbø, Senior Leader in Digital Marketing with expertise in data-driven marketing, CDP implementation, and marketing technology strategy. Understanding Self-Service in Marketing ‘Self-service’ in marketing refers to the ability for marketing teams to access and utilize data without needing direct support from IT, although many still face challenges in implementation. Why IT Support… Read More
The 22% Problem
Only 22% of marketers actually use their CDP. Not “use it a little.” Use it at all. The other 78% have a very expensive database they occasionally log into. Technology doesn’t solve utilisation problems. Strategy does. The data quality crisis has only intensified since this post. Recent industry benchmarks from Forrester’s 2025 Customer Data Platform… Read More
What “Real-Time” Actually Costs
Real-time sounds impressive in the demo. Then you see the invoice. Refreshing 100 segments hourly instead of daily: 25x the compute cost. Every 5 minutes? 50x. The math doesn’t lie. Neither does your budget. Most of what we call “urgent” can wait until tomorrow. The economics of real-time data have shifted dramatically as cloud costs… Read More
The Future of Data-Driven Marketing: Server-Side Tracking and First-Party Data
Key Takeaways Data-driven marketing is a marketing approach that uses customer data to guide decisions and strategies. As of 2026, third-party cookies are disappearing due to privacy regulations like GDPR and changes from Apple’s iOS 14 update, leading to a significant shift in marketing strategies. Server-side tagging is a method for tracking user interactions. CAPI… Read More
Pal Erik Waagbo 