"Dennis Kirwan is CEO of , a marketing agency helping brands turn expertise into authority, visibility, and demand across search and AI. Publish, share the link, measure clicks. That playbook built a decade of content marketing. In today's zero-click world, it's also how thought leadership dies in silence. By "zero-click," I mean that people form opinions before they ever click through-inside feeds, private channels and AI-generated summaries."
"Pew's analysis of U.S. browsing behavior found that when Google results showed an AI summary, users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits versus 15% when no summary appeared. Google argues that overall click volume remains relatively stable year over year. But stable in aggregate doesn't help if your ideas aren't traveling. The practical implication is simple: Your article can't rely on the click to create impact. It has to travel as a quote, a carousel, a forwarded note or an AI synthesis."
Traditional content marketing relied on the publish-share-link-measure clicks playbook to build authority over a decade. Zero-click behavior makes audiences form opinions inside feeds, private channels, and AI-generated summaries before clicking. Pew's analysis found AI summaries reduced clicks to traditional results to 8% of visits versus 15% without summaries; aggregate click volume may appear stable but individual ideas can fail to travel. Articles must be designed to travel as quotes, carousels, forwarded notes, or AI syntheses rather than rely on clicks. Two distinct AI realities require different distribution tactics: search-page AI summaries and LLM-native discovery. Writing must favor clean, quotable pulls.
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