Media Strategy Over Search Strategy
Build a multimodal evidence portfolio that AI can remix
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 99%
Media Strategy Over Search Strategy replaces a page-and-keyword mindset with a portfolio of accessible assets across text, video, audio, imagery, and structured data. The mechanism is based on multimodal AI systems being able to retrieve and remix more kinds of evidence into generated answers and interfaces. A brand represented only through text has fewer opportunities to appear when a query or result depends on visual, spoken, or quantitative information. The strategy therefore begins with a modality inventory, identifies coverage gaps, and republishes valuable knowledge in complementary formats. It also asks which data, processes, technical instructions, and demonstrations can safely become public. Success is measured not only by rankings and clicks but by whether AI systems can understand, cite, embed, or transform the brand’s material.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain
Core principles
- 01Publish for machine understanding across modalities
- 02Treat every format as part of one discoverability portfolio
- 03Expose useful evidence rather than only promotional copy
- 04Make assets accessible enough for AI systems to retrieve and remix
- 05Optimize for inclusion in generated experiences, not only page rankings
How to run it
- 1
Inventory the media portfolio
List the organization’s text, video, audio, imagery, interactive tools, and structured data by topic and audience need.
Pro tip Record whether every asset has transcripts, captions, metadata, and stable public access.
Watch out A large asset count can conceal severe topic or format gaps.
- 2
Map modality gaps
Identify high-value topics that exist in only one format or cannot be readily understood by machines.
Pro tip Prioritize formats that communicate evidence unavailable in prose, such as demonstrations or datasets.
Watch out Converting every article into low-value media creates volume without additional information.
- 3
Create complementary evidence
Develop assets that reinforce one another across modalities, such as an article, demonstration video, transcript, diagrams, and data table.
Pro tip Design each format for its native strengths rather than copying the same artifact verbatim.
Watch out Inconsistent claims across formats can weaken trust and retrieval quality.
- 4
Open useful information
Determine which data, processes, instructions, and product knowledge can responsibly be made public and easy to digest.
Pro tip Publish definitions, update dates, and machine-readable versions alongside human-facing explanations.
Watch out Never expose private, licensed, security-sensitive, or personally identifiable information for discoverability.
- 5
Optimize accessibility
Use descriptive metadata, captions, transcripts, structured markup, and durable URLs so humans and AI systems can retrieve the assets.
Pro tip Test important assets without scripts, logins, or proprietary viewers where possible.
Watch out Public content that crawlers cannot access may remain effectively invisible.
- 6
Measure AI-era visibility
Track citations, mentions, embedded assets, generated-answer inclusion, referral traffic, and conversions across the portfolio.
Pro tip Use scenario-based measurement because direct traffic may decline while influence expands.
Watch out Judging the strategy solely by blue-link rankings misses its intended effect.
In the wild
A software company turns a text-only documentation section into written guides, concise demonstrations, narrated walkthroughs, diagrams, transcripts, public benchmarks, and structured compatibility data. Every asset links back to a canonical topic page.
→ AI search systems have multiple accessible forms of evidence to cite or incorporate into answers and generated interfaces.
A company converts non-sensitive internal trend data into a documented public dataset, an explainer article, charts, downloadable tables, and a video methodology review.
→ The brand can appear as a source when AI systems construct data-rich answers rather than merely return articles.
Common mistakes
Producing format clones
Automatically converting the same shallow text into several media types does not create genuinely complementary evidence.
Publishing sensitive information
The desire for AI visibility must not override privacy, security, contractual, or regulatory boundaries.
Optimizing only for clicks
Generated experiences may create brand influence and citations without reproducing traditional referral patterns.
Is it for you?
Best for
Brands that depend on organic discovery and possess expertise, data, demonstrations, or media that can be published responsibly.
Not ideal for
Businesses whose information is confidential, regulated, undifferentiated, or unsafe to expose publicly.
From the transcript
“I think one of the biggest factors in SEO in the future is going to be the diversity of content formats.”
“You should have a media strategy, not a search strategy.”
“The next part of this, which I think is wild, is you have to obsess about making all of your information public and accessible, right?”
From the episode
Google Launches Gemini AI (And It’s Better Than GPT-4)