Always Be Testing

Rob Pinkerton is the CMO of Seismic, an AI-powered sales enablement platform, and previously served as CMO of Morningstar and SVP at Oracle, with earlier time at Adobe. He holds a JD and an MBA, and he began his career in politics, which he credits as some of the best training for a CMO. Known as a “positive contrarian” on AI, he calls himself a proud member of Team Human and sees AI as simply software that helps people do work they couldn’t do before. In this episode of Always Be Testing, hosted by Tye DeGrange, he explains why AI is forcing marketing and sales to merge. Buyers now use AI tools at every stage of the funnel and want to talk to a real person sooner, which makes sales the “validation channel” that all other marketing has to support. He urges marketers to stop chasing clicks and MQLs and to focus on moving qualified opportunities forward alongside sellers, who he says are eager to have their marketers back. He is skeptical of metrics built on social proof, since AI can fake them. He suggests inverting your numbers, so that a 3% conversion rate becomes a 97% failure rate worth investigating, and he argues that marketers should know the actual person they are targeting, not a persona or ICP. The conversation also covers why authenticity and source of origin are becoming the scarcest resources online, why self-service can lead to buyer’s regret when AI agents read outdated websites, and why the CMO role is still immature and should evolve into a general manager role across the company. Rob closes with how real partnerships build brand trust and pipeline, and why political skill and “sharp elbows” matter for marketing leaders.

In this episode of Always the Testing Podcast, host Tye DeGrange talks shop with Dave Yovanno, CEO of impact.com, a partner marketing platform serving about 6,000 brands, including Walmart, Target and 60 banks. The platform has visibility into about $1T in GMV, roughly $200B of it partner-referred. Dave grew up in a blue-collar family in Cleveland and joined the Navy to pay for college. He later helped ValueClick acquire early affiliate networks BeFree and Commission Junction, then became impact.com’s CEO in 2017, when it had about 200 employees.
Together, Tye and Dave discuss why Dave advises choosing your next opportunity by who you’ll work with first and what second, and how partnerships have moved from the “sand between the rocks” to a main course. They explore why buyers now trust creators and reviewers over brand messaging, and why brands must let trusted partners carry their story. Dave also explains why he sees AI as a tailwind: as search shifts to an “answer era,” LLMs cite creators and publishers rather than brand copy, and brands can use GEO tools like Evertune to find and activate the partners AI already cites. He previews the product roadmap, including creator storefronts, Meta amplification, measurement beyond last click, and a seller program opening Walmart’s 100,000+ seller brands to partnerships. The conversation closes with how the Navy shaped his leadership, from attention to detail to respect for structure and the ability to relate to all types of people.

Tye DeGrange talks with Peep Laja, CEO of Wynter (a B2B market research platform with 12 to 48 hour turnaround on real-human surveys) and a leading voice in SaaS messaging and testing. They unpack why 65% of SaaS messaging is identical across competitors, the four layers of a message that wins (clarity, relevance, value, differentiation), and why a strong offer has to come before any spend on distribution. They also cover why human research still beats synthetic AI, how AI agents may soon close $20K+ B2B deals, and why storytelling and humanness are the best defense against AI slop.

Sunil Kaki, Founder & CEO of Clove Growth, joins Tye DeGrange to trace the career blueprint that took him from a CJ call center to Fortune 500 CMO roles. They dig into brand vs. performance marketing, why chasing every new channel kills growth, CAC/LTV discipline, optimizing the first-user experience, the affiliate marketing philosophy that actually works, building trust with your CFO, and where AI agents fit into modern marketing.
Connect with Sunil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilkaki/
#AlwaysBeTesting #PerformanceMarketing #Marketing

Mike Mallazzo, GM at Alephic Media, joins Tye DeGrange to unpack the next arbitrage window: marketing to LLMs and AI search engines. They cover AEO and GEO strategy, how brands get cited by ChatGPT and other AI assistants, the emerging opportunity in AI-driven ad arbitrage, why partner and affiliate marketing are becoming core to AI search strategy, and why traditional attribution models (MMM/MTA) are losing their grip.
#AlwaysBeTesting #AEO #GEO #AISearch