GaryVee: Gemini Is the Only Guaranteed Winner in AI Search

0:00We are talking about the future of the internet of publishing and of personal branding with the one and only Gary Veaynerchuk. This is crazy. Gary, thank you for coming on the podcast. Happy to be here, my friend. Um, all right. So, I want to jump into AEO Geo to start with because I've seen you talking a lot about search engine

0:23optimization for large language models. what people, you know, they're calling now generative engine optimization. And I'd like to ask how that's showing up inside of Vayner Media, your agency. So, is it like has it changed the kinds of people that you're hiring, the way that teams are structured or how you think about client strategy? Uh, definitely how we think about client strategy. um somewhat team structure because we've added people that we think have heavy

0:52expertise. But when we think there's a substantial marketing shift, we don't think about it as a department or a couple of experts. We think it as a about it as a capability that many more people need to learn. Not everyone. Obviously, we're structured in a fairly classic way between creative and media and account and operations, project management and production, but there's def, you know, anyone, for example, that has been inside of Vayner as someone who does SEO, for example, now she or he has to uplevel to understand how AEOG is working. Otherwise, you know, they're in a declining field. And obviously growing up or having depth in SEO makes you

1:40conducive to thinking about how you know GEO or AEO is working but there's people in media there's people in strategy there's people in creative who are also deeply now educating themselves and thinking about all right how are we going to create creative and social that may overindex for anthropic claude right or you know what are we doing with our own content, our Substack, Reddit, you know, things of that nature that may be conducive to showing up more organically. And then obviously the the just like, you know, I grew up in SEO with Wine Library back in the late 90s, early 2000s, you know, it goes from SEO

2:29to SEM pretty quickly. And so, you know, this is already going from AEOG to whatever they're going to call it, AEM, GM, whatever they end up calling it. You know, how do we think about marketing inside of these platforms from an ad standpoint, not just from an organic results standpoint? So yeah, it's it's, you know, to us it's kind of like once I deem, if we're talking about Vayner X, once I deem something as like not a passing fad or not um something that may stick, but something that is clearly going to stick. And I think, you know, I couldn't imagine anyone that's paying attention to this thinking that

3:15we're going to have a massive decline in end consumer searches on AI, you know, agents and bots and platforms. You know, I think this is just the beginning because I think even everyone's websites are going to be more responsive and I just think it's a whole different era we're about to go into. And so we take that very seriously and kind of put all chips in and you know create partnerships with people like Profound and others that are leading in the space and so we you know this is we're not

3:51taking this lightly at Vayner. Are you have you um been in the weeds at all just like seeing what gets brand cited like what things are more likely to get brand cited? Not not yet. I you know you know I don't want to [ __ ] you like there's certain things I'll go very head deep on this one is you know again this is what being a little older gives you some advantages around the main reason I haven't gone real pen to paper and sat with the team and like really looked under the hood is my intuition 6 and 12 months ago was oh this is going to be like the old days of

4:29Google where it's going to be changing pretty rapidly And so like every minute is crazy for me. Like I get it. Like this matters. And so like the nerdom that I enjoy quite a bit of like how is Reddit weighted versus how is general websites that are 20 plus years weighted versus how is social creative weighted. Um then I think one thing that people are going to be very naive to is I think meta and bite dance are going to be very big players in this really. So yeah. Well, social search is

5:02huge. You know, I don't think people realize how many people, you know, I just went to Japan with my daughter. 100% of her search for our trip was in Tik Tok. 100%. Wow. You know, like every place we went, everything one and you know, they're going to have, you know, their results very affected by the content within. and it's more, you know, and and they're getting their kind of like results, but then they're adding capability of going back and forth, no different than what you would do on claude or open AI. And so, like, you know, I I've kind of got the pillars understood. It's really not my job per

5:50se these days to go in and help our client go from the fourth result to the first result by understanding of the nancond that Reddit this Tik Tok content that Substack this LinkedIn that Wikipedia this you know foodandwine.com that but it is my job to hire people and create the architecture of it being a religion And to your point at there will be a time probably this holidays. My intuition is there'll be a day on December 28th when I'm bored enough while all the family's doing their own thing and like we've scratched that first week of holiday itch and there'll be a pocket where there'll be 3 hours of

6:37downtime and instead of watching a college football game or another Christmas movie, I'll probably ping one of my internal heroes and say, "Hey, you got, you know, I don't want to bother you no holiday." Because I know who the psychos are and want to [clears throat] do this as well. and be like, "Hey, 2 to 5 today. You want to really go in there with me?" And that will probably be the first time I'll go a little deeper. I'll I'll definitely get updated on, "Oh my god, Wikipedia has gained a lot of influence on anthropic." Like, I'll, you know, even as you hear me answering, you

7:12could tell that I'm not in some ivory tower completely lost of what's going on, but I also haven't spent the 10 or 30 hours that I inevitably will probably inspire. your job your job is to hire the right people. Yeah. But but I think I'm making a point that I'm hopeful brings value to leaders, which is there will be 30 hours put in to like that nerdy because I do think one of the competitive advantages Vayner Media has is I'm a practitioner as a CEO, which is incredibly unusual at the size and scale that we play out. I backed into it because of my personal brand and the family wine business and V

7:50friends. So I have these other businesses where I'm the in essence CMO and hands dirty marketer and that's uh serviced Vayner extremely well. Yeah, I was at I was at Densu earlier in my career and uh when I was at Densu we would look at Vayner and the things that you guys were doing and we knew that like you were in the weeds and you you guys were going hard and it was just it was so cool to see cuz I'm like that type of person too. And actually what I what I like about uh Vayner Media is so on your homepage it says on repeat like

8:22literally at the top of the page it says we put social at the center of everything that we do. And what's crazy is social media are those are some of the top ranking sites in Google. YouTube, LinkedIn X, Tik Tok, uh Facebook, Instagram. And these get surfaced a ton. Like the descriptions for the videos get surfaced a ton in AI. You can literally you can actually see what chatt searches the web with, which

8:51is crazy. It's called a query fan out. So like you can literally like I've made like tons of viral videos about this. You can just like rightclick inspect and literally see the searches that chatbt is doing. And what is it coming across? It's coming across the descriptions for on on social media. And in in a way in a way that is you know it's been interesting as you know especially if you what years were you at Denu 2017 right so that was around the time where Vayner Media in the ad land started to go from like a joke and it's like Gary this crazy wine guy like this is stupid

9:32to wait a minute this might be something and here we are almost 10 years later. And yet still, and you know this, the proper Madison Avenue holding company, Fortune 500, you know, marketing world continues to underestimate social media. Yes. Yes. And and what's interesting is this AEO GEO thing has not been underestimated by Fortune 500. To their credit, a lot of the 40, 50 year old leaders grew up watching SEO go from nothing to

10:09everything. This method of marketing is so effective, I had to make sure it wasn't against Google's rules before I kept doing it. It's a form of SEO I call compact keywords. Whereas most SEO focuses on putting up articles to answer questions, how, what, when, compact keywords focuses on putting up dozens of pages that sell to searchers who are actually looking to buy. These pages rank on Google and convert so much better than normal that when I discovered this years ago, I couldn't believe this was allowed. It's less work, too. The average compact keywords page is only 415 words. Compact Keywords is a 13-hour deep course on getting

10:48sales with SEO. A customer recently said, "Each lesson is dense with information. You're giving years worth of experience boiled down into 15 to 30 minute lessons with no filler or fluff. I feel like I'm gaining a new superpower. Compact Keywords is about setting up an SEO funnel that brings you sales for years and years and years. It works with AI. It's less work than traditional SEO and it makes way more money. You can get it now at

11:17compactkeywords.com. Back to the podcast. And so this wasn't hard for them to say, you know, I thank the lucky stars understood that social media was television, but fragmented television. And that was hard for people to make the connection in 2006. AEO GEO connected to SEO. That doesn't take a rocket science degree. Everyone got it. To your point, we've had way more clients in the last six months take our social media creative

11:50production capability seriously. Um because of the way indexing No, because Yeah, because Yeah, exactly. Like I would argue there's a couple clients who've read up for way more cost of social creative production strictly because they know of the collateral sawdust byproduct value that it means for AEO GEO while we're making these how-to or relevance videos for them in

12:21social. You think do you think AI is going to kill the internet? So you you've predicted a ton of changes in technology and content consumption. What do you think is going to happen to niche websites, to blogs, news sites, publishers, and the internet as a whole if more answers are happening inside AI tools instead of on websites? Yeah. I mean, I mean, one, you know, let's let's really nerd out for a second because I like the way you're thinking and asking questions. I mean, it's going to change the face of the internet, right? I mean, the answers are coming

12:57from the internet, Ed. Yeah. Yes. So, [laughter] so you know, it's it's not going to kill it. In fact, yes, but but if you're a niche blogger and someone doesn't have to go to your blog to get their answer, they just get it from Chat GPT. Ed, is this 2009? That day has been over for a long time. Like if you're a niche blogger, at least when I grew up, maybe from my perspective in 2006, five, seven, eight, nine, those sites were doing work because that was preocial media eating up the oxygen, right? like you know I mean between Substack let's call a spade a spade

13:35between Substack LinkedIn and the social media networks like that sportsdaily.com or like star warly.com I don't think that's been the most pro I mean you've had it like I have websites but that has not been the primary source of your reality. It's been maybe, you know, one could argue if you structure your company a certain way, it's the moon, but all the planets around you, your Substack, your LinkedIn, your social media content, you know, I think AI is accelerating what social media started, which is the detachment from

14:13going directly to the do. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz Yeah. If people a lot of people blame AI as like the death of niche blogs, but you're right. It was happening. It was happening when people were going to social. Yeah. Ed, let's talk about Bar Stool. Let's just use that, right? Because Bar stool like was a niche blog that became big and I think people might know it, right? Like, you know, Bar Stool was a niche blog, you know, but really accelerated because

14:43of YouTube and Twitter and Instagram. And I think every niche blog, you know, you know, really runs on that currency today. And like there's very few people that have a do that is wildly successful or solidly successful where they do nothing on social media content or you know. Mhm. Mhm. And so there was a layer there was a layer built on top of the open internet called social that ate up a lot of the oxygen and became a layer no different than Google search became a layer. And then to your point and everyone's point, this AI interface is going to be the next layer and it's going to consolidate

15:26that even more. That's just that's a foregone conclusion. You know what I think a lot of people are underestimating that's going to pull so far ahead in the next couple of years ahead of other LLMs? Gemini. Because Gemini is the only LLM that has access to YouTube transcripts. It's so crazy. Gary, brother, if you, you know, maybe you've seen this for me cuz I've started to put out this content, but it's been more behind the walls. When I tell you YouTube shorts and YouTube has accelerated to the top of Vayner's strategy to clients where it was like shorts was like a distant fourth, you know, a year and a half ago. Uh, I

16:05couldn't agree more. Not only that, Ed, when you factor in that the amount of human beings that use calendar and Gmail as meaningful, utilitarian, operational, functional, how they live their lives, infrastructure, and the fact that Gemini is going to be able to pull from that, Gemini is the actual only guaranteed winner in this era right now.

16:31That's a hot take. The only guaranteed. But you're right. You are right. the only it's the only guaranteed winner. I mean, obviously, I think we're all very impressed with Claude. You know, I think it's hard to underestimate Sam and Open AI just cuz he's psycho and they had an advantage. Um, but the only like if you know, back to like not wanting to be wrong on the internet, for me personally, it is the the only guaranteed winner for me is Gemini

16:59because of the stack they came in with. Claude and OpenAI started from day one with nothing other than their incredible technologies. Gemini starts with the world is trapped in Google calendar in in Gmail and is stacked with unlimited information on YouTube and YouTube shorts. That is a aggressive head start. Yeah. And it's just like if you want to get the best information and there are less niche bloggers now because these LLMs still need to get their information from somewhere and that's that's why social is going to win and that's why I actually think meta and bite dance are very dark horse like where is the content like I you're

17:46making a very important point. I keep making this point. I'm stunned by people's inability to understand this. Where's the content coming from? And the content that's being produced today, with all due respect to Substack and to blogs, and Substack's a monster, but it's the scale that social has and the complexity, right? Video that gets transcribed into audio, like that gets transcribed into written, the depth of audio, video, and written word content that's coming from social, there's not a distant second. And then Ed, it begs the question, what happens if people decide to start putting up

18:24garden walls? What are you thinking? I always think about like what are they thinking, right? And like you know, like what is Meta thinking? Like does does Meta sit around and say okay so we have all this info on our platform like what ramific and I don't this is above my pay grade legally you know I'm thinking from a yeah I'm thinking purely from corporate well well Google literally did this Google restricted so previously chat sheet open AI was looking at uh like a 100 pages of or or 100 results from Google and then Google actually restricted the it it this messed with all the SEO tools, but this was like an

19:12offensive measure from Google to make it so you're only seeing like the top I think it was like the top 10 or 20 uh results from Google because OpenAI was getting too much information and and so it was like this parameter where you could by the way that was like makes sense. We've seen this a million times. Toys R Us giving Amazon their infrastructure on commerce. In the early days of massive innovation, people are naive. People make deals. People aren't thinking all the way through. Right now that we all know, now that it's July 2026 and everyone kind of knows the new world order, here's a profound statement. I'd

19:49love to see the math of how much net new content is going to be produced in the next 3 years versus how much has been produced. Well, I really All right, I gota So, I got to ask you about this. So, as long as I've known your brand, I've known your brand for a long time. I read I read uh Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook 10 over 10 years ago. Um, and so, you've always been huge on posting a lot, and I'm also very huge on posting a lot. I made a video about how Mr. Beast was shocked by instant Bollywood posting a 100 times a day on Instagram, getting

20:209.2 billion views. And that was crazy. And but the thing is like with AI content flooding the internet now, is volume still the strategy? Is there anything creators and businesses need to be careful about just because like Yeah, it's like just so easy just is what is is just reduce the filters, get everything out, post more

20:42or is there more to it? Well, I think there's a couple things. I think one within the very narrow framework of volume on social content. You know, I'd love to hear someone's counterpoint when they set up when people come to me and they're like, "Gary, now with AI," I'm like, "Okay, so what are you going

21:02to do? Post less?" Like, like it's completely counterintuitive. You know, I will use this analogy for people that know sports, Ed, you know, the modern athlete, like an NBA uh a bench player in the NBA today, the 10th guy on the Memphis Grizzlies, if you picked him up and took him to 1957 and put him on the court, the exact version of who he is,

21:32he's going to dominate. He's the greatest player of all time. [laughter] It's It's called evolution. I just want I'm using this incredible platform to say something that people may not know about me. I'm not excited that volume is a requirement. I wish this was 1957. Of all humans in advertising, I'd be the best Don Draper. I would have meetings.

21:58I'd be charming. I'd have a good idea. And we would [ __ ] crush. we would sell lots of television commercials. That's just not where we're at. So, couple things. Yes, I still think volume matters because it's, you know, the stakes are even higher and I think even more volume. And I'm sorry that it's 900 posts a day, not one every 3 days. I didn't make the rules, but I will say something is emerging that we're very serious about, which is the rise of

22:26analog. So, one thing that is emerging with this extremity of output, um, I love how everyone's like, "Oh, all this AI slop." I'm like, "The human slop was garbage, too." It's true. Yeah. 99.9%. I cut out a lot of human slot. It's true. Me, too. Me, too. You know, you can't always nail it. And by the way, you and I are actually decentish. A lot of people just aren't good at it. and like all of the output they put out is not

22:57valuable to them. Do you believe that anybody can figure it out? I think no. It depends on how you define figuring out. I do believe everybody has the capacity to get better at making content that's more valuable to their audience if they practice and put in the work. But but I think I can get a lot better at basketball if I went ham for a year and worked on every part of my game. But I don't think I'd become LeBron James

23:22for sure. So, just natural talent. You don't have to be LeBron James. No, I [clears throat] don't have to be. But I think when you say, "Can everyone figure it out?" Sometimes people see that as, "Can I become Alex Cooper or Mr. Beast?" And the answer is probably not cuz there's a lot of variables that go into those things. But can every can people go from uh getting a 100red views per post for themselves or their family business or their business, their marketing to getting a 100,000 views consistently? Yeah. I think I think people have the capacity if they get educated and put in the work

23:55and get some dirt under their fingernails. Anyway, the rise of analoges got me very interested. You know, experiential marketing, event marketing, I'm very bullish on moving Vayner in that direction and we've been in it historically through Gallery Media Group and events and we're going even harder at that and I'm I'm infatuated by that. the I feel like we're going into this barbell era, extreme digitalization, robotics, AI, social as like at scale kind of mainstream. And then on the other side, um, events, you know, just like, you know, just good oldfashioned, you know, what you're seeing at sporting events, what you're seeing at music concerts, run clubs, um, people going out to

24:41dinner more, um, popups, stand. My daughter, for example, wants to stay in line for 3 hours to get a limited edition item. the three hours in line is enjoyable for her because she views that as a detachment from her Snapchat, Tik Tok consumption. Yeah. And you know, it's also hu like the analog stuff that you just described is also huge for AEO and Gio because you're having people write about you and and share things about you and you're getting all these brand mentions and you're getting backlinks which is making

25:14your website do better. That's that's right. And and the way we do it and the reason we're winning so many experiential scopes is we're doing the experiential event, but we're also fully filming the entire thing and it's a production day for creative. Oh yeah, that's huge. And you get all this content to make out of it. Oh my gosh. Um, all right. So, we don't have a lot of time left, but I want to ask about about scaling a team. So, I've I've posted short form video every day since November 1st, 2022. I've not missed a single day. I've done this daily podcast every day since July 5th,

25:482023. Have not missed a single day. Like literally no days missed. I do it when I'm sick. I do it when I have a headache. I do it all the time. Literally have not missed a single day. And the next thing, by the way, I want I want to thank you you for that because part of the reason I do this is because I was so inspired by Casey Neistat's vlog run almost a decade ago. And I believe you were an early investor in Beam and Casey Neistat was doing the daily vlogs because of Beam. And so and like I'm I'm trying to inspire people in

26:19the way that Casey inspired me. And I'm like I'm from Brooklyn. Like I see Casey running in New York and I'm Yeah. And I'm just trying I'm trying to do that for other people. And I think I think I am. It's it's amazing. But um so the next thing that I need to get better at is building a team around my personal brand. Yeah. And so so that I'm not doing everything myself cuz I'm doing I have an I have an editor, I have a thumbnail designer, but I'm still doing so much myself. I have some other people. Um and so when you started hiring people to help with your personal

26:50brand, what mistakes did you make that creators, founders or experts listening can avoid. One of my great flaws as an operator is I bring my charitable component of my life into my business at times and I create nepotism and entitlement by carrying people that are underperforming because I have this belief that I can fix them.

27:20Me too. Well, and I would argue, Ed, that's probably why you inherently felt warm towards me from afar and why I even in this short period of time feel warm towards you. I find it I find it similar to what parents do wrong when they create spoiled kids. It comes from a very good place, but everything in life is best when it finds the middle. You know, the reason there's so much anxiety in the world is politically we're pulling too hard from the left and to the and the right, right? You know, like and so everything's at its best using that analogy when it's purple. And I would

27:58say as you're building your team, you need to be purple. You need to be a leader that does actually care about your thumbnail designer, your editor, your writer. Like, you should care about people. It makes you a better leader. At the same token, you have to be capable of telling your thumbnail designer or your new project manager that if she or he is underperforming by your subjective opinion, you have to have [clears throat] the capacity to kindly give feedback along the way and then also be prepared to exit them and find someone else. My great mistake was I would carry people an extra year or two when I long knew

28:34that they were not capable of performing well. And so the answer to your question directly that I really hope helps people is hire fast. Because sometimes people take 43 interviews and they think they're going to be perfect at hiring someone. You never really know until they're in the building who they are. You'll never learn that in an interview process. Number two, fire faster. Like when you know, you know. There's a way to do it graciously. Make sure you give feedback. Don't stun people. And then finally, this is the most important one, Ed. Promote fastest. On the flip side, if you hire this next person, Ed and

29:08they're like your kind of right-hand producer and you're like, "Oh my god, Sally's incredible, don't wait a year. Like, give her an extra bump. Sit her down and be like, I see a lot in you similar to me. I've This is I'm going to end with this because there's some agency people listening and I think this will really stun them and maybe motivate leaders. Literally three weeks ago, uh, no, six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, we did a party for people that have worked

29:37at Vayner for 10 plus years. The company is 15 years old. We had 134 people invited and 97 attend. Ed, you know the ad game. You know this industry. The average tenure is less than two years. I had 134 people in the company that have been at the company for 10 plus years. Wow. Our retention number are are like like in the stratosphere compared to the industry and it only comes because of what I just talked to you about because when I when I saw kids that were talented, I took the time and effort to tell them I saw that in them. We did the right

30:20things by promoting them earlier or giving them more dollars. Um, what I didn't do as well, which is why I'm sharing this cuz I hope this helps someone, is on the flip side, I didn't do as well of a job of exiting D players that we thought were A players in the interview process. And that would be my

30:37piece of advice. Are thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it, brother. Stay well. This is episode 199 of the Edward Show. 1999 days in a row doing this podcast. If you watch us on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening and I will talk to

31:00you again tomorrow. Bye now.