Doug Straton — Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Client Evangelist, Bazaarvoice
Published:
Optimizing for ChatGPT alone made some sense when it was the only assistant your buyers used, and it makes much less sense now that the same question gets asked in Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and whatever shopping agent a retailer bolts on next quarter.
What does Doug Straton say on The Agile Brand podcast?
Doug Straton, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Client Evangelist, Bazaarvoice, says: A Q&A with Doug Straton, CMO and Chief Client Evangelist at Bazaarvoice, on how paid AI placements (like Sponsored Agents) change visibility but do not substitute for credible evidence. Straton argues that generative assistants reward verifiable inputs—structured customer reviews and citations—rather than optimization tricks, and recommends CMOs shift budgets to proof-building activities, measure model share, and run simple tests across assistants to see what sources models actually cite.
From: The Agile Brand podcast
Cite as: Doug Straton. (2026). On The Agile Brand podcast. Retrieved from https://research.agilebrandguide.com/insights/doug-straton-optimizing-for-chatgpt-alone-made-some-sense-when-it-was-the