About the Book
Never Always,
Never Never.
Strategic Marketing in an AI World
Most marketing today is stuck in a cycle of short-termism. Marketers chase ROAS targets, optimize campaigns in isolation, and treat every platform update like a fire to put out. The result is a lot of motion without much direction. Meanwhile, AI is accelerating everything around them.
This book is about putting strategy back at the center of marketing — and understanding how AI changes who gets to be effective at it.
What you'll learn
Patrick Gilbert, CEO of AdVenture Media and author of the bestselling Join or Die: Digital Advertising in the Age of Automation, draws on over a decade of experience managing paid media for brands ranging from scrappy DTC startups to publicly traded companies.
In this book, he traces the rise and fall of the tactics that once drove easy growth, explains why they've stopped working, and offers a practical framework for what comes next.
Along the way, Gilbert challenges some of the most deeply held assumptions in modern marketing. Drawing on research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Byron Sharp, and Les Binet & Peter Field, he makes the case that most of what marketers believe about loyalty, targeting, and funnel optimization is either incomplete or flat-out wrong — and shows how evidence-based principles can reshape the way teams think about growth.
The second half of the book explores how AI fits into this picture: not as a shortcut or a replacement for thinking, but as an amplifier of whatever you bring to the table. Gilbert explains how AI actually works in plain language, how ad platform algorithms learn and break down, how AI-driven search is reshaping visibility, and how marketing teams can build an AI-first culture without losing the strategic foundation that makes the technology useful.
Key Themes
The Broken Playbook
Why the platform tricks, targeting hacks, and optimization shortcuts that built most digital marketing careers have been commoditized.
Evidence-Based Marketing
Drawing on Ehrenberg-Bass, Byron Sharp, and Binet & Field to challenge deeply held assumptions about loyalty, targeting, and funnel optimization.
Mental Availability
How brand salience and memory structures drive growth — and why most digital marketers underinvest in them.
Incrementality & Measurement
Moving beyond ROAS and last-click attribution to understand what's actually driving business outcomes.
AI as Amplifier
How AI actually works, how ad platform algorithms learn, and why AI amplifies whatever you bring to the table — strategy or lack thereof.
Building an AI-First Culture
Practical frameworks for marketing teams adopting AI without losing the strategic foundation that makes the technology useful.
Who this book is for
Marketers who sense something has shifted but aren't sure what to do about it
Agency leaders managing teams through the AI transition
Business owners who want to understand what good marketing actually looks like now
Anyone tired of easy answers and looking for honest, practical frameworks
Who it's not for
Anyone looking for a list of AI tools to plug in tomorrow
Marketers who want hacks without understanding why they work
People who think the old playbook is still fine
What people are saying
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