The Frog Files

Sharp takes on AI marketing.
None of the fluff.

Working notes from the Purple Frog team. AEO, paid media, content, and the unglamorous reality of growing a B2B business in 2026.

Latest

12 posts · Updated May 2026
May 30, 2026 AEO · Get Found 8 min read

Google killed GEO on May 15. The bill is due.

On May 15 Google published the first official guide to optimizing for AI Overviews and AI Mode. It quietly killed four tactics agencies have been selling for two years. Here's what actually works now.

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May 28, 2026 Paid Media · Get Leads 10 min read

ChatGPT ads opened to SMBs in May. Should you actually run them?

OpenAI killed the $50K minimum spend on May 5. A self-serve Ads Manager is now live for any US business. Who should test it now, who should wait, and how to spend $500 without burning it.

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May 26, 2026 AEO · Strategy 8 min read

Google's new "Preferred Sources" is the SEO scoreboard nobody told you about.

Buried in Google's May 2026 AI Mode update: users can now mark sites as preferred sources. Those sites get 2x click-through. The implications for brand-led marketing are bigger than they look.

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Apr 28, 2026 AEO · Get Found 8 min read

AEO is just SEO with citations.

Everyone's freaking out about AI search like it's some new beast. It isn't. It's a new front door to the same library — the library still rewards the same things. Here's what actually matters.

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Apr 26, 2026 Paid Media · Get Leads 9 min read

Performance Max is a black box. Here's how to crowbar it open.

Google would love you to set a budget and forget. We'd rather you knew what was happening inside. A field guide to making PMax less opaque — including when to fire it entirely.

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Apr 24, 2026 Operations · Strategy 6 min read

The agency-buyer trust deficit. (And what actually fixes it.)

After 20 years on both sides, I can tell you exactly why most agency relationships die at the 6-month mark. It isn't performance. It's something more boring than that.

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Apr 22, 2026 Paid Media · Get Leads 10 min read

Conversion tracking is the most expensive thing you're not doing.

Of every dollar an SMB spends on paid media in 2026, thirty cents is being optimized against incomplete or wrong conversion data. The four-part fix.

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Apr 19, 2026 Operations · Strategy 8 min read

The four reasons clients fire their agency. Ranked.

20 years on both sides of the agency-client breakup. The four reasons it actually happens, in order. Performance isn't first.

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Apr 15, 2026 AEO · Get Found 9 min read

You can rank without traffic. AEO is a third thing.

It's now possible to drive revenue from a search keyword you don't rank for at all. The mechanism, the levers, and what to actually measure.

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Apr 12, 2026 Get Content · Conversion 9 min read

Your landing page is the bottleneck. (You're spending around it.)

The single highest-leverage thing most SMBs could do this quarter is rewrite three landing pages. The five mistakes that put 80% of pages in the bottom decile.

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Apr 8, 2026 Get Content · Quality 9 min read

The slop detector. A 5-minute audit of your AI-assisted content.

2026 is the year AI slop stops working. Seven tells, the editor pass that fixes them, and the 5-minute audit you can run on your last 30 days of content.

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Apr 5, 2026 Paid Media · Strategy 10 min read

What ad spend actually buys you in 2026 (and what it doesn't).

The standard agency pitch implies that ad spend buys leads. It doesn't, exactly. What your money actually pays for — and the three things to fix before launching.

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