Insights From The Future

What we're
thinking about.

Ideas from the team at FTF — on marketing, media, and what's coming next.

What's Happening to Search? How Google and Instagram Just Rewrote the Playbook

The rules of search changed again. Here's what the latest shifts mean for your organic strategy in 2025.

Chloe Drake · Dec 2025

Nova, Volume 5: AI-Commerce, Ad-tech Turbulence & The Holiday Push

The latest from FTF — AI in commerce, ad tech shifts, and what to watch heading into the holiday season.

Michelle Marshall · Dec 2025

Holiday Shopping Has Changed. Has Your Strategy?

Consumer behavior shifted dramatically post-pandemic. Your BFCM playbook needs to catch up.

Michelle Marshall · Nov 2025

FTF at Amplitude's Marketing Summit

Our team at Amplitude's Marketing Summit — key takeaways on analytics, attribution, and where marketing measurement is heading.

Neil Bar-or · Nov 2025

Nova, Volume 4

The latest from FTF — what we're reading, thinking about, and watching across marketing, AI, and the industry.

Michelle Marshall · Nov 2025

Why AI Overviews Are Stealing Traffic

Google's AI Overviews are reshaping organic search. Here's what the data shows and what you need to do about it.

Michelle Marshall · Nov 2025

Nova, Volume 3

The latest from FTF — what we're reading, watching, and thinking about across marketing, AI, and the industry.

Michelle Marshall · Nov 2025

How to Create an Effective AI Prompt

Most people use AI wrong. Here's a practical framework for writing prompts that actually get you useful outputs.

FTF Team · Nov 2025

The New Search is Here: How Conversational & Generative AI Search Are Redefining Visibility

Conversational and generative AI search aren't just shifting rankings—they're redefining the entire discovery experience. Learn how to earn visibility in the new search landscape.

Chloe Drake · October 2025

Nova, Volume 2

FTF's monthly digest — the signals, shifts, and stories shaping digital marketing right now.

Michelle Marshall · Oct 2025

Nova, Volume 1: AI, Attribution, & The Next Wave of Ad Automation

FTF's debut weekly report covers Google Ads API v22, expanded attribution, GA4 consent diagnostics, and the surge of AI creative automation.

Michelle Marshall · Oct 2025

Haunting the Competition: How to Build a Full-Funnel Holiday Campaign That Actually Converts

Your survival guide for holiday marketing — from awareness to loyalty — with every funnel stage mapped to tactics that convert.

Michelle Marshall · Oct 2025

How to Host a High-Impact Team Summit (from a Fully Remote Agency That Cracked the Code)

FTF took its 20-person remote team to Skytop Lodge for 48 hours of strategy and connection. Here's the full playbook.

Shelby Allen · Oct 2025

How We Use AI to Make Work (and Life) a Little Easier

FTF's Senior Digital Marketing & Client Strategy Leader shares the real AI workflows she uses every day — from smarter client communication to automating the boring stuff.

Jenna Hnilo · Oct 2025

How AI is Reshaping Attribution and What Smart Agencies Are Doing Differently

AI attribution is replacing guesswork with precision. Learn how machine learning models are transforming how agencies allocate spend and forecast growth.

Michelle Marshall · Oct 2025

How AI is Transforming Technical SEO: Real-World Applications

From automating 60,000+ image optimizations to generating metadata for thousands of pages — how FTF is using AI to scale technical SEO.

Brandon Hammond · May 2025

Unlock the Power of Your Data with Our Exclusive Microsoft Clarity GTM Template

Download FTF's free Microsoft Clarity GTM Custom Tag Template and start tracking user interactions, e-commerce events, and form submissions—no code required.

Josh Silverbauer · April 2025

Practical Applications of AI for Marketing Executives: An Exclusive LinkedIn Webinar Series

FTF's invitation-only seven-part series for marketing executives — real-world AI frameworks to uncover insights, automate work, and drive measurable growth.

Josh Silverbauer · Nov 2024

Unlocking Paid Media Insights with Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity goes far beyond heatmaps — it's a full-funnel paid media analysis tool. Here's how to use it for landing pages, UTMs, smart events, and conversion mapping.

Josh Silverbauer · Aug 2024

Understanding Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER): The Key to Smarter Marketing

MER is your marketing team's GPA. Learn how to calculate it, what it tells you, and how to use it to make smarter budget decisions across every channel.

Arad Lahiji · May 2024

The (Rick) Role of Customer Experience in Ecommerce Success

Never gonna give you up on CX. Rick Astley's infamous chorus maps perfectly to the six pillars of ecommerce customer experience. Seriously.

Josh Silverbauer · Mar 2024

How Microsoft Clarity Can Improve Website Analytics Coverage

GA4 only captures the events you configure. Microsoft Clarity fills in the blanks — every click, dead click, and rage click — without a single additional event snippet.

Amanda Enstad · Feb 2024

From The Future's Outlook on AI: Shaping the Digital Marketing Landscape

FTF's strategic position on AI and how we're integrating automation, precision, and personalization to revolutionize digital marketing today.

Michelle Marshall · February 2024

Look What You Made Me Do: Lessons D2C Brands Can Learn from Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift has mastered community-building at scale. Here's how D2C brands can steal her playbook and forge the same kind of loyalty with their customers.

Neil Bar-or · Jan 2024

Secrets of Ecommerce Growth

After the pandemic boom, eCommerce growth has stalled. Here's how top brands are using CRO, UGC, website optimization, and behavioral science to drive conversions in 2024.

JP Garbaccio · January 2024

GA4 — 2023's Top 5 Improvements & Top 5 Duds

Google rolled out 44 GA4 updates this year. Here's the definitive breakdown of what actually moved the needle and what missed the mark entirely.

Josh Silverbauer · Dec 2023

Real-Time Campaign Tracking: Overcoming GA4's Traffic Challenges

GA4's 48-hour data lag is killing real-time decisions. Here's how to bypass it with BigQuery and Looker Studio to see what's happening on your site right now.

Josh Silverbauer · Nov 2023

The Resurgence of Contextual Advertising

Privacy regulations and cookie deprecation are reshaping digital advertising. Contextual advertising is back — and with AI, it's smarter and more precise than ever before.

Michelle Marshall · September 2023

14 Common Technical SEO Mistakes, and How to Fix Them

We've run over 100 technical audits. Here are the most common technical SEO issues we encounter and which have the largest impact on organic traffic when corrected.

Nick Eubanks · March 2023

Link Building Still Works

Contrary to popular belief, links still move the needle. Here's what the data shows and a real-world look at how manufactured links operate in the wild.

Nick Eubanks · August 2022

How to Convince Your Executives The Value of SEO

Your C-Suite is open to investing — but first you need to prove the channel worthy of their money. Here's how to pitch the CEO, CMO, and CFO on SEO.

Nick Eubanks · Jul 2021

SEO Case Study: 313% More Organic Traffic with REAL Examples

A deep-dive across 3 websites in 3 niches—ecommerce, B2B lead gen, and hospitality—with real strategies, real numbers, and zero fluff.

Nick Eubanks · Dec 2020

How To Conduct a Content Audit For SEO

Learn how to identify what to remove, optimize, rewrite, or combine — and make data-driven decisions that dramatically improve your SEO performance.

Matt Schickling · Aug 2019

How to Test Page Titles and Meta Descriptions for SEO

A step-by-step framework for running controlled A/B tests on your title tags and meta descriptions at scale using Google Search Console.

Nick Eubanks · Apr 2019

How To Create an Ecommerce Content Strategy for SEO

Every content type you should be building for an ecommerce site — from category pages to scholarship resources — with real examples of what's working.

Nick Eubanks · Mar 2019

Step by Step Guide to an Advanced User Experience (UX) Audit

FTF's 10-step UX audit process for identifying what's killing conversions — and fixing the right things first.

David Martin · Mar 2019

It's Not About Ranking In Position 1 — The Monopoly Strategy

Owning position 1 isn't enough. Here's how to dominate the entire SERP and multiply your organic traffic exponentially.

Nick Eubanks · Feb 2019

11 Reports To Analyze When Redesigning Your Website

Web design isn't just colors and fonts. Here are the 11 Google Analytics reports our consultants analyze before starting any website redesign project.

Nick Eubanks · January 2019

Salesforce Commerce Cloud SEO Issues & Solutions

Commerce Cloud has a unique set of SEO challenges. Here's what we've found across dozens of client implementations — and exactly how to fix each one.

Nick Eubanks · November 2018

UX: The New SEO Ranking Factor

When traditional SEO tactics max out, user experience is often the missing piece. Here's how to diagnose and fix UX issues that are holding back your rankings.

Nick Eubanks · July 2018

How to Implement Hreflang

If your website is targeting multiple languages or locations, hreflang tags are an integral part of your technical SEO success. Everything you need to know to implement them correctly.

Nick Eubanks · June 2018

I'm From The Future Acquires WEBRIS

Just days after the True Voice Media acquisition, FTF announces the acquisition of WEBRIS, an SEO agency based in Miami, Florida, founded by Ryan Stewart.

Matt Schickling · Jan 2018

I'm From The Future Acquires True Voice Media

FTF has acquired True Voice Media — a Philadelphia-based agency specializing in social media, content, and influencer marketing strategy.

Matt Schickling · Jan 2018

Understanding TF*IDF and Its Role in SEO

TF*IDF is the mathematical backbone of how search engines score relevance. Here's what it is, how it works, and how to use it to improve your content strategy.

Nick Eubanks · October 2017

How To Use WebP Images with WordPress

WebP images can cut file sizes by 25–73% compared to JPG and PNG. Here's everything you need to know to implement them on your WordPress site today.

Neil Bar-or · August 2017

How To Do SEO For B2B Companies

The nuances of B2B SEO are staggering. Here's how we approach building campaigns for companies with long sales cycles, multiple decision makers, and complex buying processes.

Nick Eubanks · July 2017

Does Egobait Still Work? [Case Study]

We compare the egobait method against the raw data approach — two real content campaigns, two different clients, with actual performance data.

Matt Schickling · July 2017

How To Design an SEO Content Map

Building SEO rankings is like constructing a house — brick by brick, with a blueprint. Here's the framework for stacking organic authority that compounds over time.

Nick Eubanks · Jul 2016