Shift Happens – Details, episodes & analysis

Is your content getting harder to find — even as you create more of it? 

In this episode of Shift Happens, DAC’s SVP of Client Strategy, Nasser Sahlool, joins Orli Milstein, Director of Content Strategy, to explore how AI is reshaping discovery and why traditional SEO tactics no longer cut it. They unpack what it means to structure content for both humans and machines — and how brands can build clarity, authority, and true findability in an AI-driven search world. 

Are your dashboards full of data that looks great but doesn’t actually drive business? 

In this episode of Shift Happens, DAC’s SVP of Client Strategy, Nasser Sahlool, sits down with Dan Temby, SVP of Technology & Analytics, to unpack why marketers chase vanity metrics, and what to measure instead. 

0:00: Intro

0:50: How do we know which metrics on our dashboard drive sales, and aren’t just vanity metrics?

3:25: If clicks don’t equal customers, what should marketers measure instead?

6:18: How do we help clients move from dashboards to decisions?

8:50: How is the analytics space evolving, and what should marketers prepare for?

10:42: How did you apply semantic descriptions with AI to build DAC’s operating system IRIS?

12:55: AI amplifies strategy, but only if the data is speaking the same language

13:40: Vanity metrics may make dashboards look busy, but value metrics prove impact

We're back from our short summer hiatus to explore one of the marketing industry's most urgent issues: diversity. Listen in as Nasser, Jenna, and Dan are joined by LiveIntent CMO Kerel Cooper—an award-winning advocate for diversity in business, media, and technology—to dive into some of the topic's most important talking points, including:

• How diverse workforces drive higher performance (and make fewer mistakes)
• The blurred lines between personal and professional lives
• Diversity and the immigrant experience
• Pitfalls on the path to diversification
• Curiosity: The ultimate catalyst for change?

LINKS: DAC: "How diverse is DAC?" | DAC: "4 ways we're creating a more diverse workplace" | DAC: "Celebrating diversity and inclusion at DAC" | ATTRIBUTIONS: "radio band.wav" by Paper Jam of Freesound.org

Is B2B marketing really more challenging than B2C? The digital age has blurred the lines between the two, so we enlisted T-Systems' Head of Digital Marketing, Björn Radde, to reveal truths from one of Europe's most successful B2B operations. Join Nasser, Dan, and Jenna as they pick Björn's brain to reveal:

• Why B2B doesn't mean "boring to boring"
• The duality of B2B/B2C experiences
• How to reverse-engineer the sales funnel for major deals
• Why B2B sales will be insulated against the loss of third-party cookies
• How to nurture an effective B2B culture: Test, learn, and upskill

LINKS: DAC: "Why Google's new Customer Match is a great news for B2B marketers" | ATTRIBUTIONS: "radio band.wav" by Paper Jam of Freesound.org

Since we first covered the topic in episode one, Google has revealed that it will NOT replace third-party cookies with an equivalent mechanism to identify individual users. Cue anxious marketers asking themselves: "How are we going to do our jobs?!" Fortunately, Dan, Jenna, and Nasser are back to paint a much more vivid picture of our cookie-less future, gliding their hoverboards across talking points including:

• Why are third-party cookies going away?
• User Tracking 101
• Privacy-preserving approaches to real-world problems
• What the FLoC?
• Welcome to cohort party 29056!
• The Three-Step Cookie Doomsday Preparedness Plan™

LINKS: DAC: "Google’s shift away from cookies and personal ad IDs" (Mar 2021) | DAC: "How to be data-driven in a crisis" (Apr 2020) | DAC: "Digital advertising in a cookie-less future" (Feb 2020) | DAC: "Google's 'Privacy Sandbox' invigorates data transparency debate" (Aug 2019) | DAC: "How to respect data privacy in the digital age" (Jan 2019) | ATTRIBUTIONS: "radio band.wav" by Paper Jam of Freesound.org | "Tape Rewind.wav" by Analog Bleep Ten of Freesound.org

The iconoclastic David Shing (Shingy) is one of digital's most entertaining, fascinating, and polarizing figures—and he remains one of the sharpest minds in the business. Join Dan, Nasser, and Jenna as they chase down AOL's former "Digital Prophet" and see the world through his eyes, casting their gaze at:

• The antagonistic origins of the Prophet
• The best (and worst) pandemic advertising
• Are CMOs unprepared for the cookieless future?
• Three barriers to data-driven insights
• QR codes: A comeback story

LINKS: www.dacgroup.com | ATTRIBUTIONS: "radio band.wav" by Paper Jam of Freesound.org

In the grim darkness of the far future, there's no such thing as websites… or is there? Join Calamity Jenna, Nasser the Kid, and Dan "Just Dan" Temby as they mount their steeds to explore the very real prospect of a websiteless future. Our intrepid trio set the record straight at speakeasies along the way, including:

• Why APIs are the heralds of website death
• Google's war on clicks: Benign or malignant?
• Platformification and the platform economy
• Schema markup's inevitable renaissance
• Will the website disappear or metamorphose?

LINKS: www.dacgroup.com | ATTRIBUTIONS: "radio band.wav" by Paper Jam of Freesound.org | "twangy electric guitar.wav" by venusiancharm of Freesound.org

Keynote speaker, best-selling author, advisor to 36 of the Fortune 500, seventh generation entrepreneur, certified barbecue judge, divorce statistician, reformed domain squatter... Jay Baer has seen and done it all, and now he's Inside the Funnel's first ever guest! Join Jenna, Dan, and Nasser as they gleefully pick Jay's brain to reveal priceless insights into customer experience (CX), including:

• Kansas barbecue vs. Texas barbecue
• Why do 70% of CX initiatives fail?
• How online reviews have become the dominant force of our age
• Quick, clear, and kind: The three levers of CX
• 600 haircuts, 600 questions
• Delta Airlines and the coveted customer experience

LINKS: www.dacgroup.com | www.jaybaer.com | ATTRIBUTIONS: "radio band.wav" by Paper Jam of Freesound.org

Digital transformation is one of the business world's most misconstrued concepts. It doesn't mean getting a new marketing stack or moving from carbon paper to Excel. So... what *does* it mean? Join Jenna, Nasser, and Dan as they explore and explain why digital transformation is about customer experiences and business outcomes—not just shiny new tech. Inside the Funnel, roll out!

• Jim from The Office vs. Neo from The Matrix
• New tech stack =/= digital transformation
• Why alignment is easier said than done
• The three pillars of digital transformation
• Fundamental, fundamental, fundamental

LINKS: DAC: "The new normal: Accelerating to a digital future" | DAC: "DAC at the Digital Marketing for Financial Services Virtual Summit 2020" | ATTRIBUTIONS: “radio band.wav” by Paper Jam of Freesound.org

Omnichannel was thrust back into the limelight at the tail-end of a crazy year. Why? Because digital is becoming the world's de facto medium for working, socializing, shopping—and engaging with both local businesses and national brands. But what is omnichannel? What *isn't* omnichannel? And have we finally found a topic that Dan finds exciting rather than frustrating? Listen in as Jenna takes the wheel for a whistle-stop tour through:

• Omnichannel vs. multichannel
• Omnichannel =/= attribution analysis
• Dan's delightful bathroom reno
• Step one: Organizational change
• Who owns the customer record?
• "Teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea"
• Last, best experiences

LINKS: DAC: "Google's Local Omnichannel Takeover and What it Means for Your Paid Ads" | ATTRIBUTIONS: "radio band.wav" by Paper Jam of Freesound.org