Training Data From SEO to Agent-Led Growth: Profound’s James Cadwallader
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Apr 14, 2026 
James Cadwallader, co-founder and CEO of Profound, builds marketing tools for the AI era. He argues we face a platform shift as AI agents crawl and synthesize the web for users. Talks cover why traditional SEO thinking fails, how different models surface different sources, the rise of agentic advertising, and why original insight will beat volume.
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SEO Alone Misses Agent Consumption
- SEO tactics still matter but now content may never be consumed by a human because it's optimized for agent consumption.
- Marketing must target discovery and ingestion by agents, not just human readability or click rankings.
Agents Aggregate The Long Tail
- Agents use the index very differently and exploit the long tail, often aggregating dozens of sources for one answer.
- Example: James used ChatGPT to pick a showerhead and it referenced about 65 different web pages.
Map Agent Citations Before You Optimize
- Measure how your brand appears across different agents and analyze the citations and sentiment each model uses.
- Use that source-level insight to build agent-specific strategies rather than guessing by channel vibes.