The Companies That Pay MILLIONS For Your Data…

AI labs are paying millions of dollars for company data through third parties, so should you sell yours? Neil says it depends on the business model, and Eric warns the labs will use that data to compete with you. Then a Bain study: only 6% of marketers say AI has had a significant impact on performance. Eric explains why that matches the top slice of any company, Neil shares the three places AI is actually winning for clients, and an a16z chart shows just 2.2% of households pay for AI. They explain why they stopped hiring clippers after YouTube's originality update, why niche videos bring qualified leads, and how Neil now picks topics from his sales pipeline. An honest episode on data and content. Key takeaways ◾Do not sell data that lets the labs compete with you ◾AI only pays when it is aimed at work that moves revenue ◾Original, niche content beats clipped reach Chapters 00:00 Should you sell your data to the AI labs? 02:06 Data is the moat as models converge 02:51 Eric's YouTube videos are driving leads 03:45 Bain: only 6% of marketers see AI impact 05:13 Neil asks: how many of you are growing? 06:10 Neil's top 3 AI wins in marketing 07:29 AI amplifies effort, and only 2.2% of homes pay 08:59 Why we stopped hiring clippers 09:58 YouTube's originality update for Shorts 11:54 Neil's team wanted 10 clip channels 12:58 Eric no longer needs an editor or a poster 13:32 Niche content brings qualified leads 15:27 Neil's channel: topics from the sales pipeline 16:52 Long form once a month, shorts twice Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Need marketing help? Visit: https://www.singlegrain.com/ and https://npdigital.com/

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot Starter Plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the Starter Plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com. By the way, one more thing we should talk about, Neil, is the fact that OpenAI labs like OpenAI, they're paying for data, right? Whether it's OpenAI or Anthropic. And so you've probably gotten these offers too, right?

• 0:45Speaker 00

  So there's like funny like videos being made about this as well. So, you know, some people, depending on the size of your business, it could be, you know, millions of dollars, or it can be like hundreds of thousands of dollars. So these labs are going through third parties and the third parties are reaching out to you and they're offering, they're saying, hey, you know, they would like to buy your data. Are you open to selling it, right? So the question, Neil, is if you own a company, should you be selling your data to these labs? And it also depends too, because if you're in like the medical field, you probably shouldn't be selling that data, right? But I think it depends, but you can answer first.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  You cut out at the last minute. They could be messing with my electricity or something, but.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. So what I was saying is that should you be, the labs are paying for millions for your data, right? Or at least hundreds of thousands of dollars. Should you be selling your data to these labs?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  It depends on your business model. If you are Britannica, sure, because it's hard for you to monetize in other ways. If you're a corporation selling a product or a service, you're like Amazon or something like that, you have a lot of e-commerce data, you should not be selling your data.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Yep. My take on this is exactly that. Like if you're in the medical field, you shouldn't be selling your data. You have a lot of confidential information in there and that's bad on you to do that. But I'll say this, like if you're in transition with your business right now, let's say you're transitioning a completely different type of business, you're becoming more AI-enabled or whatever it is. Technically, you can sell your stuff right now as you make this transition, because it kind of doesn't matter, right? Provided that you're in an industry that allows you to do it. So I think the answer is it depends, but here's the other thing, Neil. If these labs are willing to pay millions and millions of dollars for data from all these people, guess what? My bet is they're all gonna come and try to compete in these places, in these spaces. Like, why wouldn't you? If you have the best frontier intelligence, why would you just not try to compete with everyone? Where it seems like there's a, there's a good place to attack.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, I agree with you.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  And I think the data is what's really going to separate you from the competitors, because everyone's gonna have similar models over time and it's catching up. I know these models are getting better and better, but I don't think the innovation is growing as fast from a leaps and bounds perspective from version to version, like compared to what it was a year ago. I know it's better, much better now, but you would see leaps and bounds. And it was also at a much earlier standpoint where there was a lot of bad stuff and you'd see things being fixed and just be much better. Like you can see video comparisons of people using OpenAI versus Anthropic and like, yeah, I'm all, I'm all Claude, I'm all ChatGPT. And you're looking at the videos and they're like, they're pretty much similar. There's not that much of a difference. Like they both work.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I'll say one thing, like I was, I was, I've been making more YouTube videos, right? Because I'm no longer encumbered on that, on that front. And I've talked about this on this podcast. So I can pump out a lot more content. So yesterday I had one come out. It did decently on my channel, I think like 17,000 views or something like that in the first 24 hours. And so for me, because I'm targeting more B2B and business type, you know, audience with my content. Like, by the way, it's been driving leads. So I'm like, this is good. But my point is that your time is compressing a lot faster, right? And so I would say last year, Opus 4.5 in around, from around December, you can code a lot more. But you couldn't do what you're doing now from, from like an editing standpoint, or like a design standpoint from thumbnails. So you're just able to do more now.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  And that's why it's not as impressive as it was like a year ago, where there was a major step change. Whoa, what was that, Neil? Did someone drop something?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  That's what I was saying, the electricity, they're doing construction on the lights in the house right now.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  I see, I see. Okay. So look at this study. It says 94% of marketers say AI hasn't made a significant impact. I have thoughts on this already. So the key takeaway says, "A new study found that just 6% marketers report that AI is impacting performance at their firms. The problem certainly is an adoption with 47% of marketing leaders saying that AI is a core capability for the industry. Researchers note that to become a marketing leader that actually sees impact, you have to establish a centralized AI strategy that focuses on customer value." So who, who, who said this exactly?

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Oh, a study from Bain. Okay, so it's from Bain. All right. Okay, got it. And, you know, only 6% of marketing professionals say that AI has influenced performance in a significantly positive way, despite 47% of leaders noting it's a core capability. So, so how are these 6% of professionals making a difference with marketing? They focus on providing top-down centralized AI strategy rather than throwing tools at employees and hoping for the best. Let me react to this one first, okay? First and foremost, this is coming from Bain, okay? So Bain is not exactly, like, to me, they're like a slow-moving behemoth, right? And I think they're like a poster child for what's gonna happen to a lot of these services firms, right? If they don't adopt quickly. And so they probably service a lot, surveyed a lot of their employees as well. But here's what I'll say, when you have a lot of bloat in your organization,

• 5:32Speaker 00

  you're talking about the top 1% to 5% or so. This actually maps pretty well in my mind. And so of course, only 6%, these are the top 6% of people. The rest are just slot-grating it, or they're not even using this stuff. That's my opinion. Go ahead, Neil.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  So I used to, when I go to conferences, I used to ask people how AI is impacting. And then most people would say, it doesn't really produce much revenue from. And then over time it changed where a lot of people like, yeah, it does, it does produce a lot of results. And then I started asking follow-up questions to the audience when they used to say like, yeah, it produces really good results. Because then it started becoming the majority. And then I'd say, other people are raising their hands, how many of you guys' companies actually growing this year? And so many put their hands down. I'm like, okay, so it's actually not working out the way you think it's working out, right?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  The biggest way we see AI helping in marketing is actually driving you business. I'm not saying the technology can't help marketers perform better, do better A/B testing on creatives and be more efficient with campaigns. But where we really see the win is people who are dominating paid and organic on the LLMs. That's the number one way we're seeing more growth. The second is, is things like creative testing. That's the second area that we see huge wins on. The third area is in data and analytics and reducing waste and spend. But those are the top three areas we're seeing right now with most of the companies we're working with when they're seeing wins from AI specifically.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  But yeah, does that mean that's how it's gonna be in the future? No, I think it's gonna get better. But the technology is really early on and the issue you have, at the same time that you're seeing positive gains, what's distorting the whole image and the data is you have a lot of people just using AI, running up costs and working on things that would, don't matter in marketing, that would never move the needle. Whether they hired five more humans to do this, or whether they use AI to do this, it doesn't matter. They're working on crap that doesn't really move the needle. And that's, I see, is a bigger problem in organizations than the technology itself. It's people are focusing on the wrong thing. But that's what we're.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders, showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Seeing on our end.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Real quick, if you want to acquire customers faster and more efficiently this year with the latest strategies and tactics, then check out singlegrain.com. That is my ad agency, again, www singlegrain.com. Check it out. And if it seems like a fit, we'll get in touch and help you with a free marketing plan. So let me just call this out and then I'm gonna show you a chart over here, because Neil, we like charts. So the challenge is, and we've talked about this on the podcast quite a bit, AI is just an intelligence amplifier, right? And I've called this out quite a few times. And so here's the thing. Why do most people say that, okay, being average is not a good thing? And also, why do most people say that being like most people is also not a good thing? It's because you're average, right? But when you think about it, what does the average person want? The average person wants everything, but they don't want to work for anything, right?

• 9:06Speaker 00

  And so if you, if you put that, if you take that in mind, right? And if you think about, well, if AI is leveraged, it's gonna blow up the mindset of, of the good people, right? In terms of the good, I'm not gonna say any of these people are bad, but the people who want to work hard, first the people that don't want to work hard. That gets blown up completely and it reveals everyone completely. We've talked about this so many times, I don't think it's gonna be the last time that we talk about it, Neil. And the other thing that Andreessen Horowitz called out too, there's a chart that I'm trying to pull up right now. Only 3% of people in the world are, are, are paying for AI right now from like a personal standpoint. So here we go. Here, I have the chart. Let me show you the chart and then we can react to this. Right? So check this out. You see this?

• 9:46Speaker 00

  So check this out Neil, this is, and you're muted by the way. So this is from Endries and Horowitz. It says, more and more households are paying for AI. So when you look at January 2023, it's like basically 0%. When you look at, this is April 2026, 2.2%. So 98% of households aren't paying for AI yet. Neil, what you just said earlier, we're still very early as well.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And on a random note, I know we have a time for a few more topics. Eric and I are no longer looking for clippers. We don't need our content clipped anymore. You saw the recent YouTube announcement, right?

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Explain what clipping means, though. So clipping means two things, so.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Sure. What a lot of people do when they talk about clipping in marketing is they take long pieces of content like this, or it could be content that we created from other podcasts or speeches, and they'll take short little clips, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, and they start posting them from a lot of different accounts on Instagram, on YouTube, and all the other social networks. Sometimes these accounts are other people's accounts. Sometimes it could be Neil Patel SEO clips, Neil Patel business clips, Neil Patel social media clips, right? And it could be for a channel that's just specifically about me talking about social media or just Instagram and me giving Instagram advice. So YouTube ended up putting something out there and it says,

• 11:10Speaker 01

  "Hey, everyone, our recommendation systems are designed to connect viewers with videos they find genuinely valuable. We evaluate billions of signals, including watch history, topic interest, and engagement, to ensure the best possible experience for viewers. To improve the shorts experience for everyone, we're updating our recommendation systems to further prioritize original content and reduce the reach of content re-uploaded from other creators without adding anything of their own. This update to our recommendation system delivers a better experience for viewers while ensuring creators publishing original content have the best chance to grow and succeed. This change is also aligned with our existing YouTube policies. What this means for you, focus on originality.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Channels identified as primarily aggregating or re-uploading other creator videos without significant changes will likely see less distribution within the shorts feeds. If you use clips from another, if you use clips from another creator, make sure you're adding real value through your own original commentary, unique edits, or storytelling. And add in your, then the next bullet was, add your own unique perspective or take, which is kind of similar to the one on being more original.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. So by the way, Instagram was already doing this, right? And so what Neil is really calling out here is that the reason why we're no longer hiring clippers, one, clipping is actually easier now because these bots are going to get better at clipping the moments for you. But also what Neil was talking about in terms of spamming, like a lot of these clippers were spamming, like they would, actually they would take some from some of my interviews, like your rich BFF, they would steal the clip and then they would put it on another channel and it would blow up on another channel, right? And so that unoriginal stuff or even like these, a lot of these faceless channels where they use AI to generate a lot of this content, they're trying to reduce that because they know that if it just becomes a bunch of low quality stuff, people are going to leave the platform and they're not going to make as much money.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Did you ever get pitched on creating like Eric Su SEO, Eric Su marketing? Did you ever do it, like creating like 20 channels?

• 13:10Speaker 00

  No, I never did it, no.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, me neither. I never liked it because I was just like, I don't mind people clipping my own content and then me posting my own content. But like dude, even my team, like you need to create 10 channels. Look, Hermosy does them like, that's great. It's probably working really well for him. I'm not interested in this tactic.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. What I'll say is, like, by the way, I'm sure you see this in your DMs when you check your Instagram DMs. There's all these clippers that reach out and it's always like, hey, bro, hey, bro, hey, bro, hey, brother, hey, brother, hey, brother. And it's like, dude, you start with that, man, I'm just not going to respond to you, man. Like, like, and these are like kids, right? But what I say, like, if you're a kid right now, like, by the way, I think kids can do many amazing things. We hire people like in teenagers, right? That are doing amazing work from like a coding standpoint and their parents say it's okay, right? But my whole thing is the people that we hire, they behave very professionally and it's all about, hey, what can they actually build and what leverage can they add, right? Because to me now, if we're talking about clipping, like if we use my YouTube channel as an example, like I'm going to pat myself on the back over here because there's three different things happening right now.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  I no longer need a thumbnail person. I no longer need an editor anymore. I don't even need a poster for me on this one anymore in terms of someone scheduling it. Because the AI just does it for me, right? And so some of these videos, like I got this one out, like I recorded this after dev day. I just recorded, it's like a seven minute video and I just cranked it out, right? And I'm like, hey, yeah, yeah, put some gold in there, you know, put some, you know, put that in there. Hey, for this one, you know, put, put the dots in there, put the Grok bots in. I'm enjoying myself. Look, look, look at the muscle one over here, right? Where it's like, did that one do as well? No, it didn't do as well, right? But I'm just saying.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  You enjoy the content and it's related to your single brain company and you'll get more qualified leads and it did well from that perspective. Maybe you didn't get 14,000 or 20,000 views, but who cares? Because it's targeting your ideal customer. Because someone who's talking about Jev, Jev maxing and Jev for marketing is ideal customer for single brain, not the grain side, but the brain side, which many of you guys haven't heard of yet and you guys should check out. And that's the type of content that's going to generate you revenue. Because the companies that already know about Jev, they're usually companies who are on cutting edge and looking for services like your single brain.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  By the way, to Neil's point, I actually want to pull up Neil's channel in a moment here. But if you're doing 1800 views, imagine you're in like a basketball stadium, like a high school basketball stadium, right? Like that's 2,000, close to 2,000 people that watch it. Or Neil, when I do my webinars, I put them live and I'll actually want to come to you in a second. But when I did like this one over here, 5,800 views, right? Or this one has 12,000. So you do a webinar, you can somehow fill up like a stadium full of people. That's amazing, right? And so anyway, Neil, let's go to your channel real quick because you, you do the webinars, but you don't set them to go live here, right? What's the reason for that?

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Uh, it goes live on YouTube.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, but then you don't, you don't leave it there.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have no idea why we do or do not do it.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  I think it makes sense for you to leave it there. If you have like, unless you're trying to gate it all and like people get around it. But I'm like, if they get around it, they get around it, so.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  I'll find out for my team. I know we do use the in email sequence follow-ups to collect more leads. So it could be, that's why they don't want to putting it live or keeping it live, but I'll find out for them.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  That's cool. This is, by the way, this is Neil and I from six years ago. It's pretty funny with Noah here as well. But Neil, do you want to go through your channel real quick? Because you've been, you've been cranking out more content. And so let's, let's look at your channel for a second.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so let's see, is GPT-6 going to change marketing? Got decent amount of views. How to start an AI marketing agency? We're looking for more agencies and some of that content as well. Why ChatGPT is ignoring biggest chains? So we're trying to go very specific. Chains would be like local franchises and stuff like that. Franchises make up good customers for us because you have to remember, you may not make a lot from one store, but if they have 500 stores in the United States or 500 stores or 1,000 globally, it adds up to, you know, a pretty penny over time.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  I think this is smart. Look, when you go with the chains, because Neil wants more chains, right? Why ChatGPT is ignoring the biggest chains? It's like, oh damn, like I'm a chain, like I need, like if you're a chain, like you're doing a lot in revenue, right? You could just stack them all up together. So, and by the way, I'm pretty sure Neil tweaked this with his team over time. Because before, like there's like how to become rich, right? Now it's, I'm sure a lot of your opinion comes into this, right?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  It does, and it's not just my opinion. We take it from our sales team. So what's in the pipe? What are our best customers? What has the lowest churn? We're taking those type of customers and then creating content based on their problems.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  Yep. I think that's really good. And so by the way, guys, like if you have your customer calls stored in like a gong or whatever it is, you can easily just query up the API to MCP and you can use Jev to classify it, right? And then if you're creating content, then it can give you a list of content to go after. So anyway, at least for me now, Neil, I'm enjoying YouTube more. I don't know about you. Are you enjoying it more?

• 18:03Speaker 01

  I'm enjoying it. And yeah, I'm picking more of the topics and being more specific. So much so that my recording sessions are pretty quick. Now I'm, I've also condensed it too. So I only do long forms once a month and I do short forms twice a month. And that's it. Because it was getting overwhelming, like sometimes I'd be recording twice in a week. And I'm like, this is becoming too much.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Cool. Well, anyway, guys, that's it for today. We hope you enjoyed it and we will catch you tomorrow.