SGE's $40B-ad impact, Ferrari's marketing genius, Electric Mercedes G-Wagon, and more

Dude, I have some data, by the way, from BrightEdge. You want the data?

Yeah, I want the data.

So he's sharing some— so this is from Jim Yu, BrightEdge Enterprise SaaS, and thank you for sharing this data. So Jim Yu said, this is BrightEdge's recent data on SGE, so Search Generative Experience for Google, and Perplexity, perplexity.ai. And so SGE data. SGE has the potential to impact over $40 billion a year in ad revenue for marketers. Broken down by industry, SGE impacts search queries at the following rates. Healthcare, number one. So 65% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE. E-commerce, 50% were impacted. B2B tech, 46%. Education, 42%. Insurance, 42%. Entertainment, 35%. Restaurants, 37%. Travel, 30%. Finance, 19%. Last thing over here on SGE before we talk about it, and then we'll move to Perplexity. BrightEdge tapped SEO experts on how they're thinking about SGE plus generative AI search, and this is what they found. 52% are actively experimenting with SGE. This doesn't tell me much. 46% say AI-powered results are getting better over time. Also doesn't tell me much. With some exceptions, typically 85% of results are serving SGE queries. That's interesting.

Speaking of SGE and health, the whole health keywords, we track a lot of data scraping and also doing like surveying. And, you know, we'll pay people to be like, hey, do your normal searches and let's see what happens. Totally agree. A lot of health queries have SGE results in there. But you want to know what's funny from everything that we've seen?

What's funny? Is it really funny? If it's not funny, you have to pay me with Air One.

Okay, I'll buy you Air One either way. A lot of people aren't clicking on the health results. The accuracy of what they believe to be accurate is very different. And I'll give you a polarizing example. This is an extreme example. But you take vaccines. Some people are pro-vaccines. Some people are really against vaccines. Some people are against COVID vaccines. Some people are for them. People have really strong beliefs with healthcare and what they do. Some people refuse to take medicine and they want to do everything like homeopathic, organic. Like Steve Jobs, I think.

Yeah.

I don't know what the name is, you know, the correct term for it. And then there's some people like me, I'll just pop a pill. I got a headache. Cool. Advil.

All right.

Let me take some Tylenol at the same time.

Ah, you got some DayQuil? All right.

Pop it in. And I know that I'm exaggerating here. You shouldn't take medicine in overdose. I'm not trying to tell anyone that. But like, what I mean by that is like, if I have a headache and Advil says take 2, I'll take 3, right? That's a realistic example. Like, all right, cool. And I won't wait hours for my headache to be over.

You just jam it in.

I was jamming. I'm like, man, I got a headache. I don't care to deal with this. Let me just pop it in. Yeah. So I'm a very different viewpoint. So you have SGE in certain categories from what we're seeing and we're analyzing a lot today and then we'll eventually end up putting out a report on this. We're seeing a lot of SGE results just getting ignored. But again, this is its early innings, right? If it was baseball, we're in this first inning and SGE will improve drastically over the years. Will it get more clicks or not? Depends how qualified or, you know, how good the results actually are that they're producing.

Yeah, and this is the only one where he put parentheses here. Google will show disclaimers on the healthcare stuff because you don't know what you can trust. At the end of the day. And that's a big thing, right? If they can't trust the search results, that really affects their core business. Perplexity data. So everyone, perplexity.ai, it's another LLM that you can use. A lot of people like using it. I've used it here and there. I don't use it too often, if I'm being honest. Some people, it's their home screen, but I don't think you use it. I still use Google. I'm just being honest.

Yeah.

So Perplexity is growing about 40% month over month, which means that more consumers are using and engaging with the platform's provided responses. I'm curious what that base number is because 40% on a really small number is not much, but you have assume that they're doing pretty well. Domain differences between Google and— Neil's searching right now. Uh, domain differences between Google SGE and Perplexity shed light on which content sources search engines value. Reddit is a top domain across most of Perplexity citations by industry for 7 of the top 9 industries, with healthcare and finance as exceptions. What?

Oh, I was just looking at their traffic numbers. Not bad.

Perplexity, 100 million.

$156 million a month.

Okay.

SimilarWeb isn't showing 40% growth.

So growing 40%— what are you saying?

It's showing 24.13% growth.

That's still pretty damn good.

That's still really good at those levels, yeah.

Okay, so it's significant. See, Neil was waiting to pick it apart, but this he's like, oh, that's pretty good.

No, no, I didn't think it was bad. I just assumed it was way more traffic based on their valuation.

What is their valuation right now?

It's like over a few billion bucks at least. I could be wrong, but I thought I read it. No.

Yeah. Okay. So for healthcare, restaurants, travel, and education, Perplexity and Google have a similar focus on high-authority websites such as Mayo Clinic, a top-ranked hospital, Yelp and TripAdvisor, trusted restaurant and travel sites, and online course provider Coursera. In e-commerce, both engines heavily source Wikipedia and Amazon. And Google uses Quora and Consumer Reports for third-party product information, while Perplexity references Reddit. That's interesting. Overall, Perplexity is most likely to reference product sites, whereas SGE Will also include informational resources such as lifestyle and news sites.

I was wrong. The article I read was Perplexity looks to raise $250 million plus at a valuation of $2.5 billion or more. Doesn't mean they actually raise it at multiple billions.

That's still a good deal because if they become a trillion-dollar company. Yeah. So look, at the end of the day, both Perplexity and SG, they're just trying to find trusted sources. It seems like they know they can't have all the answers anymore.

Would you invest money at a $2.5 billion valuation?

If I think the company can go a trillion, I might. But no, I think I would avoid it. Because the thing is, it's a great company, but you can find better deals at the end of the day.

The valuation is already too high for me. Like, how much money am I going to make? Because what ends up happening is once you get big enough, people value you based on economics. They won't value you based on like, oh, you're doing this AI thing. They'll be like, okay, what's your profit over the last 12 months? We're going to give you this multiple and here you go.

It's too much.

Or your future 12, right? And I look at like, this is— it's too rich for me. I'll make more money just buying up businesses.

I think those of you that have really interesting companies, if you have revenue, we're still not likely to invest. I'm just speaking for both of us right now. But if the valuation is like, you know, $5 or $10 million or so, then maybe, maybe it's worth taking a look, right? But other than that, it's just worth taking a look at our business and just reinvesting in our business. That's what I mean. All right, real quick, I need to tell you about the group that Neil and I created called the Agency Owners Association. And this is a group that's similar to entrepreneurial organizations such as YPO or EO. By the way, Neil and I are both in YPO, but we thought it'd be really cool if we're able to create a group that's dedicated to agency owners to helping them scale. So you could be at 6 figures, 7 figures, 8 figures. We have different groups for different levels. All you have to do is go to marketingschool.io/agency. Again, that's marketingschool.io/agency, and you can go there to apply. And I will tell you right now, what we're doing is there's an online community. We do calls every now and then. There's stuff that we share in there that we don't share publicly.

And you can, at least with the online community, you can cancel at any time.

So you can go there to learn more about it. And that being said, back to the video. Okay, I'll finish this off. Top search results on Perplexity and Google overlap, particularly notable in healthcare. 60% of Perplexity citations overlap with the top 10 organic Google results, meaning that Perplexity users are getting similar relevant responses to Google, but with the added benefit of an AI-generated summary and conversation flow. So yeah, I'm not going to read all the rest of this. Um, actually, no, I'm gonna give you 2 more. One more. Perplexity offers 5.28 citations per response. When you think about ChatGPT, you're lucky if you get a couple of links in there. Yeah, Gemini doesn't. You might get 1 or 2 if you're lucky, but that's good that Perplexity does that.

So. No, totally. Um, it's— and with Perplexity or ChatGPT or any of these new technologies that are leveraging AI, I think we're really going to see a ton of them raise a lot of capital and most of them fizzle out.

Yep.

And that's a big reason why I'm not betting on any of them.

That's like the search engines in the '90s.

Yeah. Oh, AltaVista. Oh, Hotlook. Oh, LookSmart. Oh, you know, Ask Jeeves. You got Yahoo, you got Google, you got MSN, you got Bing. Like, you know, Bing wasn't there back in the day, but you get the point. There were so many of them, dude. People like you and I didn't even You know, use the same search engine. And then Google came along and they're just like, we're not going to— we're going to remove all these banner ads and just make it simple and clean. And then a lot of us, you know, young people, at least at that time we were young, we're like, oh, Google's a place to use because it's just simple and we don't see all this crap.

Did you try to invest in Google when it first went public? Because we're still in high school.

Yes.

Did you?

No.

No?

I was too young.

I told my mom to buy Nvidia when I was 9 years old because I used to buy those video cards when I played games. You keep upgrading them, right? Had she just put $10,000 in, it'd be worth like $6 million today. Had she just held it more than her homes.

And Eric's mom, as a little sidebar note here, the reason she pushes, you know, young Eric to invest in real estate is because your mom's a realtor and she loves—

Exactly. People talk their own book. Like, for example, if you're talking to your son, you probably just say like, focus on what's actually working for you. Or more so, you might be a little more biased towards business.

Yes. But what's different, I think, From with you and I versus the older generation, like our parents who weren't in business, you and I understand the concept that your best leverage is going to be whatever you're also naturally talented at. I don't see you and I pushing, you know, a specific thing like you got to do this. It's the only way to make money. You and I have been big believers that everyone has their own path.

It's because we've gotten older and wiser.

Yes. But our parents are still stuck in their own ways. Yeah.

It's true. By the way, most people are stuck in their own ways.

That's true. I am stuck in my own ways for a lot.

So am I. But we just realize that we're willing to admit it. And it's key, those of you that are a little older, to admit that. Alright, so I wanted to take a second to tell you about Leveling Up Founders. This is an event/mastermind for people doing 7, 8, 9 figures. These are founders that are doing that amount. And we've been doing this event for a couple years now. We've had the amazing speakers, but more than anything, it's about the people. What I mean by that is like-minded people want to hang out with like-minded people, and this is the best spot to connect with people of a certain caliber. And we vet every single person that comes through. So if people are— even though they make a lot of money, but their character, we don't really align with that, we're not necessarily going to let them in. We did this event in Beverly Hills, and it's happening in the beginning of August. All you have to do to learn more about it is just go to levelingup.com/ Again, it's levelingup.com/founders if you want to hang out with amazing people. Neil, my podcast co-host, is going to be there. I'm going to be there. People like Syed Balkhi, he will be there as well. And again, it's going to be a great time. levelingup.com/founders to learn more, and we'll see you inside. This one's from David Senra. Everyone, anyone that listens to the Founders Podcast, it's an amazing podcast. You should listen to it. I think you'll enjoy it. Um, so for the tweet says this: Ferrari was an absolute marketing genius. I remember one visit from a very important and wealthy American client. The factory parking lots were filled with unsold cars, which we tried to hide from public view. The American said, Commodore, I would like to buy a Ferrari. And it's not Commodore, it's Commodatore or something. I don't know what that means. Um, so I would like to buy a Ferrari. Ferrari replied, yes, of course, but we have so many requests. I'll do what I can, but I'm afraid that you'll have to wait several months before you can buy one. That was because a Ferrari must be desired. It cannot and must not be perceived as something that is immediately available. Otherwise, the dream is gone. In order to maintain the exclusivity of the brand, production has always been lower than the requests of the market. So that's the genius of Ferrari's marketing.

Dude, that's smart. Did you see what Mercedes did with their G-Wagon for marketing on it?

Not the electric one?

The electric one.

What about it?

They made a car. They took like 3, 4, 5 G-Wagons. It was more than 3, but 4 or 5 or something like that. And they made them spin in circles, not donuts. Imagine the car sitting still and it can go 360 with the middle of the car staying It's like turning.

Yeah, yeah. And it just goes 360.

Yeah, it just keeps turning. It's ridiculous. They have a video on YouTube. You should check it out.

Is that what you're getting? Are you getting a G-Wagon?

No, they're too expensive.

How much is it?

G-Wagon electric, it's not out yet, but my guess is when it comes out, due to demand, it'll probably be going from $200,000 to $300,000.

But all the electric demand's going down now.

Not the Mercedes. If you want to go into a Mercedes dealership like Fletcher Jones, which is the most popular Mercedes dealership, I think, in the world, They don't have any electric Mercedes. They're sold out.

I would get an electric G-Wagon. That's pretty cool.

It is cool, right? Yeah.

I would lease it though.

We asked our friend Trix. I was just like, hey dude, because he has a Mercedes. I'm like, hey, can you put me on the list? He's just like, there's no list yet. It's too early because we're like a year and a half away to 2 years, something like that. He's like, but when we can add you to the list, I'll add you. Normally I would say yes, but Right now, I'm on the kick to see if I can make my Tesla last 15 years.

What? You're not going to last 15 years.

You don't think so?

No.

Challenge accepted.

This is not how you're built.

I'm trying to live like the old way.

What have you had that's had 15 years? I've known you for 12 years, 13 years now, right? What have you had since 13 years ago?

Dude.

Nothing.

You know, so maybe— oh, my shoes. My Salvador Ferragamo shoes. I keep my shoes forever.

I believe it. Because you don't wear your shoes that much.

No, I do.

No, no, nice shoes, you don't wear them. Like the Ferragamos, I wear them like a couple times a year.

No, I used to wear them every day.

Huh?

I just get them resoled.

Oh. Yeah, like, explain.

You have Common Projects, right? How old are your Common Projects?

3, 4 years old.

Do you still wear them or not?

Every now and then, yeah.

Okay. I wear my Common Projects almost every single day. Guess how old they are?

Maybe not every day.

I think half the week.

6 or 7 years.

Yeah, you're close. It's a little bit more than 6.

Yeah.

So like, but they stay clean.

You keep them clean.

Yeah, because Franny is amazing. She like cleans my shoes every week.

Neil's very OCD, so everything has to be clean.

Uh-huh. I was talking to her the other day. I was like, these shoes can last another, you know, 3, 4 years because the soles on them are really good.

Yeah.

But then she's just like, but your white shoes are turning like little yellowish and they're not as white.

So that's the thing. That's why it's worthy to invest in quality because it lasts a long time.

Yeah. And Common Projects, I think were like $300, $400, right?

Somewhere around there. Yeah, $300, $400. But you've used it a lot longer than a pair of like $20 shoes. Yes. Yeah.

They're my longest lasting shoes I've ever forgotten.

Like you don't have to spend, you know, $20,000, $30,000 for a suit.

You can just get a—

you can go to Suit Supply or— okay, maybe not Suit Supply, but you can get a custom suit. And no hate on Suit Supply, but you can get a custom suit for like, you know, $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 or so, but it'll last you a very long time.

Dude, almost all my suits are 10+ years old.

Yeah, that's exactly what I said.

I also don't wear any of them. Like, not even maybe once a year. And that's a maybe. But like, I have tons of suits that I don't wear.

Yeah. And but like, And what you found, okay, like there are some nice suits where you might spend like a couple thousand dollars, but it's, it to me, it's no different than the suits that are cheaper. You know what I mean?

I typically stick with the same brand for suits and I like them and I don't—

Tom Ford? No, no.

Tom Ford doesn't make my size. I struggle. You can get custom, like made-to-measure suits. But Tom Ford doesn't work for guys who are like 130 pounds.

What brand do you use then?

Burberry. So almost all my suits come from Burberry.

Okay.

They have like slim fit people my size or skinny and they're able to get them for me, although I don't wear them anymore.

So that is it for today. I mean, let us know what you think and go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. You know, we meet in person for this. We've got Brad from recordeditpodcast.com and yeah, we'll catch you In the next episode. Bye.