James Cadwallader, CEO of Profound, explains the "Zero Click" shift where AI agents like ChatGPT browse the web for users instead of people clicking links. Marketers now need new tools to reach these agents. Profound is launching a UK hub in King's Cross and will unveil new research and products at the conference.
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Hi everyone, I'm James Cadwallader, co-founder, CEO here at Profound, and welcome to Zero Click London 2025. Thank you all so much for coming, appreciate you. Yeah, I mean, this is a big production. This is, uh, even we did our first Zero Click just about 8 weeks ago in New York City. And it went really well, and it went so well that we said, okay, well, we should bring this to London. And yeah, this is the outcome. So I think, look, so why is it called Zero Click? What's the idea here? And I know everyone in the room is very dialed in. It's not that I'm here to educate or kind of impart some wisdom, but I think just as a kind of framer before we start a bunch of what I think is gonna be very exciting content today, Zero Click speaks to what I believe is one of, if not the biggest platform shifts in the history of the internet. And I mean, admittedly, for a while I was actually using a really bad metaphor. I was saying that the front door of the internet had changed. I was saying we'd gone from this world of blue links to a world of where you can talk to the internet and it talks back to you. That the front door changing. And I think Upon some reflection, I came to realize that actually that analogy is broken because the front door of the internet for the last 26 years has been one where you walk through as a human and you explore hundreds of millions or billions of URLs on the internet and you come back with your information. But in this new world, you ask ChatGPT a question and it sends a user agent through that same front door that we've been using for the last 26 years and brings the information back on your behalf. And the second-order effect of that means that every company, every website on the planet now needs to think about the user agent that is visiting on behalf of the human. And yeah, here at Profound, we believe in a future where Humans won't use websites in the same way that we do today. I think our grandkids will find the idea of scrolling through an index of blue links to be quite peculiar. I think you will talk to the internet and it will talk back to you. And we're building a marketing platform for that future. That's what we're trying to do at Profound. That's the future that we see. And we believe that every marketer will require incredible technology to navigate and show up and win this new era of superintelligence. We have an incredible lineup today. Yeah, we have speakers from Reddit, we have industry experts, some folks from the biggest agencies in the world. We're about to reveal some really exciting research. And my co-founder Dylan is also going to be coming up and running through the roadmap of Profound to give everyone a kind of preview of what we're working on and what you can expect. We have lots of really awesome customers in the room. I'd say if you're in the room, there was a ton of demand to be here today. So if you're in the room, it probably means you're someone special. And yeah, I would definitely encourage everyone when we have breaks to connect with each other, to speak with each other, to use this as an opportunity to get to know what I believe are some of the best minds in the world as we, you know, start to think about the future of the internet. So yeah, I won't talk for much longer. I think one thing I wanted to note is that one of the big reasons why we wanted to launch Zero Click here in London is to coincide with Profound's office in King's Cross. So we're officially live in London as our UK and Europe hub. Obviously, as you can tell, I'm British. I'm from London and It's a real pleasure and it's super exciting for me now that I live in New York to come back here and be able to do what we do on this side of the pond. So yeah, in terms of the agenda, as I mentioned, we have incredible people coming up and I think this is going to be an awesome chance for everyone to really lean into what we see as the future of marketing. So, yeah, that's me. I'm excited to get a chance to speak with everyone after the talks, and I'll be hanging around. And, yeah, let's have some good conversations, and I'm excited to learn with you. Thanks so much.
