Ep 27. The Platforms Know Your Brand Strategy Better Than You Do — And That's a Problem, with Dr. Cecilia Dones, 3 Standard Deviations

Google just announced the biggest overhaul to search in 25 years. The blue links aren't going away — they're just being buried. AI mode is now the default. Agents can be dispatched from the search bar. Native checkout is live. And five new ad formats launched alongside all of it. Meanwhile, OpenAI is quietly moving toward a CPA pricing model for ChatGPT ads, Anthropic just hit $47 billion in ARR and may turn a profit this quarter, and Meta wants you to pay a subscription fee to escape the attention economy it built. Make that make sense. This week, Shiv and Myles sit down with Dr. Cecilia Dones, founder of Three Standard Deviations and professor of AI and strategic communications at Columbia University and NYU. Dr. Dones helps organizations move from AI adoption to AI advantage — and she brings an academic rigor to the conversation that reframes some of the biggest stories in the industry in ways most people haven't considered. Dr. Dones breaks down why Google's AI overhaul isn't just an ad product story — it's a governance story. As more brand strategy, planning, and creative decisions migrate inside platform walls, the algorithms will eventually know a brand's identity better than the brand does. She also explains why ChatGPT's pixel is a fundamentally different data asset than anything Google has ever had — because it doesn't capture what people searched for, it captures how people actually think. And she delivers the most actionable advice in the episode in one sentence: audit your brand in AI today, because it looks nothing like your SEO did. They also get into why Meta charging a subscription fee to avoid ads is an oxymoron and a trust problem wrapped in one, why the measurement industry is quietly shifting back toward econometric modeling as platform attribution gets more opaque, and why "set it and forget it" always creates a PR disaster eventually. Learn more about the AI Literacy Alliance at uof.digital/alliance New episodes every two weeks. Get your AI Edge here.