Media Captain Digital Marketing Podcast

"You can't trick Google." That's the line this week, but plenty of business owners are trying anyway. One client quietly rolled out AI to auto-generate a blog post every single day. Jason and Stefanie explain why that's a fast track to getting your whole site flagged as AI slop, then dig into 10 more marketing moves you need to know about.

Plus, an actual civil war has broken out inside the Media Captain office. Half the team swears...

Claude just started adding invisible watermarks to everything it writes. LinkedIn just launched a tool that lets users flag AI slop the same way they'd report spam. Neither of those happened by accident, and the agencies still winning right now are the ones writing like actual humans instead of prompting like robots.

A few small changes are making a real difference lately. A tighter LinkedIn profile gets picked up by AI sear...

In the premiere episode of our newly designed studio, we break down 11 crucial marketing insights, software shifts, and agency strategies that are driving results for our clients. From major updates in Google Ads to using conversational AI for technical SEO, we discuss what is working right now in the marketing landscape.

Timestamps:
01:47 – Google Local Service Ads Merging into Google Ads
04:07 – Transiti...

Google's March 2026 spam algorithm update rolled out in under 24 hours, the fastest in history, and the local pack is changing in ways that could affect how customers find your business. Jason and Stefanie Parks break down what it all means and share 11 real marketing insights from working with 100+ businesses.

In this episode: how PPC data can sharpen your SEO strategy, why review velocity matters more than review count, the qu...

We run a digital marketing agency working with hundreds of businesses across the country, and every two weeks we share what we are actually seeing in the trenches. In this episode, we break down 11 marketing items that are top of mind right now, and honestly some of these surprised even us.

Google Ads showing up inside AI Overviews are up 394%. Live chat on your website is becoming a thing of the past. One of our attorney cl...

In this episode, Jason and Stephanie Parks sit down with Will Crall, President of On3 Sports, one of the fastest-growing college sports media brands in the country.

Will shares how On3 built its empire through passionate fan communities, elite newsbreakers, and a dominant social media strategy, including their acquisition of Rivals from Yahoo in 2025.

The episode also covers the latest digital marketing trends, agenc...

Google and Meta just released their Q4 earnings, and the numbers are staggering. Google pulled in $113B in revenue while Meta hit $60B, but the profit margins tell a different story. We break down what these earnings mean for advertisers, plus why Google's algorithm is causing chaos right now.

In this episode, we also reveal how we're using AI to transform e-commerce SEO (one client went from 8% to 30% visibility), why iPhone videos...

After a 6-year hiatus, sibling co-founders Stefanie and Jason Parks are back with their marketing podcast. They own Media Captain (a marketing agency serving 100+ clients since 2010) and DermWarehouse (an e-commerce company with 200,000+ customers selling 60+ skincare brands). Each 30-minute episode covers marketing news, agency insights, and personal updates.

Marketing News & Trends:

• Google's dominance continues - Alphabet's...

1. US Consumers spent $8.9 billion online on Black Friday, down from the record $9 billion in 2020, the forest ever year-over-year decline for eCommerce sales [source].
2. Traffic at retail stores on Black Friday dropped 28.3% compared with 2019 levels [source].
3. I ran a poll asking whether people shopped at a physical retailer after Thanksgiving and whether people made a purchase online after Thanksgiving. 
4. ...

Below are the 11 marketing items we cover in episode 58: 

1. Google is changing the name of Google My Business to Google Business Profile.
2. In order to understand SEO, you need to understand what Google likes and dislikes.
3. Broad Match Keyword Bidding can lower your cost per click and drive higher quality traffic to your site. 
4. If you have low quality content (duplicate and thin content) on your site, this can cause...

Below are the 11 marketing items of the week that Jason covers in detail. You can read the entire email blast for the week HERE. 

1. Saks Fifth Avenue spun off their rapidly growing eCommerce division. In doing so, the company tripled its valuation at nearly $6 billion. Will this prompt a spinoff for Macy's? Activist investors are hoping the answer is yes. 
2. Spanx was acquired this past week for a reported $1.2 billion...

1. What are heading tags and why are they so important for SEO? 
2. Google announced that mobile users will now have continuous scroll in search results. 
3. We're proud of the new moss wall art we had installed in our conference room!
4. When it comes to your social media strategy, stories add a great personal touch. 
5. If you’re looking to garner more reviews for your local business, I recommend looking into G...

1. Do you know the most popular search query on Bing? It’s “Google” [source]. In June 2021, online search engine Bing accounted for 5.56 percent of the global search market, while market leader Google had a market share of 87.76 percent [source].
2. Despite Google being the dominant search engine, Bing can still perform very well. 
3. 1) TikTok, 2) YouTube, 3) Instagram, 4) Snapchat, 5) Facebook...

• Toast had its initial public offering this week that could value the restaurant-tech company at more than $16 billion [source]. Toast is a point of sale software for restaurants. 
• Aftership is a software company we recently started utilizing for DermWarehouse. This helps us track and gather information between when we ship products and when they are delivered. 
• DermWarehouse is starting a subscription box. A subs...

Amazon is likely the front-runner for NFL Sunday Ticket [source]. The NFL may ask for up to $2.5 billion per year for the package, a source said. I expect to see more of the major technology/digital companies (Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter and Netflix) snag the rights to major sporting leagues. It’ll be tough for traditional media outlets to compete with the deep pockets of technology.

Do you have duplica...

• Google announced it will be killing expanded text ads, starting June 30, 2022 [learn more]. They will only serve responsive search ads moving forward. According to Google, responsive search ads see a 7% higher conversion rate than standard search ads. We’ve moved a lot of our clients towards responsive search.
• Intuit (parent company of QuickBooks) is in talks to buy MailChimp for an estimated $10 billion [lea...

Jason and Stefanie talk about they take an idea and turn it into an actual business.

For The Media Captain, DermWarehouse and Park Perfection, before being an established business with a solid customer base, they were just ideas. How did Jason and Stef take their ideas and make the necessary implementations to start a business and then grow it? They will do a deep dive in episode 50 on this very subject.

What's ...