AI Marketing Startup Raises $2 Million to Tackle Post-Google SEO Challenges
Artificial intelligence is transforming how customers find businesses online. Hall, a marketing startup founded in 2023 by former Dovetail and Atlassian designer Kai Forsyth, has just raised $2 million in a pre-seed funding round backed by Blackbird. Their mission? To help small businesses thrive in the era of AI-driven search and discovery.
Traditional SEO is facing a major shift. Recent research from the Pew Research Center highlights a drop in organic search traffic as users rely more on AI-generated summaries from platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Perplexity. This trend, sometimes called The Great Decoupling, means fewer clicks on traditional search results and a shrinking $80 billion SEO industry focused on ranking optimization.
Why Traditional SEO Tools Fall Short
Google Search Console remains a go-to tool for marketers, but it's becoming less effective as AI chatbots take center stage. When consumers ask AI assistants for product recommendations or local services, they bypass traditional search pages entirely. Businesses currently have little insight into how these AI platforms represent their offerings.
For example, if an AI recommends a competitor or provides inaccurate product details, companies have no way to track or correct this information. This lack of visibility and control creates a gap in performance marketing that Hall aims to fill.
Hall’s Vision for AI-Driven Marketing
Hall is building infrastructure that provides businesses with tools to:
- See how they appear across various AI platforms
- Track how AI-driven conversations convert into real business outcomes
- Optimize their presence within AI-generated responses
According to Forsyth, the shift from centralized search engines to distributed AI discovery is only just starting. This shift demands new marketing strategies, different success metrics, and fresh optimization approaches. Hall wants to be the platform businesses rely on to navigate this new AI-first marketing channel.
For marketers looking to stay ahead, understanding AI’s role in customer discovery is crucial. Hall’s approach highlights how marketing will evolve beyond traditional SEO and into a space where managing AI representation becomes key.
To learn more about AI and marketing strategies, consider exploring courses on AI for marketing professionals that can help you adapt to these changes.
Your membership also unlocks:
