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Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

The AI Spending Trap

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

Eric Siu and Neil Patel

Business, Marketing, Careers

4.61.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Neil Patel and Eric Siu break down the rise of “token maxing,” why AI token spend without ROI is dangerous, and how companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are battling for AI dominance. They also cover TBPN’s X growth strategy, AI-powered advertising, enterprise AI services, and the marketing playbook behind Grüns’ $1.2B exit. A must-watch for marketers, founders, and AI operators looking to scale with smarter distribution, AI adoption, and performance marketing strategies. Key Takeaways: ⬛️ Token maxing without ROI creates dangerous incentives ⬛️ Google and Microsoft may dominate AI through distribution ⬛️ Grüns scaled to a $1.2B exit with message-match funnels Chapters: (00:00) TBPN’s X Ad Strategy (00:33) Mid-Form Content Growth (01:41) Monetizing Podcast Impressions (03:00) What Is Token Maxing? (04:08) AI Spend vs ROI Debate (05:10) Cutting AI Token Costs (06:16) Anthropic vs OpenAI (09:50) Why Distribution Wins AI (10:49) Anthropic’s $1.5B Venture (12:03) Why Services Businesses Win (13:32) OpenAI Enterprise Growth (14:21) Grüns’ $1.2B Marketing Playbook

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

When a buyer asks AI for a solution like yours, does your business come up?

0:04.5

Most companies have no idea.

0:06.2

And by the time they find out, they've already lost the deal to someone who did.

0:09.9

HubSpot AEO helps you show up in those moments, what the right answers buyers are looking

0:14.7

for.

0:15.6

Before the first click, before the first form fill.

0:18.6

That's the moment HubSpot AEO is built for. Check out Hubspot.com,

0:23.2

the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Remember I was talking how TBPN does the ads

0:28.2

at the end? So this time I found the ad. So I'm going to show it to everyone and then show

0:31.9

what's working for me on Twitter right now and then we can move over to token maxi.

0:37.1

TBVN's daily newsletter has opeds that are written by Jordy and I in addition to top tech

0:41.6

headlines and the timeline's best posts. Sign up for free at tbPN.com.

0:47.1

Okay. So I want to explain what I just played over here. So we went, we did the eBay video first.

0:52.1

There's that interaction and then they basically clip that part. And this is, I call this a midform clip where it's like three to ten minutes or so and it's horizontal. It's not vertical. These tend to do pretty well on, on Twitter or X. You see this one has 64,000 views. So that's 644,000 impressions that you have for a post roll over here to get people onto their newsletter,

1:11.7

and it kind of advertises their show, too.

1:13.6

And so I think we're going to see more of this.

1:16.5

And I wanted to test this as an example for kind of the work that we're doing right now.

1:21.1

So if you go to, I'm looking at my page right now, I think this one is, maybe it's with you as well. Not bad. Okay, look, Neil.

1:30.2

So there's a, there's a video of Neil here with his kids laptop decorating it. And then this

1:35.7

is us talking about Anthropic as a single growth market. This is from this podcast, Neil, okay?

1:39.9

Two minutes over here, 54,000 views. That's not bad, right? Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah, so you got two here. So my point of saying this is like you have 1100 bookmarks, 535 likes. I think there is, this one point seven K. I'm looking at one here, 10K over here, 2.2K. In fact, whoever wants to advertise on this podcast, the next advertiser, we'll have to pay for these impressions as well, because we will also stack these on. So 18K on that one, not bad, right? So my point of seeing all this is that if you're trying to grow on like an X, for example, the reason I think TBPN did so well is because they were selling these impressions, especially on X and you know, you have very tech forward people listening to this stuff, right? So what do you think about this? It's not a bad way to monetize, but when their ad, I always saw go subscribe to their website. I didn't hear them pitch another company or product or service. I saw other companies, so I think it just depends on what you see. Like last time I tried to show, I couldn't find anything.

2:34.8

No, no, the one you just played right now.

...

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