Everyone is publishing more. Buyers are trusting less.

Going into the holiday season, this week's news points one way. Producing marketing has become cheap. Earning belief has not. The gap between the two is where budgets are being wasted.

What happened

An analysis of blog posts from 219 mid-market B2B SaaS companies found that total publishing volume rose 37% year over year, and 151% since ChatGPT launched. Median output went from 42 to 62 posts a year, and posts got 55% longer. But 52% of the posts were how-tos, explainers or comparisons, and only 2.4% contained original research or a real point of view.

Meanwhile, the places AI answers seem to draw from are not company blogs. A study of off-site brand mentions found that Reddit mentions had the strongest correlation with visibility in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews (0.75), ahead of general web mentions (0.70) and press coverage (0.67). Brands with 10 times more Reddit mentions typically got 5.5 times more AI mentions. The authors are clear that these are correlations, not proof of cause.

Reddit knows what it is worth. It is testing a logged-in-only experience to cut unmonetized traffic and protect its content from AI scraping, after a 53% revenue increase. It is also testing ads on its search pages, noting that half of its users say the platform helps them discover something new. Discord is going the other way and making public communities searchable on Google to attract new members.

On the paid side, one survey found that 57% of marketers have no clear understanding of whether their spending on user-generated content creators delivers a positive return, and 38% do not measure creator costs against acquisition economics at all. And as Black Friday approaches, only 54% of consumers trust that the discounts are actually lower than normal. Retailer reputation and money-back guarantees build the most trust in a deal. Influencer recommendations rank last.

What it means if you lead marketing

More content is not the advantage it used to be. If everyone can publish twice as much, the volume cancels out, and the posts that stand out are the 2.4% with something new to say. That is good news for teams with real expertise and real data.

Second, your reputation is increasingly built off your site, in conversations you don't control. That makes community presence and genuine customer voices part of your search strategy, not a side project. It also means the free ride on platforms like Reddit is ending. Plan for paid placements there, and for content that earns mentions rather than posts that chase them.

Third, measurement is still the weak spot. When more than half of marketers cannot say whether creator spend pays off, the risk is not overspending on creators. It is not knowing which part is working.

Finally, trust beats volume at the checkout too. A clear guarantee and a reputation for honest pricing may do more for your holiday campaign than another round of influencer posts.

What I would do

• Publish less, and make each piece say something new. One piece of original data or a clear opinion is worth more than ten explainers.
• Track where your brand is mentioned off-site, including community threads, and treat that as a visibility metric next to search traffic.
• Put creator spend through the same test as any channel: cost, new customers and return, measured the same way.
• Lead holiday offers with your guarantee and pricing honesty, not only the discount.

Worth trying

Audit your landing pages with AI before the ads run. One guide suggests giving an AI assistant screenshots, page content and crawl reports to catch broken links, conflicting offers, wrong availability and mobile layout problems. Then test the full purchase path yourself on desktop and mobile, including checkout and conversion tracking. Repeat it before every campaign.

The tools have made more content easy. Trust is still earned the slow way.