Welcome to Intelligent Artifice, your weekly dose of insights to help you win with performance marketing in a Generative AI world.
Intelligent Artifice features hard won insights from the front-lines of performance marketing in a Generative AI world - delivered straight into your inbox. For free.
From exile to this
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Hi Reader I recorded one episode of The Mobile User Acquisition Show in 2018 sitting cross-legged in a shack in a mango orchard in Ratnagiri, on the west coast of India, swatting away mosquitoes, editing on GarageBand while tethered to a dying phone signal. Another from the town of Bhopal, in a house with a pet cow roaming freely. One from Indore, just after I let a street vendor light a paan on fire and push it into my mouth: yes, while it was still burning(because, why not?). Yet another from a room in an orphanage-school in Bodh Gaya, a few miles from the Bodhi tree where the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment. Just me, GarageBand, and two constant questions: “Can I still build something?” “And is the Wi-Fi strong enough for me to take this call?” I wasn’t on a soul-searching sabbatical. I wasn’t traveling for fun. I was in exile. A visa limbo had kicked me out of my NYC home (I told this story here). I didn’t know when I’d be back—or what I’d come back to. No team. No fallback plan. No runway. The podcast gave me something to hold onto—because at the time, I had nothing else. It was structure. It was connection. It was proof that something still worked... that I could still build something. And it worked. Over 250 episodes. Event and webinar invites. Lots of clients found us through it. People at conferences would say: “I listen to your podcast!” It wasn’t just a show. It was my identity. It was who I was. So when the magic started to fade, I almost didnt notice. It didnt happen all at once. It didn’t crash. It eroded. The calendar invites felt heavier. The prep questions felt stale. The edits felt like obligation. Answers felt like déjà vu. I wasn’t curious anymore. And that terrified me. But this wasn’t ‘just content.’ This was a machine that drove our business. Stopping it felt… dangerous…. What if the inbox went quiet? What if people forgot? What if the machine I built broke when I stepped away? What if I stepped away and nothing came back? But I knew the truth: If I kept recording without interest, I’d be clinging to a dead thing out of fear. So I did something scary: I shut it down. Quietly. No goodbye episode. No announcement. Just… stopped. I gave it space. And giving that space - especially when something has worked.... is harder than it sounds. There were moments I asked: “Is this the end?” “What is up next?” “Or is there even a next?” But in that space, something new started to build. Not the show. Not the rhythm. Something else entirely. AI. Started with a few experiments. Then a flood of breakthroughs. AI helped me do something I’d never thought possible: Learn to code. Build faster. Get leverage on problems I thought were just “how things are.” It reshaped how we make creative. It reshaped how we work. Helped me as a technophobe to build an army of agents… …and build an amazing team of humans to run these agents. And... maybe most importantly - it made me curious again. Joyful about making, building, creating again. So after that long, quiet pause… The answer showed up - slowly, gradually, unmistakably: 🎙️ Intelligent Artifice — a podcast about how AI is reshaping how we build, create, and perform. Each episode either:
I’m lining up the first season. We’re recording now. I already have some amazing guests. But I dont know who I dont know. Sooo if you’re a marketer, operator or builder leaning into an AI-first world(and no: you dont necessarily have to be a programmer or maker, or to have 'figured it all out' - heck, you may even be 'struggling-but-trying')… …I’d love to feature you on the show. Hit reply with “ARTIFICE.” ...and tell me a bit more about what you'd like to speak about - and we'll take it from there. Later, Shamanth PS: Some recent deconstructions from our socials…. 🧠 𝗕𝗮𝗯𝗯𝗲𝗹 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝟱𝟬𝟬𝗞+ 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 $𝟭𝗠+ 𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵. I ran semantic analysis of 50+ video ads to uncover what’s resonating, what’s fading, and what high-performance education apps can steal shamelessly. Check the link here. |
Welcome to Intelligent Artifice, your weekly dose of insights to help you win with performance marketing in a Generative AI world.
Intelligent Artifice features hard won insights from the front-lines of performance marketing in a Generative AI world - delivered straight into your inbox. For free.
Hi Reader After 16 years in performance marketing, I’ve learned something most people don’t want to admit: Nobody actually knows what the algorithm wants. Not Meta. Not the gurus. Not the guy posting “7 hacks to scale your ROAS.” (Not even the guy who is writing this email to you all.) We all have pieces of the truth. Which reminds me of that old parable: A group of blind men each touches one part of an elephant. One says it’s a rope. Another says a tree. Another says a wall. All of them are...
hi Reader - Many moons ago, I studied improv theater in New York City. If you arent familiar with it, here’s how it works: You walk onstage with four or five people. The audience gives you one word. And from that, your job is to build a full 10-minute theatrical production. No script. No props. No plan. In one of my first classes, I took the word “cabbage”… “Hey, I’m a talking cabbage at a job interview. “Hi hiring manager, you are a carrot talking to me.” “Oh hey, there is ranch dressing in...
Hi Reader I thought it was the best thing after sliced bread. When I first wrote the code for Brute Force AI, I was fired up. The plan was simple: ✅ Take your top-performing ads. ✅ Take your worst performers. ✅ Use AI to analyze 'em. ✅ Extract exactly what separates the high-performers vs. the rest. 🤑 Profit I thought it was genius. I obsessed over the code to fine-tune it. And then I ran the analysis on actual ads. ...and waited with bated breath to see the results.... And it just… sucked....