Co-Founder & Chief Data Officer, MarketStorm
Trust is the new traffic.
Carole Lawson studies how people actually decide, and what that means for brands in the age of AI.
- 2×Oracle OpenWorld keynote speaker
- UNFeatured speaker, World Tourism Organization
- 2×InformationWeek 500 Top 10 Technology Innovator
- 47th → #1California's state web, to Best of the Web
Think With MarketStorm
Essays on trust, behavior and the new internet.
Carole writes most weeks about why the funnel has blended, why measurement favors what's easy over what matters, and what Google's AI shift means for marketers.
- Nov 10, 2026
When Keywords Stopped Being the Point
SEO evolved beyond keywords. Learn how AI interprets meaning and why businesses must create useful, credible content that answers real customer questions today.
- Nov 4, 2026
Everyone Wants to Know What Google Wants. Google Already Told Us.
Google’s people-first guidance reveals why human expertise, trust, and customer understanding—not chasing algorithms—are marketing’s real advantages in AI.
- Oct 21, 2026
The Placement Didn’t Make Sense. The Person Did.
Why AI-powered advertising should prioritize consumer behavior over familiar placements—and why surprising results may reveal the strongest opportunities.
“There's a fallacy that a click is a win. A click is one kind of a win. But what really matters more than clicks is a change in preference that has been influenced before the click.”
Carole Lawson in CEO Weekly
Recent conversations
Podcast interviews on attribution, trust and AI search.
Influence Matters in the AI Search Era
Targeting Tomorrow's Customers Today: Carole Lawson and Rick Brown of MarketStorm on Predictive Marketing
Entity SEO in the Age of AI
The Data Is Technical, but the Decision Is Human
The Demand Generation CMO: Carole Lawson on Marketing Beyond the Funnel
How Trust Is Replacing the Marketing Funnel
AI, Personalization, and Privacy: Striking the Right Balance
What Data Scientists Can Teach Us About Marketing
About Carole
She took a state from 47th to Best of the Web.
As Director of eServices for the State of California, Carole led a digital transformation across roughly 400 sites and 4 million pages. As Chair of the Governor's Innovation Council, she worked directly with early leaders from Google, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter.
In 2018 she co-founded MarketStorm with Rick Brown, an AI-first company built years before AI was mainstream, and without outside funding.
Speaking
Keynotes on how people decide.
Two-time Oracle OpenWorld keynote speaker, invited by the United Nations, and a main-stage speaker for O'Reilly Media and InformationWeek.
- Trust Is the New Traffic: Rethinking What Actually Drives Revenue
- Attribution Is Lying to You: What Businesses Get Wrong About “What Caused the Sale”
- The Behavioral Inflection Point: How to Spot Market Change Before Your Competitors Do
In the press
Press & media kit
Carole Lawson of MarketStorm, Traffic Won't Win the Next Decade, Influence Will
Why influence, not traffic, drives growth, and how AI decides which brands it cites.
Nov 5, 2026 · Read
Targeting Tomorrow's Customers: Carole Lawson & Rick Brown of MarketStorm on Predictive Marketing
Founder lessons from building MarketStorm, and following intent to influence decisions.
Oct 6, 2026 · Read
How Trust Is Replacing the Marketing Funnel
How Carole moved California from 47th to Best of the Web, and what it taught her about trust.
Sep 2026 · Read