1. How do you balance fraud prevention with customer experience to reduce false declines?

False declines are a costly problem for merchants. They not only lose the order value, merchants incur sunk acquisition costs and risk damaging their reputation with each false decline. It's also a negative experience for customers: 40% do not return to a merchant after a false decline, resulting in lost future business. The challenge lies in identifying orders that are statistically risky but don't fit clear fraud patterns. Merchants want to prevent fraud, but some of these orders are legitimate but flagged as false positives.

The key is balancing a seamless checkout experience for legitimate customers with robust fraud prevention. Requesting additional verification for every order might prevent fraud but increase cart abandonment. A balanced approach uses verification only when necessary and employs sophisticated fraud detection.

Adaptive Checkout addresses this challenge by tailoring each checkout flow to the order's risk profile. This minimizes friction for low-risk orders and requests additional verification only when needed.

The process begins by filtering out blatant fraud before authorization and enriching orders with additional data, making it easier for banks to identify and approve legitimate customers. By surgically analyzing each order's risk, even riskier orders have a better chance of approval, turning potential false declines into approved transactions. This selective verification approach is crucial for improving conversion rates without sacrificing fraud protection or positive checkout experiences for legitimate customers.

2. How do you integrate machine learning and behavioral analytics to identify fraud patterns? 

The power of machine learning is the ability for it to ‘learn’ independently as it runs. There are various ways to implement this, but we believe the best approach is a layered one. 

It starts with having vast amounts of quality data. Riskified trains its machine learning models on hundreds of millions of data touch points from across our global merchant network. Our algorithms learn to distinguish safe behavior from suspicious patterns and stop existing fraudulent behaviors. But to truly stay ahead of emerging fraud tactics, we also apply real-time anomaly detection using unsupervised machine learning, which flags unusual behavior based on combinations of various order characteristics — such as many orders suddenly exhibiting copy-pasting of credit card details alongside proxy use. Our engine can detect it and stop fraud  MOs before they spread. 

Machine learning also adapts the checkout flow for every transaction, surgically applying additional security measures for select higher-risk orders and enabling merchants to confidently approve more genuine orders while blocking fraud at various stages of the process.

3. What impact does AI-powered fraud prevention have on cart abandonment rates and conversion optimization? 

Cart abandonment has many causes, but a long or overly complicated checkout process is a major one. Consider an order that initially appears suspicious, such as one placed from a new device or with a recently issued credit card. Using AI and Riskified’s merchant network data, we can compare an order against millions of data touchpoints to draw a clear picture of a shopper’s true identity. This allows us to identify legitimate customers and expedite their checkout. Conversely, imagine a returning customer with a stored credit card and no unusual activity in their order data.Why ask them for a CVV if there is no need? Some customers may not have this information readily available, potentially leading to cart abandonment. AI enables us to precisely request verification, such as a CVV or a one-time passcode, only when needed. This reduces checkout friction and increases successful conversions of legitimate orders.

4. What best practices should businesses follow when implementing AI-driven payment security solutions? 

It’s important to think of fraud prevention and conversion as two sides of the same coin. Make sure that whatever solution you’re assessing for payment security also helps to optimize conversions and prevent the false declines.

Make sure to connect with other stakeholders to understand the full scope of security issues related to payments. For example, does the payment security solution address post-purchase concerns like returns and policy abuse? Is there a need to protect against abusive behaviors like serial returns or false claims of INR? To empower merchant fraud and customer service teams with real-time ability to address these challenges, ideally, the fewer integrations you have to deal with, the better. 

Lastly, look for more than a solution - look for a partner that future-proofs your business. AI and ML solutions should never be a black box - merchant teams need technology that provide them with the visibility, flexibility, and control they need to tailor solutions aligned with their business strategy and success.  

For example, when you have declines, do you understand why they were declined? Can you add your own logic into the decisioning? How can you get a clearer image of the customer’s identity? Mapping this out can help you choose the right solution and make decisions that will improve revenue and security in the long run. 

5. How does AI-powered checkout impact payment authorization rates across different industries? 

Machine learning-based solutions can detect far more patterns than a rules-based solution – and unlike static rules, they can adapt and learn in real time. 

Using a sophisticated AI-powered solution that detects and screens out fraud prior to issuer authorization ensures that fewer fraudulent orders reach the issuer. Elite fraud prevention solutions are able to analyze high- quality data and share, that data with issuers at scale. This helps them filter out fraud while understanding the context behind orders better. For example, there can be a significant difference between the risk of buying a $1000 fridge online versus buying a $100 gift card at the same merchant. AI solutions provide the context that distinguishes between safe and risky orders. In the long run, this will lead to more trust with the issuer, higher authorization rates, and less risk of falling into a monitoring program.

6. How can AI-powered fraud prevention solutions be customized to meet specific business needs? 

The ideal AI-powered solution should be very customizable. No two businesses are alike, no one can decide your risk tolerance, and no one knows exactly how your business operates – so generic products won't cut it. 

Start by making sure fraud is viewed properly. Alongside the standard ML models, Riskified has developedgeo-specific, vertical-specific and sometimes even merchant-specific models, all of which is crucial for accuracy. 

Also, when you review transactions for fraud, do you want to review them after authorization, where you can manually overturn declines and leverage additional data like AVS match in the US? Do you prefer to review orders pre-authorizatio? Or maybe leverage both pre- and post-auth review?

For example, policy abuse is extremely specific to the merchant and their defined policies, so having ML to determine risk is an elemental part of the equation. And each merchant will want to deal with policy abusers differently – warning them, blocking them at checkout, denying claims, etc. 

Even in CNP fraud, how strict do you want to be? If you want to send a one-time password to some risky orders with verifiable phone numbers, how long would you give your customers to verify the code? High-end fashion offering limited stock would have a different view from fast fashion. And some forms of verification, like 3DS, will work better with consumers in one region, and less well in others. 

There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and it will look different from merchant to merchant, as it should. 

1. How can AI-powered apps balance automation with organic discovery in travel and outdoor recreation?

That balance is something we’re really focused on with Globe Chaser. AI handles the behind-the-scenes work, like smart route suggestions and location-based activity planning, but we leave space for real-world spontaneity. The goal isn’t to over-automate. It’s to empower users to make the most of their time outdoors. So while the app helps guide and personalize the experience, it still feels like authentic exploration.

2. How does the app leverage real-time data to optimize route planning and adventure recommendations?

We use real-time GPS data to detect the user's current position. If location sharing is enabled, the app automatically checks for nearby routes or adventures that match the surroundings. When no preloaded routes are available, our AI engine, called AVA, steps in to generate a personalized adventure based on the user's location and preferences. Route suggestions are powered through Google’s API, ensuring the paths are walkable and engaging. Our database of routes and experiences is growing every day, and we’re also working on integrating real-time weather data to make adventures even more dynamic and safe. The goal is to offer a smooth, location-aware experience that requires minimal planning on the

3. How do you integrate gamification and interactive features to boost user engagement?

Gamification plays a key role in how users experience Globe Chaser. Players can earn points while exploring, compete in team-based battles, and even purchase in-game coins to unlock extra features and enhance their adventures. Whether it’s families, groups of friends, or corporate teams, the competitive element keeps people engaged and coming back. We're also working on a badge and level-up system that’s already part of our product roadmap. The goal is to make every adventure feel rewarding, dynamic, and a little addictive — in the best way possible.

4. What privacy and data security measures are crucial for AI-powered outdoor exploration platforms?

Data privacy is a top priority. With Globe Chaser, we use strict internal access policies, and anonymized analytics. Location data is only used when necessary and never kept longer than needed. We also give users full control over their personal data, including the option to request to delete it completely. Outdoor exploration should feel safe, both physically and digitally.

AI can actually be a powerful tool for bringing people together. It helps us recommend local group adventures and routes, highlight community-created content, and connect users with similar interests and activity levels. With Globe Chaser, users can create their own scavenger hunts, upload photos, and compete in teams, both locally and online (players can also simulate real world adventures without leaving their home). It’s not just about solo exploration. It’s about being part of something bigger.

We’ve also started working with tourism companies, hotels, and even city councils to use Globe Chaser as a tool to make their regions more attractive. Whether it’s guided city tours, themed adventure trails, or interactive explorations for visitors, we’re helping local communities offer new, tech-powered experiences that bring people together in the real world.

5. In what ways can AR (Augmented Reality) or VR (Virtual Reality) enhance outdoor adventure apps in the future?

AR has a lot of exciting potential. Imagine pointing your phone at a landmark and instantly seeing facts, hidden clues, or educational content layered onto the real world. It makes the experience more immersive and fun. VR, on the other hand, could help users preview adventures or explore places they might not be able to visit in person. Used the right way, these technologies can make the outdoors even more engaging without taking away the real-life magic. Plans to integrate augmented reality and even VR are already underway, opening the door to even more immersive and interactive outdoor experiences.

1. How can businesses leverage applied security data to enhance threat detection and incident response? 

The book is a great reference guide for measuring maturity and leveraging what you have effectively.  It provides several easily adoptable methodologies to help holistically manage and utilize your security data.  From discovery, to ingestion, to analysis and reporting, these methodologies provide sustainable frameworks upon which to improve and build.  Learning how to measure your detection hypotheses and the required data to signal effectively will lead threat detection teams down a much shorter path. Real world examples of streamlining ingestion, processing and analysis will quickly enable your teams. 

2. What best practices should companies follow to ensure secure data collection, storage, and analysis? 

Know your requirements!  Governance is critical, not just to maintaining compliance, but to developing an effective program which can quickly evolve to counter threat actors with new hypotheses.  

By ensuring governance, engineering, and operations teams are all embedded in your security data strategy you enable both rapid response and innovation safely. 

We want all teams to be able to evolve quickly, run with scissors safely, and affect change within your wider organization to achieve desired outcomes. 

3. What are the critical metrics and KPIs for evaluating the effectiveness of a security data strategy? 

Seek to understand your own organization, your risks, exposures, and adversaries. Building processes, procedures, and adopting methodologies to measure this repeatably is paramount.  

 Start with basic health and observability: 

- Feed fidelity & health (up/down time) 

- Feed usage (number of detections per feed) 

- Feed efficacy (number of true positives per feed) 

 What can be done with what you have: 

 - What can I effectively signal on? What can’t I effectively signal on?  Why not?  

- Where do these detection blind spots exist on the risk register? What should be prioritized? 

- The number of secondary investigations initiated by signal. 

- The number of secondary signals for N-level triage (forensic images, DFIR-as-code) 

- Detection & countermeasures blind spots mapped to a common framework (ATT&CK, etc.) 

Finally understand how well you are performing: 

- How effective are the signals? What about signals per feed? Have they ever triggered? How often have you tested or tuned them? 

- Are the tests fully automated? Do they always fire as intended?  

- Do you test for false negative scenarios? 

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but I would start by answering those questions, and ensuring you have supportable frameworks in place to facilitate effective changes. 

4. How can organizations transition from reactive security measures to proactive threat intelligence? 

Organizations need to be able to evolve their countermeasures more quickly than their adversaries, in a safe, effective manner. Hypotheses need to be able to prove, or disprove, a theory so that lessons can be learned and applied more quickly. That starts with ensuring you have some ability to flexibly ingest and process your data. When incidents occur, sustainable mechanisms to detect the needles in the haystacks need to be quickly developed and implemented.  Ensuring easy, governed, detection development and quick iterations are critical to building an adaptable security operations and intelligence program. 

5. How is cloud adoption influencing security data strategies?

Organizations need to have a game plan to effectively navigate and balance the risks and rewards associated with cloud adoption. Most organizations have some form of hybrid environment which requires a more holistic approach towards collecting, managing, and analyzing data. Understanding what the requirements are from a business, governance, and operations standpoint will better enable your overall execution. 

6. How can businesses integrate security data strategies into their overall digital transformation efforts? 

Adopting methodologies for each stage of your security data program will enable your organization to measure and improve your internal processes and their effectiveness.  By implementing these frameworks, solid foundations can be built to capture the full value of your data.

1. In your experience, how do ad formats that mimic social media interactions (e.g., swipeable, tap-to-reveal) perform compared to traditional banner or static ads? 

Our approach emphasizes thoughtful implementation of social-inspired elements across platforms, recognizing that each environment, whether mobile, desktop, or CTV, requires nuanced creative adaptation to maximize consumer connection. By carefully tailoring social interaction patterns to match platform-specific consumer behaviors and expectations, we create experiences that feel native and intuitive regardless of where they appear.

When familiar social features are used in the right context, they have been proven to drive a 5.81% engagement rate and 11X more exposure time than standard banner ads. This effectiveness is further validated by PadSquad's Social Skin creative, which is proven to outperform standard ad formats, driving 39% higher lift in brand favorability and 21% higher lift in purchase intent compared to standard ad formats. 

With a strategic application of familiar social mechanics, we’ve created a comfortable, engaging experience that resonates with audiences and drives measurable performance across diverse media environments. 

2. Which features of social platforms (polls, UGC, reactions, etc.) have you successfully adapted for your digital advertising strategy? 

We’ve successfully adapted a variety of social features into our display, video, and emerging formats—what we refer to as Social Replicas. These are ad experiences designed to emulate the familiar UI/UX of popular social platforms, creating a seamless and intuitive environment for the viewer. From social stories to feed-inspired layouts, these formats mirror the native content experience consumers are accustomed to, driving stronger engagement.

We’ve layered interactivity such as likes, shares, reactions, and swipe-ups, to invite consumers to engage with the ad the way they would on social platforms. We also incorporate both UGC-inspired and authentic UGC elements to build a sense of relatability and authenticity throughout our campaigns. Social-inspired overlays, familiar navigation cues, and contextual visual treatments reinforce the look and feel of the platforms where consumers spend the most time.

As we design these experiences, we’re mindful of how they translate across screens. What works well on mobile might need to be adapted for larger formats, including CTV, where viewing behaviors and interaction patterns differ. Social Replicas are designed with the environment, audience, and campaign goals in mind. This ensures each execution feels native and effective, no matter the screen.

3. How does your team ensure brand authenticity when designing ads to resemble user-generated or influencer-style content? 

Because we're not simply using the same exact asset in a new box, we're crafting unique ad experiences for each campaign to match its objective. Our belief is that the assets used in social are an incredible resource for brands, but our view is that you can't simply place it in another box outside of the social platforms.

4. What metrics do you use to evaluate the success of socially inspired ad formats (e.g., engagement rate, watch time, CTR)? 

Each campaign has unique objectives and outcomes, but many times we are designing the experience to hit on that key objective: video views, reach, engagement, site traffic, or even lifts in brand health metrics. The value of using the assets in new and different ways is what makes custom creative so valuable.

• Engagement metrics: interaction rate, completion rate

• Attention indicators: scroll depth, scroll speed, video completion

• Creative-specific actions: reactions, shares

• Traditional performance metrics: CTR, conversion rate, ROAS

• Brand impact: brand recall, brand preference, purchase intent

5. Is there any industry-specific compliance that limit your use of more informal, social-inspired ad styles? 

This is an area where it's not a compliance issue but one of technology limitations and lagging consumer behaviors/adoption: Interactive CTV. Unfortunately, the industry is asking for something that consumers don't innately grab the remote to do, more than that, the tech stacks for TV aren't in a place where there is uniformity in the ad serving standards, with new walled gardens in this ecosystem making the challenge even more prominent.

6. How frequently do you A/B test traditional versus social-style ad creatives?

Repetitive content risks ad fatigue and disengaged audiences. That’s why we experiment with a variety of creative formats and features, refreshing assets and messaging throughout the campaign to drive performance. Our testing goes beyond simply comparing traditional versus social-style ads. We continuously evaluate how different formats and features perform throughout the campaign. 

We also strategically adapt messaging to speak to different audiences and campaign phases. For example, the same ad format can be customized to highlight back-to-school essentials for younger students while showcasing back-to-college gear for older audiences. Similarly, an entertainment brand might evolve its messaging from “Coming Soon” to “Watch the New Trailer” to “See It This Weekend,” using unique creative assets and tailored CTAs at each stage.

This agile, audience-first approach not only helps prevent ad fatigue but ensures sustained engagement over time. By emulating the feel of social media interactions, we create a more seamless and familiar ad experience—one that drives deeper, more meaningful audience engagement.

1. What are the potential benefits of adopting a managed services model for marketing services compared to traditional in-house teams or agency engagements? 

As a MarTech expert, I've seen firsthand how managed services can transform marketing operations by providing unprecedented flexibility in navigating complex technology landscapes. Our model allows companies to quickly shift experts across platforms like MAP, ABX platform, data providers, and ad platforms without the costly overhead of continuous retraining or new hires. We help organizations optimize workflows, reduce technical debt, and leverage best practices developed across multiple B2B clients, ultimately enabling them to do more with less. By offering an external perspective and deep expertise, managed services can unlock efficiencies that traditional in-house teams often miss.

2. How does the integration of AI tools streamline the go-to-market processes, leading to increased efficiency and cost savings?  

AI tools are revolutionizing go-to-market processes by dramatically improving efficiency across multiple key areas, including engagement, sales enablement, operations, content creation, marketing planning, and performance reporting. We're seeing significant time savings in content development through AI-powered co-creation and editing tools, which allow marketers to generate and refine content much faster than traditional methods. Performance metrics are also being enhanced, with AI enabling more sophisticated tracking of campaign effectiveness, engagement rates, and potential cost reductions across marketing and sales initiatives. By automating manual tasks and providing advanced insights, AI is helping marketing teams focus on strategic activities while reducing overall operational costs and improving workflow productivity.

3. What metrics should we use to evaluate the effectiveness of AI-powered marketing initiatives? 

When evaluating AI-powered marketing initiatives, we focus primarily on efficiency metrics like the speed and quality of content creation and editing. Conversion and engagement metrics remain critical, tracking performance from initial interaction through pipeline and revenue generation. We're exploring emerging KPIs that assess AI's ability to engage with new accounts or target personas previously difficult to reach. Tracking cost savings and performance improvements across specific use cases helps organizations understand the tangible value of their AI investments.

4. How does the integration of AI in marketing workflows impact the roles and responsibilities of our marketing teams? 

AI is reshaping marketing roles by automating manual tasks while introducing new responsibilities for content verification and strategic oversight. While AI streamlines processes like market research and content ideation, marketing professionals now need to invest more time in editing and quality assurance. Marketers must adopt an AI-forward mentality, focusing on leveraging tools to automate workflows and create strategic value. As AI evolves, marketing roles will increasingly require skills in AI tool management and the ability to critically evaluate AI-generated content.

5. How can we ensure data security and privacy when utilizing AI platforms in our marketing operations? 

Ensuring data security and privacy when utilizing AI in marketing operations requires strict adherence to company information security policies and a cautious approach to handling sensitive data. Marketers should integrate AI in ways that enhance workflows while operating in controlled environments, avoiding the input of confidential information into public or unsecured platforms. Staying informed on evolving data privacy regulations, investing in team AI literacy, and maintaining human oversight alongside AI capabilities will help organizations maximize AI’s potential while safeguarding their data.

6. How can integrating AI-powered platforms enhance our marketing and sales workflows? 

By providing specific use cases that improve existing processes, such as ad testing, email copywriting, and strategic market planning. By ramping up the capabilities of in-house teams and sellers, organizations can leverage AI tools for research, automation of sales cadences, and intelligent trigger-based enablement strategies. The key is to focus on targeted AI applications that solve specific pain points and incrementally improve efficiency, rather than attempting a wholesale transformation of all workflows at once.

1. What strategies can businesses use to attract high-performing affiliates and maximize conversions? 

Top affiliates reach that level because they’re strategic with their time and choose programs that genuinely invest in them. So, if a business wants to attract those high-performers, it needs to make joining and promoting the program as easy and rewarding as possible. 

That starts with a straightforward commission structure affiliates should instantly understand the value. Providing ready-to-use materials like templates and copy removes friction and helps them start promoting right away. 

But more than that, it’s about building a real relationship. Affiliates want to know there’s someone on the other end who actually cares about their success. The best performers also expect a bit of a VIP experience, so making them feel valued from the beginning and continuing to show up for them is what keeps them engaged and delivering results. 

2. How do higher commission structures impact affiliate engagement and long-term loyalty? 

High commissions are great for grabbing attention, but they’re not enough to keep affiliates around. If it’s just about the payout, it’s easy for them to bounce from one program to the next. 

What really drives long-term loyalty is the relationship making affiliates feel genuinely valued, heard, and supported. If a business wants to build a program that stands the test of time, it has to go beyond commissions. That means offering ongoing incentives and creating an experience that keeps affiliates engaged and excited to stick around. In our updated GetResponse Affiliate Program, we are committed to providing ongoing support to our affiliates. This includes monthly update newsletters, quarterly one-on-one sessions with our team, and exclusive access to the GetResponse Affiliate Slack channel available at the Gold subscription level. 

3. What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring affiliate marketing success? 

At the end of the day, revenue is the ultimate KPI. Metrics like traffic, clicks, and free trials matter they help gauge the quality of the traffic an affiliate is driving. But on their own, they don’t move the needle. They’re leading indicators, not end goals. If those actions aren’t converting into real revenue, they don’t hold much weight in the long run. 

4. How can businesses align their affiliate program with broader digital marketing strategies? 

Your affiliate program should function like an extension of your sales team. That means keeping brand messaging consistent and making sure affiliates are in sync with your broader marketing efforts. Share product updates, upcoming launches, and campaign roadmaps when you can and stay connected through regular newsletters or check-ins. 

Cross-channel alignment is key. If your SEO team knows what keywords are driving traffic, pass that insight to affiliates so they can fine-tune their content. And make sure affiliates play nicely with other channels, like influencers or paid media, so they’re adding value not stepping on toes. 

5. How can brands ensure transparency and trust in their affiliate partnerships? 

Transparency and trust start on day one. Your website should lay it all out - how affiliates earn, the exact commission structure, how and when payments happen, and what kind of support they can expect. Real success stories help too, giving potential partners a glimpse of what’s possible. 

Setting clear expectations from the start builds trust. From there, it’s about consistency - keeping affiliates in the loop with resources, monthly updates, and being available when they need help. When affiliates feel informed and supported, they’re far more likely to stick around and succeed. 

6. What challenges do companies face when scaling an affiliate marketing program, and how can they overcome them? 

The biggest challenge in scaling an affiliate program is doing it without sacrificing efficiency. What works fine with 20 affiliates can quickly break down with 200. That’s why it’s crucial to build with scale in mind from the start.

Automation is key especially when it comes to onboarding and giving affiliates easy, self-serve access to the resources they need. A solid affiliate management platform, like PartnerStack, can make a big difference by streamlining workflows and keeping operations smooth as the program grows.

1. How do AI agents enhance process automation, and what key inefficiencies do they help eliminate? 

AI agents enhance process automation by handling high-volume, repetitive tasks with speed, precision, and consistency. They streamline workflows by validating contracts, generating content, making rule-based decisions, and executing complex calculations. By eliminating bottlenecks such as manual data processing, human errors, and delays in decision-making, AI agents not only increase operational efficiency but also improve compliance, reduce costs, and enhance scalability. Additionally, they enable real-time data analysis, ensuring faster insights and better decision-making, while freeing up teams to focus on innovation and high-value strategic initiatives.

2. What role does natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning play in AI-driven automation? 

In the Pipefy context, the connection between natural language and AI enables us to scale our solutions. NLP acts as a bridge between humans and AI, allowing agents to process, interpret, and generate human language naturally. With Pipefy’s AI Agents, NLP ensures fluid interactions by adapting to users' language and behavior to deliver increasingly accurate and relevant responses.

Generative AI allows us to easily create agents that can operate within processes, continuously improve their performance, and optimize process automation in a smart and efficient way.

3. What industries or business functions can benefit the most from AI-driven workflow automation? 

Companies from all sectors can benefit from using AI Agents in their workflows, as they bring increased autonomy, efficiency, and precision to processes. Pipefy brings together the powerful combination of a no-code platform—enabling autonomy for business teams—with deep knowledge of the service management market, delivering solutions and use cases across industries like insurance, financial services, and HR, along with artificial intelligence that powers cognitive reasoning within workflows.

In insurance, for example, AI can streamline claims processing and risk assessment. In financial services, it helps automate compliance checks, fraud detection, and data analysis, driving significant improvements in operational efficiency and cost reduction.

4. How does AI-powered automation help businesses scale operations with the existing infrastructure? 

AI Agents are capable of profound transformations in operations and changing the working style between humans and agents, evolving the traditional automations. They allow processes to become more agile, intelligent and strategic, bringing a new era of operational efficiency and also allowing team members to focus on higher-value activities. They unlock technology within the company due to their easy setup and adoption, offering an intuitive interface and recommended agents for each type of process, without the need for any technical team for this implementation. AI-powered automation helps organizations accelerate digital transformation - empowering business areas without requiring IT support.

5. What are the biggest risks companies should be aware of when implementing AI in process automation? 

One of the biggest risks is failing to adopt AI, as companies that do not integrate AI into their operations may fall behind in AI transformation. However, even for those implementing AI, challenges remain. Businesses should be aware of potential risks such as data privacy and security concerns, probabilistic decision-making, and over-reliance on automation without human oversight. Ensuring proper governance and clear AI ethics policies can help mitigate these risks and maximize the benefits of AI-powered automation.

Additionally, it’s important to understand the use cases where AI is recommended to operate autonomously, under supervision, or not recommended at all. Because AI operates probabilistically, caution is needed to ensure appropriate oversight and avoid unintended consequences.

6. How do you see the role of AI evolving in process automation, and what’s next for the industry? 

Today, AI is no longer just hype, it’s becoming practical and accessible for companies.

Here at Pipefy, we are focused on this evolution, building an intuitive solution that democratizes AI adoption, empowering both technical and non-technical teams to automate processes with ease.

Looking ahead, we aim to further enhance agent decision-making, outcome prediction, and enable hyper-personalized workflows that drive efficiency and innovation across industries.

Because of Agentic AI, business process automation (BPA) is no longer just about automation, but delivering agents that understand the process and act independently.With Pipefy, our agents and assistants actively participate in processes in a simple and intuitive way, enhancing human-agent interactions.

1. What are the biggest emerging SEO trends that businesses should be preparing for in 2025 and beyond?

I think the biggest trend in search is the possibility that Google may not continue to drive traffic as they have historically over the past two decades. The movement of the search experience over the past few years will continually be influenced by artificial intelligence and machine learning. The ideal way to deal with this is to focus on EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) and Brand marketing. Reaching your audience continues to increase in complexity, whether it be through visual search, voice search, video, interactive content, or whatever is around the corner, figuring out where they are and what they engage with will be valuable to continued success in digital marketing.

2. How can businesses ensure that their SEO strategies align with evolving search engine algorithms?

Focus on your current audience or the audience you are trying to reach. User intent drives what is seen in search results, so understanding what people expect to see in the result for particular queries is what you need to provide to effectively rank and convert them when they reach your content. Contextual relationships with topics and brand relevance for these topics will be the key to continuing to rank, whether it be AI driven or keyword searches in traditional search engines or generative engines. To do this effectively, brands will need to leverage structured data that ties their content to their entity, helping the algorithms and AI to understand why your content is valuable for the person searching.

3. What are the biggest challenges brands face in local vs. global SEO strategies?

Localization will continue to limit traditional global SEO strategies because if it is relevant to a local company, search engines will likely provide them within search results more favorably because they are more relevant or apparent to a person in a particular location. This will make it harder for global brands to rank competitively across markets unless they have a known footprint, relevancy or awareness for a localized result. Local businesses that are leveraging location-based content and signals (e.g., Google Business Profiles, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Maps) have an advantage over these larger organizations’ higher authority signals that have historically helped them rank highly across the majority of search.

4. How should brands balance organic SEO efforts with paid search strategies for maximum ROI?

Understanding that SEO is not simply an acquisition channel, it provides awareness and can help brands gain traction that then can be converted through paid search can help you improve your return on ad spend. Additionally, leveraging high performing keywords in paid search to inform content strategies for organic search can help you increase your return by widening your funnel; what are the non-brand topics that are driving a lower cost per acquisition in paid that can be targeted in organic to reach them higher up in the funnel and turn to lower cost brand searches in paid. To find a balance, it is necessary to evaluate the blended ROI of all your marketing channels to find the right balance, no single channel is an island and there is value in being in all of the ones that your audience engages with.

5. What are the best practices for businesses to future-proof their SEO strategies against constant algorithm updates?

If you are producing content that is relevant, highlights your topical expertise and experience you will gain trust in your brand. Maintaining the experience on your site (navigation, UX/UI and performance) and making it easier to complete the desired task or find an answer will reinforce the purpose of your site to users and engines. If your brand earns this engagement and you can maintain it, your brand demand will increase, and you will prove to search engines that you should be included in results relevant to your brand. The easiest way to future-proof your strategy is to focus on what the engines are trying to do, deliver the most relevant results for a request based on the intent of the person making the request.

6. What impact will zero-click searches and AI-generated answers have on SEO strategies?

The short answer is less traffic, especially for informational queries. People will continue to search for these, and it will still be important for brands to have content that is relevant to these topics, because it shows
what brands and sites have expertise and authority for them. If you simply want to increase traffic, identifying other areas of the SERP like “no answer” queries, local search, people also asked, image results, product results, etc. that are present for keywords that have high demand will help your brand continue to stand out even if the result isn’t driving traffic to your website.

Key Takeaways – search engines will continue to award traffic to websites that focus on the user, leverage multi-format content that provide value. My recommendation is to ensure that SEO is part of your holistic marketing strategy, build owned assets and increase your engagement with the community where your brand operates. You can invest in tools, such as AI, to do this more efficiently, but effective content, analysis and engagement comes from human oversight and understanding.