In this issue:
⇒ Content volume went up for 85% of content teams. Why nearly half saw no change in results?
⇒ The new problems AI created that didn't exist before
⇒ The Content Producer vs Content Thinker split. Which one is your team?
Z&C Newsroom
📌 Our first original research report is out!
This report combines quantitative survey data with insights from interviews with 53 B2B content professionals. They answered questions about how their content volume changed over the last 12 months, where and how they use AI in the production process, and whether any of it moved the needle in terms of results.
85% of B2B content teams increased their publishing volume in the last 12 months.
That's not surprising. AI removed the production bottleneck overnight. A team of two can now publish what a full editorial department used to.
This is the state of content in 2026. And as a team obsessed with content quality, we wondered: is it really worth it?
To build this report, we shaped a hypothesis. Then we went to B2B professionals, including CMOs, Heads of Content, and Content Leads. We surveyed people running content operations at tech companies, from software and SaaS businesses to IT consulting firms.
Our hypothesis:
"Most companies didn't reinvent their content after AI. They just started producing the same thing faster."
This hypothesis was confirmed.
✅ 65% of companies use AI to produce more of the same.
❌ But 35% don't. They prove there's a way to use AI for writing better content, not just faster content.
Among teams that increased content volume significantly, nearly half saw no noticeable change in results.
When we asked what changed in terms of quality, 77% named "generic content" as their biggest new challenge. 37% said their content now sounds like their competitors’.
Read that again.
Teams are working harder, publishing faster, and investing more in content production. Yet, what they produce is indistinguishable from everyone else.
AI solved the wrong bottleneck.
Before AI, the constraint teams complained about was capacity:
not enough writers
not enough time
not enough budget
AI removed that problem. So teams are using the extra capacity to do more of what they were already doing.
When you think about it, capacity isn't a bottleneck, after all. It never was.
The bottleneck was always the answer to this question:
Do we have anything worth saying?
AI didn't help answer that question.
AI just made it no longer possible for content teams to hide the real problem behind the operational one. If your content doesn't work, it's not because you don't publish enough.
Now you can produce ten content pieces per week, but all of that content has the same problem — it doesn't say anything. That's why it doesn't work.
Good news:
About 35% of the teams we surveyed are playing a different game, with the same AI tools.
Instead of asking themselves, "How do we publish more?" they ask, "What's actually worth saying?"
We started calling them Content Thinkers. The opposite crowd is Content Producers.
Here's the difference between them:
Which camp is your team in?
This self-audit takes two minutes.
The Content Thinker Self-Audit Five questions. Be honest. No one's watching. |
|---|
1. Before you write a piece, do you check whether the angle is differentiated? |
Always → Thinker signal
Sometimes → Borderline
Rarely / what does "differentiated" even mean here? → Producer signal
2. How does your team primarily use AI? |
Research, idea pressure-testing, angle generation → Thinker signal
First drafts, outlines, publishing faster → Producer signal
3. Look at your last 10 published pieces. Could any of them have been written by a competitor? |
Most of them, honestly → Producer signal
Maybe 2–3 → Borderline
No, they're clearly ours → Thinker signal
4. What's your team's primary content success metric right now? |
Publication count, traffic, keyword rankings → Producer signal
Pipeline attribution, direct replies, shares from target accounts → Thinker signal
5. Do you have a documented POV (something your content argues for or against)? |
Yes, we reference it in every brief → Thinker signal
Sort of. It lives in someone's head → Borderline
Not really, we follow what's performing → Producer signal
So, is your team Content Thinker or Content Producer?
Picks from our team
📄 The full report if you want to read the research, not just the highlights.
✍️ How we wrote this report, and how you can too
🔎 Brand Authority Content Audit Template, a free template to help you create content that shapes perception, earns citations, and builds authority.