Agency News Weekly

Heading to PressConf This Week?

It’s finally PressConf week! I’ve been looking forward to this event for months. If you’re going to be there too, make sure to look me up! I’d love to connect.

Agencies vs. AI – When Do We Start to Worry?

Since ChatGPT made a splash a few years ago, there has been no lack of chatter among agency owners about how AI tools are enhancing our capabilities – and possibly threatening our livelihoods in the process. For a while now, my foundational thoughts about AI have rested on some wisdom from a Sujay Pawar tweet:

Computers did not replace accountants. But, the accountants who used computers replaced those who did not.

Similarly, AI alone will not replace anyone. Instead, the person who uses AI will replace those who do not.#AI #ChatGPT #WordPress
— Sujay Pawar (@SujayPawar) March 12, 2023

Enter the WordPress AI Website Builders

Recently, WordPress.com announced its AI Website Builder tool that can create a WordPress site with a text prompt. At first glance, this is not earth-shattering news: other tools like ZipWP and Kadence’s AI website builder have been doing this for a while.

But as Jamie Marsland pointed out last week, what’s most important about this new tool is “the convergence of hosting and application… What used to be a stack of decisions and tools is now becoming a single unified experience. AI is the glue. Design, content, structure, deployment—all handled in a fluid, interactive way.”

I’ve been saying for a while now that the days of agencies making a living on simple brochure websites is over. AI tools are already doing a decent job at harvesting this low-hanging fruit.

So what is the value of a WordPress agency today?

A Focus on Integration?

Your immediate thought might be the value agency professionals can bring to creating more complicated sites that assemble plugins and hosting together to create a complete solution for a client.

But even the integration space is threatened.

StellarWP recently announced Stellar Sites, a solution built on Kadence’s AI website builder that also combines other StellarWP products like The Events Calendar, LearnDash, and GiveWP (among others). This new smartly designed solution asks you questions about the site you want to create, and then spins it up for you on Nexcess hosting (content, images, plugins and all).

Is it flawless? Of course not. But we have to remember that today’s AI tools are as dumb as they will ever be.

Is it time to panic?

I don’t think so. But if you run an agency, it’s definitely (past) time for an existential conversation about who you are and what you’re going to become. Even if your business is growing today by offering “the same old services,” the disruptive force that is AI is going to change that in the coming months and years.

It’s not time for panic, but it is time for clarity. We need to be crystal clear on who we are, what differentiates us, and (most importantly) how we can continue to serve our clients in ways that AI tools cannot.

How WP 6.8’s Speculative Loading + Cloudflare Can Give Your Sites Some Serious Speed

One of the most important additions to WordPress 6.8 is Speculative Loading, a performance enhancement that preloads likely next-page links before users click them.
This feature aims to reduce perceived page load time by prefetching navigational links the user might visit next.
It’s based on the Speculation Rules API, which is currently supported in Chromium-based browsers like Chrome and Edge (which make up roughly 3/4 of users).
Speculation Rules is on by default in WordPress 6.8, but it can be toggled off with a code snippet:
add_filter( 'wp_speculative_loading_enabled', '__return_false' );
Speculative Loading is helpful as-is, but Press Wizards suggests a stack that can take it to the next level.
Cloudflare’s Speed Brain enhances WP’s Speculation Rules by automatically injecting its own AI-powered speculation rules that are learned from site-specific browsing behavior.
Even on Cloudflare’s free plan, Speed Brain determines which links to preload or prerender,
Combine this with a WordPress plugin for HTML caching (they recommend Optimole’s Super Page Cache), and the performance benefits are exponential.
Pages can load almost instantly because they’re not only preloaded but also served directly from Cloudflare’s edge, bypassing the origin server.
If you’re on the never-ending quest for page speed, check out Press Wizard’s article and do a little tinkering with your own stack.

Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly Ruled Illegal

A U.S. District Court judge ruled last week that Google illegally monopolized the ad tech market, harming publishers and advertisers alike.
The court found Google intentionally acquired and manipulated key tools (like AdX and DoubleClick) to neutralize competition and dominate digital ad transactions.
Evidence showed that Google created barriers that forced advertisers and publishers to use its products or suffer reduced performance and higher costs.
The ruling opens the door to remedies that could include a breakup of Google’s advertising services.
As a result, agencies could gain access to more ad platforms with more advantageous pricing and less bias toward Google products.
Google’s defense claimed their ad tools benefit users through integration and efficiency, but the judge dismissed these claims as self-serving and anti-competitive.
The decision follows other antitrust pressures, including a new lawsuit in the UK targeting Google’s dominance in search advertising.
Meanwhile, Meta also faces renewed scrutiny over alleged monopolistic behavior.
Analysts suggest this is the most aggressive legal stance the U.S. has taken on tech monopolies since Microsoft in the 1990s.
While immediate effects are limited, the long-term impact could lead to diversification of advertising options and a reduced dependence on Google’s ecosystem.