The Dead Internet Theory (DIT) is the idea that bots have taken over the internet. But we can all admit AI is getting better at imitating a voice and sounding like a human. Where it struggles is having something to say that nobody else is saying. That only comes from a person who knows something.

Recently, I had a little run-in with compliance, and it got me thinking. Readers come with a question and they don’t want to decode anything, or they’ll leave. But the plain version still has to be accurate, or you’ve traded one problem for a worse one.

So you spent a bazillion dollars creating a proprietary research report. Great. There’s just one big problem. The most popular way of things being searched can’t see it. That creates a gap between the research you own and the research the market can actually find.

Financial firms are publishing more research than ever, and that’s a smart move. But (and you can probably guess where I’m going with this), your research and thought leadership may not be getting the traction you hoped for.

Somewhere along the way, length became a stand-in for rigor. If an article is long, that means it must be thorough. But if no one finishes it, does it matter?

Most financial services content passes every compliance review and still fails the reader. It’s accurate, it’s broadly applicable, and almost nobody reads it, because compliant and useful are not the same thing.