Highlights
- Demand is increasingly created in spaces you cannot track but cannot ignore
- Brand distinctiveness drives recall in AI search, communities, and dark social
- Attribution is losing relevance, downstream pipeline signals matter more
- Useful, shareable content fuels unseen conversations and peer recommendations
- Signal-based GTM helps capture buyers when they emerge from the dark funnel
- Customer experience and product value are now core demand drivers
Introduction
A growing portion of the B2B buyer journey now happens in places marketers cannot see or measure. From AI search and Slack communities to private conversations and peer recommendations, traditional attribution models are losing their grip on reality.
This shift is forcing a fundamental rethink. Demand generation is no longer about tracking every click or optimizing every touchpoint. It is about building presence, influence, and memorability in spaces where measurement is limited or nonexistent.
The question now is how to create it when you cannot see it forming.
Here’s Our Expert Panel
- Matt Padanyi
- Anat Oron
- Isaac Ware
- Jean Cameron
- Gary Lyng
- Leon Basin
- Fara Rosenzweig
- Kali Roling
#1 Matt Padanyi
You create demand in unmeasurable spaces the same way you held a viewer through a commercial break: by building a brand identity (or a broadcaster’s identity to bring it back to that) so distinct that people carry it into conversations you’ll never see. You need to be legitimately unique to capture attention and imagination while striking a chord with the audience’s own identity, experiences, and motivations. Design for reception without response, and make sure you’re ready to capitalize on response whenever you do get it through any other channel.
Author Bio
Matt Padanyi is a former broadcaster turned content marketer, currently at TradeStation where he’s spent nearly four years making advanced trading platforms accessible to everyday investors. His background in journalism gives him an edge most marketers don’t have: he knows how to take complicated subjects and make them worth reading. Follow Matt on LinkedIn
#2 Anat Oron
Demand in unmeasured spaces is built through consistent, specific, genuinely useful contributions – content that answers real questions and that people pass along because it’s actually useful, and a presence in communities where buyers actually talk. You can’t track it directly, but you’ll see it in branded search lift, educated inbound leads, and shortened sales cycles. The measure isn’t impressions, it’s whether buyers arrive already knowing who you are.
Author Bio
Anat Oron has spent her career helping B2B companies build stronger customer relationships across marketing, content, lifecycle programs, and community. She’s Customer Marketing Director at Radware and co-founded Practi, a newly launched AI learning community for B2B professionals already 200 members strong. Follow Anat on LinkedIn.
#3 Isaac Ware
We have stopped trying to illuminate the dark funnel and focused on getting better at knowing when someone walks out of it. The best demand gen I’ve seen doesn’t obsess over attributing every touchpoint, it builds a presence in those unmeasurable spaces, then uses buyer signal intelligence to catch the moment a prospect surfaces with signals or contact-level intent.
Author Bio
Isaac Ware is Senior Director of Demand Generation at UserGems, where he runs a lean team focused on signal-based GTM and one-to-one ABM at scale. He’s known for building demand programs that directly move pipeline and accelerate sales. Connect with Isaac on LinkedIn.
#4 Jean Cameron
You don’t measure those spaces directly—you engineer for influence inside them and measure the downstream signals they create. If research is happening in AI search, Slack groups, private chats, and communities, your job isn’t to “track the click”—it’s to be the answer when your category comes up.
Author Bio
Jean Cameron is a Sr. Director of Demand Generation at LucidLink with 20+ years of experience driving revenue through marketing for B2B SaaS companies. A Stevie Award winner and recognized top 30 B2B marketer, she leads demand gen programs that connect marketing directly to pipeline. Connect with Jean on LinkedIn.
#5 Gary Lyng
IMHO majority of B2B companies rely on the basics but necessary fundamentals ie website, content and promotion thereof through SEO, standard social media additionally volume and long reads or long watches people don’t have time for. A few tactics.
- build evangelist swat team to be the voice, discover communities and be active on to inform, influence and inspire and harness power of every relevant and possible credilble voice of employees
- bite size easy consumption ie video and rapid facts of impact.
- build your community of influencers beyond analyst ie SMEs and podcasters
- engage with new video. Ai generated and create stories channels on YouTube, tiktok and more.
Author Bio
Gary Lyng is a GTM architect and product marketing leader who has spent his career building category-defining narratives for data and AI infrastructure companies. As VP of Product Marketing at Hitachi Vantara, he led the shift from product-feature selling to a solutions-led approach across financial services, healthcare, and government. Follow Gary on LinkedIn.
#6 Leon Basin
The channels you can’t measure are usually the ones that matter most. I focus on building content and frameworks so specific and useful that they get cited in rooms I’ll never enter; AI summaries, Slack threads, analyst decks. Attribution won’t confirm it worked. Pipeline eventually will.
Author Bio
Leon Basin is a senior GTM and business development leader who specializes in US market entry and channel growth for technical B2B companies. His work sits at the intersection of pipeline architecture and revenue systems, helping teams close bigger deals and scale faster without adding unnecessary complexity. Follow Leon on LinkedIn.
#7 Fara Rosenzweig
Dark social isn’t a measurement problem. It’s a conversation problem. You create demand by becoming referable: sharp POVs, memorable ideas, and content people actually bring into Slack threads, group chats, and AI prompts. AI search is catching up on measurement, but you won’t see most of it immediately. Build the systems anyway, because that momentum always shows up downstream.
Author Bio
Fara Rosenzweig is a VP of Marketing with 20+ years of experience across startups and enterprise companies, and an Emmy Award on her shelf to prove the creative work landed. She knows how to grow revenue and keep sales and marketing actually aligned. Connect with Fara on LinkedIn.
#8 Kali Roling
We want demand to come from AI search, dark social, and peer communities, but we don’t treat them as channels to run campaigns against.
Instead, we focus on strong customer outcomes: strong adoption, real value, and a product people genuinely love and want to talk about. That’s what drives peer recommendations and organic advocacy (which also feeds AI search, since it often pulls from those same conversations).
Author Bio
Kali Roling leads expansion marketing at Gong, focused on driving upsell and cross-sell pipeline from existing customers. She builds the programs and lifecycle systems that turn a strong customer base into a scalable revenue engine. Connect with Kali on LinkedIn.
Conclusion
The future of demand generation is not about better tracking. It is about better positioning.
Marketers who win in this new environment stop chasing perfect attribution and start engineering influence. They invest in distinct brand narratives, genuinely useful content, strong customer outcomes, and signal intelligence to capture intent when it surfaces.
You may never fully illuminate the dark funnel. But you can design for it. And when you do, the impact shows up where it matters most, in stronger pipelines, faster sales cycles, and buyers who arrive already convinced.
UnboundB2B
6 May 2026
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