Read This Week’s Digital Marketing News Updates

To make sure your website is as agent-friendly as possible, read the entire blog here.

4. Some WordPress Sites Are Unintentionally Blocking AI Bots

If your SEO data looks good but you still aren’t seeing much movement with AI bots, it could be because your site is unintentionally blocking the crawlers.

In a new study, one researcher found that, while Google AI Mode and Copilot were monitoring and crawling their site, big names like Claude and Meta AI were not. Why? Because they were blocking them.

If you’re blocking things like Googlebot, GPTbot, and more, you’re essentially removing your ability to end up in AI search results. For the best chance, make sure your page is available to these bots.

If you aren’t sure whether your site is blocked, run a WP Engine diagnostic. It only takes a few minutes and it could reveal the cause of issues you’ve been dealing with for months.

Click here for full instructions on performing the diagnostic test and reading its data.

5. Ask.com Officially Shuts Down After Nearly 30 Years

Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, officially shut down its search business on May 1, 2026, nearly 29 years after launching in 1996 before Google existed.

Ask Jeeves was one of the internet’s earliest “answer engines,” built around conversational questions long before AI search became mainstream.

Its shutdown highlights how difficult the search market has become as Google and AI-powered search experiences continue dominating the space.

6. Early ChatGPT Ad Data Shows Strong Engagement, but Scale Remains the Big Question

Early SimilarWeb data suggests ads inside ChatGPT conversations are generating higher engagement rates than traditional Display and Podcast ads, especially for high-intent searches like Mother’s Day.

Unlike traditional search ads, these placements appear naturally within conversational responses, making them feel more contextual and less disruptive.

Mother’s Day-related prompts reportedly triggered ads about three times more often than average, with brands like Etsy and Nordstrom already seeing strong visibility.

However, inventory is still limited and testing remains small-scale, making it too early to know whether current CTRs will hold long term.

High engagement also does not guarantee strong performance. Advertisers still need more data around conversions, scalability, and pricing before ChatGPT ads can seriously compete with platforms like Google Ads or Meta.

Key Takeaway: ChatGPT ads are showing promising early engagement, but marketers should treat the platform as a test channel until larger-scale performance data becomes available.

7. Etsy Launches ChatGPT App

Etsy shoppers will now be able to shop their favorite shops from within ChatGPT. Thanks to a native app within the AI bot, Etsy lovers can now access over 100 million listings and products.

In the announcement, Etsy shared that “[t]he Etsy app in ChatGPT is now live in beta, allowing users to search and compare Etsy items directly in conversation.”

Users simply need to tag @Etsy in their prompt, and the Etsy app will provide listings relevant to it.

This differs from ChatGPT Instant Checkout, and Etsy is the first ecommerce website to offer it.

Why We Care: If this beta test is successful, we could see more and more brands wanting to create a special app within ChatGPT, too. It could be a whole new arm of digital marketing and ecommerce.

8. Google Expands AI Bidding & Budgeting Tools to Reduce Manual Campaign Work

Google Ads is rolling out new AI-powered bidding and budgeting features designed to help advertisers capture more demand with less manual work.

The updates include:

• Journey-aware Bidding, which uses more customer journey data for optimization
• Smart Bidding Exploration, expanding beyond Search after reportedly driving a 27% increase in unique converting users
• Demand-led budget pacing, which automatically shifts spend toward higher-demand periods

Google says advertisers using campaign total budgets have already seen a 66% reduction in manual budget adjustments.

The goal is to help campaigns respond more dynamically to changing demand while reducing the need for constant bid and budget management.

Key Takeaway: Google is continuing to push advertisers toward AI-driven campaign management, with automation taking a larger role in bidding, budgeting, and demand discovery.

9. Google’s March Core Update Shifted Traffic and Visibility

Now that the dust is settling from Google’s March Core Update, data is revealing who was the most affected – YouTube, Reddit, and aggregators.

The analysis from Amsive found that:

• YouTube lost the most – 567 visibility points
• Reddit lost 64 points
• Instagram lost 48 points
• X lost 46 points
• Google seems to favor authoritative sources, especially in the travel, jobs, and health sectors

Although some sites, like Reddit and Indeed, saw a big bounce back, not all sites have recovered.

Keep an eye on your own analytics to see if your site has been affected by the big core update.

10. Reddit Wants to Help Grow Your Business

Reddit is quickly becoming a major player in the PPC scene, and this new report will help you capitalize on that growing audience.

After announcing that its ad revenue increased 74% YoY, Reddit released a 13-page guide designed to help brands connect with their preferred audience on the platform. Highlights include:

• The 5 types of people you’ll find on Reddit
• Trending topics and how they’re being discussed in different industries
• Insights on how business owners found their communities
• Case studies on how businesses converted Reddit fans into paying customers
• Ideas on how to create ads that Reddit users will enjoy

This report is a wealth of information for businesses already advertising on Reddit or even considering taking the plunge. You can download the full report for free here.

11. Instagram Starts Labeling AI-Generated Content

Instagram wants you to be able to trust what you see on its platform. That’s why it introduced AI Creator labels this week.

In the announcement, Instagram explained: “This new label builds on our existing ‘AI info’ labels that you can apply when posting AI content and that we automatically add whenever we detect that AI tools were used in the creation process. … In instances when content is labeled as ‘AI info’ and posted by a labeled AI creator, the ‘AI info’ label would appear on the content instead of the ‘AI creator’ label.”

This isn’t a push to stop creators from using AI. In fact, Meta is probably one of AI’s biggest fans. But it is a push to stop the erosion of trust caused by creators posting AI-generated content without telling people it’s AI.

Weekly Homework

1. Explore Etsy’s new in-ChatGPT app to see if it could work for you.
2. Audit your SEO strategy to ensure that you’re doing the most you can for Bing searchers.
3. Talk to your web development team to ensure your site is built for both humans and AI agents.
4. If you have a WordPress site, run a diagnostic test to ensure that you aren’t unintentionally blocking any crawlers.
5. Download the Reddit report to learn how to advertise your business effectively on the open-forum platform.
6. If you are in shopping or travel, explore the ways that Google Ad’s AI Max could improve your search ads.

Digital Marketing News 4/25/2026 to 5/1/2026

This week: Adobe acquires Semrush reshaping search visibility, AI Overviews cut organic clicks by 38%, and AI Overview CTR drops despite rising impressions.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Adobe Completes Semrush Acquisition, Signaling a New Era for Search and AI Visibility

Adobe has officially completed its acquisition of Semrush, marking a major shift in how brands approach search, content, and digital visibility.

The move brings together Semrush’s strength in search intelligence, like keyword data, competitive insights, and visibility tracking, with Adobe’s broader ecosystem of content, customer experience, and analytics tools. The bigger implication: discoverability is no longer a standalone function, it’s becoming fully integrated into the entire marketing lifecycle.

As AI-driven search and conversational interfaces reshape how users find and evaluate brands, the traditional path from search to website is changing. In many cases, users are getting answers, comparisons, and recommendations before ever clicking through, making visibility across AI platforms just as important as rankings in traditional search.

This acquisition reflects a broader industry shift toward what some are calling a multi-layered approach to visibility, combining traditional SEO with emerging strategies like generative engine optimization (GEO) and AI-driven discovery.

Key Takeaway: Search is no longer just about rankings, it’s about visibility across an entire ecosystem. Brands that connect content, data, and AI-driven discovery will be better positioned to win in the next phase of digital marketing.

2. Study Finds Google AI Overviews Reduce Organic Traffic By 38%

New research is shedding light on the real impact of Google’s AI Overviews, and the results could be a concern for marketers and publishers.

A randomized field experiment found that when AI Overviews appear in search results, organic clicks to external websites drop by 38%. At the same time, zero-click searches surged, with users increasingly getting answers directly on the results page instead of visiting other sites.

What’s particularly notable is that removing AI Overviews didn’t significantly change user satisfaction or perceived quality of results. In other words, users felt they were getting the same value, even without clicking through.

This reinforces a growing trend: search is becoming more self-contained, with AI summarizing information and reducing the need for users to leave the platform.

Key Takeaway: As AI-driven search continues to rise, marketers must adapt to a world where visibility, not just clicks, matters, and where being included in AI summaries may become just as important as ranking on page one.

3. Brand-cited AI Overview CTR Fell 61% in Q4

According to a new report from Seer Interactive, brand-cited AI overview CTR fell a whopping 61% from Q3 to Q4.

While clicks may have dropped, impressions more than doubled in the same category over the same time period. The numbers also revealed that:

• Being cited by AIO still delivers +120% for both paid and organic CTR
• There is a 6-7% advantage for a brand to be cited in an AIO for paid CTR
• If a brand is not cited, organic CTRs declined by 67%

The study also revealed that these are the types of queries most likely to return an AIO:

• Comparison (X vs Y): 95.4%
• Review Queries: 86.3%
• Question (Who/What/Where/How): 85.9%
• Price/Cost/Buy: 83.4%

You can learn more about AIOs and search queries by reading the entire report here.

4. Bing Hits 1 Billion Users as Microsoft Strengthens Search Growth

Microsoft has announced that Bing has surpassed 1 billion monthly active users for the first time, marking a major milestone in its ongoing push to grow its search ecosystem.

Alongside this growth, search advertising revenue increased by 12% year over year, continuing a streak of double-digit gains. Microsoft also pointed to steady expansion of its Edge browser, which has gained market share for 20 consecutive quarters, helping drive more users into the Bing ecosystem.

While Bing still holds a relatively small share of the global search market, the growth highlights increasing engagement and the impact of Microsoft’s broader strategy, including AI integration and default search positioning within Edge.

Key Takeaway: Bing’s growth signals expanding opportunities beyond Google. Marketers should consider diversifying their search strategies as alternative platforms continue to gain traction.

5. Google Expands AI Max Across Ads, Balancing Automation with Control

Google is continuing its push into AI-driven advertising by expanding AI Max across more campaign types, while introducing new tools to give advertisers greater control over how automation is applied.

AI Max is now rolling out beyond Search into Shopping and travel campaigns, allowing brands to reach users across more touchpoints, including conversational and exploratory queries that traditional keyword strategies often miss. For retailers, this means more adaptive ads powered by product data, while travel advertisers benefit from a more unified campaign structure.

At the same time, Google is addressing a key concern around automation: control. New features like “AI Brief” allow advertisers to guide messaging and targeting using natural language inputs, while updates to URL selection and compliance tools ensure campaigns remain aligned with brand and regulatory requirements.

Key Takeaway: As Google leans further into AI-driven advertising, success will depend on finding the right balance, leveraging automation for scale while maintaining enough control to protect brand messaging and performance.

6. New First-Party Shopper Data Comes to Google

Google is expanding its partnership with Albertsons Media Collective to enhance first-party shopper data on its apps.

In the agreement, Albertsons, a large food and drug retailer, will integrate its first-party shopper data directly into its Google and YouTube campaigns.

According to Google, “Unifying brand and shopper marketing in Display & Video 360 helps brands like Keurig Dr Pepper seamlessly optimize every dollar, managing commerce media with the same accountability and performance as their broader marketing strategy. By connecting Albertsons Companies’ data with the reach of YouTube and intelligence of Google AI, brands can drive ROI across the entire shopper journey.”

Since Google and YouTube play such a large role in most customer journeys, access to better first-party consumer data could be the key to boosting retailers' bottom lines as they reach new audiences.

7. WooCommerce Stores Can Now Sell Via YouTube Videos

Google and WooCommerce have partnered to enable WooCommerce stores to sell products through YouTube videos.

In the announcement, WooCommerce was quoted as saying, “Google for WooCommerce makes it simple to reach 2.7 billion shoppers on YouTube and automate your creative with AI.
YouTube Shopping is now a direct sales channel for WooCommerce stores. As search and discovery undergo a massive evolution, brands need to show up where their audiences are researching and buying. YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine and the largest platform for researching products via video.”

The partnership allows WooCommerce users to connect their store to their YouTube channel using an extension and tag products in their YouTube videos and Shorts. Once tagged, those products will appear as shoppable cards while viewers are watching the videos and in the Channel Shopping tab.

It adds YouTube to the long list of places WooCommerce users can sell their products, including Display Ads, Gmail, Discover, Search, and Google Maps.

The announcement also shared that users will be able to access AI-powered ad creative across all Google channels, as well as Performance Max for service businesses.

If you are a WooCommerce user, this new partnership is definitely worth checking out.

8. LinkedIn Opens Event Ads to External Platforms

LinkedIn is introducing Off-Platform Event Ads, giving marketers more flexibility to promote events while driving registrations directly to their own websites.

Instead of relying on LinkedIn’s native Event Pages, advertisers can now link Event Ads to external destinations, like webinar platforms, landing pages, or livestream sites, while still leveraging LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities. The result is a more streamlined, controlled user journey from discovery to registration.

This shift reflects a broader move toward giving marketers greater ownership over their data and conversion experience, without sacrificing the reach and precision of LinkedIn’s ad ecosystem.

Action Item: Test Off-Platform Event Ads to improve registration flow and data ownership, especially if you’re currently relying on third-party platforms or want more control over the end-to-end user experience.

9. TikTok Creators Can Now Add Relevant Keywords to Metadata

TikTok now lets creators manually manage the keywords assigned to their videos, giving you more control over how your content gets discovered in search.

This update lets you suggest relevant terms or block those that don’t fit. For digital marketers, this is a low-key big deal: it's essentially SEO for TikTok, and it means you can actively guide the algorithm instead of just hoping it figures out what your content is about. Pair this with TikTok Trends to research what terms your audience is actually searching, and you've got a solid one-two punch for maximizing reach.

Just don't get too keyword-happy. TikTok still holds the final say on what sticks.

10. Instagram Improves Post and Reels Insights and Metrics

It’s been a busy week over at Meta. Instagram also announced some big updates to its content metrics, specifically for posts and Reels.

The update makes it easier for users to find key metrics, including engagement activity and audience demographics. It also added more insights, including share and skip rate percentage, which have become increasingly more important to brands and creators.

Unfortunately, the update does not include other important information, such as data on collab posts, trial reels, cross-posted content, and boosted content.

The update is Meta’s latest effort to keep creators and brands happy on the platform, which has seen a slight decline in the past few months.

11. Meta Launches New Social Platform: Instants

There’s a new app in the Meta neighborhood: Instants.

The app, which was designed as a spin-off of Instagram, gives off Snapchat vibes. Users can share photos with friends that will quickly disappear. Those photos can also be shared directly to Instagram.

Instants isn’t the first time Meta has tried to replicate Snapchat. It follows a long line of other attempts, including Stories, which is now a major part of Instagram, Poke and Slingshot, which were both shut down in 2014, and Quick Updates on Facebook, which also had a very short shelf-life.

Whether Instants becomes a big hit remains to be seen, but it’s still important for marketers to keep an eye on potential new platforms.

12. New Advertising Opportunity: AI Sponsored Snaps

Snapchat launched a new kind of ad this week: AI Sponsored Snaps.

Building on the success of Sponsored Snaps, this new tool lets brands pair their ads with AI chatbots to create a more personalized connection with their audience.

The new chatbots will connect with consumers, driving full-funnel outcomes from the top of the discovery funnel through the end of the process. Snapchatters can use the AI bots to ask questions, get personalized recommendations and feedback, and explore what the brand has to offer.

The opportunity is kicking off with Experian, and if successful, will expand to other brands in the future.

13. “Ask YouTube”: Google’s Newest AI Experiment

Google is testing a new conversational search feature called “Ask YouTube.”

The tool allows searchers to ask YouTube a specific question and receive an AI-generated summary with cited videos and follow-up questions. The source videos are embedded in the responses, with links that open to timestamped sections.

The tool is currently available to US Premium subscribers who are 18 years of age or older and accessing Google on a desktop from now until June 8th.

14. OpenAI Crawl Activity Has Tripled

Since the August 2025 launch of GPT-5, OpenAI crawl activity has doubled.

This means OAI-Search Bot is now generating more traffic than its training crawler, GPTBot. This matters for digital marketers because it means that ChatGPT is increasingly pulling live web content to answer user queries, making your site's crawlability and AI visibility more critical than ever.

And here's the kicker: if you've only blocked GPTBot, thinking you're opting out of OpenAI's reach, you're still fully exposed to OAI-SearchBot, the bot that actually determines whether your content shows up in ChatGPT search answers.

If you’re measuring bot crawls, you need to be separating AI training crawls and AI search crawls to get the most accurate data.

15. Pinterest Forms CTV Partnership

Pinterest is jumping into the connected TV game. This week, Pinterest announced that advertisers can now expand their campaigns to consumers’ home TVs through a CTV partnership with tvScientific.

In the press release, Pinterest explained that, “tvScientific by Pinterest is the first ad platform to offer direct access to Pinterest’s high-intent audiences for CTV campaigns. Advertisers can use Pinterest’s commercial intent signals to reach audiences across premium inventory on the biggest screen in the house, while also leveraging tvScientific’s AI-powered optimization technology.”

With CTV ad spend reaching over $32 billion last year, it’s quickly becoming a major player in the digital marketing space. Making it more accessible to more brands through partnerships like this could open many doors, especially for small- to mid-sized businesses that may have been priced out of this opportunity in the past.

Weekly Homework

1. Explore how to connect your WooCommerce store to your YouTube channel to create shoppable product cards that let consumers shop your site directly from your YouTube videos.
2. Download Seer Interactive’s report on Google’s AIOs to see how you can improve your chances of benefiting from appearing in AIOs.
3. Check out Pinterest’s new partnership with tvScientific to see if a CTV campaign might be in the cards for your brand soon.
4. Add keywords to your TikTok metadata to see if it helps you increase your reach.
5. Keep an eye on AI Sponsored Snaps. If this new ad type takes off, it could be a very lucrative way to interact with your consumers in a more personal way.

Digital Marketing News 4/18/2026 to 4/24/2026

This week: ChatGPT launches CPC ads and Ads Manager, AI search referrals surge with AEO impact, Google upgrades Demand Gen with view-through conversions.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. CPC Bidding Comes to ChatGPT

Advertisers can now advertise on ChatGPT by bidding by click, not just by impression.

In ChatGPT’s initial advertising pilot, advertisers would have to pay a flat rate per 1,000 impressions served – regardless of who clicked. Now, some advertisers are being offered the opportunity to bid per click. The price seems to range from $3 to $5.

Important to Know: This is only available to a select group of advertisers, but with OpenAI hiring its first advertising marketing science leader soon, we can expect ChatGPT Ads to continue to expand.

2. ChatGPT Tests New Ads Manager, Signaling Push Toward Scalable Ad Platform

OpenAI appears to be taking a major step forward in its advertising capabilities, with early tests of a new ChatGPT Ads Manager interface now surfacing among marketers.

The new dashboard is designed to give advertisers real-time control over campaigns—allowing them to launch, monitor, and optimize performance more efficiently. This marks a significant upgrade from the platform’s earlier, more limited reporting setup, which relied heavily on basic data exports.

At the same time, more brands are beginning to appear within ChatGPT, indicating a growing ad inventory and a clear move toward monetization at scale. The introduction of a dedicated Ads Manager suggests OpenAI is building toward a more mature, self-serve ecosystem similar to platforms like Google Ads and Meta.

While still in early stages, the evolution points to upcoming improvements in targeting, reporting, and automation, areas that will be critical for broader advertiser adoption.

Key Takeaway: ChatGPT is quickly evolving into a more robust advertising platform—marketers should start paying attention now as self-serve tools and ad capabilities continue to expand.

3. Study Reveals AI-crawled Sites Generate 320% More Human Traffic

A new study by Duda provides a clear view of how AI crawler activity is growing and what businesses need to do to get noticed.

The study analyzed over 858,000 sites to understand exactly how AI crawlers operate. They found these referral patterns:

• Total LLM referrals: 93,484 to 161,469 (+72.7%)
• ChatGPT: 81,652 to 136,095 (+66.7%)
• Claude: 106 to 2,488 (23x growth)
• Copilot: 22 to 9,560 (from near-zero)
• Perplexity: 11,533 to 13,157 (+14.1%)

Additionally, they revealed that crawlers are no longer just indexing, but also happening in response to real-time user queries, such as:

• User Fetch (real-time answers): 56.9% of all crawler activity, driven almost entirely by ChatGPT
• Training (model learning): 28.8%, split across GPTBot and other model crawlers
• Discovery (content indexing): 14.3%, distributed across multiple systems
• ChatGPT User Fetch volume: ~39.8 million visits

You can read the entire report here.

4. Yelp Introduces New AI Assistant

Yelp is a big player in the local SEO game – and it just got better.

In a conversation with TechCrunch, Yelp’s SVP of product, Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, said: “We would really like consumers to reconceive Yelp as a place where they can ask questions and get answers, not just that, but also complete the action. That’s Yelp reconceiving from a review platform to an answers and action platform. Some of the investments we’re making will be in that lane.”

The goal of this update and the others coming this year is to make the app more user-friendly. This new AI upgrade will help searchers:

• Ask questions
• Get restaurant reservations
• Order food for delivery
• Book service professionals

Yelp has always been a big deal in local SEO, but with these updates, more and more consumers will be turning to the app for recommendations on all kinds of things. If your business doesn’t have an updated Yelp page, you risk losing out on that traffic.

5. Google Upgrades Demand Gen to Accelerate YouTube Conversions

Google is expanding its Demand Gen capabilities with new features designed to drive faster conversions, especially across YouTube’s growing performance ecosystem.

The update integrates Demand Gen into Google’s Commerce Media Suite, allowing advertisers to leverage retailer first-party data, including product catalogs and conversion signals. This enables more precise targeting of high-intent shoppers across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail.

In addition, Google is introducing view-through conversion optimization, which prioritizes conversions that happen after a user sees an ad, not just clicks it. This shift reflects a broader move toward measuring impact in more passive, discovery-driven environments where users may not take immediate action.

Key Takeaway: As platforms like YouTube evolve into full-funnel channels, marketers should start optimizing beyond clicks, leveraging first-party data and view-based attribution to capture high-intent audiences more effectively.

6. Video Content is Coming to Google Local Ads

The video content trend is expanding to Google Local Ads.

Video ads have been spotted within the local map pack. Instead of sticking to static listings or text-based ads, some advertisers are being given the opportunity to add more engaging video content.

Still in beta testing, the feature is only available to select advertisers in certain locations. You can check if you’re eligible by signing into your Google Ads dashboard and navigating to the Google Ads’ Location Manager.

7. Google Publishes Best Practices for Read More Links

Google started adding “Read More” links in search result snippets within Google Search. Now, advertisers and digital marketers have some guidance on how to process that information.

Google published the best practices on its blog, noting three main ideas:

1. Make your content immediately visible on the page, not hidden behind an expandable section or interface.
2. Avoid using JavaScript to control the scroll position on the page.
3. Don’t remove the hash fragment from the URL if you have history API calls or window.location.hash modifications on page load.

Why We Care: The “Read More” button is another opportunity to draw more eyes to your content. Make sure you follow the best practices to set yourself up for success.

8. Social & Video Growing More Quickly than Search Ads

A new study by PwC revealed that, while search ads are still king, they aren’t growing as quickly as social media and video posts.

The report revealed that:

• Digital advertising revenue reached $294 billion, a 13% increase from last year
• Search saw an 11% increase
• Social media saw a 32% increase to $29 billion
• Digital video grew to $78 billion, a 25% increase

Even though social and video are growing at a faster pace, digital advertising and search ads are clearly still bringing in the most advertising revenue.

9. 76% of Pinterest CPG Promotions Achieved an ROI of 1.5x or Higher

Pinterest is quickly becoming the place to be for CPG brands that want to build awareness and drive a measurable sales impact.

A new report from the social media/search platform revealed that:

• 82% of campaigns generated a positive ROI
• 76% achieved an ROI of 1.5x or higher
• 83% achieved either ROI or sales uplift

In the report, Pinterest said: “In everyday terms: if you put $1 into these Pinterest campaigns, most brands got back more than $1, and many got $1.50 or more. That’s awareness translating into measurable business results.”

To make the most of the platform, Pinterest suggests:

• Plan around real CPG activities, not just audiences.
• Make it easy to move from inspiration to action.
• Use measurement to move Pinterest from test budget to core investment

10. Threads Introduces Live Chats

Threads is adding a new feature to make it easier to get your content out to more people at once.

Similar to Instagram’s Broadcast Channels, Thread’s new Live Chats will allow a Threads user to deliver updates and behind-the-scenes content directly to a large number of people at once.
– and in real time.

This announcement was made at Coachella, where Threads Chief Connor Hayes said: Those that are out here on Threads know that we want to be this real-time conversation for what’s going on in the world, but sometimes, posting to feed fifty times over the course of an hour just doesn’t do what it needs to do for live conversation … In the future, [users] will be able to start a live chat, add a few other collaborators … who can send messages into it, and then people can subscribe and follow along and interact with it without actually being able to send themselves. So it’s like the group chat from your messaging app that your fans can follow along with.”

If you’re a brand that has been looking to grow on Threads, this new feature may help you reach those goals.

11. TikTok’s US Venture Gains Security Infrastructure Certification

Since TikTok’s US venture was announced, users have been worried about the security of their data. In a recent press release, the US-based arm of the social media app announced that it has gained an important infrastructure certification.

In the announcement, TikTok USDS Joint Venture shared that it has secured its ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification. This means that its infrastructure meets global benchmarks.

TikTok USDS JV can now be trusted to have:

• Organizational controls: Defined governance, policies, and strategies for how security is managed across the company, including asset management, threat intelligence, and vendor relationships.
• People controls: Demonstration of a security-first culture among employees.
• Physical controls: Security of tangible assets like offices and servers from unauthorized access or environmental damage.
• Technological controls: Safeguards protecting digital information and systems, including vulnerability management, encryption protocols, secure coding standards, and data leakage prevention.

Why We Care: Even though the TikTok ban was stressful for many businesses and marketers, it appears TikTok is taking the steps necessary to regain the public’s trust and maintain its place in the American social media hierarchy.

12. YouTube Tops Charts for Kids

A new report from Precisify, YouTube is where kids go to watch their favorite creators.

The study revealed that YouTube is a hit for:

• 80% of boys aged 6-9
• 74% of boys aged 10-12
• 72% of girls aged 6-9
• 69% of girls aged 10-12

YouTube Shorts and TikTok also have sizable audiences of child viewers. The only demographic to cross the 50% benchmark was TikTok among girls aged 10-12.

Why We Care: If you’re a kid-based brand, you might want to consider getting more involved with YouTube, since that’s where your audience is spending the most time.

Weekly Homework

• With the new AI-based updates to Yelp, take the time now to breathe some new life into your Yelp profile to enhance your local SEO strategy.
• If you (or your audience!) love CPG content, consider whether or not Pinterest could improve your reach and introduce you to new audiences.
• ChatGPT Ads are coming closer to the everyday marketer. Now is the time to decide whether this is an avenue you want to explore.
• If you are a kid-focused brand, explore ways to improve your YouTube strategy to help you land in front of the right kids.
• Give yourself an advantage and read Google’s new Best Practices documentation on the “Read More” link.

Digital Marketing News 4/11/2026 to 4/17/2026

This week: Google retires Dynamic Search Ads, Google Ads glitch disrupts campaigns, and TikTok expands AI ad creation.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Google Dynamic Search Ads Will Retire in September

If you’re using Google Dynamic Search Ads, you’re going to need to find another way to advertise on Google.

Google announced this week that it is retiring the legacy Search automation tools, including Dynamic Search Ads (DSA). They are doing this in favor of AI Max, an AI-powered campaign tool.

Here’s what Google said in the announcement:

• Starting in September, eligible campaigns using DSA, ACA, or campaign-level broad match will be automatically migrated to AI Max.
• Google will stop allowing advertisers to create new DSA campaigns through Google Ads, Ads Editor, and the Ads API once automatic upgrades begin.
• The company expects all eligible migrations to be completed by the end of September.

If you are a DSA user, you can continue running ads as normal until September, or you can voluntarily upgrade now. Google will be rolling out tools this week to help make it easier to move campaign history, settings, and data into AI Max. Advertisers will also start to see in-platform prompts about the upcoming move.

If you choose to wait until September, ACA campaigns will be automatically moved into AI Max with search term matching and text customization turned on by default.

If you want the most control over your ads, content, and data, start the migration process now.

2. Google Ads Glitch Triggers Mass Disapprovals

Advertisers are raising concerns after a wave of unexpected Google Ads disapprovals disrupted campaigns, despite no apparent issues with their websites.

Reports indicate that ads were flagged for DNS and server (500) errors, even when landing pages were functioning normally. In some cases, advertisers saw hundreds, or even thousands, of ads disapproved at once, causing sudden drops in traffic, leads, and revenue.

The issue appears to stem from Google’s automated review system. If its crawlers encounter temporary errors, like timeouts or DNS lookup failures, ads can be flagged under the “destination not working” policy, regardless of whether users are actually experiencing problems.

This highlights a growing challenge for marketers: performance isn’t just driven by strategy anymore, platform reliability plays a major role. When systems misfire, the impact can be immediate and costly.

Action Item: Proactively monitor your Google Ads accounts for disapprovals, regularly test landing pages across environments, and be ready to escalate or appeal quickly if issues appear to be platform-related.

3. OpenAI’s Ads Manager is Here – And It Needs Work

OpenAI is still testing its ads manager, but results haven’t been great yet.

Right now, the ads manager looks very similar to Google’s Ads Manager. However:

• Advertisers can only pay per impression
• Cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition models are listed as “coming soon”
• Audience targeting is very basic and can only be refined by keywords, free-text hints, or country
• There is no demographic targeting or audience buying tools
• Reporting only consists of impressions and click graphics
• Audience size estimates and optimization tools are nowhere to be found

Basically, OpenAI may offer ads, but they seem to be generally out of reach for most digital marketers, especially those who value CPC and CPA ads.

4. Study Reveals 5 Characteristics That Show Whether Your Site Will Gain Organic Traffic

A recent study identified five key characteristics of sites that gain or lose organic traffic.

According to the findings, a site has a higher chance of winning organic traffic if it:

• Offers a product or service (+70%)
• Allows task completion (+83%)
• Offers proprietary assets such as unique datasets, user-generated content, or specialized software: (+92%)
• Has a tight topical focus: (less than +80%)
• Has a strong brand: (+32%)

What This Means: The best way to win more traffic is to post unique content, offer a product or service, or use your content to solve a problem or help your searcher complete their task.

5. Google Shares How It Picks One URL Over Another

In a recent Reddit chat, Google’s John Mueller explained how the platform picks canonical URLs.

He cited the following nine reasons:

1. Exact duplicate content
2. Substantial duplication in main content, such as the same article appearing in multiple places
3. Too little unique content relative to template content
4. URL parameter patterns inferred as duplicates
5. Mobile version vs. desktop version
6. Googlebot-visible version, not necessarily what users see
7. Serving Googlebot alternative or non-content pages
8. Failure to render JavaScript content
9. Ambiguity or misclassification in the system

Bottom Line: The system is built on overlapping signals, so the best way to stand out is to produce authentic, helpful, and accurate content that you don’t post in a zillion different places.

6. 84% of Europeans Don’t Trust Their Data with US-Based Companies

A new survey published in Social Media Today revealed that the vast majority of Europeans do not trust US and Chinese-based companies with their data.

The survey found that 84% of Europeans don’t trust their data with US-based companies, and 93% don’t trust it with Chinese-based companies. The most untrusting? Users in Germany.

Europeans across the board view European companies as significantly more trustworthy. This could be due to the EU Commission’s ongoing efforts to regulate data protection and give EU users more control over who does what with their data.

Why This Matters: Reputations like this in one industry can eventually affect all US and Chinese-based companies across industries. This distrust could spread from tech companies to other industries, hurting the bottom line of brands across the board.

7. Google Simplifies Analytics and Ads Consent Rules

Big changes are coming to Google in June.

Starting on June 15th, Google Ads data collection will rely on the ad_storage consent setting when showing ads. This removes a layer of complexity that most marketers didn’t enjoy.

As of now, the ad data that flows between Analytics and Ads is influenced by Consent Mode and Google Signals outside of Google Analytics. This causes some confusion, especially for marketers who didn’t love that their controls were buried in Analytics settings rather than being readily available.

How to Prepare: While you have a bit of time before the removal, you should audit your consent implementation now, well before the June 15th deadline. Clearer rules are coming, but it makes getting consent more important than ever.

8. Increase Your Reach on X with These Tips

X’s Head of Product, Nikita Bier, recently offered some tips that brands, marketers, and creators might want to pay attention to.

Although X, formerly known as Twitter, has had its share of issues as of late, people are still turning to the app for information on sports, gaming, music, and food.

If you’re in those industries and want to use the app to expand your reach, Bier suggests:

• Posting less links
• Sharing more content in-stream
• Add keywords like “Breaking” or Breaking News” (but only if it’s actually breaking. X will be cracking down on ragebait posters who take advantage of this)
• Don’t repost clips from other platforms, such as videos with a TikTok watermark

9. TikTok Adds New AI Video Generation to Ad Tool Kit

More AI tools are coming to TikTok! ByteDance introduced the latest Seedance 2.0 video generation model into the creator toolkit this week.

In the announcement, TikTok explained: “The model improves the consistency of products throughout content, so they remain recognizable across video segments with fewer manual corrections. Motion is also more natural, with smoother movement throughout. Together, these improvements mean less time spent fixing outputs and more time scaling your campaigns.”

If you’ve been producing TikTok ads, this could be a tool worth checking out.

10. YouTube Offers New Engagement Options

If your brand is big on going live on YouTube, pay attention to these new engagement options.

The new options include:

• Encouraging fans to send gifts on horizontal live streams
• Access to gifts in countries that previously did not have access, such as Canada, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand
• Updates to the personal ad-free window after a fan shows support
• Live chat engagement
• Customizable streaming for all devices, including horizontal and vertical at the same time

More and more people are turning to YouTube Live for entertainment so the more ways to engage with your audience, the better.

11. Google Ads AI Skills to Chrome to Save Favorite Workflows

More AI tools are coming to Google’s popular Chrome browser.

This week, Google announced the launch of Skills in Chrome. This tool lets you create your own one-click workflows and prompts. Google says this will be helpful in situations such as:

• Health & Wellness: quickly calculating protein macros for any recipe
• Shopping: generating side-by-side spec comparisons across multiple tabs
• Productivity: scanning lengthy documents for important information

Google is also launching a library of ready-to-use Skills that contain prompts for common tasks and workflows.

Skills can be saved anywhere you’re signed in on a Chrome desktop device.

Weekly Homework:

• If you’re a Google Dynamic Search Ads user, start making plans to switch up your strategy before DSA ads are discontinued in September.
• Make browsing and researching easier by creating your own prompts in Skills on your Chrome browser.
• Review the five characteristics that could increase your organic traffic and decide how to use this knowledge to improve your website and increase your traffic.
• Check out the new TikTok Ads AI tools to see if it could improve your ad creation.
• Get familiar with Google’s Ad consent rules before it all switches up on June 15th

Digital Marketing News 4/4/2026 to 4/10/2026

This week: ChatGPT traffic flows to Google, AI ads drive major sales lift, and YouTube tests long unskippable ads.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. 1 in 5 ChatGPT Clicks Go to Google

A new study found that 20% of ChatGPT’s referral traffic goes directly back to Google. When the study started in 2024, only about 14% went to Google. By January 2026, when the study ended, that number was over 21%.

In addition to revealing that 30% of the traffic flows to just 10 domains (and 20% of that traffic is going straight to Google), the study also revealed surprising information about searcher’s habits, such as:

• 65-85% of ChatGPT prompts are conversational in language
• Most ChatGPT prompts don’t match traditional search prompts
• The majority of prompts are navigational in nature and then transactional. With the smallest percentage of prompts being informational or commercial.

If you want to improve your AI visibility and get your content found by AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, check out this study and use the data to restructure your content.

2. Some Brands Seeing Up to 80% Sales Lift from AI Ads

Google revealed this week that some brands are seeing up to 80% sales lift from using its AI-powered advertising tools.

The numbers reveal that AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, aren’t disrupting Google’s core search business as much as previously expected. In fact, it’s just the opposite:

• Alphabet Inc. surpassed $400 billion in revenue in 2025
• Q4 ad revenue was up 13.5% YoY to $82.28 billion
• YouTube Ads were up 9% YoY to $11.38 billion

Why We Care: Not only are these impressive sales lift numbers, but they also show that Google is still king when it comes to reach and brand awareness. To improve your chatbot visibility, focus on improving your visibility with Google. It’s all tied together.

3. Google March 2026 Core Update Now Complete

We shared last week that Google started its March 2026 Core Update. We can now confirm that the rollout is complete.

The rollout took 12 days and 4 hours, and Google did not release any new guidance on managing the fallout.

Pro Tip: Access your analytics dashboard to see how your site fared. Analyze your ranking and traffic changes, identify which parts of your site took the biggest hit, and adjust your content strategy accordingly.

4. Google Fixing Search Console Bug That Inflated Impressions

If you see a sudden dip in your Search Console data over the next few weeks, don’t panic, you probably didn't lose traffic; you just stopped "hallucinating" it.

Google has confirmed a long-running logging error that has been inflating impression counts since May 13, 2025. The company is now rolling out a fix to bring those numbers back down to reality.

The Details:

• The Glitch: A reporting error caused Search Console to over-report how many times your site appeared in search results.
• What’s Affected: Only Impressions are impacted. Google clarified that Clicks and other performance metrics remain accurate.
• The Timeline: The correction is being deployed now and will take several weeks to fully reflect across all accounts.

Why We Care: Reporting to clients or stakeholders just got a little awkward. Since this bug has been active for nearly a year, many year-over-year comparisons might look like a "loss" in visibility when the fix hits. Marketers should proactively communicate this "data anomaly" to stakeholders now to explain that while the reported impressions are dropping, the actual click-throughs and revenue-driving traffic haven't changed.

5. YouTube Is Testing 90-Second Unskippable Ads on TVs

YouTube is leaning further into its role as a traditional TV replacement and longer, less skippable ads are the price of admission.

While YouTube recently introduced 30-second unskippable formats, some viewers are now reporting massive 90-second ad blocks before the "Skip" button even appears. These longer interruptions are appearing primarily on connected TV (CTV) devices rather than mobile or desktop.

How it works:

• The "TV" Experience: The ads mimic traditional commercial breaks, sometimes exceeding 90 seconds in total.
• Content Agnostic: Early reports suggest these long blocks aren't tied to the length of the video, they’ve been spotted on both short clips and long-form content.
• The Pushback: Google officially stated on X that they "do not have a 90-second ad format," suggesting this may be a glitch or a very aggressive "ad pod" test where multiple shorter ads are bundled together without a skip option.

Why We Care: YouTube is successfully carving out premium, TV-like inventory that allows for longer, more impactful storytelling. For brand advertisers, this is a golden opportunity to run traditional TV-style creative with the precision of digital targeting. However, the user backlash is real; if the "ad load" becomes too heavy, we might see a surge in ad-blocker usage or a migration to "Lite" subscription tiers.

6. YouTube Expands Media Kit Insights and Tools

New Media Kit insights and AI tools are coming for YouTube creators. This week, the video platform announced expanded audience data and more AI editing tools.

The new Media Kit includes data on subscribers, video posting frequencies, and unique viewers. There is also expanded information on demographics, including parental status, household income, and more.

YouTube Create, the platform’s editing tool, added AI tools that should make it easier to edit and process complex video clips.

7. Instagram Debunks Popular Engagement “Hack”

Many “gurus” have said that reposting feed posts to Stories is a surefire way to increase engagement. This week, Instagram debunked that “hack.”

In Adam Mosseri’s weekly Q&A, he shared that “You can definitely share your own post to your Stories, or re-share your own post, but it’s not going to meaningfully change your reach overall, because Feed generally gets more reach than Stories anyway, and you can’t really re-post your own thing because it was already posted, so it won’t really change the eligibility.”

He also said that, “Generally speaking, those hack-type tactics sometimes work, usually don’t, and when we find them, we usually shut them down,” Mosseri said. “It’s more important to focus on who is your audience, what are the patterns for what’s resonating and what’s not [and] how can you double-down on those patterns, while staying true to your own goals and identity and who you are.”

Why We Care: We’ve always said that focusing on your audience is the biggest growth “hack” there is, but now we can say that Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, agrees.

8. 58% of Snapchat Users Turn to the App for Health and Wellness Research

Calling all health and wellness brands! If you’re not on Snapchat, you’re going to want to read this. According to a new study, 58% of daily users are turning to the app for health and wellness research.

Other interesting findings included:

• 95% of users say they have an active interest in health and wellness
• 62% say they prioritize regular check-ups
• Snapchat users are 1.2x more likely to purchase health and wellness products
• They are 1.6x more likely to spend more on high-quality products and services
• They are 3x more likely to engage with daily wellness content
• 49% feel more aware of specific treatments and products based on what they’ve seen on Snapchat
• They are 1.5x more likely than non-Snapchatters to find, compare, and remember health content and information
• 59% say they have changed real-world behaviors based on what they’ve seen on Snapchat

Why We Care: The world gets noisier by the minute. Finding this type of impact on one platform can be difficult. If you are a health and wellness brand, you should consider employing Snapchat in your social media marketing strategy.

9. Diversify Your Content to Achieve Success on Pinterest

If you want to find marketing success on Pinterest, you need to diversify your content. The search platform shared new insights into why content diversification is a key driver of engagement.

In a new blog post, Pinterest engineers explained, “While earlier stages [of the feed recommendation process] mostly optimize for certain positive actions (e.g., saves) given an impression, the multi-objective optimization layer tackles a different problem: determining the best composition of a feed served to the user. This is critical as users tend to have lower intent when visiting Home Feed and their browsing behavior will be significantly impacted by what they see. For example, visually repetitive content is less engaging and is likely to reduce the user’s session length and the likelihood that a user will revisit Pinterest.”

With over 619 million monthly active users and counting, a lot of brands are paying attention to Pinterest to improve their marketing and reach new audiences. Tips that come directly from Pinterest itself can help those brands find the success they’re looking for.

10. Meta Simplifies Pixel Setup

Any Meta ads manager knows the stress pixel setups can cause. Meta heard the noise and simplified the process.

Now, Meta Ads users can access the official Pixel template in Google Tag Manager, eliminating the need for third-party or community-built workarounds.

This new template allows advertisers to reuse their existing GA4 dataLayer. This allows events already configured for Google Analytics 4 to be leveraged without rebuilding the tracking from scratch. It will also make ad tracking faster and more reliable.

If you’re interested in learning more, log in to your Tag Manager and Meta Ads manager to see the new change.

11. Google Rolls Out Onboarding Guide for Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)

Google published its new onboarding guide for the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) in the Merchant Center this week.

The documentation walks you through completing the technical implementation required before you can access onboarding.

Once that’s completed, you can fill out the interest form, and Google will notify you if you’re selected to participate.

You can learn more about onboarding to the Universal Commerce Protocol here.

12. Google Maps Rolls Out New Features

Google is making it easier for users to contribute their knowledge to Maps.

In a blog post, Google explained that: "Photos and videos you post help people better understand a place, like the overall vibe or the newest menu. Now, we’re making it easier to find the right image for sharing.”

Users can now share images and ask Gemini to create captions. They can also turn on media access in their photo settings to gain access to photos and videos from their recent experiences and directly add them to the Contribute tab on Google Maps.

Users can earn “Local Guide” points by adding photos, writing reviews, answering questions, and checking facts to improve Google Maps.

This seemingly small move will make it easier for local businesses to boost their local SEO with the help of their favorite customers.

Weekly Homework:

• Read the SEMRUSH study about ChatGPT and use the findings to guide your content strategy.
• If you’re in the health and wellness industry, consider adding Snapchat to your social media marketing strategy.
• Check out Pinterest’s suggestions on how to improve your visibility and expand your reach.
• Review your traffic and ranking data to see how the Google March Core Update affected your site and then adjust your strategy accordingly.
• If you’re interested in participating in Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol in the Merchant Center, access the new onboarding document to add your name to the list of interested merchants.

Digital Marketing News 3/28/2026 to 4/3/2026

This week: AI search favors Reddit content, Gemini traffic growth surges, and ChatGPT hits $100M ads.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn Dominate AI Search Citations

A new study analyzing 30 million sources reveals that AI search engines are heavily relying on third-party platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn to generate answers.

Reddit emerged as the most-cited source across major AI tools, including ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity, largely due to its depth of real user discussions. YouTube and LinkedIn also ranked highly, while platforms like Wikipedia and Forbes continue to serve as foundational authority sources. For recommendation-based queries, review sites like Yelp and G2 frequently appear.

The takeaway is clear: AI models prioritize a mix of authoritative content and authentic user-generated insights. This means visibility in AI-driven search isn’t just about your website, it’s about your presence across the broader digital ecosystem.

Action Item: Expand your content strategy beyond owned channels. Actively invest in platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn to increase your chances of being surfaced in AI-generated search results.

2. Google Gemini Sends 41% More Traffic to U.S. Websites than Perplexity

A recent study by SE Ranking found that Google Gemini sends more traffic to websites than Perplexity.

The study revealed that:

• Google Gemini growth started after the rollout of the 3 Gemini models
• Website visits from ChatGPT dropped by almost 22% between November 2024 and January 2026
• ChatGPT still drives nearly 80% of global AI traffic to websites
• ChatGPT web traffic jumped 53.8% after the release of GPT-5
• Gemini is currently growing at roughly 47% per month

Why We Care: Regardless of these numbers, these studies show just how volatile AI search can be. While it’s definitely going to drive traffic to some websites, just how much and which platform is the best will be anyone’s guess. If you’re going to focus on your AI web traffic, prepare yourself for spikes and dips – it’s totally normal.

3. Google’s March 2026 Core Update Has Started

Google’s March 2026 Core Update started on March 27th, and the dashboard says it could take up to two weeks to complete.

The dashboard also notes that the rankings will have the biggest impact. We aren’t sure exactly how or why, though, because Google hasn’t published a companion blog or made a specific goal announcement.

For now, it’s important to just keep an eye on your traffic – and don’t panic. Some volatility is normal, especially as the update continues to roll out.

4. ChatGPT Introduces Location Sharing for More Personalized Local Results

OpenAI is rolling out a new location-sharing feature in ChatGPT, designed to improve the accuracy of local search responses.

With user permission, ChatGPT can now access precise device location to deliver more relevant recommendations, like nearby restaurants, services, or stores. The feature is optional and can be adjusted in settings, giving users control over how much location data is shared.

For marketers, this update signals a shift toward more personalized, location-driven AI experiences. While early feedback suggests results may still vary in accuracy, the move highlights the growing importance of local relevance in AI-powered search.

Key Takeaway: As AI tools become more location-aware, optimizing for local visibility, through listings, reviews, and proximity signals, will play an even bigger role in how brands show up in AI-driven search results.

5. ChatGPT Hits $100 Million in Ad Revenue, Opening Self-Serve Ad Access in April

OpenAI hit a big milestone this week – $100 million in ad revenue.

That number was generated from fewer than 20% of eligible US free and Go tier users who see ads daily. With about 85% of those users eligible to see ads, the current revenue represents only a fraction of what the platform can eventually generate.

With more than 600 advertisers now using the platform, OpenAI announced that the self-serve ad databoard will launch to consumers this month. Based on the company's ad success in the US, it is also exploring expansion into Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Why This Matters: AI is changing digital marketing, including paid ads. As AI companies deepen their presence in advertising, marketers need to pay attention.

6. Why ChatGPT Ads Are Prioritizing Clarity Over Creativity

New data shows that advertising within ChatGPT is quickly evolving into a highly structured, intent-driven format, where clarity consistently outperforms creativity.

According to recent analysis, top-performing ads are short, direct, and highly contextual, often following a simple “Brand: Benefit” format. Instead of storytelling or clever hooks, successful ads focus on immediate value, using concise messaging, specific numbers, and clear calls to action to match the user’s intent in real time.

This shift reflects a broader change in how users engage with AI platforms. Rather than browsing or discovering, users are typically in decision mode, making relevance, credibility, and precision far more important than traditional brand-driven messaging.

Action Item: Rethink your ad strategy for AI platforms, prioritize concise, value-driven messaging that mirrors user intent, and test formats that emphasize clarity, proof points, and direct calls to action over creative storytelling.

7. New Controls and Features Come to Google PMax

Google just dropped new reporting and control features for Google Performance Max.

The new tools include:

• First-party audience exclusions
• Budget reporting to help project end-of-month spend
• Full audience reporting, including breakdowns for different audience demographics and segments
• Network segmentation in placement reporting to better identify where your ads have been served

With these new tools, marketers will be able to better understand the “why” behind your results. Using that information, you can create better ads and achieve a higher ROI.

8. New Ad Options Come to Meta

At its annual IAB Newsfront event, Meta announced some new ad display options.

The new tools and options include:

• New content and category lineup for Reels Trending Ads
• Expanded Creator Marketplace features
• The release of Facebook Collabs in the Partnership Ads Hub
• A redesigned Partnership Ads Hub
• UGC-style videos with avatars
• Video and image voiceover options
• Improved catalog product videos

All of the tools and options are designed to make ads as interactive and engaging as the organic content consumers love.

9. Meta Tests Instagram Plus

Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing something new – Instagram Plus.

As of now, Instagram Plus includes features such as:

• Create unlimited audience lists for Stories, beyond Close Friends
• See how many people have rewatched a Story
• Spotlight a Story (up to once a week) to get more eyes on it
• Give a vibrant, animated Superlike on Stories to show extra love
• Extend a Story for an additional 24 hours so more followers can see it
• Preview a Story without showing up as a viewer
• Search story viewer list instead of having to scroll through it

While Meta hasn’t confirmed where it’s doing these tests, social media reports indicate that users in Mexico, Japan, and the Philippines have seen the test live.

10. Reddit Adds Publisher Tools to Reddit Pro

Reddit is continuing to improve its ad opportunities. This time, with new publisher tools in Reddit Pro.

The new tools provide:

• Community snapshots: For each community discussing their links, publishers can now access a snapshot of each community’s rules, stats, and most discussed links directly in Pro
• Community notes: Publishers can also manage their own notes for each community directly in the Links tab, keeping their strategy and context in one place

Reddit will also be improving Reddit Pro profiles for all users by adding features like profile flairs that let users highlight posts and organize their stories.

The goal is to make it easier for publishers to share important stories and information with their audiences, while continuing to amplify their reach on the platform.

As part of a free public beta test, Reddit publishers can access these tools by verifying their domain in the Links tab on the Reddit Pro platform.

11. YouTube Engagement Just Got Easier

YouTube added a new feature that big brands and creators will love – Comments to Heart.

The new tool will automate engagement by allowing creators to select multiple comments and “heart” them all at once.

While this may seem like a small feature, it could save some brands hours of consumer engagement.

In addition to Comments to Heart, YouTube also announced the rollout of live stream Gifts and Jewels to more markets, including Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Thailand. This is the second expansion since offering the product initially to U.S. creators in 2024 and then to Canadian and Korean streamers earlier this year.

12. LinkedIn Shares Tips to Increase Engagement

In a new report, LinkedIn shared tips on how you can improve the performance of your long-form articles and posts.

Those tips included these four key suggestions:

• Share insights and actual data
• Build an ongoing audience with newsletters
• Make content easy to consume by adding skimmable sections and a TL;DR recap to your posts
• Highlight experts and trusted voices to improve your credibility

While these tips are geared toward what LinkedIn is seeing among its users, they can easily be applied to any marketing platform.

13. 42% of Brands Say Limited Tool Integration Is Biggest Barrier to Marketing Personalization

Looking at consumer data, it’s becoming abundantly clear that consumers want personalization. So what’s holding brands and marketing agencies back? According to a new eMarketer survey, it’s their data stack.

According to the survey participants, the biggest barriers to improving personalization attempts include:

• Limited integration
• Difficulty unifying data into a single customer profile
• High costs of data management solutions
• Lack of real-time access to data

The numbers vary but are pretty similar across brands and marketing agencies, leading us to believe this is an industry-wide problem. If your tech stack doesn’t appear to be working for you, just know you’re not alone.

Weekly Homework

• Keep an eye on your Google ranking and traffic, as they may be volatile due to the Google March Core update.
• Research whether ChatGPT ads could benefit your brand.
• Explore the new tools in your PMax dashboard to see if any of them could help you increase your PMax ROI.
• Check out the new ad options and tools for your Meta ads.
• Sign up for the new Reddit Pro options while the beta is still free for brands and creators.
• Take a look at your tech stack. Is it working as well as it should or could you make some chances to improve your marketing’s performance and personalization?

Digital Marketing News 3/21/2026 to 3/27/2026

This week: AI-generated content loses ranking, ChatGPT citations favor listicles, and Google tests AI headlines.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Study Reveals: AI Speeds Up Content Creation But Doesn’t Drive Lasting SEO Impact

A new study published by Search Engine Land found that AI-generated content might not improve your SEO visibility as much as you think.

Over 16 months, the researchers followed 20 brand-new domains across a variety of industries to see whether AI-generated content was really the marketing super-answer we’ve all been looking for.

The results revealed that:

• Month 1: 71% of new AI-generated pages were indexed within the first 36 days
• Months 2-3: Most continued to grow
• Months 3-6: Only 3% of the pages remained in the top 100
• Month 15: No site showed meaningful recovery, although 66.9% of the sites were still indexed

The study reported that the visibility crashed due to:

• Lack of authority
• No author credibility
• No unique content
• Poor site structure with no internal linking, topical organization, or clear hierarchy to help Google understand page relationships

Bottom Line: AI may have made it easier to get content posted, but you need a real SEO strategy if you want your long-form content to continue generating traffic long after you’ve posted it.

2. AI Citations Are Favoring Listicles, Articles, and Product Pages

A new study analyzing 75,000 AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity shows that over half of all AI citations point to just three content formats: listicles (21.9%), articles (16.7%), and product pages (13.7%). The research also reveals that user intent, not industry or model, drives what gets cited.

• Informational queries: Articles dominate, cited 2.7x more than other formats.
• Commercial queries: Listicles capture 40% of citations, nearly double any other type.
• Transactional/navigational queries: Product and category pages lead (~40% combined).

Interestingly, third-party listicles outperform brand-led lists in professional services, showing that LLMs prefer neutral, editorial comparisons. Model differences exist: ChatGPT favors articles, Google AI Mode is balanced, and Perplexity pulls heavily from forums like Reddit.

Key Takeaway: Align your content format with user intent. Articles educate, listicles drive comparison, and product pages convert. A strategic approach like this can boost AI citation visibility and ensure your content gets noticed.

3. ChatGPT Citations Are Concentrated Among a Few Domains, Favoring Broad Coverage

A recent study by Kevin Indig shows that ChatGPT concentrates citations among roughly 30 domains, which capture 67% of all citations within a topic. The research highlights that simply ranking No. 1 in Google isn’t enough, AI favors domains that cover topics broadly with long-form, cluster-based content.

• Citation concentration: Top 10 domains in product comparisons earned 46% of citations; top 30 earned 67%.
• Page retrieval vs. citation: ChatGPT retrieves ~6x more pages than it actually cites; 85% of retrieved pages never get cited.
• Content length matters: Pages 5,000–10,000 characters saw significant lift; pages over 20,000 characters averaged 10 citations vs. 2.39 for pages under 500. Finance was an exception, favoring shorter, denser pages.
• Position on page: Upper 10–20% of content earned the majority of citations; bottom sections rarely contributed.

Key Takeaway: To win in AI search, focus on building topic authority with comprehensive, long-form content rather than isolated keyword pages. Cover your topic from multiple angles, structure content strategically, and prioritize the sections that get cited most.

4. Google Tests AI-Generated Headlines in Search, Raising Publisher Concerns

Google is experimenting with AI rewriting search result titles to better match queries and boost engagement. While the test is currently small and narrow, it spans beyond news sites and can change tone, intent, or meaning in headlines.

• Example: A verbose, playful headline like “I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything” was shortened to “‘Cheat on everything’ AI tool.”
• Title generation sources: Google considers page content, headings, meta tags, anchor text, structured data, and other prominent text.
• Publisher reaction: Editors warn AI-generated titles risk misrepresenting content, altering brand voice, and affecting CTR, potentially undermining audience trust.

Key Takeaway: If your site relies on carefully crafted headlines, start monitoring Google Search title changes closely. Be ready to adapt your SEO strategy and track click-throughs to ensure your content still resonates with readers.

5. Google Ads PMax Gets AI Animation for Static Images

A new AI-powered feature spotted in Performance Max campaigns lets advertisers generate animated clips from a single image, no video production needed. This could be a game-changer for brands running static-image campaigns without a video budget.

• How it works: Upload a source image (product, logo, or property photo) → AI generates enhanced versions → each produces two animated clips → select up to five per asset group. Faces can’t be used as source images.
• Early tests: Logos can spin, property photos get cinematic pans, simple inputs, but high-quality display-ready output.
• Placement: Clips appear in Display ad previews; broader rollout details are unclear.

Action Item: Advertisers using PMax should check their asset groups for this feature. Testing AI-generated animated clips can boost engagement and make campaigns more visually dynamic, without extra production costs.

6. OpenAI Cuts Some Features But Adds New Shopping Experiences

Change is in the air for OpenAI. The same week the platform announced it would shut down its video app, Sora, it also unveiled new shopping features.

Now, users can now either upload images of products to search for or describe products using budgeting or preference constraints. OpenAI will then present side-by-side options with key details like price, reviews, and features to help searchers make their decisions.

In doing this, they also added the option for merchants to use their Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) to share product feeds and promotions. Some retailers, like Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, and Lowe’s, have already integrated with the new system.

Why We Care: Any new way for people to find your product is worth paying attention to. OpenAI might be cutting options that aren’t cost-effective, but that doesn’t mean they’re shying away from other major improvements, like improving in-app shopping.

7. Bing AI New Dashboard Tool Reveals More AI Visibility Data

Thanks to a new tool, Bing AI Performance users can now connect AI citation data to specific URLs on their sites.

The new AI performance dashboard measures:

• Total citations
• Average cited pages
• Grounding queries
• Page-level citation activity
• Visibility trends over time
• Grounding query-page mapping

Having these valuable insights can help Bing users know what content is attracting views and which can be improved. If showing up in AI search is a priority for you (and it should be!), this tool could be a game-changer.

8. Google Business Profile Tests AI-Generated Review Replies

Google is rolling out a limited test in Google Business Profile that suggests AI-generated responses to customer reviews. Businesses can review, edit, and manually submit replies, aiming to save time while maintaining engagement.

• Feature rollout: Spotted in the U.S., Brazil, and India; availability is inconsistent and not yet widespread.
• Functionality: AI generates suggested replies, with some users reporting prompts for older negative reviews. Bulk suggestions may require review, though some reports indicate fully automated posting is possible.
• Why it matters: While timely responses can build trust and impact conversions, generic AI replies risk damaging credibility, especially on sensitive negative reviews. Authenticity and quality still matter more than speed.

Key Takeaway: If your business has a high volume of reviews, this feature could streamline responses, but always review AI suggestions to preserve brand voice and trust.

9. 68% of Small Businesses See Social Media as Path to Success

Your social media feeds might start getting a little more crowded. According to a recent study published by EMarketer, 68% of small business owners see social media marketing and paid ads as their quickest path to success.

By polling small business owners in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US, Constant Contact found that the majority felt they would find more success with social media posting and paid ads.

Other options included:

• Email marketing: 41%
• In-person events: 29%
• Traditional advertising: 26%

This could mean one of two things: either you beef up your social media marketing and paid ad efforts or you lean more heavily toward things like email marketing, blog writing, or SEO strategies to cut through the noise and find your audience.

10. Reddit Ads Expand Access

A new partnership with the software company Pacvue is making it easier than ever to use Reddit Ads.

The platform’s existing user base of over 70,000 businesses will now have access to manage their Reddit ads from the same dashboard where they manage all other paid ads.

This is excellent news for advertisers who want to streamline their ad management process. With Reddit getting more attention lately because of the increase of AI chatbots citing Reddit results, making it easier to advertise on the platform could be a win-win situation for both the platform and advertisers.

11. Reddit Introduces New Ad Options

Speaking of Reddit, the platform also rolled out some new advertising options this week.

Advertisers can now access opportunities such as:

• Collection Ads - pairing a lifestyle hero image with shoppable product tiles in a single DPA carousel
• Community Overlays - the ability to indicate products that are already resonating with Reddit users
• Deal Overlays - the ability to automatically call out discounts and sale pricing
• Shopify Integration - the ability to automatically identify which products to show to each user with a simplified catalog and pixel set up

With these improved ad options and easier access to ad management, now is a good time to explore Reddit Ads for your business. This is especially true, as 84% of Reddit shoppers feel more secure about their purchases after searching on the platform.

12. YouTube Makes It Easier to Connect Brands and Content Creators

If YouTube is one of your main content platforms, you’re going to love these new tools from its creator partnership program.

The new platform is meant to streamline BrandConnect with the Creator Partnerships Hub to deliver:

• Improved brand deal matching and outreach
• Sharing channel insights
• Collaboration features, such as YouTube’s Media Kit and Open Call elements, are built in
• AI-powered brand partnership recommendations

Influencer marketing remains a valuable part of the content marketing puzzle, especially given that 83% of Gen Z prefer watching their favorite creators to other studio-produced content. This new platform will streamline the process of finding the right influencer to partner with for your brand.

13. Human Speech Improves Reels Retention by 25%

Struggling to get traction on Instagram? Try adding human speech to your Reels!

A new study by Emplifi revealed that videos that start with human speech, rather than music, can improve retention by:

• 3-second retention: +11.7%
• 10-second retention: +24.7%
• 30-second retention: +6.6%

Speech-based videos also see a 5.6% higher engagement rate over music-only content. With 61.8% of brand Reels still not containing any speech, this could be a way to stand out from your competition.

Other ways to improve Reels retention include:

• Human faces
• Text overlay
• Vertical formats
• Seamless loops
• Slow-paced start
• Slow overall pacing

This is a great time to jump into Reels, especially since Instagram just released a new way to transition between still images to create a Reels clip.

As Instagram explains: “You can use AI transition to create a seamless video from multiple photos in your Instagram story. To use AI transition, you must agree to the Meta AI terms. You’ll be prompted to do so the first time you use AI transition if you haven’t already.”

14. Google’s March 2026 Spam Update is Complete

Google started rolling out the March 2026 spam update on March 24th. It’s already completed.

The update was completed within 20 hours. To put this into perspective, the August 2025 spam update took 27 days to complete, and the December 2024 spam update took 7 days.

While this update was incredibly fast, keep an eye out for ranking or traffic changes in the next few days. Any changes could be due to this update or the Google February Discover update.

15. Google Expands Universal Commerce Protocol

Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP, has some great new updates that will encourage a simpler path for retailers.

New capabilities include:

• New Cart option that lets agents save multiple items to a cart at one time
• New Catalog option that lets agents receive real-time product information when necessary
• New Identity Linking option that allows shoppers on UCP platforms to receive the same loyalty or member benefits as they would when shopping directly from a retailer’s website

In addition to these shopper improvements, Google also added new onboarding options in the Merchant Center that will make it easier for merchants to navigate through the UCP. While some merchants already have access to this new onboarding experience, others may have to wait a bit. But don’t worry. Google says that the new experience will be rolled out to everyone in the US within the next few months.

Weekly Homework:

• Consider whether you want to fight against the 68% of small businesses that are leaning heavily into social media marketing and paid ads, or pivot your marketing strategy to capitalize on the opportunities they leave in other avenues.
• Keep an eye on your organic traffic and ranking status. If it drops, you could have been affected by Google’s recent updates.
• Are you a Google UCP marketer? Check out the new tools and opportunities that were recently added to the platform.
• Interested in how your content is performing with AI? Check out Bing’s new AI dashboard.
• Explore the new Reddit Ads opportunities to see if any of them could fit into your existing strategy.
• Review the Search Engine Land study about AI-generated content to see how you can use its findings to improve your website’s ranking.
• Try to post some more human-first Reels on Instagram and Facebook. See if adding a face and a voice to the opening of your Reel makes a difference in your retention.

Digital Marketing News 3/14/2026 to 3/20/2026

This week: ChatGPT models show citation gaps, OpenAI builds dedicated Ads Manager, and Reddit ads drive 82% ROAS growth.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Study Reveals Major Differences in Citations Depending on ChatGPT Models

A new analysis revealed that you may get different answers depending on which ChatGPT model you use.

 

According to the data, different models will display different results. For example, brand websites appear in the following citations:

• GPT-5.4 - 56%
• GPT-5.3 - 8%
• GPT-5.2 - 22%

The current default model, GPT-5.3, returned mostly third-party content. This includes blog posts and articles on sites like Forbes, TechRadar, and Tom’s Guide.

The current premium model, GPT-5.4, returned mostly brand homepages, pricing pages, and product pages.

Why We Care: Brands are clamoring to get mentioned in AI responses. Understanding what each model is looking for is the first step to achieving that goal.

2. OpenAI Tests New Ads Manager

As more advertisers use ChatGPT, OpenAI has realized it needs a place for people to organize those ads. Introducing the Ads Manager dashboard.

OpenAI confirmed this week that it is beginning to build the infrastructure for a formal ad management system, suggesting that ChatGPT ads are here to stay.

This system is currently available to early adopters, but we’ll continue to follow this to see when it is released to more brands.

3. Ads Could Be Coming to Google Gemini

Speaking of AI ads, Google seems to have changed its stance of no ads on the app – ever.

While Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told reporters at Davos in January that there were no plans to bring ads to Gemini, SVP Nick Fox said otherwise.

In an interview with WIRED, Fox said that Google is “not ruling out” ads, saying what they’ve learned from ads in AI Mode will “likely carry over” to Gemini.

Google isn’t rushing into adding ads to the AI bot, but they are using AI Mode to guide their testing grounds by:

• Keeping ads separate from organic results
• Clearly labeling ads
• Only showing ads if they’re relevant to the search

While the testing still seems to be a ways out from hitting even the beta market, it’s something that marketers might want to start preparing for, especially if you’re already using ads in AI Mode.

4. Google Held 73.7% of US Search Market Share in Q4 2025

A new report revealed that Google is still going strong, but sites like Amazon, Bing, and YouTube are also receiving search traffic.

When it comes to product searches, the data revealed that:

• Traditional Search Engines: 80.76%
• Commerce Platforms: 9.76%
• Social Networks: 5.37%
• AI Tools: 3.19%
• Other Verticals: 0.91%

While people are still searching on traditional engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, they are also turning to commerce platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay.

What This Means: If you are an ecommerce brand, you need to ensure your product descriptions are on point and up to date. You should use the same keywords in these descriptions that you use in website copy.

5.Reddit Ads: +82% ROAS Increase

In Fospha’s State of Retail Commerce 2026 Report, it was revealed that Reddit ads are working. Retailers are reporting up to 82% ROAS when using the platform in their marketing.

The report revealed that if you want visibility, you should use:

• TikTok
• Meta
• DemandGen
• YouTube

If you want sales, you need to use:

• Amazon
• Web Search
• TikTok Shop

The biggest reveal of all, though? Reddit. When including Amazon sales, Reddit Ads have an impressive ROAS increase of 82%

You can download the entire report here.

6. Meta Switches Ad Transparency

Meta is making a ton of changes to its ad processes. One of those changes is how it marks something as an ad.

Instead of the previous “Sponsored” language being prominently displayed on the ad, now a simple “Ad” marker is displayed.

While this may seem like a pretty insignificant change, some people think it will make more users see these ads as organic updates rather than paid reach. It could help with CTRs, but it’s also something EU regulators are likely to be watching.

7. Instagram Tests Links in Captions

One of the most annoying things about Instagram is that you can’t place links in your captions. That is now changing – for some paid users.

Instagram has long resisted this, since it would make it easier for users to leave the app. But the app is now testing the option with a select group of verified users.

Creators in the test group can share up to 10 links in a post, per month. It’s important to note that this is currently only available to Meta Verified creators, not publishers or brands.

Why We Care: Links in Instagram captions could be a great asset for marketers, as they make it easier for scrollers to click through to your site. However, since it is currently only available to creators, brands will need to partner with a creator to get their link included in a caption. This could lead to an uptick in influencer brand deals in the coming months.

8. Google Discover Core Update: Some Publishers Lost More than 20% of Placements

Recent analysis of Google Discover data revealed that some local publishers lost more than 20% of their national placements during the most recent Core Update on February 5th.

The data revealed that the sites that lost the most traffic included:

• X
• Yahoo
• Fox News
• Go
• CBS 6 Albany
• Syracuse.com
• Economic Times
• NJ.com
• Forbes
• KTLA

The biggest winner? A student publishing site called GEEditing.com, followed by Parade, Ecoticias (a Spanish news site), Axios, Fortune, and Newsweek.

Why We Care: If you noticed a big drop in traffic, specifically national traffic, you’re not alone. This update seems to have shaken up a lot of things, including giving a random student essay editing site a 531% boost in publication mentions.

9. Google Is Testing “Sponsored Shops”

There’s a new way to advertise on Google – Sponsored Shops.

These new blocks will consolidate all sponsored items into one place, rather than displaying single-product listings. It groups products from the same shop into a single block while also displaying ratings, reviews, and other information. It essentially creates a little mini storefront right there in the Google shopping results.

This update is still in the testing phase. Google has not revealed when it will become available to all advertisers.

10. Pinterest Shares Spring 2026 Trends

If you’re wondering how to connect with your audience this spring, Pinterest has some suggestions.

The biggest finding is that searches are revealing a shift away from perfectionism and reinvention. Instead, consumers want brands that improve self-expression, comfort, and positive vibes.

The report highlighted 4 specific trends:

• Curated comfort makeovers
• Spring soups and creative recipe choices
• Tiny sanctuaries and intentional connection
• Spring cleaning and organizing

Basically, consumers want real, authentic, and intentional content that will make them feel good – not perfectionism that will make them feel worse.

Weekly Homework:

• Review the ChatGPT study to get a firm grasp on what each model is looking for when it returns results to searchers, and then align your content to those results.
• Explore whether Reddit ads could fit into your marketing strategy and goals.
• Download Fospha’s State of Retail Commerce 2026 Report to see if any of the findings could impact or improve your current marketing strategy.
• If you want links in your Instagram captions, you need to look into getting a Meta Verified account.
• If you use Google Ads for your ecommerce brand, explore whether the new Sponsored Blocks could benefit your business.
• Monitor your organic traffic. If you see a large dip, it could be due to Google’s February Discover Core Update.
• Download the Pinterest report to get insights on what spring consumers are searching for.

Digital Marketing News 3/7/2026 to 3/13/2026

This week: AI assistants dominate global search, Google Maps launches AI concierge, and YouTube becomes largest media platform.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. AI Assistants Make Up 56% of Global Search Volume

A new study from Graphite.io revealed that AI assistants, including ChatGPT and Gemini, now account for up to 56% of global search volume and 34% of all U.S. search volume.

The most popular platforms include:

• ChatGPT
• Gemini
• Perplexity
• Grok
• Claude

Some of the most important findings include:

• AI platforms generate 45 billion monthly sessions worldwide.
• In the U.S., AI accounts for 5.4 billion monthly sessions.
• 83% of global AI usage occurs inside mobile apps (75% in the U.S.).
• ChatGPT dominates AI usage, representing 89% of global AI sessions.
• When isolating search-like prompts (“asking”), AI usage equals 28% of search worldwide and 17% in the U.S.

Why We Care: We’ve been saying it for a while now, but let these numbers show: you cannot avoid AI search when planning your SEO strategy.

2. Study: Retail and Grocery Brands Make Up 44% of ChatGPT Ads

We shared last week that ChatGPT ads are taking off. Now, we have some data on who is cashing in.

According to a recent SensorTower study, retail and grocery ads account for 44% of ChatGPT ads. Other industries spotted on the site include:

• Media & Education: 12.6%
• Travel & Entertainment: 10.4%
• Software & Tech: 11.9%
• Delivery: 9.1%

These numbers are pretty similar to the types of businesses popular on Google.

Some of the 100+ brands spotted using ChatGPT ads include:

• Retail & Grocery: Best Buy, Target, Chewy, Wayfair, and Ulta Beauty
• Travel & Entertainment: Expedia, Marriot, and Airbnb
• Software & Tech: Canva, Hubspot, Zoom, and Asana
• Media & Education: Netflix, Audible, Coursera, and Spotify
• Delivery: UberEats, HelloFresh, and Factor

While ChatGPT ads are still pretty much in their infancy, it’ll be interesting to follow along and see which brands continue to find success here, and which brands jump ship.

3. Meet Google Maps’s New AI-Powered "Ask Maps"

Google is officially turning its navigation app into a high-level concierge. By injecting Gemini AI into the platform, Google Maps is moving away from being a digital directory and becoming a conversational partner.

The new “Ask Maps” feature allows you to ditch the manual filters and simply ask complex, human questions, like “Is there a public tennis court with lights on that I can play at tonight?”

It analyzes data from over 300 million places and 500 million contributors to give you personalized, conversational answers that factor in your past preferences, like a fondness for vegan food or specific neighborhoods.

Action Item: Since Ask Maps pulls from 300 million places and user reviews to answer conversational queries, local businesses must ensure their Google Business Profile and reviews highlight specific "vibe" keywords (e.g., cozy, quiet, good for groups) to show up in AI-generated itineraries.

4. Google Search Console Launches Branded Queries Filter for Easier Traffic Segmentation

Google Search Console now lets you separate branded and non-branded search traffic natively in the Performance report.

Previously, SEOs and site owners had to manually build complex regex strings or keyword lists to separate people who already knew their name from those who discovered them via general topics. Now, Google uses an internal AI-assisted system to automatically categorize these queries.

The tool is available to all "eligible" sites (those with enough data volume) across Web, Image, Video, and News searches. It allows you to see specific metrics like impressions and CTR for each group and even includes a new visual card in the Search Console Insights report to compare brand recognition against brand discovery.

Key Takeaway: You can now easily see how much traffic comes from people already familiar with your brand versus those discovering your site for the first time.

5. Google Ads Updates Asset Optimization Panel for Demand Gen

Google has just overhauled the Asset Optimization section for Demand Gen campaigns, stripping away the manual clutter and replacing it with a sleek, AI-powered control center.

Think of it as a "command toggle" for your creative assets. Instead of manually cropping videos or hunting for the perfect landing page image, advertisers can now use a centralized panel to let Google’s AI do the heavy lifting.

The update focuses on three big wins:

• Auto-generated shorter videos: AI trims existing video assets into shorter cuts to qualify for additional placements.
• Automatic video resizing: Videos are adapted across multiple aspect ratios to maximize inventory coverage.
• Landing page image pulls: Images are sourced directly from an advertiser’s landing page to generate additional creative variations.

This shift signals a new era for Google Ads: your job is to provide the high-quality raw materials, and Google’s AI handles the distribution and formatting to ensure you're hitting every possible corner of the ad network without the extra production hours.

Action Item: Head into your Demand Gen Asset Optimization panel to enable "Video Resizing" and "Landing Page Image Pulls". These are high-impact, low-effort wins that expand your reach without requiring a single minute of extra creative production.

6. US Users Spend 11.4 Billion Minutes a Day on YouTube

YouTube is now officially the world's largest media platform. According to an eMarketer article, the video platform has officially claimed the top spot, surpassing Netflix, Facebook, and Instagram.

According to the report, US viewers spend:

• 11.4 billion minutes a day on YouTube
• 10 billion minutes a day on Netflix
• 5.4 billion minutes a day on Facebook
• 4.7 billion minutes a day on Instagram

The report also reviewed that YouTube’s ad revenues were more than $40 billion in 2025, which is significantly more than the $37.8 billion in revenue earned by NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Disney – combined.

Why We Care: Is YouTube the missing piece to your content marketing puzzle? With numbers like these, you might want to consider adding the channel to your toolbox.

7. Online Ads Expected to Bypass Traditional Media Ad Spend by 2028

A new report from eMarketer revealed that traditional media will continue to trend downward, even being surpassed by online advertising by 2028.

The forecast revealed that Google, Meta, and Amazon will continue to trend upward, with more brands turning their attention to online platforms. By that ad spend money has to come from somewhere, and it appears that companies will continue to divert funding previously used for traditional advertising away from those outlets and repurpose it with online advertising.

8. 8 out of 10 PMax Advertisers Are Also Running CTV Ads

Speaking of CTV and non-traditional marketing, a new study by Smarter Ecommerce revealed that 8 out of 10 PMax Advertisers are now running CTV ads.

When CTV (connected TV) Ads first appeared on the market, they required a specialist buy. This made them incredibly difficult and complex to access, leaving many advertisers in the dark.

Now, PMax advertisers can run CTV ads straight through their Google Ads account – improving accessibility, impressions, and reach.

This is a significant jump, considering that in January 2023, just over 20% of all PMax advertisers were running CTV ads. Thanks to the approved accessibility, now 80% are.

Action Item: If you are running PMax Ads and want to get into the CTV game, just go to your Google Merchant Center feed to see if your campaigns are eligible for CTV or even shoppable CTV formats. If they are, run a test. If they aren’t, tweak your creative so that they will. Advertisers who have specifically used purpose-built video assets designed for TV screens are outperforming those using auto-generated formats.

9. Medium Engagement Rates Down for Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads

If you’ve noticed a dip in your engagement last year, you’re not alone. According to a Buffer report, engagement rates on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads were down in 2025.

In Buffer’s State of Social Media report, the platform revealed trends including:

• X/Twitter: +44% overall from 2.0% to 2.8%
• Pinterest: +23% overall from 3.2% to 3.9%
• Facebook: +11% overall from 5.0% to 5.6%
• TikTok: +3% overall from 4.4% to 4.5%
• LinkedIn: -5% overall from 6.4% to 6.1%
• Threads: -18% overall from 4.4% to 3.6%
• Instagram: -26% overall from 7.3% to 5.4%

The biggest way to increase your engagement? Reply back. On Threads alone, posts where the creator has replied to comments see a 42% increase in engagement overall.

Why We Care: Obviously, as social media marketers, we want to make the most of our strategies, and that includes posting where we get engagement. While it will vary across businesses and industries, it’s important to note that engagement is technically down on LinkedIn, Threads, and Instagram, but all three platforms still have higher engagement rates than X/Twitter or Pinterest.

10. Meta Ad Prices Increase in 6 Countries

Speaking of Meta Ads, the company has increased its prices in 6 countries, including Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

The news was delivered via pop-up with the Ads Manager, and some advertisers have shared it on multiple social media platforms.

Meta explained the increase by saying, “When your ad is delivered to an audience in a jurisdiction with location-specific fees, such as a digital service tax (DST), a location fee will be added to your bill. This fee is separate from your campaign budget and will appear as a distinct line item on your invoice or transaction statement.”

The increase varies by country, but advertisers can expect to see the following impacts:

• Austria: 5%
• France: 3%
• Italy: 3%
• Spain: 3%
• Turkey: 5%
• United Kingdom: 2%

If you are trying to reach audiences in these countries, be sure to factor in this new increase when determining your PPC budget.

11. Meta Expands Social Media Empire with Purchase of Moltbook

Social media giant Meta has made another platform purchase. This time, they’ve acquired Moltbook, a new social network for AI bots.

While humans can read through the discussion, the content on Moltbook is completely generated by AI bots interacting with other AI bots.

In a confirmation to TechCrunch, Meta said, “The Moltbook team joining MSL opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses. Their approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory is a novel step in a rapidly developing space, and we look forward to working together to bring innovative, secure agentic experiences to everyone.”

Why We Care: With Meta now owning this platform, it could potentially be another place to run Meta Ads in the future.

12. Over 25% of Marketers Are Unhappy with Influencer Pay Agreements

According to new data from the Association of National Advertisers, the US influencer economy is expected to reach almost $44 billion by the end of 2026. With more money comes more calls for pay transparency.

The study revealed that:

• 48% of marketers are only somewhat satisfied with influencer pay agreements
• 10% are not satisfied at all
• 52% take a mixed approach when managing influencer relationships, relying on both in-house and external partnerships
• 16% strictly handle influencer relationships in-house
• 55% said they use a project-based payment model
• 45% use a retainer-based payment model
• 25% tie influencer payment to key performance indicators

Given the frustration with the lack of transparency and satisfaction, 55% of respondents said they are looking to change their influencer compensation strategy within the next year. Only 13% said that they won’t even look into a different model.

Why We Care: Influencer marketing is a major source of income and reach for many brands. Any shake-up, especially in pay transparency and process, will most definitely affect how brands across industries work with influencers and content creators in the near future.

13. 14% of US Workers Are Experiencing “Brain Fry” from AI Overuse

Is AI increasing mental fatigue? According to new research published in Search Engine Journal, it might be.

The research, conducted by the Harvard Business Review, revealed that 14% of US workers say that they are experiencing “brain fry” from AI use. This includes “mental fatigue that results from excessive use of, interaction with, and/or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive ability.”

The most affected group? Marketers.

One participant was quoted as saying, “I had one tool helping me weigh technical decisions, another spitting out drafts and summaries, and I kept bouncing between them, double-checking every little thing. But instead of moving faster, my brain just started to feel cluttered. Not physically tired, just… crowded. It was like I had a dozen browser tabs open in my head, all fighting for attention. I caught myself rereading the same stuff, second-guessing way more than usual, and getting weirdly impatient. My thinking wasn’t broken, just noisy—like mental static. What finally snapped me out of it was realizing I was working harder to manage the tools than to actually solve the problem.”

Regardless of where you stand on the AI debate, the study’s findings are interesting and worth paying attention to. How much AI is too much?

Weekly Homework:

• Explore adding a YouTube channel to your content marketing strategy or improving your existing channel.
• Log in to your Google Ads Merchant Center to see if you are eligible for CTV ads. This could expand your reach and introduce you to new audiences.
• Check your Meta Ads account to see if you are subject to the new fees and rates.
• Audit your influencer marketing pay process to make it more transparent and ethical.
• Consider whether you’re relying too much on AI, or if you’re a victim of “brain fry.” If you are, brainstorm ways to become less dependent on AI tools.
• Explore whether or not you want to add ChatGPT Ads to your strategy, specifically if you fall into one of the top 5 industries using them right now.
• Audit your SEO strategy to ensure that you’re also optimizing for AI bots.

Digital Marketing News 3/1/2026 to 3/6/2026

This week: TikTok dominates search behavior, ChatGPT carousels favor Google Shopping, WordPress vulnerabilities threaten sites.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Nearly 1 in 2 Consumers Use TikTok as a Search Engine

New data reveals that TikTok is still holding its own as a Google alternative.

The Adobe study revealed that nearly 1 in 2 consumers (49%) use TikTok as a search engine. This is true across all demographics, including:

• 12% of Baby Boomers
• 40% of Gen X
• 55% of Millennials
• 65% of Gen Z

Other interesting data revealed that:

• 1 in 10 respondents rely on TikTok over Google as a search engine
• 14% said they were more likely to rely on ChatGPT than Google
• 38% of business owners use TikTok influencers for sales or promotions
• 38% of businesses plan to increase investment in TikTok affiliate marketing over the next year

If you want to learn more about TikTok and how brands are using it to expand their reach, read the entire Adobe report here.

2. ChatGPT’s Product Carousels Are Almost Entirely Powered by Google Shopping

A new study reveals that ChatGPT’s product carousels are overwhelmingly sourced from Google Shopping. Analyzing over 43,000 carousel products across 10 industry verticals, researchers found that more than 83% of carousel items appear in Google’s top 40 organic shopping results, while Bing accounts for just 11%, with almost no products unique to its index.

The study shows that ChatGPT favors higher-ranked Google products, with 60% of matches coming from the top 10 results and nearly 84% from the top 20. Shopping queries used to populate carousels are shorter and fewer than normal search queries, emphasizing that AI is pulling structured product listings rather than context-heavy web pages.

Why this matters: For brands and retailers, ranking well on Google Shopping is more important than ever. Products that appear near the top are far more likely to be featured in ChatGPT carousels, boosting visibility and potential traffic. Beyond rankings, overall product sentiment and online presence may also influence AI selection, making a holistic digital strategy essential.

3. TikTok Won’t Commit to End-to-End Encryption of Messages

Some users have been asking TikTok for end-to-end encryption of its messages, but the short-form video platform said no.

Users say that it will make the app safer, but TikTok said that its messages will remain protected with standard encryption and only authorized employees can access direct messages.

End-to-end encryption has been the default technology used for apps like Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Message, Apple’s Messages, and Google Messages.

4. TikTok Experiences Second Outage Since Oracle Sale

There’s a lot of TikTok news this week! The US-arm of the social app experienced its second outage in the short time since Oracle took over this week.

While Oracle has not yet identified the cause of the outage, it left users feeling frustrated and annoyed, especially since this is the second time Oracle has contributed to a major TikTok outage in just a few months.

5. Google AI Overviews Move Beyond the First Page

It was previously thought that Google only pulled information for its AI Overviews from the first page of the SERP. New data has been released that shows that may not be true.

A recent Ahrefs analysis revealed that:

• 37.10% rank in the Top 10
• 26.2% rank in spots 11-100
• 36.70% don’t rank in the top 100
• 18% of non-ranking citations come from YouTube

What This Means: If you’ve been stressing out about ranking on page 1 with the end goal of ending up in an AIO, you might not need to. It seems that Google is considering a range of signals when creating the blurbs, and a single top-10 position appears to be the weakest.

6. New Google Patent Causes Confusion About AI-Generated Landing Pages

A new Google patent is causing a bit of an uproar in the digital community, with some people worried it will replace sites with landing pages.

This new patent describes a system that can generate a search results page tailored to each individual user, specifically for advertising purposes.

Some experts have been concerned that this means Google will create an entirely new landing page based on information Google finds on its SERPs. With that information, it could create an “updated search result page with a navigation link leading to this custom AI-generated page rather than the standard URL.”

However, a careful review of the patent shows that this is not true. While it’s true that the patent is about advertising, it goes on to explain that:

• “In some instances, the navigation link can be included in a sponsored content item.
• In some instances, the landing page score can be determined based on a conversion rate associated with the first landing page.
• In some instances, the AI-generated page can include a call-to-action button to a product page…”
• In some instances, the AI-generated page can include a product feed that provides an overview of a product…
• In some instances, the AI-generated page can include a sitelink to a product detail page.”

Why We Care: While we still aren’t exactly sure how (and if) Google will use this new technology it's working on, you can rest assured that Google isn’t going to create new AI-generated landing pages for your content if it feels the one you created isn’t good enough.

7. Google Ads API: Customer Match Uploads Ending for Inactive Tokens

Starting April 1, 2026, Google will block inactive developer tokens from uploading Customer Match data via the Google Ads API. If your token hasn’t been used for Customer Match uploads in the last 180 days, any attempt through the Ads API will fail.

Google recommends moving these workflows to the Data Manager API, a more secure, modern solution that offers features like confidential matching and enhanced encryption. Other Ads API functions, campaign management, reporting, and other tasks, will continue as usual.

Why it matters: Brands and agencies relying on Customer Match need to audit their developer tokens and migrate active workflows to the Data Manager API. Failing to do so will result in errors and failed uploads after the April 1 cutoff.

8. WordPress Faces a Number of Critical Vulnerabilities

If you’re a WordPress user, you'd better check on your site. Multiple critical vulnerabilities were announced this week, including:

• User Registration & Membership plugin: Installed on over 60,000 websites, this 9.8/10 vulnerability allows attackers to create administrator-level accounts and take over entire websites.
• Page Builder by SiteOrigin: Used on more than 500,000 websites, this 8.8/10 vulnerability requires the attacker to have Contributor-level access or higher, but once inside, they can upload files to the server.
• LatePoint - Calendar Booking: This 8.8/10 vulnerability makes it possible for attackers to gain elevated privileges by linking a customer to an arbitrary user ID and then resetting that user’s password.

How to Protect Your Site: Make sure all of your plug-ins are updated to the newest versions to help block out attacks.

9. Pinterest Releases Best Practices for Shopping Templates

Looking to increase your reach on Pinterest? Check out the platform’s new best practices.

The new guidance from Pinterest suggests:

• Putting templates at the center of your lower-funnel strategy
• Design for ideas, not just inventory
• Design scalable systems that allow for branding and offer updates
• Use Smartly to create pins people can’t resist

If you’ve been thinking of exploring Pinterest, this new release is a good place to start.

10. Google Updates Best Practices, Provides Clearer Guidance for Image SEO and Google Discover

Google updated its best practices for both image SEO and Google Discover this week.

The new documentation on Image SEO shares that marketers should:

• Choose an image that’s relevant and representative of the page.
• Avoid using a generic image (for example, your site logo) or an image with text in the schema.org markup or og:image meta tag.
• Avoid using an image with an extreme aspect ratio (such as images that are too narrow or overly wide).
• Use a high resolution, if possible.

The documentation for Google Discover image selection shared that “Google tries to automatically crop the image for use in Discover. If you choose to crop your images yourself, be sure your images are well-cropped and positioned for landscape usage, and avoid automatically applying an aspect ratio. For example, if you crop a vertical image into 16×9 aspect ratio, be sure the important details are included in the cropped version that you specify in the og:image meta tag).”

Be sure to catch up on the latest updates to Image SEO and Google Discover Image selection to keep your work aligned with the recommendations.

11. Google Releases Universal Commerce Protocol Help Page

In addition to updating various best-practice documents, Google also released new guidance on its Universal Commerce Protocol.

The documentation explains how UCP and UCP-powered checkouts enable a native Buy button that moves the transaction to Google’s services, even when the actual merchant remains the seller of record.

Why We Care: With formal documentation now available to the public, it’s clear that UCP is moving beyond a concept and becoming a core part of Google’s commerce strategy. This is important for all ecommerce sellers who want to reach new audiences on Google.

12. Google Says Frequent Crawling Is a Good Sign for Your Site

Google has published a new help document on how its crawlers work, aimed at educating site owners about the basics of web crawling. One key takeaway? Frequent crawling is a positive signal.

According to Google, if your site is crawled often, it usually means your content is fresh, relevant, and in demand. Ecommerce sites are a prime example, Google crawls them frequently to keep prices, promotions, and inventory status up to date in search results.

The document also covers other important points: how Google crawlers operate, respect site settings, repeat crawls to capture updates, and optimize crawling automatically as pages grow more complex.

Why it matters: Crawling is the foundation of SEO. Understanding how and why Google crawls your site can help you improve visibility and ensure your content shows up when users are searching. Frequent crawls are a sign that Google sees value in your site, so focus on keeping content fresh, structured, and crawl-friendly.

13. Consumers Spent 108 Billion Hours on Social Media in 2025

If you want to find your audience, chances are they’re on social media. A new study from eMarketer revealed that people worldwide spent 108 billion hours on social media apps last year.

The apps that saw the most usage included:

• Social media - 108 billion hours
• GenAI/AI Assistants - 30.3 billion hours
• Business and productivity - 11.7 billion hours
• Short dramas - 5.8 billion hours
• Browsers - 5.5 billion hours

While the time spent on AI assistant apps increased 425% worldwide since last year, social media is still king.

Weekly Homework:

• Read through the Adobe TikTok report to get inspiration on how to use TikTok to expand your brand’s reach.
• If you have a WordPress site, make sure all of your plug-ins are updated to the latest possible version so you aren’t vulnerable to hacker attacks.
• Read through Google’s updated Best Practices for image search and Google Discover to ensure that your images are up-to-date and aligned with Google’s recommendations.
• Explore Pinterest’s newest best practices to see how you can improve the ROI of your Pins and Pinterest Ads.

Digital Marketing News 2/21/2026 to 2/28/2026

This week: OpenAI tests ChatGPT ads rollout, Google unveils Nano Banana 2, and TikTok dominates social growth metrics.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. ChatGPT Ads Are Here

We’ve been talking about OpenAI adding ads to ChatGPT for a while now, and they’re finally here!

The ads feature a very prominent brand favicon and are clearly labeled as “sponsored” content, but it looks a little different than what OpenAI had said in the past.

Why We Care: Even if OpenAI decides that they don’t love the idea of offering ads and takes this opportunity back, they’ve opened Pandora’s Box. For marketers, that means considering yet another medium to add to their AI search strategies.

2. OpenAI Charges Premium Rates for Ad Space

Speaking of ChatGPT Ads, if you want to get a space, you’re going to have to pay for it.

OpenAI started rolling out ads to U.S.-based users, and reports are saying that they’re charging rates as high as $60 CPM, with a minimum buy-in of $200,000. If you don’t want to go directly through OpenAI, partners like Shopify are also offering advertisers the opportunity to test out the platform through Shop Campaigns.

While OpenAI’s COO Brad Lightcap says that adding ads to the platform will be “an interative process,” it’ll be interesting to see how the experience evolves the more brands –and consumers – are exposed to it.

3. Google Drops Nano Banana 2

Google just launched Nano Banana 2, a new AI image model that mixes Pro-level quality with super fast speed. It builds on earlier versions from Google DeepMind. You can now create high-quality, realistic images in seconds, without sacrificing detail or accuracy.

Key upgrades include:

• Smarter images: Uses real-world knowledge + live web data
• Better text in images: Clear writing + translation inside visuals
• Consistent characters: Keep the same look across scenes
• More control: Follows your exact instructions closely
• 4K-ready visuals: Perfect for ads, social, or websites

Bottom line: AI visuals are no longer “nice to have”. They’re becoming a core marketing tool.

4. Google Ads Support Issues New Requirements

If you want to contact Google Ads, you’re going to have to authorize support-led account changes before they can help you.

Advertisers are noting a new authorization button that gives a Google Ads specialist the ability to make changes to the account. The fine print? Google does not guarantee any results, and advertisers must be aware that any changes are made at their own risk – even if someone acting on behalf of Google is making the changes.

Why We Care: It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is important to note that you’ll be handing over control of your account while still keeping full accountability for what happens next.

5. No Sitemap Necessary? Google Says Maybe Not

We’ve been told for a long time that a valid sitemap is important for SEO, but now Google says that might not always be the case.

On a recent Reddit thread, a poster explained that “I’m encountering very tricky issue with sitemap submission immediately resulted `Couldn’t fetch` status and `Sitemap could not be read` error in the detail view. But i have tried everything I can to ensure the sitemap is accessible and also in server logs, can confirm that GoogleBot traffic successfully retrieved sitemap with 200 success code and it is a validated sitemap with URL – loc and lastmod tags.

…The configuration was initially setup and sitemap submitted in Dec 2025 and for many months, there’s no updates to sitemap crawl status – multiple submissions throughout the time all result the same immediate failure. Small # of pages were submitted manually and all were successfully crawled, but none of the rest URLs listed in sitemap.xml were crawled.”

Google’s John Mueller responded and said, “One part of sitemaps is that Google has to be keen on indexing more content from the site. If Google’s not convinced that there’s new & important content to index, it won’t use the sitemap.”

Interesting insight into the importance of a sitemap, especially if you aren’t producing content that Google finds important.

6. Brands Report Over 200% Increase in Followers on TikTok

A new study from Emplifi finds that brands are growing faster on TikTok than on any other platform.

Emplifi’s 2026 Social Media Benchmarks report showed that:

• The average median followers on TikTok rose from a little under 20,000 to 65,000
• Median followers on Facebook, X, and YouTube remained relatively the same
• Median followers on Instagram and LinkedIn grew slightly

TikTok didn’t just see an explosion in median follower count. It also took over for median interaction and engagement, as well as organic reach.

You can find out more about what Emplifi discovered, including which types of posts performed the best, by downloading the entire report here.

7. Meta: Meet Graph API v25.0 and Marketing API v25.0

Meta announced some big changes and updates to its Graph API this week.

In the announcement, Meta shared that “[b]y the end of June 2026, we plan to introduce Page Viewer Metric in the Graph API. Viewers metric is intended to replace the legacy reach metric and provide a consistent cross-platform measurement (Facebook and Instagram) of how many people saw a piece of content.”

There are additional technical changes, as well, making it incredibly important that Meta marketers who use third-party apps and tools make sure that they are using the latest versions of Meta’s AI tools, especially when using Advantage+.

8. Pinterest Says “Screen Free Activities” Search is Up Over 200%

If your brand is in the parenting space, you might be interested in these recent findings published in Pinterest’s first-ever Parenting Trend Report.

In addition to searching for “screen free activities” and “family tradition ideas,” parents are also searching for:

• Educational activities +280%
• Outdoor learning +65%
• Family Trip Vision Board +545%
• Life Skills Activities for Kids +100%

In addition to looking for activities and opportunities, 64% of parents say they use Pinterest monthly to research products before making a purchase.

9. 40% of US Consumers Say They’re Looking for a Deal

If your sales have been slow, you’re not alone! A new article from Marketing Dive found that nearly 40% of U.S. consumers say they’re only buying things on sale, using coupons or discount codes, or are cooking at home.

Although December retail sales rose by more than 4% when compared to the same period last year, major economists are saying to expect the 2026 consumer to be “functional but fragile.”

It’s a common belief that this is due to the K-shaped economy, but other global issues also play a role.

Why We Care: If you’re going to stand out in a shaky economy, you need to make it count for your consumers. If sales are slow, consider offering coupons or discount codes to encourage consumers to return to you.

10. 67% of Consumers Say Brands Value New Customers More than Existing Ones

Speaking of inspiring consumers to come back to you, a new survey by GetResponse revealed that two-thirds of loyal customers don’t think they matter to brands as much as new consumers.

While loyalty programs are great, the consumers surveyed said that they get most frustrated by:

• How long it takes to earn rewards to redeem
• Points expiring too quickly
• Generic offers that aren’t customized to their needs
• Too many different promos

The report revealed a lot of interesting information, so if boosting your loyalty program is on your 2026 to-do list, download it and see how you can use this information to improve your program and keep your customers coming back for more.

11. Apple Rolls Out Age Verification Tools

In an effort to stay ahead of global child safety laws, tech giant Apple has rolled out a new suite of age-verification tools.

These new tools will determine the user’s age range without accessing important personal information, such as the date of birth. From there, they will block certain sites and downloads deemed not child-friendly.

The new changes are already live in Brazil, Australia, and Singapore, with additional features being developed to comply with laws in Utah and Louisiana. Safety features being developed in Texas have been put on the back burner while litigation plays out.

Why We Care: If kids and teens are your prime target audience, you’re going to need to make sure your content is kid-friendly enough to not get blocked by these new tools.

Weekly Homework

1. Are you looking to grow quickly on social media? Download Emplifi’s newest social media benchmark report to learn what apps are working best.
2. If you’re using third-party apps for your Meta Ads, make sure they are compatible with the new upgrades to the technical backend.
3. Is your loyalty program failing? Read the new report from GetResponse to get ideas on how to make it more consumer-friendly.
4. Interested in how to reach more people in the parenting space? Download Pinterest’s new parenting report for valuable insights.

Digital Marketing News 2/14/2026 to 2/20/2026

This week: Google Ads re-enable paused keywords, Perplexity AI drops ads for accuracy focus, Apple Podcasts expands into video.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Meta Launches Manus AI – a New Advertising Tool

Have you noticed something new on your Facebook page? Meet Manus AI, a new tool to improve advertising.

Meta believes that this new tool will improve your Meta Ads by:

• Uncovering new insights through research
• Generated reports with in-depth analysis
• Scheduling recurring tasks to save time

The jury is still out on whether this will actually improve Meta Ads, but it’s worth experimenting with. You can access Manus AI in your Meta Ads Manager under the Tools listing.

2. Pinterest Hits 619 Million Monthly Active Users

If you’ve been looking for an additional way to reach your audience, Pinterest might be the platform you’ve been looking for.

According to its latest quarterly earnings report, the site is up to 619 million monthly users, up from 553 million in Q424. This number accounted for year-over-year growth, including:

• 12% overall
• 4% in the US & Canada
• 9% in Europe
• 16% in the rest of the world

Other notable statistics include:

• 14% increase in year over year global revenue to $1,319 million
• 42% increase in global average revenue per user
• 64% increase in global monthly revenue

Why We Care: There’s always a race to find a new and exciting way to reach your audience when typical marketing platforms start to become too convoluted. With rising numbers like these, Pinterest could be your next opportunity.

3. Google Ads Automatically Re-Enabling Paused Keywords

Are you seeing unexpected campaign expenses? It could be because Google Ads automatically re-enabled paused keywords for some advertisers without notice.

Some advertisers reported seeing entries tied to “low activity system bulk changes.” The entry in the log appears as an automated bulk update with a visible Undo option.

This unexpected reactivation could result in unwanted impacts to:

• Campaign delivery
• Budgets
• Ad pacing
• Performance

Why We Care: This could significantly impact your well-strategized Google Ads campaigns. Make sure to check your dashboard to see if you’re affected.

4. Google Shares More Campaign Guidance

There are a lot of strong opinions out there about campaign and ad group consolidation, and Google has finally weighed in.

On a recent episode of Google’s Ad Decoded podcast, Brandon Ervin, Director of Product Management for Search Ads, shared that: “the big shift we’ve seen with the rise of Smart Bidding and AI, the machine in general can do much better than most humans. Consolidation is not necessarily the goal itself. This evolution we’ve gone through allows you to get equal or better performance with a lot less granularity.”

With Google’s algorithms constantly evolving and new tools coming onto the market, Google emphasized that advertisers should continually evaluate whether their current ads structure still supports their goals, or if they should switch it up. Regardless, keep in mind that while you don’t necessarily need to consolidate campaigns, you should try to reduce unnecessary structural complexity.

5. Roku Video Advertising Grew 18% since 2025

According to Roku's recent earnings statement, video advertising revenue grew to $4.15 billion in 2025.

The report also included other interesting stats, such as:

• Streaming hours increase 15% to 145.6 billion
• Roku Channel was the #2 app for engagement in the US, second to YouTube

It also talked about how Jennifer Aniston’s haircare brand, LolaVie, selected Roku as its first CTV partner. That campaign contributed to a 40% lift in sales and a 53% YoY increase in new customers.

Why We Care: CTV is a growing advertising medium, and depending on your brand’s goals, it may be worth exploring its opportunities in 2026.

6. Perplexity Abandons Advertising Testing

ChatGPT may be jumping into the ads game, but Perplexity is leaving. The AI platform announced this week that it is abandoning its current ad testing program.

Testing began in 2004, but Perplexity has since discontinued the test. One executive said, “A user needs to believe this is the best possible answer,” and having ads appear could make them question the platform’s integrity.

The platform will continue rolling out shopping features, but it won’t take a cut of sales. Another executive was quoted as saying, “We are in the accuracy business, and the business is giving the truth, the right answers.” Instead of generating revenue from ads and sales, the platform earns profits from subscriptions priced from free to $200 per month.

Although OpenAI is testing ads in ChatGPT and Google runs ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews within Search, Perplexity isn’t the only platform to swear off ads. Anthropic has said that Claude will remain ad-free.

7. YouTube Ads Auto Captions to Muted Videos

A lot of video creators add captions to their videos to improve accessibility, but if you don’t, YouTube will now do it for you.

In a recent video, the video platform announced that a new playback function will automatically switch on captions whenever a user mutes their device, saying that “When the user unmutes their device, captions are turned off. This is not currently available for Shorts. The setting is turned on by default for all users. However, you can turn it off in the caption settings.”

While this is great news for accessibility, it’s also good news across the board, as many people watch videos without sound. The auto-captions will make it easier for viewers to follow the content without the creator having to add them to the video manually.

In the same announcement, YouTube also unveiled a new profile animation feature, new options and features for paying subscribers, and improved AI personalization tools.

8. TikTok Joins European Advertising Standards Alliance

If you’re using TikTok to reach European audiences, listen up! TikTok has officially signed the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA).

The alliance provides guidance to advertisers on how to be “legal, decent, and truthful” with their advertisement campaigns. EASA also states that “member ads should be ‘prepared with a sense of social responsibility and created with due respect to the rules of fair competition.’”

In a press release announcing the signing, TikTok stated, “Joining as a Full Member, TikTok will support 28 advertising self-regulatory organizations across Europe, formalizing its contribution to advancing industry-wide standards globally.”

While it’s big news that will help keep TikTok in Europe without having to sell the company as it did here in the US, it’s also important for advertisers to ensure they follow EASA guidance if they want to advertise on TikTok in Europe.

9. Changes Are Coming to Google’s AI Overviews

Google is changing up AI Overviews and AI Mode. In a new release this week, Google announced it will add link pop-ups to AI Overviews and AI Mode when viewed on desktop.

Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, announced this week that the redesigned link experience will be added to AI Overviews and AI Mode on desktop.

As more companies worry about zero-click searches, this could be a way to regain some of the traffic they've lost.

10. New Video Experience is Coming to Apple Podcasts

Apple Podcasts is getting into the short-form video game. The popular audio platform announced that it will launch a new video experience this spring.

Recent research shows that 51% of the U.S. population has watched a video podcast, and 37% consume this type of content monthly. Apple wants to capitalize on this by adding a video component to its popular audio-only platform.

In the announcement, Apple’s senior vice president of Services, Eddy Cue, said, “Twenty years ago, Apple helped take podcasting mainstream by adding podcasts to iTunes, and more than a decade ago, we introduced the dedicated Apple Podcasts app. Today marks a defining milestone in that journey. By bringing a category-leading video experience to Apple Podcasts, we’re putting creators in full control of their content and how they build their businesses, while making it easier than ever for audiences to listen to or watch podcasts.”

While it won’t officially launch until spring, some users will start seeing the beta version on iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, and visionOS 26.4 this week.

Why We Care: If you’re already producing video podcast footage for other platforms, it would make sense to explore the opportunities to reach your audio audience on Apple Podcasts, too.

Weekly Homework

1. If you’re a Meta Ads user, check out the new Manus AI tool to see if it could help streamline your ad experience.
2. As Pinterest continues to grow, it may be worth considering adding the platform to your social media marketing strategy. Check out the options to see if it might be a good fit for your brand.
3. Log in to your Google Ads account to make sure your keywords haven’t been automatically unpaused.
4. Explore the option of adding CTV ads through Roku to your marketing strategy in 2026.
5. If your brand has a podcast, consider adding a video component to take advantage of Apple Podcasts’ upcoming video experience.

Digital Marketing News 2/7/2026 to 2/13/2026

This week: Google rolled out a Discover-focused Core Update, OpenAI officially began testing ads in ChatGPT, and Bing introduced a new AI citation report to track visibility in generative answers.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Google’s Core Update Targets Discover Feed

Google launched its February Discover Core rollout late last week.

Expected to take two weeks to complete, the update addresses user experience by:

• Showing more locally relevant content
• Reducing sensational content and clickbait in Discover
• Showing more in-depth, original, and timely content from websites with expertise
• Showing more content that is personalized based on the users’ creator and source preferences

As with any Core Update, it may cause traffic fluctuations, but they should all shake out eventually. The update is currently being released to English language users in the US and will expand to all countries and languages within the next few months.

2. Google Revises Discover Guidelines

In addition to launching the Discover Core Update, Google also revised its “Get on Discover” documentation. Google Revises Discover Guidelines Alongside Core Update

The update includes ways to increase your likelihood of being featured on the Discover page, including:

• Avoiding clickbait and similar tactics
• Using page titles and headlines to capture the true essence of your content
• Avoiding sensationalism that caters to morbid curiosity, titillation, or outrage
• Providing content that is necessary and timely
• Including compelling, high-quality images within the content
• Providing an overall great page experience for the reader

Why We Care: Any time you can improve your content and get it in front of more people, the better! Following these tips from Google could help you maximize your reach and find new audiences.

3. OpenAI Ad Testing Starts

If you use ChatGPT’s U.S. free or Go subscription tiers, you should start seeing ads soon. OpenAI announced this week that it has started testing sponsored content.

 

Here’s some information you should know:

• Ads will not be shown to users under 18 years of age
• Ads are not eligible to appear near sensitive or regulated topics like health, mental health, or politics
• Not everyone is allowed into the advertiser program
• Chats will remain private and never be shared with advertisers
• Ads will be shown depending on what you’re discussing, ads you’ve previously engaged with, or your past chats or memories

OpenAI is also giving users control over the ads they see inside the program. Users will be able to access their ad history, share interests, and opt in to (or out of!) personalized ads based on past chats and memories.

4. Meta’s Marketing Messages API Ended This Week

If you used Meta’s Marketing Messages API to send follow-up messages, you’ll need to find another way. The social media giant discontinued the ability to send these messages on February 10th.

In the discontinuation announcement, Meta shared that “Marketing messages (also known as recurring notifications) lets businesses send promotional content to opted-in users via Messenger. This feature on Messenger API will go away on 10 February 2026.”

Users will now only be allowed to send one message per subscriber every 48 hours. Access will also be limited to existing partners and businesses. No new integrations will be allowed.

If you’ve been using this tool, click here to catch up on the news, as well as learn what to do next.

5. U.S. TikTok Addresses Privacy Concerns

When the new U.S. TikTok deal was announced a few weeks ago, many users became concerned over the updated privacy settings. The TikTok U.S. has finally addressed these concerns.

In a press release late last week, TikTok U.S. said: “Our U.S. Privacy Policy aligns with data privacy laws, mirroring language used in state laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). These laws require companies to describe broad categories of personal information that could be processed, including when that information is shared voluntarily by you - for example, in the content you post to platforms. When you voluntarily post to TikTok, we process the information you share, and we're required by law to tell you this. TikTok has included this type of language in its privacy policy since 2024, and similar language appears in the privacy policies of other platforms subject to the CCPA.”

To make a long story short, there isn’t much need to be concerned. What TikTok U.S. is doing is consistent with other social media platforms, with no new requirements to allow the app to track you and your location.

6. TikTok U.S. Launches Local Feed

So you don’t have to provide your precise location data, but if you want to, you’ll gain access to TikTok U.S.’s new and improved Local Feed.

Already active in select European markets, including the U.K., France, Italy, and Germany, the new hyper-local feed is designed to help users stay connected to their local community and discover new opportunities.

This feature will be available only to users aged 18 or older and will collect information only when the app is in use. From that data, the feed will be curated to include recommendations for new restaurants, local events, shopping, and more. With 84% of small-business users on TikTok reporting that the platform has already helped them grow their brand, this could be an excellent opportunity.

Why We Care: If you’re a small business looking to boost your local foot traffic, this could be an incredible opportunity for you to expand your reach with new customers.

7. TikTok Launches New Enhanced Shops Promotion Program

A new seller program is coming to TikTok! The short-form video platform announced that the Smart Promotion Program, launched last month, will replace the existing Co-funded Promotion Program.

 

Smart Promotion Program registrants can expect:

• Point rewards to improve conversion and repeat purchasing rates
• Transparent fee structure
• Guaranteed ROI through February 28, 2026
• Enhanced product exposure through pop-up messages and surprise placements
• And more

Those monetizing their TikTok can learn more about this program, including who is eligible and how to enroll here.

8. Amazon Enables Communication Between AI Agents and Amazon Ads API

Amazon is testing a new platform to improve its ad offerings.

This best test integrates Amazon Ads with a range of AI agents to improve campaign integration and streamline ad creation. According to the mega-retailer, the new Amazon Ads MCP Server is built on the Model Content Protocol, an open standard that will allow AI platforms to communicate with external tools.

Paula Despins, Vice President of Ads Measurement at Amazon Ads says that it will “act as an instruction manual for AI agents to turn the complex, multistep operations of advertising workflows into simple actions that can be handled through natural language prompts. For example, if an advertiser is running campaigns in the U.S. and Canada, we have a tool that enables them to quickly expand it to another country with a single prompt.”

Why We Care: If you’re an Amazon Ads user, being able to launch different campaigns in different countries with just a click of a button could really boost your bottom line.

9. Bing Webmaster Tools Adds AI Performance Report

A new performance report has come to Bing’s Webmaster Tools. Launching in beta, this report will help you see where and how often your content is cited in AI-generated answers across the Microsoft ecosystem.

The new report will detail where and how often your content appeared across Microsoft Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries, and select partner integrations. The tool will show you:

• Which URLs were cited
• Which queries triggered those citations
• How citation activity changed over time

While these metrics only show citation frequency, Microsoft says it's working on expanding the tool to show ranking, prominence, and how a page contributed to a specific answer. Armed with this knowledge, content creators can be more specific in their content to provide the exact answers AI bots and human users are seeking.

10. Reddit to Expand AI Search Capabilities

Reddit announced strong fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 revenue, but the improvements appear to be continuing for the forum website.

With a record-breaking 471 million weekly active users, Reddit is looking to expand its hold on the search ecosystem with new AI-powered search tools.

In addition to its current tools and ad offerings, Reddit is working to integrate AI and new entry points into its search to increase search volume and queries per user. The platform is also working on enhancing its internal and external search displays.

2025 was the year for Reddit Ads. Could 2026 be even better?

Weekly Homework:

• Monitor your Google Analytics to see if your site is impacted by the February Core Update.
• Review the new updates to the Google Discover documents to ensure that your content is aligned with the new rules.
• Decide if advertising on ChatGPT is something your team wants to explore in the future.
• If you have been using Meta’s Recurring Marketing Messages API, make sure you have plans to support your marketing efforts without the feature.
• Explore TikTok’s new Local Feed opportunity and the enhanced Shops Promotion Program to see if either of the updates could be an opportunity to expand your brand’s reach.
• Check out your Bing Webmaster Reports to see if your content is gaining traction in the Microsoft AI ecosystem.

Digital Marketing News 1/31/2026 to 2/6/2026

This week: Firefox handed users full control over browser AI, Google cracked down on SEO shortcut listicles, and ChatGPT revealed a high-stakes, invite-only ad rollout.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Want to Block AI Features? Firefox Says Okay

AI usage in internet browsers has been a major topic of conversation, with some consumers fully on board and others highly annoyed. In a recent announcement, Mozilla shared that Firefox will soon let its users block all current and future AI features.

The announcement shared that “AI is changing the web, and people want very different things from it,” the company wrote in a blog post. “We’ve heard from many who want nothing to do with AI. We’ve also heard from others who want AI tools that are genuinely useful. Listening to our community, alongside our ongoing commitment to offer choice, led us to build AI controls.”

This opt-out opportunity will begin on February 24th, when Mozilla releases Firefox 148.

Why We Care: If other browsers follow suit, it could reshape AI search strategies and make traditional SEO strategies more valuable again.

2. SaaS Brands See 30-50% Visibility Drops on “Best Of” Listicles

Are you a big fan of “best of” listicles? Google might not be!

After the December 2025 core update, some well-known SaaS and B2B brands observed a 30-50% drop in organic visibility, particularly in blog, guide, and tutorial subfolders. The most common drops occurred on self-promotional listicles in which the publisher ranked itself first.

While this could change as volatility from the update levels out, it’s important to note that it may also indicate that Google is reevaluating how it treats “best” content.

The best way to get ahead of this? Don’t take SEO shortcuts. Ranking yourself first without any third-party testing or clear evidence of peer or consumer evaluation will fall short.

3. Google Says: 2 Mistakes Cause 75% of Crawling Issues

Every marketer wants to know how to improve Google's crawl of their site. In Google’s 2025 year-end report, Gary Illyes revealed that most crawling issues stem from two specific issues.

Here is what the report found:

• 50% come from faceted navigation, such as sites that create near-infinite URL combinations
• 25% come from action parameters
• 10% come from irrelevant parameters, such as session IDs, UTM tags, and other tracking parameters appended to URLs
• 5% come from problematic plugins or widgets
• 2% come from other “weird stuff,” such as double-encoded URLs and related edge cases

These are all pretty common mistakes, so be sure to check your site to see if you’re making them.

4. LinkedIn Offers Insight on AI Search Visibility

LinkedIn recently did an internal study on what drives visibility in AI-generated search results, and the results may be helpful for you – both on LinkedIn and off.

The results revealed that:

• Non-brand driven-traffic has dropped 60%
• Click-through rates have dropped
• Up to 60% of searches in the US/EU are zero-click

In a response to the results, LinkedIn is telling its users to:

• Focus on accessibility in their content
• Understand that early visibility compounds
• Keep publishing authoritative content to improve visibility
• Lean into cross-functional content
• Remain consistent with their content production
• Stay agile and continue to test and refine content strategies
• Keep a pulse on their industry

As LinkedIn says, “We are moving away from 'search, click, website' thinking toward a new model: Be seen, be mentioned, be considered, be chosen.”

You can read more about the findings and how you can adapt to them here.

5. WordPress Updates Guidelines to Counteract AI

Like many technology companies, WordPress is working to counter AI adoption. This week, it published new AI guidelines intended to encourage responsible use and prevent the internet from becoming AI slop.

While the guideline release goes into more specific detail, the five biggest takeaways include:

1. Produce your own content. AI can help, but it shouldn’t be a contributor.
2. Disclose meaningful AI assistance.
3. All contributions must be compatible with GPLv2-or-later, including AI-assisted output.
4. Non-code assets (docs, screenshots, images, and educational materials) also count.
5. Choose quality over volume.

Basically, it’s what we’ve been saying all along: Use AI as a tool, but not as your total creative process.

You can catch up on all of the nitty-gritty details here

6. ChatGPT Advertisers Asked for $200k Spending Commitments

We reported last week that OpenAI will soon be adding ads to ChatGPT. This week, we know how much that will cost advertisers: $200,000 in early commitments.

This is according to an AdWeek article, which reports that four brands said they were approached to join the tightly controlled beta test for ChatGPT ads and were offered a spot in exchange for future commitments of $200,000.

It’s still too soon to know exactly how ads on ChatGPT will play out, or whether they will become more affordable for brands unwilling to commit much of their marketing budget. But with so many people using ChatGPT, it’s still a good idea to keep your eye on the platform as a future marketing option.

7. TikTok Reaches 90 Million Daily Active Users

Last week, we reported that many US users were leaving TikTok in an apparent protest of the US ownership change. This week, the numbers show that many of those users came back.

​​

Typically, TikTok sees about 92 million daily users. After the announcement that the US deal was closed, it dropped to about 86 million daily users. While downloads of alternative apps like Skylight Social and Upscrolled took off.

In the days after that report, UpScrolled's active users have plummeted, and Skylight Social is also declining. On TikTok, however, metrics are improving, with the app recently reaching 90 million daily active users.

While it might be a good idea to still hold onto your brand’s handles on those alternative apps, it looks like TikTok might weather this storm and continue to be a key tool in the social media marketing toolbox.

8. X Is In Hot Water with French Authorities

X is in the news again – and not necessarily in a good way. French authorities reported that they have raided X's Paris offices as part of a year-long investigation into the social media platform.

According to Europol: “An investigation led by the French authorities is currently underway concerning the online platform X, in relation to the proliferation of illegal content, notably the production of deepfakes, child sexual abuse material, and content contesting crimes against humanity. The investigation is conducted by the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office with the support of the French Gendarmerie’s cybercrime unit (UNCyber) and Europol.”

X issued a statement on their platform saying that the investigation is “politically motivated.”

France isn’t the only government taking a look at X. The U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) also announced a formal investigation into the platform and its processing of data for the Gork AI chatbot on the same day as the Paris raid.

Why We Care: No matter how these situations play out, it’s a good reminder that, as marketers, we need to diversify our marketing efforts. While it’s good to stay current with popular apps, it’s even more important to have a content strategy with multiple touchpoints. This way, if you lose connection with one, you still have many other ways to reach your target audience.

9. The Winter Olympics Are Starting and Brands Are Ready

With the Winter Olympics starting this week, many brands are looking to make the most of this global event.

According to eMarketer:

• 67% of millennials say it's important or very important for brands to get involved with large cultural events like the Olympics or the Super Bowl
• Worldwide media ad spend will reach $1.15 trillion, a 10% increase over last year
• NBCUniversal will cash in the most, with the Olympics and the Super Bowl being held on the same Sunday for the first time in years
• US CTV Ad spend will reach $37.95 billion, a 14.5% increase
• YouTube is expected to see a boost in viewership, too, with 17% of all Summer Olympic watchers engaging with the event on the video platform

Why We Care: A lot of marketers will be looking to make a splash at this year’s Olympics. It could be an inspirational gold mind – or a stark reminder of what not to do.

10. Get Ready for Those Super Bowl Ads

Speaking of an inspirational gold mind, the Super Bowl is also coming up this weekend, and you know what that means: promotional content the internet will be talking about for days!

Everyone from Nerds to Squarespace is looking to make a splash during this year’s big game. If you’re more interested in the promotional content than who wins the Seahawks vs. Patriots showdown, you can follow along with what content is performing well (and which content isn’t!) on Marketing Dive’s Super Bowl 60 Ad Tracker.

Why We Care: No matter your industry, we can learn a lot about our target markets and overall consumer attitudes from how they react to Super Bowl ads. Which ones go viral and which ones flop could give some insight into how to run your own campaigns. And who knows, you might even get some inspiration!

Weekly Homework:

1. Check your site rankings to see if you were negatively affected by Google’s December 2025 Core Update.
2. Watch or listen to Google’s recent podcast to see if your site is making any of the most common crawling errors. If you are, log into the backend of your site and fix them!
3. Read through LinkedIn’s findings on how to boost your visibility in an AI-driven world.
4. Get ready to get inspired (or turned off) by big-name brands during the upcoming Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl.
5. If X is a significant part of your marketing strategy, you might want to monitor its recent UK and France-related issues closely.

Digital Marketing News 1/24/2026 to 1/30/2026

This week: TikTok’s U.S. deal is done, Google search volumes fell nearly 20% year over year, and AI-driven traffic delivered massive gains across holiday shopping.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. It’s Official: The TikTok Deal Is Done

A White House official confirmed this week that the US TikTok is finalized. TikTok’s new US operations will be run by Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, with ByteDance retaining just under 20% of the new organization.

In a statement, TikTok announced that it “will operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurances for U.S. users.”

Since the U.S. takeover, users have been seeing a pop-up with updates to TikTok’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. According to CBS News, the biggest change is that TikTok will now collect precise location data from users.

Why We Care: Although this ends the “will-they-won’t-they” game around the TikTok ban, it raises questions about how sustainable the app will be going forward. Under U.S. ownership, app deletions have increased 150%, with many users saying they aren’t fans of the forced sale. If the app continues to lose users, will it remain a primary marketing tool for brands?

2. 3 Apps Gain Attention After TikTok Deal

With some American users seeking alternatives to TikTok, three apps are benefiting from the exodus.

A sudden uptick in downloads hit these three apps this week:

• Upscrolled - an Instagram-style social platform
• Skylight - an open source TikTok alternative
• Yope - a visual messaging app popular with Australian teens

While it’s still way too early to tell if the US deal will affect TikTok’s sustainability, if you think your audience might be jumping ship, it might be a good idea to at least grab your brand’s handle on the up-and-coming apps.

3. Google Searches Fell Nearly 20% YOY

A new report from Search Engine Land says that U.S. Google searches are down almost 20% from this time last year.

While Google still accounts for a strong majority of search results, the report indicates a change may be coming. With fewer searches also comes fewer opportunities for clicks, ads, and traffic.

Search Engine Land maintains that this drop could be due to AI-powered answers and instant results because:

• Users are getting what they need with fewer searches and follow-ups
• Zero-click searches remain high
• Repeat searches and clicks within the Google ecosystem show minor changes

The study also showed that queries are getting longer, with most queries totalling between six and nine words. Additionally, very long searches of 15 words or more remain rare but are increasingly common. This indicates that users are becoming more comfortable searching for more complex questions.

According to Rand Fiskin, co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, “The big highlight here is the decline in # of Google searches/searcher from 2024–2025. It’s a nearly 20% decline in the US, though only 2–3% in the EU/UK. Other studies have shown that Google is sending less traffic than in years past, especially to the long-tail of the web, and I suspect that AI answers have dramatically altered the way many users engage with Google, answering their questions before they ever need to click on an organic result or perform a second/third/fourth search.”

You can download the full report here.

4. Google is Considering Letting Sites Opt Out of AI Search Features

If you aren’t a fan of generative AI search features, you might soon be able to opt out of letting it explore your website.

In a recent Google blog post, Ron Eden, Principal of Product Management, was quoted as saying: “Building on this framework, and working with the web ecosystem, we're now exploring updates to our controls to let sites specifically opt out of Search generative AI features. Our goal is to protect the helpfulness of Search for people who want information quickly, while also giving websites the right tools to manage their content. We look forward to engaging in the CMA’s process and will continue discussions with website owners and other stakeholders on this topic.”

A survey by Barry Schwarts on X showed that 1 in 3 publishers would opt to block Google’s AI search features.

While no timeline or concrete guidance has been provided, if this happens, publishers will have greater control over where and when their content appears on the web.

5. AI Recommendation Lists Repeat Less Than 1% of the Time

A new study from SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai finds that AI-generated brand and product lists almost never repeat, even with identical prompts.

Key findings:

• Less than 1% of lists repeat exactly
• Rankings jump wildly, but intent survives (top brands appear frequently)
• Smaller markets show more consistency; larger markets are chaotic

Takeaway: Track visibility across multiple runs, not exact rank. AI outputs are random by design. Focus on brand presence, not position.

6. AI Local Visibility Is Up to 30x Harder Than Google

A new SOCi report shows that appearing in AI recommendations is far more difficult than ranking in Google’s local results.

Key findings from 2,751 multi-location brands:

• ChatGPT recommended 1.2% of locations, Gemini 11%, Perplexity 7.4%
• Google’s local 3-pack featured 35.9% of the same locations
• Fewer than half of top Google local performers appeared in AI recommendations

Industry highlights:

• Retail: Only 45% of top local brands carried over to AI
• Restaurants: Visibility clustered among leaders with strong ratings
• Financial services: Brands with poor ratings or incomplete profiles were often invisible

Download the full report here: The 2026 Local Visibility Index

7. Google Adds Data to Demand Gen Campaigns

Google recently announced new updates to its popular Demand Gen campaigns.

Among the updates, new features include:

• Attributed Brand Searches: shows the volume of branded searches your campaign drove on Google/YouTube to help you quantify your impact beyond core conversion goals
• Shoppable CTV: enables viewers to seamlessly browse and purchase products while watching YouTube ads on the big screen
• Travel Feeds: hotel advertisers can now connect their Hotel Center feed with their Demand Gen campaigns to populate dynamic ads

Explore all of the details of these exciting new opportunities here on the Google Ads & Commerce Blog.

8. Pinterest Adds Tool to Improve Media Management

If you’re one of the many brands on Pinterest, you’re going to love this recent announcement.

Thanks to the new Media Planner tool, managing campaigns just got easier. Now marketers can:

• Explore audiences, including high-value audience segments
• Estimate opportunities to see how much key awareness campaign metrics, including impressions, reach, frequency, and CPM, will cost you
• Narrow down cost estimates to specific countries
• Review different model scenarios to determine the right budget and media needed to accomplish your goals

Pinterest has long been a growing platform for brands and businesses. With access to new data and this new tool, it could climb higher on the must-have social media tool chart.

9. X Launches Paid Promotion Tags

Previously, if you were posting a paid promotion on X, you had to write it within the caption. This new feature will remove that requirement.

In a previous version of X’s rules, it stated that “Posts that are part of a Paid Partnership published as an organic Post must include clear and conspicuous language indicating the commercial nature of such content, like ‘Ad’ or ‘Promoted Content.’” Most creators would simply add a #ad hashtag to their captions.

Now, users will be able to click “content disclosure” and toggle on a notification indicating that it’s sponsored content.

This is all part of X’s bigger push to increase app usage, along with increasing creator payouts and offering a cash prize for the best-performing X article of the month.

10. Threads Ads Open to All Regions

If you’re an American Threads user, you might have noticed ads in your feed, but the ads were still pretty limited and not available globally. Meta announced this week that Threads Ads will now be available in all regions.

In the announcement, Meta said: “Beginning next week, we are expanding ads on Threads to users in all markets globally […] For advertisers, ads on Threads are an easy way to extend the reach of their existing Meta campaigns, automatically adding Threads placements to Advantage+ and manual campaigns. The familiar image, video, and carousel ad formats appear natively in the Threads feed, helping brands reach more people in more places across Meta’s family of apps.”

With over 150 million daily active users and 400 million monthly active users, Threads is quickly becoming a popular social media site – and a place where your ideal consumers could be hanging out.

11. The Numbers Are In: AI Changed Holiday Shopping

You might still be recovering from the holiday rush, but don’t let that keep you from exploring these recent sales numbers.

According to Adobe’s “Quarterly AI Traffic Report,” every single industry saw a huge increase in AI-driven traffic, with the biggest increases being in:

• Retail: 693%
• Travel: 539%
• Financial services: 266%
• Tech and software: 120%
• Media and entertainment: 92%

Conversion rates also rose, with AI-driven traffic outperforming non-AI-driven traffic. As with revenue, AI-driven traffic accounted for a 33% increase over non-AI-driven traffic.

The study also explored demographics, finding that states such as Virginia, Washington, New York, California, and Massachusetts are engaging with AI at twice the US average, while engagement in the South and Appalachia remains at the bottom.

Why We Care: If your target audience is using AI to discover products and services, you need to find a way to get your content mentioned on those platforms.

Weekly Homework:

1. If you’re a TikTok user, monitor your metrics carefully to see if the new U.S. deal affects your audience.
2. If you want to look outside of TikTok, claim your brand’s handle on the three most popular TikTok replacement apps.
3. For Demand Gen users, don’t forget to check out the new tools to see if they could help improve your ROI.
4. Download the State of Search report from Datos to see if the numbers are aligning with your brand’s forecast.
5. If you’re a Pinterest user, be sure to check out the new tool to streamline your campaign creation.
6. If word-based advertising is more your thing, check out the new opportunities on X and Threads.

Digital Marketing News 1/17/2026 to 1/23/2026

This week: Ethical concerns around AI agents intensify, new data confirms organic search is far from dead, and ChatGPT officially steps into the advertising arena.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. ChatGPT Starts Testing Ads in the United States

ChatGPT is launching two new changes – one is ads for ChatGPT Free and ChatGPT Go users.

Ads will appear below responses and remain clearly labeled, so as not confuse searchers with actual responses. They will also not be shown to users under 18 and are not eligible to run near sensitive topics, such as:

• Physical health
• Mental health
• Politics

Any conversations about ads will not be shared with advertisers, and user data will not be sold.

The ad test launched alongside the U.S. launch of ChatGPT Go, the low-cost subscription tier at $8 a month. It includes greater access to GPT-5.2, more messages, more uploads, more opportunities to create images, and a longer memory.

Why We Care: With more and more people using ChatGPT, it could become valuable real estate for marketers across industries.

2. Google Gemini Rules Out Ads – For Now

ChatGPT might be the only AI tool with ads, at least for now. Google denied this week that it will be running ads on Gemini any time soon.

Originally mentioned in December, this sentiment was again echoed this week by Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis at the World Economic Forum in Davos. At the same time, he shared that Google would rather focus on creating a more robust and capable assistant than on figuring out how to monetize it.

This comes on the heels of ChatGPT announcing it will begin showing ads on its platform. It’ll be interesting to see if the introduction of ads on ChatGPT influences usage on either app.

Why We Care: If you’ve been waiting for ads to come to AI chatbots, you might want to turn your attention to ChatGPT, instead of Google Gemini.

3. 71% of Marketers Say Ethical and Privacy Standards Need to Be Established for AI Agents

A new study published by eMarketer reveals the desire for higher ethical and privacy standards for AI agents.

When asked about what needs to happen in order to prepare for a future where consumers delegate tasks to AI agents, the study revealed that:

• 71% think that ethical and privacy standards need to be established for AI agents
• 53% says they need to optimize their content for conversational AI
• 53% wants to reimagine the path to purchase when discovery and selection happen via agents instead of direct search

Marketers aren’t the only ones thinking about AI. Consumers are also incorporating AI into their daily lives, with 29% saying they have made a purchase solely based on an AI-generated response.

Why We Care: AI clearly isn’t going anywhere, and as marketers, we need to make the shifts necessary to adapt to new tools and grow with the industry.

4. Organic Traffic Is Only Down 2.5% YOY – Not the 25-60% Some Experts Had Claimed

We can finally put it to rest: SEO is not dead. New numbers show that organic search is only down 2.5% YOY, not the 25-60% some experts had predicted.

A new report from Similarweb revealed:

• Organic SEO traffic: -2.5% YoY
• Search engine traffic overall (2025): +0.4%
• Google traffic (2025): +0.8%
• Organic vs. paid clicks: ~90% organic, ~10% ads
• AI Overview CTR impact: -35% when present
• AI Overview prevalence: ~30% of SERPs

The numbers showed that AI Overviews affected organic traffic, but it didn’t completely take it over as previously predicted. AI Overviews appear in only about 30% of queries, mostly for informational questions.

You can learn more about the Similarweb report here.

5. Google Search Ad Clicks Hit 5 Year High

Google Search spending is up – but so are ad clicks.

In a Q4 2025 report by Tinuiti, numbers showed:

• Spending rose 13% since Q4 2024
• PMax campaigns accounted for 62% of total Google Shopping spend
• Non-shopping inventory made up 39% of PMax spend
• YouTube video accounted for 13% of impressions outside of search
• Text ad clicks hit a 19-quarter high – growing 9% year over year

Google Ads weren’t the only ads that grew. Microsoft actually outperformed Google with a 16% year-over-year increase and 10% click growth.

You can learn more about Q4 2025 benchmarks for digital ads, including Google, Meta, Amazon, and more, by downloading Tinuiti’s report here.

6. TikTok Introduces More AI-Powered Tools for TikTok Shop

This week, TikTok launched new AI-powered tools to help TikTok Shop creators make more money and have greater influence.

Among the editions are:

• AI Fashion Video Maker - a new tool to make producing Shoppable Videos easier than ever
• AI Dubbing - a tool to automatically create scripts based on product details
• Customer Relationship Management tool - designed to help boost sales, increase loyalty, and retention

TikTok Shop has already proven successful for many brands, and the more tools and features they add, the more brands will be able to expand their reach and find success on the short-form video app.

Why We Care: TikTok is one of the fastest-growing apps, especially for ecommerce brands. If you’ve already added it to your marketing strategy, put checking out these tools on your to-do list.

7. TikTok Shares 2026 Marketing Trends

Speaking of TikTok, the social media app has some ideas for how 2026 will go for digital marketers.

The app says that there are 3 main emerging trends that digital marketers should pay attention to:

• Reali-Tea: telling real stories about real people
• Curiosity Detours: taking audiences to unexpected places
• Emotional ROI: tapping into audience emotions

The report explains why it considers these trends to be emerging and what marketers can do to capitalize on them. Learn more about the trends shaping the social media landscape by downloading the full report here.

8. Google Introduces New Budget Allocations for Ad Campaigns

Do you want to make the most out of your ad campaigns? Now you can! This week, Google announced the introduction of campaign total budgets for Search, Performance Max, and Shopping campaigns.

In the press release announcing the move, Google said: “Instead of making daily manual tweaks to keep pace, campaign total budgets optimize your spend, and aim to fully and effectively utilize your budget by your end date. Whether you’re running a 72-hour test or a month-long activation, you can launch with confidence knowing you won’t overspend or miss out on opportunities. Your campaign will stay on track for your budget goals without the need for daily maintenance.”

While this will reduce the time spent managing your account, it could lead to missed opportunities. For some brands, that might be the better choice.

9. More Creator Features Come to Instagram’s Edits

Instagram rolled out its very first update to its Edits app. The new features are designed to make using the app even easier.

The additions include:

• New video effects, including bounce, fisheye, and blackout
• The ability to add multiple takes of audio and video clips to your storyboard
• Adding interactive links as clickable overlays or more creative possibilities
• 10 new ideas shared weekly to inspire your content

Why We Care: If you’ve been using Edits to make your Instagram Reels, these new edits might make editing your brand’s videos even easier and more interactive.

10. Complex Queries Now Use Gemini 3 Pro

Google has been making many changes to its AI Mode lately. First, it announced AI Mode results in November, then added Gemini 3 Flash for AI Mode. Now, Google introduced Gemini 3 Pro to AI Overviews.

Google’s VP of Product, Robby Stein, said:

• Update: AI Overviews now tap into Gemini 3 Pro for complex topics.
• Behind the scenes, Search will intelligently route your toughest Qs to our frontier model (just like we do in AI Mode) while continuing to use faster models for simpler tasks.
• Live in English globally for Google AI Pro & Ultra subs.

Why We Care: This might make Google’s AI Overviews look different, but that’s because Google is improving its Gemini models and rolling those upgrades into Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Weekly Homework:

• Download the Similarweb report on paid ad benchmarks to see where your data measures up.
• Consider whether or not you’d like to be one of the first to test running ads on ChatGPT.
• If TikTok is part of your content marketing strategy, download the 2026 Marketing Trends Report. Explore where you can make tweaks to your strategy to align with upcoming trends.
• With Google Search Ad clicks and spending both up from last year, brainstorm ways that you can improve your paid search strategy.

Digital Marketing News 1/10/2026 to 1/16/2026

This week: Apple taps Google Gemini, Google launches AI-powered checkout, and LinkedIn dominates AI citations.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. 54% of Millennials Use TikTok for Product Research

If you’re trying to reach millennials, TikTok may be the place to do it. In a new study by eMarketer, 54% of millennials use TikTok for product and company research.

The study also found that a large share of consumers aged 13-24 and 45+ use TikTok for product research and discovery.

And it doesn’t stop at research and discovery. Many of those surveyed also reported either purchasing a product or service they heard about on TikTok or recommending the product to a friend or family member.

2. Apple & Google Announce AI Partnership

The race for the most popular AI model just got a little more interesting. This week, Apple announced that Google’s Gemini will power Apple’s Siri and Apple Intelligence.

The multi-year collaboration means that Gemini will be the foundation for all of Apple Intelligence’s next-generation devices. Currently, Apple integrates OpenAI’s ChatGPT into Siri and states that it will not make any further modifications to that agreement.

Why We Care: This is especially important for brands that want to show up in AI citations, especially for local and near me searches. If you want your brand to be featured, it’s more important than ever to get Gemini’s attention.

3. Google Announces Protocol for AI Mode Checkout

New protocols and features are coming to Google, specifically the AI Mode Checkout Protocol and a new Business Agent.

The first is the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). This upgrade establishes a common language for agents and systems to operate together across consumer surfaces, businesses, and payment providers. It was co-developed by industry leaders like Shopify, Etsy, and Wayfair, and has been endorsed by over 20 others, including American Express, Mastercard, and Stripe.

The new Business Agent will enable shoppers to chat with brands directly on the Search page. Users can use it as a virtual sales associate to answer product questions, as if it were the brand. The agent is already live for retailers including Lowe’s, Michaels, Reebok, and Poshmark. Other eligible US retailers can activate their brand agent inside their Merchant Center.

Google also rolled out Direct Offers, which is a new way to test ads in AI Mode. The pilot allows advertisers to present exclusive offers directly in AI Mode to shoppers who are ready to buy.

If you’re a product-based business that wants to grow on Google, it’s a good idea to check out these new features and learn how to use them to your advantage.

4. Reels Account for 50% of Time Spent on Instagram

A new study from Social Media Today highlights how much time people spend watching short-form content.

According to the data:

• 50% of the time spent on Instagram is spent watching Reels
• YouTube Shorts are viewed over 200 billion times per day
• Snapchat Spotlight clips views have increased by more than 300% since last year
• Users spend more time on TikTok than on any other social media platform
• Facebook’s primary engagement takes place on Reels

The article also revealed other marketing trends, including Reddit ads and Facebook offering an algorithm opt-out.

Get yourself ready for the upcoming changes and trends by reading the article here.

5. Google Ads Tests Prebuilt Campaigns

Want to jump into Google Ads but not sure where to start? Google’s new campaign set up is meant to reduce friction for new users.

Based on an existing campaign, advertisers can shorten the time to campaign launch prioritizing speed over manual set up.

While Google hasn’t officially announced this feature is here to stay, its fair to assume that this is either a test or a slow roll out of the new feature.

6. Want More AI Citations? Use LinkedIn Articles

According to a recent study, LinkedIn articles are taking over citations in AI responses.

The study was cited as saying “Google search traffic to publishers declined globally by a third in the year to November […] Since May 2023, Google search referrals were down 21% globally, with Google Discover down 18% and all external referrals down 24%.”

The study also said that “data from Spotlight’s extensive database shows that ChatGPT cites LinkedIn 4.2 times more, Perplexity 5.7 times more, and the average across all LLMs is about 4 to 5 times the usual rate. Of the total 19,202 LinkedIn sources cited, over 15,000 come from LinkedIn Pulse articles specifically.”

Is this the year your business starts publishing more LinkedIn content?

7. Almost 30% of AI Overviews Cite YouTube Content

Speaking of appearing in AI Overviews and LLMs, if you aren’t creating YouTube content, you might want to. According to new studies, the video platform is a key source for AI Overview material.

YouTube has long been a popular site, but now that it’s averaging over 1 billion hours of watch time per day, it has overtaken traditional TV and become a key part of the marketing mix.

AI models and recommendation systems aren’t just learning from watch data. They’re also forming connections by monitoring how users bounce between long-form videos, short clips, live commentary, and companion apps on their phones.

If optimizing YouTube is on your 2026 to-do list, here are some things to focus on to get to the top:

• Intent-driven metadata.
• Structural optimization.
• Authority signaling.
• Strategic integration.

8. Instagram’s “Your Algorithm” Option Now Available to All English-Speaking Users

Last October, Instagram announced a new manual control option that would give users greater control over their Reels experience. This week, they announced that it is now available to all English-speaking users.

Instagram users can now select which topics they want to see more or less of. This can be highly helpful for marketers targeting specific audiences, especially when users have selected their topics as a “see more of” option.

One downside is that users must be proactive and select these options, which may not always occur. It is also possible that your Reels won’t reach the people you want because they’ve selected not to see your content.

9. TikTok is Expanding its Marketing Partners Program

TikTok announced a change to its Marketing Partners Program this week with a new “Channel Sales Partner” element.

This new feature connects prospective TikTok advertisers with better platform support aligned with their specific business requirements.

TikTok was quoted as saying, “More and more small and medium-sized businesses are turning to TikTok to drive real business results, from discovery through to leads, bookings, and sales. Sitting under the Marketing Technology badge, the Channel Sales Partner Program recognizes partners that meet TikTok’s technical, operational, and go-to-market standards while driving SMB adoption and investment through their platforms at scale.”

Why We Care: If 2026 is the year you grow your brand on TikTok, the addition of Channel Sales Partners is a great way to do it.

10. Google Launches A/B Testing for PMax Campaigns

Do you wish you could do more with your PMax campaigns? Now you can! This week, Google launched a new Beta that allows advertisers to A/B test asset sets.

Since Performance Max (PMax) campaigns generally rely on automation, enabling testing is a significant step forward. It gives advertisers greater control over asset-level performance without launching a new campaign.

You can learn more about this new feature and how to access it for your brand by reading the Google Blog.

11. Google Trends Explore Page is Getting a Major Update

Big news as Google announces it is integrating "Gemini capabilities to automatically identify and compare relevant trends for your area of interest," in Google Trends.

This new and improved Google Trends Explore page has a side panel that is powered by Gemini and meant to help users find even more search terms to explore.

The new “suggest search terms” button will ask Gemini to break out all related terms and compare them to each other. You’ll get a list of relevant terms as well as prompts to take you further into related trends.

Increase the depth of your searches with this tool today. Google Trends now assigns dedicated colors and icons to each search term to improve comprehension, allows you to add even more search terms and doubled the amount of rising queries that will show up in results.

Try it out today!

12. TikTok Phases Out Custom Identify Option for Advertisers

Speaking of TikTok, the social media platform also announced it will phase out its Custom Identity Option early this year.

When the change is complete, all advertisers will need a verified TikTok profile to continue running ads in the app. To help prepare for the switch, TikTok is advising advertisers to review the F.I.R.S.T. framework to avoid any pauses in their current marketing campaigns.

Once an advertiser completes the framework, they will be able to continue to use all of the TikTok ad tools and options, even after the Custom Identity Option is phased out.

In addition to aligning with the new system, TikTok says that following the F.I.R.S.T. framework could also help your bottom line. In the announcement, TikTok said that, “[a]ccording to backend tests, 59.3% of advertisers saw their cost per acquisition (CPA) decrease by at least 10% after linking accounts.”

A detailed guide to the new framework is available here.

Weekly Homework

1. Brainstorm ways to improve your business’s chances of being noticed by Google’s Gemini. This will boost you in both the Google ecosystem and Apple Intelligence.
2. If you’re a product-based business, explore the new features in Google’s AI Mode, specifically the Business Agent or Direct Offers.
3. Read the 2026 trend report from Social Media Today to find ways to fill in the gaps in your current social media strategy.
4. Consider whether LinkedIn articles could improve your chances of ending up in an AI citation.
5. If you are using TikTok’s Custom Identity Option to run your ads, be sure to follow the F.I.R.S.T framework so your ads aren’t disrupted when the Custom Identity Option phases out.

Digital Marketing News 1/2/2026 to 1/9/2026

This week: Consumers increasingly trust AI over traditional search, Google’s December Core Update caused major SERP volatility, and Instagram is forcing brands to rethink discovery by limiting hashtag usage.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. 60% of Consumers Say AI Delivers Better Answers than Traditional Search

A new study revealed insights marketers can use to get ahead in 2026.

Not only did more than one-third (37%) of consumers say they are turning to AI chatbots for search assistance instead of Google, but many also report search fatigue with traditional search methods. Some of the top frustrations include:

• 40% - Clicking through too many links
• 37% - Getting too many ads or sponsored results
• 33% - Difficulty getting a straight answer
• 28% - Receiving repetitive or low-quality information

Of those surveyed:

• 60% said AI delivers better answers
• 80% feel confident that AI is unbiased

Even with that level of confidence, 85% still double-check AI answers elsewhere.

While consumers may use AI for shopping assistance, the study also finds that traditional search engines remain the preferred option for searches on product reviews and pricing, news and recent events, images and videos, and health and medical information.

These insights are just the tip of the iceberg. Click here to download the entire 2026 AI and Search Behavior Study.

2. 40% of Marketers Are Using AI for Social Media Management

Wondering how other marketers are using AI in their content generation? A new study published by eMarketer offers insights for you.

The study revealed that:

• 40% of marketers are using it for social media management
• 39% turn to AI for marketing automation
• 38% are using it for customer engagement
• 34% identify as intermediate-level users when it comes to AI marketing maturity

Have you heard of Rallio? It’s our AI-powered social media management tool that can help streamline your content generation and engagement strategies, allowing you to manage multiple social channels efficiently.

Rallio empowers brands, content suppliers, business owners, and employees to rally together and amplify their social media presence like never before, all in one social media platform.

3. Google’s December Core Update Produced A Lot of Volatility

Have you seen a lot of volatility in your SERP results? It could be due to Google’s December Core Update.

The update finished on December 29th, and here’s what changed:

• News publishers experienced volatility across Search, Discover, and Google News surfaces
• “Best of” round-up posts are no longer ranking as highly as before
• Brands and commercial sites with product authority are seeing higher rankings
• Specialized retailers and brands picked up traffic, while broader retailers lost some
• Specialized software sites also gained more traffic, specifically to landing pages and resource content

If you were affected, click here to read more about how the core updates work and what you can do to reclaim lost traffic.

4. Google Ads Upgrades Creator Partnerships

Google Ads’ Creator Partnerships recently got an upgrade with new search and management tools.

The new tools include:

• The ability to search for YouTube creators by keyword or channel handle
• A filter to break search results down by subscriber count, average views, location, and contact availability
• A centralized creator communication hub with direct email access built in

With creator-led campaigns expected to play a larger role in digital media in 2026, these new Creator Partnership updates arrive at the right time.

Click here to learn more about the new tools and how you can use them in your content this year.

5. Experts Say Content Curation is Vital to Keeping Consumers in 2026

According to a new study published by eMarketer, brands need to curate the right content and culture to retain their consumers in 2026.

Experts say that providing curated product selections is the key to strengthening loyalty, encouraging repeat purchases, attracting new customers, and improving the shopping experience.

This applies to both in-store and online shopping experiences, as 73% of Gen Z shoppers and 67% of millennials say social media is their primary source of information for discovering new products.

That doesn’t mean to push out more content. It simply means curating your content more effectively. In fact, less is more in 2026: 75% of shoppers say the ability to narrow choices strengthens their confidence in purchase decisions.

How will you curate a more customized context and environment to improve your consumer experience in 2026?

6. Max Campaigns Come to Reddit

Reddit spent 2025 going all in on its ad offerings. So far, 2026 seems to be continuing the trend.

The site recently introduced Max campaigns, a new automated campaign that offers a simplified setup, improved performance capabilities, and deeper audience insights.

Early reports say that this new format is proving successful. According to Reddit, Brooks Running saw a 37% decrease in cost per click and 27% more clicks over the course of a 21 day campaign using a beta version of their Max campaigns.

Jyoti Vaidee, VP of Ads Product at Reddit, said that, “[n]ew advertisers are coming to Reddit each day. Our goal is to make their experience as simple and insightful as possible. Max campaigns empower advertisers to launch high-performing ads in the right places on Reddit, while giving them insight into the audiences they’re reaching. We’re not just making ad management faster – we’re making it smarter and tailored to our community.”

For now, Max campaigns is still in a beta format for traffic and conversion campaigns for select advertisers. Reddit says it expects to roll out access to more advertisers over the next few months.

Reddit has been working hard to capture PPC revenue and this new format may help it achieve its lofty goals.

7. Instagram is Limiting Hashtag Usage

Are you a hashtag fan? You might have to adjust your strategy! In a new announcement, Instagram shared that it is now limiting hashtags to 5 per post.

The social media platform says that this comes from research that says “using fewer (up to 5) more targeted hashtags, rather than many generic ones, can improve both your content’s performance and people’s experience on Instagram.”

​​

What This Means: For social media managers, it's time to ditch the generic hashtags and instead focus on being more intentional. Choose 5 specific and relevant hashtags to still encourage discovery of your posts, but lean into your caption writing to grab the attention of more users.

8. Google Adds Maps to Demand Gen Channel Controls

Listen up! Advertisers now have the opportunity to run Demand Gen campaigns on Google Maps. This changes the ad landscape by prioritizing intent-driven placements, giving advertisers even more control.

Think about the power of intent-driven placements. Advertisers should begin to tailor ads to local discovery and navigation when possible.

Get creative and start prioritizing location-centric ads today.

9. Instagram Shares 2026 Insights on Content

Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, recently shared some thoughts on the future of content, specifically on his app, where he says “authenticity is becoming infinitely reproducible.”

Some of his most important points include:

• AI is able to replicate anyone’s work
• AI content will soon be indistinguishable from human-generated content
• People connect more personally in DMs than on their Instagram feeds
• To help combat AI fakes, creators are producing less polished content
• Instagram is working to highlight AI through labeling, but it is becoming overwhelming

Mosseri also shared that Instagram is exploring ways to better identify who is behind each account, both to reduce misinformation and to detect AI-generated content.

It’s no secret that AI is being incorporated into every aspect of our lives, but do you agree that it will affect social media in the same ways that Mosseri is saying?

10. OpenAI is Reporting Looking to Buy Pinterest

OpenAI is always looking for ways to evolve, and this might mean purchasing Pinterest in the near-future.

According to an article in The Information, OpenAI is interested in the social media/search engine app to help it acquire more human-generated data, specifically around product searches. That information will help them turn ChatGPT into a more robust shopping tool and create additional ad-revenue opportunities.

With over 600 million monthly users, Pinterest collects substantial data that could be highly valuable to OpenAI.

If you’re one of the many brands that advertise on Pinterest, you should keep an eye on this potential merger. The acquisition could affect your 2026 strategy if it proceeds.

Weekly Homework:

1. Download the AI and Search Behavior study to uncover valuable insights to help improve your SEO strategy.
2. Analyze your SERP rankings to see if your site took a hit during Google’s December Core Update.
3. Explore the new Creator Partnership tools to see how you can use them in your ad campaigns this year.
4. Download HubSpot’s Reddit Guide and check out the new Reddit Max campaigns to see if advertising on Reddit makes sense for your social media and SEO strategies.
5. Have your social media team review your upcoming and recently posted Instagram captions to ensure you’re using only 5 specific hashtags.

Digital Marketing News 12/13/2025 to 12/19/2025

This week: New data shows a surge in global internet and AI-driven traffic, Google’s December Core Update and what it means for faster ranking recovery, and major platform changes from Meta and Instagram that could affect link sharing, engagement, and visibility.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. Global Internet Traffic Grew 19% in 2025

According to Cloudflare’s Year in Review, it’s been a busy year on the internet! Global internet traffic grew 19% this year, with significant growth starting in August.

In a recent report, Cloudflare said Googlebot crawled 200 times more pages than other AI bots and crawlers. Other key findings include:

• Global internet traffic grew 19%
• Starlink traffic doubled, including in 20 new countries and regions
• Human-generated web traffic grew to 52%
• iOS devices were responsible for 35% of global mobile traffic
• Google is the top search engine, with Yandex, Bing, and DuckDuckGo following
• AI bots account for 4.2% of HTML requests

Cloudflare’s Year in Review includes a ton of other interesting findings in topics such as Traffic, AI, Adoption and Usage, Connectivity, and Security. Read it now for insights that could affect your marketing strategy moving into 2026.

2. Google’s December 2025 Core Update is Here

Google started rolling out its third core update of 2025 on December 11th.

Before the rollout started, Google revised its core updates documentation to include this language on ongoing algorithm changes: “However, you don’t necessarily have to wait for a major core update to see the effect of your improvements. We’re continually making updates to our search algorithms, including smaller core updates. These updates are not announced because they aren’t widely noticeable, but they are another way that your content can see a rise in position (if you’ve made improvements).”

The roll-out is expected to take 3 weeks to complete. During that time, it’s likely that you’ll see some shake-ups in your SERP ranking and organic traffic.

3. Google Search Live Gets an Upgrade

Google updated Search Live this week with Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio, and it could cause some wrinkles in SEO.

According to Google, “When you go Live with Search, you can have a back-and-forth voice conversation in AI Mode to get real-time help and quickly find relevant sites across the web. And now, thanks to our latest Gemini model for native audio, the responses on Search Live will be more fluid and expressive than ever before.”

Updates include:

• Broader update to Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio across the Google ecosystem
• Improvements for Voice-Based Systems
• Smoother conversational translations

With this update, Google is one step closer to realizing its vision for voice search.

4. AI is Coming to Firefox … if You Want it To

Mozilla CEO announced this week that AI is coming to Firefox in 2026.

The last few years haven’t been easy for the company. It underwent a restructuring, laid off 30% of its employees, and discontinued advocacy and other global programs.

While they need to make a comeback and see the opportunity in AI, Anthony Enzor-Demeo, CEO of Mozilla Corporation, said in a blog post that: “People want software that is fast, modern, but also honest about what it does. They want to understand what’s happening and to have real choices. Mozilla and Firefox can be that choice.”

He also noted that, “AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.”

This means that the company is introducing AI tools in its browser, but only if the user allows it. The goal is to keep up with technology without losing consumer trust.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if it helps Mozilla pull consumers back from other browsers that force its users to use AI.

5. YouTube Shorts Get Updates to Improve Engagement

YouTube released several new features this week, including comment sections and the ability to add Shorts ads to mobile web browsers.

The updates include:

• A comment section on Shorts Ads
• Links for branded content that bring clicks directly to the advertiser’s website
• Expansion to add Shorts Ads to mobile web browsers

According to Kantar research, YouTube Ads on Shorts increase purchase intent by 8.8% and drive 2.9x more consumer spending intent than other competitors. It’ll be interesting to see whether these news features increase those numbers and drive more traffic and sales.

6. Meta Tests Limiting Link Sharing for Business Profiles

Is your business profile verified on Meta? If it isn’t, you may have seen this interesting update this week.

According to a new pop-up some accounts have received, “Starting December 16, certain Facebook profiles without Meta Verified, including yours, will be limited to sharing links in 2 organic posts per month. Subscribe to Meta Verified to share more links on Facebook, plus get a verified badge and additional benefits to help protect your brand.”

While this is still in beta, it could be a significant change for Meta in 2026. If you’re a business without a verified account and you post a lot of links, this could seriously affect your content strategy.

7. New Features Aim to Improve Creator Partnerships on Meta

This isn’t the only announcement Meta made this week. The social media platform also shared some updates to improve partnership opportunities for brands.

In the announcement, Meta shared new updates, including:

• More content types in the Partnership Ads Hub
• The ability to view performance insights
• A new Facebook Partnership Ads API
• Expanded creator eligibility for partnership ads, including professional mode profiles
• Simpler permissions to convert UGC into partnership ads

These updates could significantly improve how brands create and use UGC on Meta’s platforms.

8. US Users Can Now Control Their Reels Algorithm

Meta announced a soft launch in October, and now all US users have access to its “Your Algorithm” manual control option.

According to Meta’s Chris Cox, “We’re launching the ‘your algorithm’ tool on Reels today in the U.S. and will roll out soon to all English-speaking users — a big step towards a more controllable experience. We’ve done a bunch of work on the tech under the hood and we will continue to refine these tools, but already it’s quite powerful to steer your recommendations towards your specific interests.”

This could go one of two ways for advertisers. Either you’ll be able to reach more interested parties through topic buckets, or you’ll lose views on your Reels because people mark them as not interested.

9. Pinterest Shares 2026 Trend Predictions

Want to know what big trends are coming up in 2026? Pinterest might have the answer for you in its annual Pinterest Predicts report.

The annual list has been successful in the past, with 88% of its predictions coming to fruition.

In addition to the trend predictions, the report also includes a fun quiz to take to help you decide which trend is right for your brand.

Discover everything packed into the 24-page guide, including brand tips and advice, and how to incorporate them into your Pinterest strategy, by reading the full report here.

10. TikTok Deadline Is Extended Again

What’s going on with TikTok in the United States? No one knows.

Since a deal to sell the social media app did not close by the December 16th deadline, a new executive order extended the deadline to January 23, 2026.

The executive order stated: “A plan has been presented to me to undergo a qualified divestiture of TikTok’s United States operations, as outlined in a framework agreement. Under this Framework Agreement, TikTok’s United States application will be operated by a newly established joint venture based in the United States. It will be majority-owned and controlled by United States persons and will no longer be controlled by any foreign adversary, since ByteDance Ltd. and its affiliates will own less than 20 percent of the entity, with the remainder being held by certain investors.”

It is the same plan that was signed off on in September, but details of the deal are still up in the air.

For now, it is business as usual for TikTok, its advertisers, and its users.

11. Experts Predict a Volatile 2026 with Tighter Budgets and Reduced Headcounts

In a new article published by Marketing Dive, experts say B2C marketers will face several challenges in 2026, including price hikes and AI-driven privacy breaches.

In the article, stats are shared, including:

• 52% of industry executives predict tighter budgets
• 51% predict reduced headcounts
• 64% say 2026 will be more volatile than 2025

AI is contributing to these projections, with some experts forecasting a 20% increase in class action lawsuits driven by AI-driven data breaches.

Whether these predictions come true or not, it's important to consider them in your 2026 planning, especially if you’re in the B2C space.

Weekly Homework

1. Get up-to-date on the state of the internet with Cloudflare’s Radar Year in Review.
2. Keep an eye on your SERP ranking and organic traffic to see if your site is affected by Google’s December 2025 core update.
3. Explore all of the updates to Meta’s Creator Partnership Ads Hub in the Ads Manager to see if any of them can improve your content strategy.
4. If Reels are a big part of your social media strategy, be sure to monitor your views now that users can access the Your Algorithm tool. If you’re seeing a drop in views, try some new content strategies to help your audience mark you as interesting again.
5. Download the annual Pinterest Predicts report to see what’s coming up for 2026 and how you can use these trends to improve your brand’s online presence.

Digital Marketing News 12/6/2025 to 12/12/2025

This week: AI-driven traffic surges 805%, TikTok drives explosive holiday revenue, and OpenAI halts ads amid overhaul.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. AI Traffic to Websites on Black Friday Up 805% from 2024

Numbers are still coming in on Black Friday, but initial indications suggest e-commerce growth.

According to MarketingDive, initial numbers include:

• Adobe Analytics: e-commerce sales hit $11.8 billion, a 9.1% increase from 2024
• Salesforce: Online Black Friday sales grew to $18 billion, a 3% increase over last year
• Shopify: offline sales increased by 26% year over year
• AI traffic to US websites grew 805%
• AI leads were 38% more likely to convert

The biggest Black Friday winners: AI-driven traffic and retailers with exclusive store perks (like the Target Black Friday Tote and the Lowes Black Friday Bucket)

The biggest Black Friday losers: online order volume, flat online discounts, and short-term financing.

2. Black Friday to Cyber Monday: TikTok Sales Hit $500 Million

TikTok had a great Black Friday, sharing that it sold over $500 million in merchandise between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This large sales number was accompanied by a nearly 50% increase in shoppers compared to 2024.

Last year, TikTok reported $100 million in sales on Black Friday alone, demonstrating how quickly the platform is growing.

In just four days, TikTok reported:

• 84% sales growth from last year
• Shoppers tuned into more than 760,000 livestreams
• Livestreams generated 1.6 billion views

eMarketer stated that it expects TikTok to generate over $15.82 billion in US retail ecommerce revenue alone this year, up over 108% from last year.

Love it or hate it, the truth is: TikTok is powerful.

3. TikTok Creator Ads Have a 70% Higher Click-through Rate than Non-Creator Ads

If you want to increase your sales, TikTok says you should lean into influencer partnerships.

In a new blog, the social media platform shared that creator-led content is more successful than non-creator ads. When compared to non-creator ads, creator-led ads received:

• 70% higher click-through rate
• 159% higher engagement rate

When those ads are posted directly to the creator’s platform, rather than the advertiser’s account, they received:

• 59% higher engagement rate
• 16% higher six-second view-through rate

This shows that consumers are looking for real-life advice, especially from their favorite creators.

As you push through the holiday season and into 2026, attempt to create some relationships with creators in your industry or niche. They may become valuable advertising partners.

4. New ChatGPT Data Reveals Top 20 Factors that Influence ChatGPT Citations

Everyone wants to know how to get their content into ChatGPT citations and a new study from SE Ranking might have the answer.

After analyzing 129,000 domains, they found that the number of referring domains was the single strongest predictor.

Other signals that made the list included:

• Domain traffic
• Content depth
• Structure
• Social signals
• Review platforms
• Technical performance

The authors were quoted as saying, “For smaller, less-established websites, engaging on Quora and Reddit offers a way to build authority and earn trust from ChatGPT, similar to what larger domains achieve through backlinks and high traffic.”

Why We Care: The study finds that many of the same things you’re probably already doing as a part of your SEO strategy are the things you should be doing if you want to appear in AI citations.

5. 45% of Consumers Are Turning to Online Reviews Before Making a Purchase

A recent report by DoubleVerify revealed some eye-opening statistics about the state of social media and online shopping.

After looking at how consumers’ social media usage impacts their shopping and purchasing habits, the study found that:

• 45% of consumers look at online reviews before making a purchase
• 72% of consumers are on YouTube, followed by 69% on Facebook
• 31% said that social media influencers significantly impact their purchasing decisions
• 23% said they’ve made a purchase based on a positive comment on an influencer’s post
• 58% said they interact with influencers
• Most marketers use Instagram (96%), Facebook (96%), YouTube (94%), and TikTok (88%) to reach their target audience

If you’re interested in learning more about the study’s findings, as well as regional trends in marketing, download the full report here.

6. Google Launches “Partner Match” for YouTube Targeting

If you want to improve your YouTube targeting, you’re going to love this new tool from Google.

“Partner Match” lets you match third-party user data to signed-in YouTube accounts. With this data, advertisers can target the matches through Video Reach campaigns, Video Views campaigns, and Demand Gen campaigns (YouTube channel only).

Google says that this tool has two major benefits:

• You can use third-party partner data to improve your ad targeting.
• You can boost brand awareness and drive consideration to specific audience segments that you may not have reached before.

The tool was rolled out globally, with the exception of the UK, Switzerland, and the EEA.

If you’re a YouTube advertiser and you want to improve your targeting or reach new and relevant audiences, log in to your account and check out all that Partner Match has to offer.

7. ChatGPT Hits Pause on Ad Plans

We’ve previously reported that OpenAI was signaling that ChatGPT Ads could be coming, but a new internal memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal says otherwise.

In the memo, OpenAI SEO Sam Altman ordered a ChatGPT quality overhaul and pushed pause on any plans to develop advertising opportunities. The company wants to focus more on making ChatGPT better, faster, and “more intuitive and personal” before adding any advertisements.

This is due to several factors, including rising competition from Google and heavy financial strain on the company. The troubles are so bad that the internal memo called it a “Code Red.”

It probably didn’t help the “Code Red” panic feeling when ChatGPT went offline for thousands of users earlier this week.

In addition to pausing work on advertising initiatives, OpenAI is also pausing work on AI health and shopping agents and a personal assistant called Pulse.

You can read the full company-wide memo here.

8. Bing Explains What Matters for AI Search Visibility

Do you want to increase your traffic from AI Search? Bing explains how to do it.

In a recent blog post, Bing explained that:

• AI repurposes your content into an easy-to-read summary with clickable links
• Your highest priority should be to create high-quality content
• Online publishers should also focus on these three signals: citations, impressions, and placement in AI answers

Bing was quoted as saying, “As AI-powered search reshapes how people explore information, more of the journey now happens inside the experience itself.”

Essentially, Bing is encouraging you to show up in review sites, build relationships, and try to get in front of customers as much as possible.

You can read the entire blog here.

9. Google Shares 2025 Year in Review

This week, Google released its 2025 Year in Review. It’s full of insights on everything from Performance Max to Demand Gen.

The biggest news?

• Ads in AI Overviews expanded.
• AI Mode opened a new mid-funnel inventory.
• Changes and improvements came to AI Max for Search, Smart Bidding Exploration, and Search Partner Network.
• Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor also stepped up their guided support.
• YouTube, DemandGen, and PMax also grew substantially, thanks to additional support and features.

Here’s where Google is turning its attention to for 2026:

• Creating clearer consistency in AI Overviews
• Expanding customization settings and transparency in AI Max
• Improving Asset Studio and Meridian’s measurement tools.

Review all of the important 2025 insights here.

10. Apple Releases Top Downloaded App of 2025

What was the top downloaded app in 2025? Apple says – ChatGPT!

The top 10 free apps included:

1. ChatGPT
2. Threads
3. Google
4. TikTok – Videos, Shop & LIVE
5. WhatsApp Messenger
6. Instagram
7. YouTube
8. Google Maps
9. Gmail – Email by Google
10. Google Gemini

This is great news for digital marketers, since most of these apps, like ChatGPT, Threads, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Google Maps, can be used to drive organic traffic your way.

Check out all of the other Top 10 lists, including Top Paid Apps, Top Free Games, and Top Free iPad Apps here.

11. Customize Your Instagram Recommendations

Tired of seeing content on a specific topic? Good news, Instagram allows you to modify the topics that are landing Reels in your feed.

Using the new tool Your Algorithm, the new Reels icon opens a list of topics Meta AI is recommending to you, based on your recent user behavior. From here, you can indicate which topics you’d like to see more or less of.

Instagram VP Tessa Lyons reveals, “We’re always trying to show people the best possible reels for them. I think we do a pretty good job today, but we don’t always get it right, and we know that people’s interests change. What we really want to do is give people control over the experience that they have on Instagram.”

We’re looking forward to seeing how this algorithm change affects Explore, the search tab and other areas besides Reels in the future.

12. Fresh Content or Evergreen? YouTube Shorts Report Reveals Shift

Should you post fresh content or stick with evergreen videos on your YouTube Shorts channel? A new study reveals that fresh might be the way to go.

Mario Joos, a strategist who works with MrBeast, Stokes Twins, and Alan’s Universe, first noticed the pattern after experiencing a broad dip in performance amongst his client portfolio. After analyzing data from channels with 100 million to one billion monthly views, he found that:

• Shorts older than 28-30 days now receive fewer impressions than the videos in a similar threshold did in mid-September.
• YouTube is pushing creators toward high-volume uploads over quality content

YouTube hasn’t confirmed any algorithm changes, other than to say that “recommendation systems are driving robust watch time growth and that the Gemini models are enabling further discovery improvement.”

However, if you publish Shorts, review your analytics to see whether your views decline after 30 days. If you’re noticing a sharp decline, too, you should consider this when planning your 2026 YouTube Shorts content strategy.

13. TikTok Wants to Enhance Connection with Shared Feed Options

Have you ever wanted to share a feed with your friends? With TikTok’s newest tool, now you can!

TikTok announced this week that its new Shared Feed option will go live. This new feed will be a combined stream of recommended content, based on shared interests.

In the press release, TikTok explained that “Shared Feed can help two people stay connected by surfacing new content tailored to both of their tastes, from sports to holiday winter activities and even their favorite fashion creators. Each day, friends and family members will find a curated selection of 15 videos in their private chat aligned with their interests.”

This could be an interesting feature for both users who want to stay connected with their favorite friends and family, and for marketers who want to expand their product reach among existing customers and fans.

14. LinkedIn Announces New Ad Tools to Reach Buyers Earlier in The Customer Journey

LinkedIn is committed to helping B2B marketers reach their potential customers quicker with smarter targeting and visibility through the following new features:

1. Reserved Ads - Get prime placement in the LinkedIn feed for our Video, Thought Leader, Single Image and Document Ads.
2. Ad Personalization - Messages will adjust automatically using profile data including name, title, industry, company, etc. to personalize messaging.
3. AI-Powered Creative - Test multiple ad variations. Upload your text and assets and Ad Variants will generate new on-brand copy while Flexible Ad Creation will mix, match and optimize your assets.

Use these google to land at the top of your audience’s feed with personalized ads. Focus on AI to generate more variations, enable testing and allow you to optimize your content.

15. 2026 Content Strategy News: Mentions, Citations, and Clicks

Search Engine Land released its 2026 content strategy suggestions this week.

Topping the list was:

• Generating mentions, citations, and structured visibility signals from generative systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity
• More content on pricing and cost
• Less top-of-funnel guides and “how to” posts
• Focusing on TOFU content to generate interest at the awareness stage

By focusing on the top-of-funnel and less on the bottom-of-funnel, you’ll be able to grab more attention in the very beginning in 2026.

16. Google Year in Search 2025: What Tools Topped Trending Lists

In addition to releasing an overall Year in Review, Google also released a Year in Search with insights on AI tools and search trends that could impact your business.

Topping the list? AI tools like Gemini and DeepSeek. The results also showed that searches in the United States differ from those in the rest of the world. US trends tended to focus on entertainment and public policy.

You can check out all of the trending topics here. You can also break it down by region, as well as topics such as Trending, Entertainment, Sports, and more, so you can be sure to know exactly what is trending in your own industry and market.

Reviewing the Year in Search data and comparing it to your content calendar can reveal gaps or opportunities for you to update your content and generate more traffic.

17. SocialMediaToday Shares 4 Trends Shaping Social Media Marketing in 2026

A recent study published by SocialMediaToday and conducted by Meltwater News US shared four critical trends that will shape social media marketing in the upcoming year.

The study found that:

• Social SEO is the new top-of-funnel, with 24% of consumers preferring social media searches over Google
• Multi-platform engagement is critical
• Social customer care is a must-have for brands that want to build a strong reputation
• Reddit communities drive buying decisions

If you want to find social media success in 2026, you have to admit that what you did in 2020 might not work and instead pivot based on some of these findings.

You can discover more critical insights for 2026 by downloading the full report here.

18. New Agreement Between Publishers and Meta Aims to Improve AI Answers

Meta recently signed a new slate of deals with news publishers to improve AI-generated answers.

In the press release, Meta said: “We’re beginning to offer a wider variety of real-time content on Meta AI - from global, breaking news to entertainment, lifestyle stories, and more. When you ask Meta AI news-related questions, you’ll now receive information and links that draw from more diverse content sources to help you discover timely and relevant content tailored to your interests.”

The company also said, “These integrations will also facilitate easier access to information by linking out to articles, allowing you to visit these partners’ websites for more details while providing value to partners, enabling them to reach new audiences.”

Publications such as CNN, Fox News, Le Monde Group, People, Inc., and USA Today Co., Inc. have already signed on to the agreement.

19. Judge Limits Default Search Deals for Google

Judge Amit Mehta released a ruling late last week that could put an end to Google’s long-term pacts with Apple and Samsung.

The ruling imposed a one-year cap as a “hard-and-fast termination requirement” to enforce antitrust remedies he already rewarded in a previous 2024 ruling that found that Google had monopolized search and search ads.

Now, Google must cap its default search and AI app deals at one year, rather than the current long-term agreements.

This could open the door to a more fragmented search landscape that includes AI-powered rivals like OpenAI, Perplexity, or Microsoft.

Weekly Homework

1. Explore all of the Year in Review data released by Google to learn more about the tech giant’s most successful releases, upgrades, and extensions. It will give you a clear understanding of what to expect in 2026, as well as introduce you to concepts from 2025 that you may have missed.
2. Watch Google’s Year in Search video and highlight gaps or opportunities for your business in the trending search topics.
3. Review your YouTube Shorts data to see if your evergreen content is still performing as well as it used to.
4. Review Search Engine Land’s 2026 content strategy suggestions and brainstorm ways to fit them into your strategy.
5. Get some inspiration from Marketing Dive’s list of top 2025 marketing campaigns.

Digital Marketing News 11/29/2025 to 12/5/2025

This week: AI drives record-breaking traffic, TikTok dominates $500M holiday sales, and OpenAI freezes ads amid a company-wide “Code Red.”

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. AI Traffic to Websites on Black Friday Up 805% from 2024

Numbers are still coming in on Black Friday, but initial indications suggest e-commerce growth.

According to MarketingDive, initial numbers include:

• Adobe Analytics: e-commerce sales hit $11.8 billion, a 9.1% increase from 2024
• Salesforce: Online Black Friday sales grew to $18 billion, a 3% increase over last year
• Shopify: offline sales increased by 26% year over year
• AI traffic to US websites grew 805%
• AI leads were 38% more likely to convert

The biggest Black Friday winners: AI-driven traffic and retailers with exclusive store perks (like the Target Black Friday Tote and the Lowes Black Friday Bucket)

The biggest Black Friday losers: online order volume, flat online discounts, and short-term financing.

2. Black Friday to Cyber Monday: TikTok Sales Hit $500 Million

TikTok had a great Black Friday, sharing that it sold over $500 million in merchandise between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This large sales number was accompanied by a nearly 50% increase in shoppers compared to 2024.

Last year, TikTok reported $100 million in sales on Black Friday alone, demonstrating how quickly the platform is growing.

In just four days, TikTok reported:

• 84% sales growth from last year
• Shoppers tuned into more than 760,000 livestreams
• Livestreams generated 1.6 billion views

eMarketer stated that it expects TikTok to generate over $15.82 billion in US retail ecommerce revenue alone this year, up over 108% from last year.

Love it or hate it, the truth is: TikTok is powerful.

3. TikTok Creator Ads Have a 70% Higher Click-through Rate than Non-Creator Ads

If you want to increase your sales, TikTok says you should lean into influencer partnerships.

In a new blog, the social media platform shared that creator-led content is more successful than non-creator ads. When compared to non-creator ads, creator-led ads received:

• 70% higher click-through rate
• 159% higher engagement rate

When those ads are posted directly to the creator’s platform, rather than the advertiser’s account, they received:

• 59% higher engagement rate
• 16% higher six-second view-through rate

This shows that consumers are looking for real-life advice, especially from their favorite creators.

As you push through the holiday season and into 2026, attempt to create some relationships with creators in your industry or niche. They may become valuable advertising partners.

4. New ChatGPT Data Reveals Top 20 Factors that Influence ChatGPT Citations

Everyone wants to know how to get their content into ChatGPT citations and a new study from SE Ranking might have the answer.

After analyzing 129,000 domains, they found that the number of referring domains was the single strongest predictor.

Other signals that made the list included:

• Domain traffic
• Content depth
• Structure
• Social signals
• Review platforms
• Technical performance

The authors were quoted as saying, “For smaller, less-established websites, engaging on Quora and Reddit offers a way to build authority and earn trust from ChatGPT, similar to what larger domains achieve through backlinks and high traffic.”

Why We Care: The study finds that many of the same things you’re probably already doing as a part of your SEO strategy are the things you should be doing if you want to appear in AI citations.

5. 45% of Consumers Are Turning to Online Reviews Before Making a Purchase

A recent report by DoubleVerify revealed some eye-opening statistics about the state of social media and online shopping.

After looking at how consumers’ social media usage impacts their shopping and purchasing habits, the study found that:

• 45% of consumers look at online reviews before making a purchase
• 72% of consumers are on YouTube, followed by 69% on Facebook
• 31% said that social media influencers significantly impact their purchasing decisions
• 23% said they’ve made a purchase based on a positive comment on an influencer’s post
• 58% said they interact with influencers
• Most marketers use Instagram (96%), Facebook (96%), YouTube (94%), and TikTok (88%) to reach their target audience

If you’re interested in learning more about the study’s findings, as well as regional trends in marketing, download the full report here.

6. Google Launches “Partner Match” for YouTube Targeting

If you want to improve your YouTube targeting, you’re going to love this new tool from Google.

“Partner Match” lets you match third-party user data to signed-in YouTube accounts. With this data, advertisers can target the matches through Video Reach campaigns, Video Views campaigns, and Demand Gen campaigns (YouTube channel only).

Google says that this tool has two major benefits:

• You can use third-party partner data to improve your ad targeting.
• You can boost brand awareness and drive consideration to specific audience segments that you may not have reached before.

The tool was rolled out globally, with the exception of the UK, Switzerland, and the EEA.

If you’re a YouTube advertiser and you want to improve your targeting or reach new and relevant audiences, log in to your account and check out all that Partner Match has to offer.

7. Google Tests New Website Optimizer Tool

Partner Match isn’t the only new Google tool on the block. The internet giant is also testing a Website Optimizer tool.

Website Optimizer seems to be a reinvention of the previous Google Optimize tool. Its goal is to improve A/B testing right inside your Google Analytics 4 platform.

Here are the details:

• Google Ads access and GA4 admin permissions are required
• If you don’t have a GA4 property, it will create one.
• The tool will run directly through Google Ads, streamlining setup and putting all tools in one place.

While this is still in the very early stages of testing, it could help advertisers find a more integrated way to test and improve website performance, directly in the GA4 dashboard.

8. Simplify Your Holiday Shopping with ChatGPT

OpenAI recently rolled out a new feature that will create personalized buyer’s guides for users.

The new feature works differently from typical ChatGPT responses. To access personalized lists, users can describe what they need, include budget and preferences, and receive a fully optimized shopping guide.

The feature is available on mobile and web for all users on the Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans. From now until the end of the holiday season, OpenAI is offering nearly unlimited usage of this new shopping experience.

Why We Care: As marketers, we all know that showing up during the holiday season is essential. Getting your brand featured in one of these holiday shopping guides could boost your sales.

9. ChatGPT Hits Pause on Ad Plans

We’ve previously reported that OpenAI was signaling that ChatGPT Ads could be coming, but a new internal memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal says otherwise.

In the memo, OpenAI SEO Sam Altman ordered a ChatGPT quality overhaul and pushed pause on any plans to develop advertising opportunities. The company wants to focus more on making ChatGPT better, faster, and “more intuitive and personal” before adding any advertisements.

This is due to several factors, including rising competition from Google and heavy financial strain on the company. The troubles are so bad that the internal memo called it a “Code Red.”

It probably didn’t help the “Code Red” panic feeling when ChatGPT went offline for thousands of users earlier this week.

In addition to pausing work on advertising initiatives, OpenAI is also pausing work on AI health and shopping agents and a personal assistant called Pulse.

You can read the full company-wide memo here.

10. Bing Explains What Matters for AI Search Visibility

Do you want to increase your traffic from AI Search? Bing explains how to do it.

In a recent blog post, Bing explained that:

• AI repurposes your content into an easy-to-read summary with clickable links
• Your highest priority should be to create high-quality content
• Online publishers should also focus on these three signals: citations, impressions, and placement in AI answers

Bing was quoted as saying, “As AI-powered search reshapes how people explore information, more of the journey now happens inside the experience itself.”

Essentially, Bing is encouraging you to show up in review sites, build relationships, and try to get in front of customers as much as possible.

You can read the entire blog here.

11. TikTok Ban Update: Deadline is Expiring Soon

It’s almost the end of 2025, and the TikTok ban still hasn’t been enforced. With the fourth extended deadline coming up on December 16th, many people are wondering what will happen.

Back in October, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was quoted as saying, “We finalized the TikTok agreement in terms of getting Chinese approval, and I would expect that would go forward in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll finally see a resolution to that.”

However, with the deadline approaching and no deal having been announced, marketers and consumers alike are wondering if Americans will be bringing TikTok into 2026.

Is no news good news? We’ll find out in the next week or so.

Weekly Homework:

• Review your Black Friday through Cyber Monday sales to see if your successes were aligned with the general ecommerce data.
• Brainstorm ways your brand can take advantage of the powerhouse success of TikTok and TikTok creators.
• Review AI traffic data from ChatGPT and Bing to see which strategies can help you find your way into more AI citations.
• Set up Google’s Partner Match tool to improve your YouTube targeting.
• Table any plans you might have had for ChatGPT Ads.
• Keep an eye on the upcoming TikTok ban deadline to see if you should include the short-form video app in your 2026 marketing or remove it from your plans.

Digital Marketing News 11/15/2025 to 11/21/2025

This week: AI citations vary dramatically, Cloudflare outage risks rankings, and Adobe acquires Semrush powerhouse.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. New Report: Comparing Google Rankings to AI Citations

A new report produced by an SEO software company analyzed 18k+ queries and matched them using semantic similarity scoring across OpenAI’s GPT, Google Gemini and Perplexity, against traditional Google search results.

Here were some of the main findings:

• Perplexity showed a median domain overlap of 25-30% with Google results
  • It shared about 43% of the domains it cited with Google, which makes sense since it is a live web retrieval tool.
• ChatGPT showed a median domain overlap of 10-15% with Google results
  • It shared about 21% of its cited domains with Google
• Gemini showed a median domain overlap of just 4% with Google results

This report supports the fact that different AI systems interpret and value pages across the web in different ways. In this case, Perplexity actively searches the web for it to function, so its citation patterns are more similar to traditional search rankings.

2. Cloudflare Crashes Internet: How It Could Affect You Long After the Outage

A Cloudflare outage affected pretty much everyone this week, and if you’ve been on the receiving end of the burst of 5xx errors, you’ll need to pay attention to your crawl behavior in the upcoming weeks.

Here’s why: If Googlebot crawled your page during the outage and recorded a 5xx response, it will affect your ranking. Since Search Console is not updated in real-time, this means you might not see the dip in crawl activity or spike in server errors until a few days later.

If this happens, don’t panic. Instead:

• Record the timing and add an annotation to your analytics that this happened because of the Cloudflare outage.
• Keep an eye on your server logs, and if it returns to your baseline in a few days, you can mark it up as a contained event.
• Do not hit “Validate Fix” in the Search Console immediately. Wait at least 24 hours to see if the problem resolves itself before adding additional check failures to your reporting.

Let this remind you that where you show up in the SERP depends as much on server reliability as it does relevance. While Cloudflare is generally reliable, if you’re seeing decreases in your ranking, it could be due to an unreliable tool in your tech stack.

Action Item: Keep an eye on your crawl, error, and conversion metrics. If the situation isn’t resolved in a few days, it’s time to review your tech stack for issues.

3. Adobe Acquires Semrush

Announced earlier this week, Adobe will acquire Semrush, valued at $1.9 billion early in 2026 as long as it is approved by all necessary stakeholders.

Best known for its search marketing capabilities, Semrush has a wide variety of tools wrapped up into an all-in-one platform, offering keyword research, site audits, competitive intelligence, brand visibility, and tools that monitor how brands are referenced in large language models and traditional searches.

What else comes with this acquisition? Semrush’s recent deals include SEO assets Backlinko and publisher Third Door Media. The plan is to integrate Semrush and tools into Adobe products like Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Analytics.

Stay tuned for more updates and what this will mean for marketers everywhere.

4. Google Improves Suspension Accuracy and Appeal Turnaround Times

If you’ve ever been hit with a Google suspension, you know how frustrating it can be to wait for your account to be reviewed. Google has heard you and is speeding up the process. They also announced an improved method to stop incorrect advertiser suspensions in the first place.

Over the past few months, Google has been working out the new process. They’ve focused on making the policies clearer. They also deployed AI to enhance their detection processes and rolled out a new and more effective review process for appeals.

So far, the results have been impressive:

• Over 80% reduction in incorrect account suspensions
• 70% faster response time to advertiser suspension appeals
• 99% of appeals are resolved within 24 hours

This is fantastic news for Google and advertisers alike!

5. Google Rolls Out New AI Tools to Improve Shopping

Just in time for the holiday season, Google rolled out new AI-powered tools to help make shopping easier.

The new tools enable:

• Conversational shopping searches in AI Mode
• The ability to track prices and complete purchases through AI agents
• An AI-powered calling feature that will call local stores to ask questions and check stock

Local calling is currently only available for a limited set of shopping categories, but is expected to roll out to more stores over time.

The other AI tools are focused on the US market. Google is still working on broader merchant eligibility and expanding the functionality to an international market in the future.

6. Google Drops New Demand Gen Tools

AI Mode and Shopping aren’t the only Google products getting a boost. The tech giant also dropped some new features for Demand Gen Ads.

Since the beginning of 2025, Demand Gen users have seen an average 20% increase in conversions and conversion values, and these new tools aim to increase that average further.

The new features include:

• AI Image Enhancements: automatically create and optimize images
• Video Enhancements: automatically create video variations to improve performance amongst screens and attention spans
• Asset Uplift A/B Experiments: the ability to run creative tests on your content to leverage your best-performing assets
• Brand Suitability Controls for YouTube Feed and Discover: new controls for YouTube Home Feed, Watch Next, and Discover

If you’re a Demand Gen user, you should check out these tools to see how they can improve your holiday campaigns.

7. Study Reveals Insights into AI Overview Keywords

A new Brightedge study revealed valuable insights into AI Overview keywords.

The study revealed that Google retained only 30% of AI Overviews at its peak. The categories with the highest retention rates included:

• Grocery: 56%
• TV & Home Theater: 43%
• Small Kitchen Appliances: 37%

The categories with the lowest retention included:

• Furniture: 3%
• Home: 7%
• Apparel: 23%

If you’re trying to claim a spot in those lower categories, it could be harder because they have a higher turnover rate. Things that worked for the higher retention categories included comparison content, specifications, and “how to” content.

The biggest takeaway? Research queries win and transactional queries lose. When creating content, make sure you’re crafting it to answer questions rather than to sell immediately.

Why We Care: If you want your content to end up in a Google AI Overview, you have to create content that the algorithm is looking for. Studies like these pull the curtain back to give us valuable insight into what is working and what isn’t.

8. Gemini 3 Powers AI Mode

Gemini 3 is now available in AI Mode for subscribers within the US.

In the content of search it was designed for state-of-the-art reasoning and multimodal understanding. That means this new model should be able to explain advanced concepts, work through more complex questions and offer support to searches that have interactive visuals.

AI mode will return your results in a responsive layout, delivering images, tables, grids and other structured elements when necessary to provide users with a clear answer to their search.

Additionally, Google will be able to access more pages per question when scanning the internet for answers with a new deeper query fan-out. This matters to marketers because it could change which sites receive links or citations, and overall will impact the way results show up.

9. TikTok’s Major Holiday Shopping Push

Everyone is pushing sales at this time of year, but TikTok is raising the bar with new TikTok Shop Partners (TSP) incentives.

New incentives circulating include:

• Daily GMV Incentive Program: TSPs can receive cash incentives between $5,000 and $20,000 based on the amount of GMV growth between October 1 and December 31
• Onboard and Upgrade Incentives: TSPs can earn up to $10,000 in cash for upgrading through the TSP rankings
• Vertical Creator Incubation Incentive: TSPs can earn between $1,000 and $10,000 per creator when they successfully incubate TikTok’s target list creators
• Affiliate Service Incentive: Incentives between $1,000 and $5,000 in ad credits for increasing rank

There are also a variety of Black Friday/Cyber Monday challenges where creators and TSPs can earn between $2,000 and $25,000 in cash.

TikTok is also offering fully-funded and partially-funded coupons and discounts that cover all or part of a brand’s marketing costs, as well as invitation-only flash sales.

Why We Care: With many consumers turning to social media like TikTok to influence their holiday shopping, now is an excellent time for brands to zero in on these TikTok challenges to both sell their products and earn valuable incentives for using the platform to do so.

10. TikTok Launches Holiday Campaign Hub

Speaking of TikTok, the digital platform recently launched a Holiday Hub to help brands make the most of their holiday campaigns.

The guide helps advertisers learn more about how to use TikTok ads, as well as how to use the app to gain traction and raise brand awareness for your business.

In the guide, TikTok claims that:

• 3 in 4 users say they are likely to buy from a brand they’ve seen on TikTok Shop
• 88% of small businesses that use TikTok Shop say it made them sell more products
• 80% of users took an action after seeing holiday content on TikTok

The bottom line? TikTok is one of the best platforms to get your products in front of the right people, so don’t miss your chance to make this your best holiday season ever.

11. X Shares Holiday Advertising Tips in Hopes of Winning Back Advertisers

X wants to get a part of your holiday advertising puzzle! The social media platform updated its Holiday Marketing Hub with some tips on how to improve your X ROI.

The platform noted that:

• 1 in 3 X users will plan before shopping
• 39% find inspiration in X ads
• 69% of X users will spend more this year than last year

The biggest takeaways include:

• The best performing ads are between 50-100 characters.
• Ads should create urgency, but still maintain authenticity.
• Provide only one exit point to keep your message laser-focused.
• Use a clear call-to-action.
• Lead with your logo and front-load messaging.
• Caption everything!

Read all of the data, insights, and tips X has to offer on how to improve the ROI of your ads on X here.

12. Consumers Now Prefer Traditional Content Over genAI Content

A recent eMarketer study shows that AI-generated content is losing steam with audiences.

The study revealed that:

• 32% said that AI has negatively impacted the creator economy, up from 18% in 2023
• 41% said that AI has improved the diversity of creator content, up from 35% in 2023
• 32% said that AI has positively impacted the creator economy, down from 34% in 2023

Perhaps most shocking, though, was that 26% of those surveyed preferred genAI content to traditional content. This is down 34% from the 60% who said they liked genAI content over traditional content.

Could we be seeing a balance between AI and human-generated content emerging?

Weekly Homework

1. Keep an eye on your crawl, error, and conversion metrics to see if your SERP ranking will be affected by this week’s Cloudflare outage. If the situation isn’t resolved in a few days, it’s time to review your tech stack for issues.
2. Download and review Brightedge’s Google AI Overview report to see how you can use content to increase your brand’s odds of ending up in the popular SERP position.
3. Download TikTok’s Holiday Marketing Hub for valuable ideas on how to increase your sales on social media.
4. Brainstorm ways to use TikTok Shop to increase the amount of sales you make this holiday season, while also tapping into valuable TSP cash and ad credit incentive opportunities.
5. If you want to advertise on X, or improve your existing campaigns, check out the platform’s new Holiday Marketing Hub for valuable data and tips.
6. Evaluate your Demand Gen Google Ads to see how the new AI tools could help you improve your campaigns.

Digital Marketing News 11/8/2025 to 11/14/2025

This week: Reddit shoppers research earlier, ChatGPT may get PPC ads, TikTok partners with iHeartMedia.

Here's what happened this week in digital marketing:

1. US Ecommerce Sales Up 8.2% in October

If you’re like any other marketer, you are probably firming in Black Friday/Cyber Monday mode. While much of the early reporting indicated signs of a declining holiday season, the reports from October are somewhat hopeful.

According to Adobe Analytics:

• Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days brought in $9.1 billion from US shoppers in 2 days
• Those two days showed a 7.3% YoY increase
• October’s overall online sales rose 8.2% YoY to $88.7 billion
• Sales from social media sites grew 28%
• Purchases driven by influencers and affiliates were up 15% from last year

These findings align with the National Retail Federation’s forecast of a historically strong holiday sales season. The NRF predicts that sales will rise between 3.7% and 4.2% from last year, putting total retail sales between $1,012.2 billion and $1,017.1 billion once all is said and done.

Biggest Takeaway: Consumers are leaning into social media and influencer marketing, so be sure to add that to your holiday sales strategy, if you haven’t already.

2. Reddit: 79% of Americans Are Researching More Before Shopping

Reddit released new tips for brands that want to go big this holiday season, and the biggest takeaway? Consumers aren’t waiting for Black Friday to start buying presents.

In the report, Reddit was quoted as saying, “[t]his year, shoppers aren’t waiting for Black Friday or Cyber Monday. With prices fluctuating and inventory unpredictable, they’re starting earlier to feel in control. Unlike previous years, they’re not impulse buying - 79% of Americans plan to research more before purchasing, comparing products, reading reviews, and seeking genuine recommendations from real people.”

Reddit also notes that, “[i]n the days leading up to Prime Day, Reddit communities were buzzing with shopping strategies, deal comparisons, and wish lists. During the event itself, views of Prime Day conversations exploded - skyrocketing more than 150x and peaking on day two as Redditors shared their best finds in real time.”

The top gift categories being researched on Reddit included:

• Gaming
• Electronics
• Apparel and accessories
• Media and entertainment
• Beauty and personal care

You can read more of Reddit’s findings and tips here.

Why We Care: If shoppers are starting now, brands should, too. With so many people turning to Reddit for their pre-purchase research, you need to consider how to get your brand involved in those discussions. Focusing on relevant keywords and topics could help your Reddit Ads, as well as organic Reddit discussion threads.

3. Reddit Launches New Interactive Ad Options

Reddit has been making some big moves in the PPC space. This month, they introduced interactive ads.

In a press release, Reddit explained that, “Interactive Ads are a Reddit-unique ad unit that lets brands build custom, interactive ad experiences directly for Reddit’s 100,000+ communities – inviting redditors to play, participate, and explore directly within the ad itself. Interactive Ad units range from fully bespoke campaigns and creative activations to low-lift, high-impact, repeatable templates like countdowns, quizzes, dynamic reveals, and trivia, offering flexibility based on creative goals and investment needs.”

Whether these ads are successful or not still remains to be seen, but with 116 million active daily users who spend 24 minutes a day in the app, they might be worth considering.

4. PPC Ads Could Be Coming to ChatGPT

Even though OpenAI’s founder, Sam Altman, had previously stated that he wasn’t a fan of ads on ChatGPT, he has recently expressed a change in opinion.

When asked about his willingness to add PPC ads to the platform, Altman said, “there’s a kind of ad that I think would be really bad… There are kinds of ads that I think would be very good or pretty good to do. I expect it’s something we’ll try at some point. I do not think it is our biggest revenue opportunity.”

With ChatGPT gaining more attention as a search engine, the addition of PPC ads could be a game-changer for brands, especially those that are already appearing in ChatGPT results.

While the development of these ads seems to be a way out, Altman's change in stance on allowing ads on the platform at all is a good sign for marketers desperate to reach AI users and new audiences.

5. TikTok and iHeartMedia Partnership Aims to Help Creators and Brands Improve Audio

TikTok recently announced a high-profile partnership with iHeartMedia. This partnership aims to help TikTok creators expand into audio formats, including podcasts, radios, and live events.

The partnership introduces the TikTok Podcast Network, with up to 25 newly created TikTok creator podcasts, as well as TikTok Radio, and iHeartRadio + TikTok Live Events, similar to the heavily attended iHeartRadio Music Festival and the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball.

In the press release, TikTok was quoted as saying, “iHeartMedia, the leading audio company in America, and TikTok, the world’s leading destination for short-form mobile video, today announced a groundbreaking, multiplatform partnership that will bring TikTok creators into iHeart’s ecosystem. This collaboration includes the launch of the TikTok Podcast Network, which will feature up to 25 new podcasts hosted by TikTok creators, as well as a national broadcast and digital radio station, and a series of live event integrations.”

Why We Care: This is an incredible opportunity for brands with podcasts and audio offerings to expand their content on the wide-reaching app. Even if your brand doesn’t have a podcast, getting your product or service featured on the brand-new TikTok Podcast Network, on TikTok Radio, or at an iHeartRadio live event could help expose your brand to a whole new audience that was previously unreachable.

6. TikTok Expands Access to Bulletin Boards Feature

Speaking of TikTok, the short-form video app also recently expanded access to its newest feature: Bulletin Boards.

First tested back in June, Bulletin Boards have become an easy way for brands to connect with their audiences, boost engagement, and generate loyalty. Many brands, including People Magazine, have found success with this one-to-many messaging option, using it to share text, images, and video updates in concise, direct-to-consumer messages.

Follow these steps to access your TikTok Bulletin Board:

• In the TikTok app, tap Inbox at the bottom. From here, if you receive a banner notifying you about bulletin boards, tap “Try it” to get started.
• Tap the “Chat” button at the top.
• Tap “Create a bulletin board.”
• Turn the “Show on profile” setting on or off to change the visibility of your bulletin board.
• Tap “Create” to open your bulletin board.

You can use it as a way to keep your audience engaged with key events or updates, which could be critical to your holiday season sales.

7. Negative Google Ad Scams Are On The Rise: Here’s What to Do

Have you been targeted by a negative review extortion scam? If so, you’re not alone. Google says that they’re becoming so popular that they needed to launch a new form solely to keep track of them.

The scam involves a sudden increase in 1-star or 2-star reviews on a business’s Google Business Profile, followed by a demand for money to remove the fraudulent reviews.

If this happens to you, don’t panic. Follow these tips from Google:

1. Do not engage or pay the posters.
2. Do not try to resolve it yourself.
3. Gather all evidence immediately, including screenshots.
4. Report all communication and evidence directly to Google using the newly launched form.

While this scam is disheartening, especially during this time of year, some businesses are reporting success with the form. One business noted on a Local Search Forum that all 11 fraudulent reviews were removed in a little over 24 hours after they used the form to report it to Google.

8. Stagwell & Palantir: A New AI-Powered Marketing Platform Is Coming

If you’ve been looking for a new tool to help you identify, segment, and understand your target audiences, this new tool from Stagwell and Palantir might be what you’ve been looking for.

The partnership was announced earlier this year, and reportedly, the tool is getting closer to release. In a joint press release, the tech brands said that they are “already seeing client adoption of its early MVP model in the United States through Stagwell's leading media company Assembly. Stagwell plans to roll out the offering to the broader network and clients on an opt-in basis in the coming months.”

The tool, reportedly called the Audience Creative and Optimization System, is designed to help large enterprises go through “tens of millions of records to identify, segment, and understand audiences for improved brand strategies and optimized ROI.” Stagwell says that one key aspect that sets their tool apart from others is the “use of differential privacy technology to protect data.”

If you’re a large enterprise that is getting stuck in the mud of analyzing millions of pieces of marketing data, this new tool could be a lifesaver.

9. Google Ads Asset-Level Reporting to Display Campaigns

Do you want to dive deeper into your Google Ads Display Campaigns? Thanks to the newest update, you can!

Just this week, Google rolled out asset-level reporting for Display campaigns. This a big step toward moving Display Ad visibility closer to the visibility already available for Performance Max campaigns.

The new updates will allow Google Ads users to:

• Compare performance of each creative asset.
• View when assets were last updated to track iteration history.
• Decide which assets to keep, refresh, or remove based on data.

You can learn more about this Google Display Ads update here.

10. Brand Inclusions Appear in Standard Shopping Campaigns

*Cue Mariah Carey’s voice* It’s time!

Google finally introduces brand inclusion controls to give advertisers management of which brands can appear in their shopping ads.

This long-awaited feature lets advertisers add or remove brand lists within the ad group targeting in both PMax and Standard Shopping campaigns. This update allows brands to protect their budgets, eliminating wasted ad spend on unwanted traffic.

Advertisers gain control and efficiency over Standard Shopping ads, instead of relying on automated campaign types. Gain control and efficiency for powerful upgrade in advertising.

11. Google Launches Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor to Global Users

Google is launching new Ads tools left and right. This time, it’s Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor.

Built on Gemini, Ads Advisor can:

• Generate recommendations to improve ads
• Directly apply recommended changes (with user approval)
• Analyze and adjust things like target ROAS, bids, and budgets
• Implement focused sitelink extensions
• Diagnose performance shifts and propose fixes
• Flag policy violations and suggest edits to copy, keywords, and headlines to remove the violations

Also built using Gemini, Analytics Advisor offers a conversational experience that delivers specific metrics, generates visualizations, and provides valuable insights.

These new tools will be available for English-language Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts in early December. To access them, simply log in to your account and use the in-product advisor interface.

12. Google Simplifies Search Results

Google is cleaning up its search results and removing support for certain structured data types in Search Console and its API starting January 2026. The goal: a simpler, more focused search experience.

For SEOs, that means auditing your structured data now. Check if your schema or reports depend on data types being phased out.

Why We Care: Technical SEO is shifting toward quality over quantity. SEOs must focus on clear, useful markup that enhances user understanding, not just rich results.

Weekly Homework:

• With more and more signals that consumers are trusting social media and influencer campaigns to help them make informed purchases, consider different ways you can add these strategies to your holiday sales campaigns.
• Read the Reddit holiday tips to see how you can boost the conversation around your brand this season.
• If Reddit Ads are part of your content marketing strategy, consider exploring how the new interactive ad feature can boost engagement with your target audience.
• Between the partnership with iHeartMedia and the expansion of Bulletin Boards, there are new ways to boost your engagement and reach on TikTok. Check out each new tool to see how you can use it to your brand’s advantage.
• Keep your eyes peeled for fraudulent reviews on your Google Business Profile. If you are a victim of the extortion scam, use the newly-launched form to report it to Google