Today's Digital Marketing Pulse
LinkedIn expands post analytics with network‑reach breakdown
LinkedIn is rolling out expanded post analytics that separate reach into in‑network (connections and followers) and out‑of‑network (non‑connections) percentages. The new metrics appear in the discovery section of a post’s impression data, showing creators how much of their audience comes from algorithmic distribution such as feed recommendations and reshares.
‘Momfluencers’ for Hire: Meta’s Campaign to Reshape Its Child Safety Image Faces Scrutiny
Meta has launched a paid Instagram influencer campaign, dubbed "momfluencers," to promote its Teen Accounts safety features amid a wave of child‑safety lawsuits. Influencers like Sadie Robertson Huff and Leroy Garrett posted glowing endorsements, often with only minimal paid‑partnership disclosures. The Tech Transparency Project identified at least 11 doctors and psychologists with financial ties to Meta also pushing the product. Independent tests and a Washington Post investigation suggest the Teen Account filters still allow graphic content, raising doubts about the program’s efficacy.
The New Rules of Search: Key AEO & Content Marketing Trends for 2026 via @Sejournal, @Hethr_campbell
Conductor’s Shannon Vize and Pat Reinhart outlined a roadmap for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) in 2026, emphasizing tactics that boost AI‑generated citations and brand authority across fragmented AI search platforms. The on‑demand session highlighted high‑impact content types, new KPI frameworks,...
Gemini Powers Smarter, Scalable Ads Across Search & YouTube
Incredible to see the announcements out of #GML2026 today, I always think of it as our Ads I/O! Everything we know about marketing is changing right now, and it’s actually a wonderful thing. We’re making Gemini work a lot harder...
Attribution Models Explained: How To Choose and Implement the Right Approach for Your App
Attribution models dictate how app marketers assign credit for installs, in‑app actions, and revenue to specific marketing touchpoints. The guide outlines single‑touch (first‑click, last‑click) and multi‑touch (linear, time‑decay, position‑based) approaches, highlighting how lookback windows and reattribution rules reshape reported performance....
Businesses Boost ROI by Hiring PPC Specialists for Google Ads
Firms are increasingly outsourcing Google Ads to dedicated PPC specialists, with PPC Pros reporting a 100% rise in paid leads in just 1.5 months while lowering cost‑per‑click. The shift reflects a broader demand for data‑driven performance marketing that directly ties...
Shirofune Integrates with ChatGPT Ads
Shirofune, a digital advertising automation platform, has integrated ChatGPT Ads into its suite of supported channels. The new capability lets advertisers manage budgets, bids, creative, and reporting for ChatGPT Ads alongside search, social, and retail media from a single dashboard....
Four Simple LinkedIn Steps Yield $200K/Month
The simplest LinkedIn strategy I've ever seen is also one of the most profitable. @Laraacostar hit $200K/month with just LinkedIn. She did these 4 things consistently, every single week. 1. Education content (positioning) Two specific breakdowns Two broad business tips...
Marketers Admit 90% of Online Trends Are Bot‑Generated, Fueling ‘Dead Internet’ Theory
Industry insiders from agencies like Floodify and Chaotic Good Projects disclosed that the majority of trending content is manufactured by networks of dummy accounts. The revelations bolster the “Dead Internet” theory and threaten the credibility of digital‑marketing metrics.
Google Introduces New Ad Formats In AI Mode via @Sejournal, @Brookeosmundson
Google unveiled two AI‑driven ad formats—Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers—at its Marketing Live event. Both formats run on the Gemini model and embed sponsored content directly within AI‑generated search responses and recommendation lists. The ads feature an independent AI...
Meet Ask Advisor, Your New AI-Powered Collaborator
Google announced Ask Advisor, an AI‑powered collaborator that unifies data from Google Ads, Analytics and Merchant Center. The tool delivers proactive, personalized recommendations and can launch campaigns from natural‑language prompts, aiming to simplify marketing for both experts and novices. Ask...
Fuel Your Next Wave of Growth on YouTube with Demand Gen
YouTube’s new Demand Gen suite blends AI‑driven video creation with creator partnerships, letting advertisers produce high‑impact ads faster. The platform now supports dynamic product videos via Google Merchant Center and expands inventory to Google Maps, checkout links in nine markets,...
OpenAI Is Allowing Financial Services Brands Into the ChatGPT Ads Pilot
OpenAI is expanding its ChatGPT ads pilot to include financial‑services brands such as Robinhood and BestMoney, marking the first foray into a heavily regulated vertical. The pilot, which launched in February for free and Go‑tier users, originally featured travel advertisers...
Google Reveals First AI Mode Usage Numbers After One Year via @Sejournal, @MattGSouthern
Google’s AI Mode has crossed the 1 billion monthly active user threshold worldwide, with query volume doubling each quarter since its debut. Users now type searches that are three times longer than traditional queries, and follow‑up interactions are rising by more...
The Architecture Behind Trustworthy AI Agents in Advertising
The IAB Tech Lab unveiled AAMP 2.0, delivering production‑ready Buyer and Seller Agent SDKs that embed AI‑driven media buying into existing ad standards. The SDKs provide a shared Events Bus and State Engine, enabling transparent, auditable, and resilient agentic transactions across...
Reddit Dominates B2B Keywords, Exposing Strategy Gap
Reddit is outranking B2B vendors on 4,225 keywords. That’s 957,540 monthly searches where buyers see a thread before they see your brand. We analyzed 8,566 keywords across 14 SaaS domains. In 3 of 4 verticals, Reddit owns 40 to 45 percent of top...
Snapchat Updates Attribution Model, With Focus On App Advertisers
Snapchat is rolling out a beta "Unified Attribution" model that consolidates multiple touchpoints across the consumer journey, giving app advertisers a single view of real‑time performance data. The system syncs Snap’s own metrics with those of mobile measurement partners, enabling...
How Toters’ Unified App Strategy Increased App Opens by 503%
Toters, a Southeast Asian on‑demand delivery platform, consolidated its web, iOS and Android experiences into a single unified app. By leveraging Branch’s deep‑linking and attribution SDK, the company streamlined user journeys and eliminated fragmented onboarding flows. The overhaul triggered a...
Scaling Startups From Zero to Thousands with SEO
When people ask me what's my favorite SEO gig: Taking Startups from Zero to One. Getting a project from a few users to 100s or 1000s of users in a short amount of time is one of my biggest satisfactions. Then, training a...
AI Mode Adds Ads, Gemini Explainers, and Lead Chatbot
Ads coming to AI Mode and Gemini custom explainers next to ads. Also, Business Agent for Leads - lets leads chat with a chatbot based on your website and potentially be turned into leads. Interesting. https://t.co/u9L9MLypZc https://t.co/eW5hC60mXW
Omio Taps Appier’s Agentic AI to Acquire Users in 21 European Markets
Omio has teamed up with AI‑as‑a‑service firm Appier to roll out Agentic AI‑driven paid‑media campaigns across 21 European markets. Within twelve months the travel platform expanded from a single‑country test in Spain to a continent‑wide growth engine, consistently hitting cost‑per‑acquisition...
JPG Designs Marks 15 Years Boosting Rhode Island Businesses' Online Visibility
JPG Designs, a Rhode Island‑based digital‑marketing agency, celebrated its 15th anniversary, highlighting more than 145 five‑star Google reviews and a portfolio spanning construction, legal, healthcare and nonprofit sectors. The milestone underscores the firm’s adaptability to evolving search and AI trends.
Snap Stops Grading Its Own Homework
Snap announced Unified Attribution, a beta product that merges its own first‑party data with mobile measurement partner (MMP) data, starting with AppsFlyer. The feature lets advertisers choose a dual‑optimization mode that credits both Snap’s internal attribution and the MMP’s view....
How to Get Your Brand Recommended by AI: AEO with Julian Lopez
In this episode, Anthony hosts Julian Lopez, a leading expert on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), to explain how brands can surface as recommended solutions within AI-driven answer engines and generative search experiences. Julian outlines the shift from traditional SEO awareness...
Google’s AI Search Guidelines: What Affiliates Need to Know
Google’s new AI Search guidelines make clear that AI‑generated overviews still depend on traditional SEO signals such as crawlable pages, trustworthy content, and structured data. The documentation warns affiliates against shortcuts like forced content chunking, llms.txt files, and fake brand‑mention...
Mobile Measurement Set the Standard. Web Is Finally Catching Up.
AppsFlyer launched Web Performance Measurement, extending its mobile‑grade attribution infrastructure to web campaigns. The new suite delivers independent, server‑to‑server conversion postbacks, unified reporting across walled‑garden networks, and cross‑platform cost‑and‑revenue tracking. By closing the loop between mobile, desktop and web, marketers...
Q1 2026 Malformed & Fraudulent CTV Bundle IDs Risk Report
Pixalate released its Q1 2026 Connected TV (CTV) Malformed and Fraudulent Bundle IDs Risk Report, covering Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV, LG Smart TV, and Samsung Smart TV. The analysis of roughly 2 billion programmatic impressions shows that malformed or unidentified...
When Data Becomes Surveillance: What Meta’s Instagram DM Change Means for Marketers
Meta stripped end‑to‑end encryption from Instagram direct messages on May 8 2026, shifting DMs to standard encryption that the company can read. The move aligns with the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which pressures platforms to monitor exploitative content. While Meta has not announced advertising...
StackAdapt Unveils Next Evolution of AI-Powered Proactive Marketing at Conversion 2026
StackAdapt announced a suite of AI‑driven features at Conversion 2026, including the real‑time Command Centre, the conversational Ivy Studio workspace, a beta AI Video Builder, cross‑channel attribution, and programmatic direct mail for U.S. marketers. The tools aim to cut manual workflow,...
Skillz Q4 2025 Revenue Jumps 67% YoY as RZR Segment Fuels Growth
Skillz Inc. announced Q4 2025 GAAP revenue of $30 million, a 67% year‑over‑year increase and an 11% sequential rise. Adjusted EBITDA loss shrank to $10 million, and the company highlighted a $420 million false‑advertising verdict that could exceed $1.2 billion, while $130 million of debt...
24/7 Digital Marketing Launches Autopilot Enquiry System to Deliver 20‑30 Qualified Leads per Month
24/7 Digital Marketing announced the Autopilot Enquiry System, a six‑pillar AI‑powered platform that guarantees 20‑30 qualified sales enquiries each month for small‑ and mid‑size businesses. The launch marks the agency’s shift from task‑based services to a fully automated revenue engine.
Viant Taps Ad Fontes Media to Bring ‘News Bias’ Targeting to CTV
Viant’s demand‑side platform has partnered with Ad Fontes Media to embed the firm’s reliability‑and‑bias scores into connected‑TV (CTV) inventory. The integration, now live, lets advertisers target individual news shows rather than whole apps or domains. It is the first CTV solution...
How Townsquare and Bonneville Are Playing the Digital Slowdown
Townsquare Media reported a 7% rise in digital advertising in Q1, with programmatic revenue jumping more than 20%, pushing digital to 59% of total revenue and 63% of profit. Borrell’s 2026 Benchmark shows local digital ad growth has decelerated sharply,...
MakeMyTrip Promotes AI Travel Assistant Myra with Aparshakti Khurana in New Ad
MakeMyTrip has rolled out two digital films starring Aparshakti Khurana and Manjot Singh to promote Myra 2.0, its AI‑powered travel assistant. The ads highlight Myra’s ability to manage itinerary choices, accommodation requests and payments through a conversational, voice‑enabled interface. Myra now supports eight...
Google Ads Budget Misallocation Is More Common Than You Think – And Harder To Spot via @Sejournal, @LisaRocksSEM
Google Ads budgets are frequently misallocated, especially as Performance Max reshapes spend patterns and Smart Bidding struggles with low‑volume campaigns. Small daily budgets keep algorithms under the conversion thresholds needed for Target CPA or ROAS, leading to throttled spend and...
TechCrunch Leads,Yahoo Drops: Picnic’s 2026 Inventory Quality Rankings
Picnic released its PIQ10 2026 ranking, naming the UK’s ten highest‑quality publishers for advertising based on its continuously updated PIQ platform. TechCrunch surged to the top spot, while National Geographic, Politico and The Guardian entered the list for the first time....
Publicis Acquisition of LiveRamp Reshapes Commerce Media
Publicis announced a $2.167 billion acquisition of LiveRamp, a leading data‑clean‑room provider. The deal builds on Publicis’ recent string of commerce‑focused purchases, including Epsilon, Profitero and Mars United Commerce. By pairing LiveRamp’s neutral data‑collaboration platform with Epsilon’s identity graph, Publicis aims...
AI Ads Are Already Here. Your Lead Data Isn’t Ready.
OpenAI and Criteo announced a pilot that places ads inside ChatGPT, turning the conversational AI into a new performance marketing surface. The article warns that AI‑generated lead data can be plagued by hallucinations, producing inaccurate names, titles, or contact details...
The Growing Role of Social Media Hashtags in Recruitment and HR Marketing
Social media hashtags are becoming a core component of recruitment and HR marketing, helping talent‑acquisition teams surface job posts to early‑career audiences. Testing across campus hiring, software roles, and retail shifts showed that free first‑party tools like Creative Center excel...
Tap4Change Launches First Campaign Platform with Koala in a Blond Wig via All Good Collective
Tap4Change, an Australian donation platform, launched its first digital campaign with All Good Collective, featuring a koala in a blond wig for wildlife charity People For Nature and hair‑salon brand Franck Provost. The platform routes 100% of donor money to...
Agencies Are Moving Closer to Supply, and It’s Reshaping the Programmatic Middle Layer
Publicis Groupe’s pending acquisition of LiveRamp signals agencies’ push to own more of the programmatic stack. The move follows a broader industry trend where DSPs and SSPs blur traditional boundaries, and buyers seek tighter control over supply‑path economics. Index Exchange’s...
Far and Wide vs Bullseye
At the ET Brand Equity ‘igNight’ event, media veterans Vikram Sakhuja and Shashi Sinha sparred over whether reach remains the primary marketing metric or if targeted, attention‑driven advertising has taken precedence. Sakhuja argued that broad reach is essential for acquiring...
The 7 Best URL Shorteners in 2026
Jill Duffy’s updated 2026 roundup identifies the seven leading URL‑shortening platforms, ranking Rebrandly as the all‑around winner and Bitly for enterprise needs. Each service is evaluated on branding, analytics, QR‑code generation, automation support and price, with a detailed pricing matrix...
90% Of Brands Have Zero AI Search Mentions, New Study Finds 4 Key SEO Insights
A Victorious‑sponsored study of 177 brands across healthcare, SaaS, financial services, ecommerce/retail, and legal sectors found that 90% of them received no AI‑search mentions in Q1 2026. Only 18 brands were cited or mentioned on any of the eight AI platforms...
X Pitches Advertisers on Rising Opportunities in the App
X is revamping its ad sales pitch by highlighting a major AI‑driven upgrade to its targeting engine, which it says can better understand user behavior and boost campaign performance. The company also touts an affluent audience, with average household incomes...
Walmart Boosts Ad Relevance by Prioritizing Semantics over Clicks
How Walmart improved sponsored search by prioritizing semantic relevance over engagement Candidate retrieval in ad / RecSys systems often uses a user's historical engagement data as a proxy for relevance. But researchers at Walmart argue that this approach is incomplete in...
Omdia Forecasts Amazon, Netflix, Google Will Command $40 B of CTV Ads by 2030
Research firm Omdia projects that Amazon, Netflix and Google together will control about half of the $81 billion connected‑TV (CTV) advertising market by 2030. The forecast signals a rapid consolidation of ad spend toward the three streaming and tech giants, raising...
AdPlus Launches Public AI Cross‑channel Ad Platform, 50 Free Pro Seats
AdPlus, a bootstrapped Boston startup, opened its AI‑powered cross‑channel advertising platform to the public after a beta that attracted nearly 200 sign‑ups. The launch includes a promotion giving the first 50 users six months of the $99‑per‑month Pro plan at...
X Launches Display of Active Followers to Contextualize Performance Data
X has added an active‑followers metric to its creator analytics, showing the exact number and percentage of followers who were active in the past 24 hours and a 3‑hour reach snapshot. The move aims to give creators clearer context for engagement...
Content Marketing for Hotels: How 10X Content Improves SEO and PR
TravelBoom is urging independent hotels to adopt "10X" content—a step beyond basic guides—to boost organic search visibility, earn media coverage, and increase direct bookings. The approach focuses on delivering comprehensive, insider‑level travel information that outperforms existing web results, rather than...
Amazon, Netflix and Google to Capture Half of CTV Ad Market by 2030
Omdia forecasts global connected‑TV (CTV) advertising revenue to rise from $44 billion in 2025 to $81 billion by 2030. Google, Amazon and Netflix together are projected to capture 50% of that market, with shares of 26%, 13% and 9% respectively. The data...