Today's Digital Marketing Pulse
Consumer journeys go non‑linear, MiQ study finds
MiQ’s ‘From Funnel to Flexibility’ study, analyzing data from 53 million households and 700 trillion signals, shows 87 % of shoppers change digital activities at least hourly and 42 % describe their purchase path as random. The research, based on surveys of over 4,000 consumers and 600 marketers in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, challenges the traditional linear marketing funnel.
Also developing:
By the numbers: DOJO AI raises $6M Seed round
Rare Perth Brings Media Capability Fully In-House as the Final Step in Integrated Agency Model
Perth’s largest independent creative communications firm Rare has fully brought its media capability in‑house, ending its licensing agreement with Hearts & Science. The integration folds planning, buying and partnership functions into Rare’s Client Solutions unit, completing a three‑year restructuring that removed traditional agency silos. Executives say the unified model lets strategy, creative, and data teams collaborate on a single idea, delivering faster, transparent outcomes for clients. The change reflects growing marketer demand for holistic agency partners rather than fragmented discipline‑based services.
The Washington Post’s Arc XP Adds TollBit to Help Publishers Make Money From AI Bot Traffic
The Washington Post’s Arc XP platform is integrating TollBit to let publishers block and charge AI bots that scrape their content. AI‑bot traffic has surged, with a 300% year‑over‑year rise and a ratio of one bot for every 31 human visits...
Ford, Nissan and State Farm Are Embedding Their Brands in Sports as They Chase Fandoms
Ford, Nissan and State Farm are moving beyond traditional sports sponsorships by creating original, brand‑centric content that lives within streaming and digital platforms. Ford’s "Bronco Off Course" pairs its SUV with a desert‑golf challenge, while Nissan’s "CarJitsu" stages jiu‑jitsu inside...
Email SEO Best Practices for Small Businesses
Email SEO blends email marketing with search‑engine optimization to amplify an ecommerce brand’s online visibility. While email content isn’t crawled by Google, the data it generates—click‑through rates, high‑intent keywords, and shareable assets—feeds SEO strategy and drives qualified traffic. Marketers can...
Prioritize the Right Audience over Viral Reach
This reel has gotten more reach than any of my reels in years. I could keep posting content like this to appease the algorithm but it has almost nothing to do with my business. I'd rather reach less people, as...
Coca-Cola’s New Campaign Challenges Japan to Separate the Fizz From the Sizz
Coca‑Cola Japan launched the “Fizz or Sizz” campaign, a sound‑based guessing game that asks consumers to tell whether they hear the fizz of a Coke or the sizzle of karaage. The activation runs for a week across radio, digital out‑of‑home,...
SharkNinja Powers Sales Surge Through Retail Media Campaign via Zitcha and Market Media
SharkNinja partnered with Zitcha and Market Media to run an always‑on retail media campaign across Noel Leeming’s in‑store screens, on‑site displays, EDMs and off‑site social ads. The full‑funnel effort generated more than 830,000 impressions, 6,400 clicks and delivered a return...
Sinch Mailgun Report: Companies Are Leaving Email Performance on the Table
Sinch Mailgun’s Email Impact Report 2026, based on 400 billion emails and a survey of 1,200+ senders, reveals that 18% of messages fail to reach inboxes, jeopardizing up to a fifth of potential ROI. While 78% of respondents deem email critical, only...
Add One Extra Offer, Earn 50% More
5 ways to monetize a paid newsletter beyond subscriptions: 1. Template packs 2. Monthly subscription 3. Paid webinars 4. Low-ticket upsells in welcome emails 5. Quarterly digital product drops Most writers would *easily* take home 50% more money just adding one of these.
Canva Acquires Ortto, Simtheory to Complete Marketing Stack
Canva Buys the Marketing Stack It Was Missing: Ortto, Simtheory, and the Bet on Canva Grow https://t.co/u3vP4WiL3Q
#ThisWeek on MarkLives MEDIA: Nick Grubb on Kagiso Connect • #NextWeek: WhatsApp in the Media Mix
Kagiso Connect CEO Nick Grubb announced the company’s strategic move beyond its radio roots into insurance, lifestyle services, and data analytics. The shift reflects broader ad‑spend migration toward diversified, performance‑driven channels. Grubb highlighted that these new verticals will leverage the firm’s...
HubSpot vs RecurPost 2026: Which Platform Actually Helps Ecommerce Brands Grow?
HubSpot Marketing Hub and RecurPost are pitted against each other as the go‑to platforms for ecommerce marketers in 2026. HubSpot offers an all‑in‑one suite that merges ads, email, landing pages, CRM data and AI‑driven automation, enabling revenue‑linked reporting. RecurPost focuses...
IAB Hunts Down Speakers For MeasureUP 2026
IAB Australia has opened speaker submissions for MeasureUp 2026, its 10th‑year media measurement conference scheduled for 2 September 2026 in Sydney. The event will showcase the first wave of findings from the Future of Measurement project and feature ten curated sessions plus new...
When Everything Looks Like AI, Being Real Becomes the Advantage
Brands are confronting a flood of AI‑generated content, which now accounts for roughly 57% of online material. A Gartner survey shows 68% of U.S. consumers frequently question whether digital ads are real, and half prefer brands that avoid generative AI....
For Creators – What Brands Actually Look For In Creator Partnerships
Brands now prioritize niche alignment, authentic engagement, content consistency, audience demographics, and professionalism over raw follower counts. Nano and micro creators (1K‑100K followers) consistently out‑perform macro influencers on engagement and trust, according to the Influencer Marketing Hub 2026 Benchmark Report....
Belong Turns Reddit Hacks Into National Media Campaign via OMD and Pembleton
Belong, an Australian telecom brand, launched the “Simple Solutions” national campaign with OMD and Pembleton, converting Reddit conversations into a media‑led showcase of its “Just BE” platform. The activation curates authentic community‑sourced advice and amplifies it across Reddit, out‑of‑home billboards...
JCDecaux Lands At Western Sydney Airport
JCDecaux has won a ten‑year advertising contract for the new Western Sydney International (WSI) Airport, taking charge of 27 fully digitised out‑of‑home assets across the terminal and surrounding roadways. The airport, designed by Zaha Hadid and partners, is slated to open...
YouTube Tests 90-Second Unskippable Ads on CTV
YouTube is piloting 90‑second unskippable ads for content streamed on connected‑TV (CTV) devices. The test follows earlier experiments with hour‑long ad blocks that only appear when ad‑blockers are detected. YouTube’s CTV audience now exceeds a billion hours per day, putting...
GrowthRise Mastermind Recap Apr 7, 2026
The GrowthRise Mastermind call on April 7, 2026 tackled five core B2B marketing challenges. Participants learned to treat LinkedIn thought leadership as a demand‑generation tactic measured with view‑through and API‑based conversion tracking. The panel outlined a cost‑effective media mix—leveraging Meta for cheap...
TikTok Launches Updated Integration for Wix Users
TikTok has released an updated integration for Wix, now available through the Wix App Market, that lets merchants connect their sites directly to TikTok for Business. The upgrade simplifies adding the TikTok Pixel and Events API, enabling real‑time visitor data...
Snapchat Makes a Push for Snapcodes as a Marketing Tool
Snapchat is promoting its Snapcodes—a branded QR‑code format that embeds logos and links to interactive experiences—as a core tool for advertisers. Available since 2017, Snapcodes now support AR lenses, instant coupons, and detailed performance analytics. The company argues that these...
Canva Acquires Simtheory and Ortto in a Twin Deal Aimed at Turning a Design Tool Into an End-to-End Work Platform
Canva announced the simultaneous acquisition of Simtheory, an agentic AI collaboration platform, and Ortto, a customer‑data and marketing‑automation suite. Both firms were founded by Australian brothers Chris and Mike Sharkey, who will now lead Canva’s AI and marketing‑technology groups. The...
Evergreen Content Cuts Costs, Boosts Advisor Reach
The challenge of "successful" social media marketing is that success often hinges on two distinct but rarely simultaneous goals: reach and conversion. Making matters more difficult, social media platforms are increasingly saturated, making it harder for advisors to stand out...
Top 7 Local Businesses That Need SEO Services
Local service firms—from cleaners to lawyers—are losing leads because they aren’t visible in Google’s local results. The article explains how local SEO places businesses in front of high‑intent customers at the exact moment they search, turning organic rankings into a...
JCDecaux Wins Advertising Tender for Western Sydney International Airport, Sydney’s New 24-Hour Airport
JCDecaux has been awarded the advertising contract for Western Sydney International Airport, slated to open in October 2026. The long‑term deal will see the French out‑of‑home leader install a premium digital out‑of‑home (DOOH) network across the airport’s internal and external...
Gemini in Chrome Becomes My Daily AI Assistant
How did I ever live without Gemini in Chrome before? It appeared yesterday and I am finding myself using it all day long: -Help me understand this paper. -Is this a new page? There's no date on it and I can't tell. -Look...
Slack‑Integrated AI Closes $239K Deal Without Cold Calls
I know a founder that closed a $239K deal in 2 weeks. Never sent a single cold email or made a phone call. Here's what happened: He runs a B2B company doing a few million in revenue. Just him. Doing sales is so far...
Whitney Leavitt Says This Utah Company Is the New Stanley Cup
HydroJug, a Utah‑based water‑bottle maker, is being hailed as the new Stanley cup after a design tweak—flexible, lock‑able straws—won over celebrity Whitney Leavitt and Gen Z consumers. The brand surged 9,032% since its 2017 launch, hitting over $10 million in revenue within...
Give Value, Skip Intro, Automate Freebies for Reel Success
I've been testing Trial Reels... and I finally had one "pop off" 👀 What I've seen working so far: ✓ give a TON of information away in the video ✓ these aren't posts for people to get to know you ✓ use a ManyChat...
Take Control: Ditch Your Meta Agency Today
You should fire your meta agency. Go to your Facebook ad account, select all your campaigns, and click View History or view edits. Every single change your media buying agency has made will show up there. What you'll probably find is that...
Disney, Google Seek Dismissal Of Children's Privacy Claims
Disney and Google are asking a California federal judge to dismiss a class‑action lawsuit that accuses them of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by failing to label child‑directed YouTube videos as “Made for Kids,” which allegedly enabled targeted...
Links Earn No Boost, Others Gain Algorithmic Advantage
Let me give a precise model of "link deboosting," which I believe is, for all intents and purposes, real. Forgive me, modest longpost for the full model. Jeff Bezos has argued that when anecdotes and data disagree, the anecdotes often hold the...
‘Influencer Marketing Is Replacing The Role TV Once Played’
Influencer marketing is rapidly eclipsing traditional television as the primary channel for brand building, a trend highlighted at a recent gathering of digital creators hosted by Sunshine Socials. Two young marketers shared data showing that influencer‑driven campaigns deliver higher engagement...
What Most Brands Get Wrong Measuring Influencer Marketing ROI
Influencer marketing ROI should be measured by engagement, user‑generated content, intent signals, and retail impact rather than mere impressions. Brands that focus on engagement rates above 1% and total interaction volume capture genuine consumer interest. Leveraging UGC not only reduces...
Current TikTok Trends to Try in 2026
TikTok now serves as the primary discovery engine for 61% of its users, a rate 1.5 × higher than other platforms. The 2026 trend forecast reframes trends as early signals of shifting consumer behavior, emphasizing real‑process videos, search‑led answer content, comment‑driven...
Interview: Karen Nelson-Field, Author of The Attention Economy, on Why Not All Reach Is Equal
In this episode, Dr. Karen Nelson‑Field explains why traditional media metrics like impressions and time‑in‑view are misleading, arguing that not all reach is equal because they don’t reflect actual human attention. She describes her biometric research that shows a large...
Google's Traffic Dip Fuels Surge in Paid Ads
Google lost ~5% of traffic share in the past 10 months (35.11% → 30.53%). Everyone thinks AI search ate it. Well… ▪️ AI search: 0.22% → 0.26% (+0.04pp) ▪️ Social: 7.67% → 8.24% (+0.6pp) ▪️ Paid: 13.99% → 17.15% (+3.2pp) ^ that’s across ~75k websites in...
Bad Data, Dark Data, & Why Your North Star Keeps Moving
In a recent Office Hours episode, Jacqueline and Juan expose a deep‑seated measurement crisis in enterprise marketing, noting that only 3% of CMOs can reliably prove ROI on more than half of their spend. They attribute the gap to fragmented...
Simplify Campaigns, Cut CPA 42% in Three Weeks
On a recent audit, $3,500 was spread across 10+ campaigns. Everything looked active… but nothing was efficient. There was overwhelm — “We’ve tried everything.” The issue was fragmentation and audience overlap. We simplified structure + focused signals. CPA dropped by 42% in 3 weeks —...
AI Bot Traffic Surged 300%, Hitting Publishers Hardest: Report
Akamai’s latest report reveals AI‑bot traffic surged 300 % in 2025, with publishers hit hardest. Users increasingly rely on AI chat interfaces, generating zero‑click experiences that divert traffic from organic search. The shift has slashed pageviews, raised infrastructure costs, and weakened...
Leveraging Google Ads for Local Businesses: Tactics to Dominate Your Market
Local businesses need a different Google Ads strategy than national brands because search intent is immediate and budgets are tight. The article outlines six tactical levers—geo‑bid layering, hyper‑local RLSA structures, call‑only ad scheduling with conversion thresholds, asset‑level creative pruning, time‑based...
“The Rate of Change Is Exponential”: Nick Fletcher on Consumer Journeys, Tracking and Industry Convergence
Nick Fletcher, SVP EMEA at Rakuten Advertising, warned that the pace of change in digital marketing is now exponential, driven by AI‑powered consumer tools and fragmented journeys. Marketers are struggling with unclear signals as traditional deterministic tracking falters, prompting a...
Legal Marketers Urge Firms to Make Practice‑Group Pages AI‑Friendly for Better Search Visibility
Legal marketers are telling law firms to redesign practice‑group web pages for generative‑AI search engines. The JDSupra article highlights a checklist that could boost organic visibility and client acquisition, signaling a shift in legal‑service marketing.
Big TikTok Audience, but Math Forces Me to Quit
I've been on TikTok for five fucking years now... and I am de-prioritizing it despite my audience of 200k+ people. This isn't a dramatic exit or a hot take. It's just math.
AI‑automated SEO Agency Scales Profits and Efficiency
Automating every single action of my SEO agency with AI so that I can make more money with each of the different pieces of the puzzle. That's how you want to make money with Claude Cowork and Code. Trimming down so that...
How to Rewrite 1,000 Ecommerce Product Pages in an Afternoon with OpenClaw
OpenClaw’s AI‑powered recipes let ecommerce merchants overhaul a thousand product pages in a single afternoon. The workflow starts with an SEO audit, then generates unique, keyword‑rich copy, edits bulk attributes, optimizes images, and finally pushes listings to every major marketplace....
Google's Core Update Pushes YouTube to AI Overviews Dominance
Just checked a client that ranked in AI Overviews last week and now the top 4 links in AI Overviews are all YouTube. Let me guess: the core update was another way for Google to boost YouTube, like it did with...
Join Our Marketing, AI, SEO AMA with Sterling Sky
AMA happening now over on the r/localsearch Reddit page with @SterlingSkyInc April 8 at 1pm - 3pm ET Let's talk about all things Marketing / AI / SEO https://t.co/ej0AZFDNse
Google Tests Swipeable Location Carousel in Search Ads
Google is piloting a swipeable carousel within search ads that consolidates multiple business locations into a single, scrollable unit. The carousel displays key details such as ratings and proximity, letting users swipe through options without leaving the results page. Early...
Upper-Funnel Spend Drives Sales, Not Just Retargeting
Mejuri shifted 25% of their ad budget to upper-funnel campaigns. The result? A 12.9% lift in incremental sales and a 57% boost in iROAS. Meanwhile you're pouring all your ad spend into bottom-of-funnel retargeting and wondering why your new customer...