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
I Let Claude Make AND Post My Instagram Carousel. Here's What Happened.
A creator tested whether Claude, an AI language model, could not only write a 10‑slide Instagram carousel but also publish it automatically via PRISM’s MCP integration. The prompt produced a narrative‑driven carousel in the creator’s voice, and PRISM posted it without any manual steps. Within minutes the post generated comments, saves, and algorithmic boost, demonstrating frictionless, end‑to‑end AI content production. The experiment highlights a new workflow that collapses multiple creation and distribution stages into a single command.
2030 Forecast: Ad-Supported Video Soars 75% To $540B
Omdia projects that advertising‑supported video will surge 75 % to $540 billion by 2030, propelled by social‑media and connected‑TV platforms. Online video is set to capture 54 % of global video revenue, up from 40 % in 2025. In contrast, linear TV’s ad‑supported revenue...
Health, Government Entities Advertised On Sites That Promoted Misinformation
A Yale University study, conducted with NewsGuard, found that health and government agencies spent more than $35.7 million on advertising across 11 websites that promote health misinformation between 2021 and 2024, accounting for over 10 % of those sites' ad revenue. The...
ChatGPT Ads: New Acquisition Channel Or Just Another Brand Tax? Via @Sejournal, @Brookeosmundson
OpenAI is set to roll out a self‑serve ChatGPT Ads platform in April, expanding the pilot beyond the U.S. to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The initial limited test generated an annualized $100 million revenue run‑rate and attracted roughly 600 advertisers, but...
Algorithms Penalize Authentic Content when You Stop SEO
I know how to make my posts go viral... But twitter gurus always say you should talk about your interests, daily life, etc. Thing is, the moment I stop yapping about SEO, the algo throws me out completely and visibility stops. I...
Trim the Fluff: Only Essential Sentences Remain
Want your writing to actually be read? Try the inverted highlighter method: 1. Highlight what readers would likely skip 2. Ask: Can I justify why someone would read this? If yes → make it essential If no → delete it Every sentence should fight...
#510 - The Amazon Ads Mistake Costing Sellers Growth
In this episode, hosts Shivali Patel and Keri Miller interview Destiny Wishon, CMO of Better AMS, and Carrie Miller, a seven‑figure Helium 10 seller, about common Amazon advertising pitfalls. They explain how focusing solely on low ACoS can stifle growth, why...
KitKat Turns Heist News Into Interactive PR Stunt
🏆 Best April's Fools PR Campaign? The KitKat Heist Tracker 👇 Spotted by Finchling via its PR campaigns tracker functionality: "KitKat published an online tracker where consumers can enter the 8‑digit batch code on a pack to check whether it was...
Krolog Expands Amazon Consulting Suite to Boost Brand PPC and SEO Performance
Krolog, a Toronto‑based Amazon consulting agency, announced an expanded service portfolio that bundles pay‑per‑click, SEO and full account management into a single growth engine. The move targets brands seeking to cut ad costs, improve organic rankings and scale revenue on...
NordVPN's Free "My Location" Tool Threatens Ad Targeting by Revealing Real and Virtual Location Data
NordVPN rolled out a free browser‑based "My Location" tool that instantly displays a user's real GPS‑derived location alongside the IP‑derived virtual location visible to websites. The move spotlights how much location data fuels digital advertising and could force marketers to...
Google Answers Why Some SEOs Split Their Sitemap Into Multiple Files via @Sejournal, @Martinibuster
Google’s John Mueller explained why SEOs sometimes split XML sitemaps into several files instead of using a single document. He noted that large sites often hit the 50,000‑URL or 50 MB limit, prompting proactive division. Additional reasons include grouping URLs by...
Belgian Shopping Center Is Embracing ‘Livestream Commerce’ on TikTok
Waasland Shopping in Saint‑Nicolas, Belgium, has launched a monthly livestream commerce series on TikTok, featuring influencer Jaël Ost and guest creators. The inaugural broadcast on April 2 attracted roughly 12,500 live viewers and generated an equal number of likes, while shoppers...
Playable Ads Trends in Mobile Games & Apps - February 2026
The February 2026 playable‑ads roundup highlights a surge in high‑budget campaigns, with the royalty‑themed Kingdom‑Match3 titles dominating the market. Increased investment from major networks like Applovin has amplified spend on SDK‑driven playables across multiple genres. Creators are leaning heavily into...
The Stack: AI Surges While Social Platforms Face Scrutiny
OpenAI secured a $122 billion funding round, lifting its valuation to about $852 billion and hinting at a future public listing. The company also extended its advertising pilot to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, giving brands more time to test AI‑assistant ads. In...
Only 8% of Brands Use AI for Campaign Optimisation: The B2B SaaS Affiliate Opportunity This Creates
A Supermetrics study released March 24 reveals that while 70% of e‑commerce and B2B SaaS brands list marketing‑spend optimization as a top priority, only 8% currently use AI for campaign optimization. The shortfall stems from fragmented, siloed data rather than...
Best AEO Agencies in the USA: Leading Answer Engine Optimization Experts Driving AI Discovery
The article outlines the emergence of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) as a critical evolution beyond traditional SEO, driven by conversational AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini. It profiles the five leading U.S. AEO agencies—AnswerManiac, NoGood, Avenue Z, iPullRank, and Siege...
Free SEO Audit Reveals 58/100 Average, Easy Fixes
I ran our free SEO audit on 20 sites this week. The average score? 58/100. Most common issues: 1. Missing H1 headings (72% of sites) 2. No internal content links — just nav/footer links (65%) 3. Duplicate meta descriptions across pages (48%) 4. Thin content under...
Boathouse’s New Chief Strategy Officer Says It’s Time For Agencies To Take The Reins Of Measurement
Boathouse appointed Sonia Chung as its first Chief Strategy Officer, tasking her with dismantling data silos that tie marketers to Big‑Tech platforms. Chung argues agencies should build their own measurement infrastructure, using AI to fuse structured and unstructured signals across paid,...
Ads of the Week: 12 Campaigns That Caught Our Eye, From KFC to Pringles
Weekly roundup spotlights 12 standout ad campaigns, from KFC’s animated Colonel Sanders to e.l.f.’s true‑crime parody and Verizon’s suspenseful “Look Behind You.” The piece highlights unconventional collaborations such as McDonald’s with K‑Pop Demon Hunters and Liquid Death teaming with real‑estate...
How Samsung Ads And Crumbl Got Their CTV Campaign To Perform Like Social
Samsung Ads partnered with Crumbl for a seven‑week CTV acquisition push in Q4, delivering over 16,000 app installs and five‑figure revenue while achieving a 23% conversion rate that outperformed the brand’s social campaigns. The integration with AppsFlyer gave Crumbl transparent,...
How Samsung Ads And Crumbl Got Their CTV Campaign To Perform Like Social
Crumbl partnered with Samsung Ads for a seven‑week CTV acquisition campaign in Q4, leveraging Samsung’s integration with AppsFlyer to track performance. The effort generated over 16,000 app installs and a 23% conversion rate, slightly higher than the brand’s typical social‑driven...
Transparency Brought Down The Trade Desk’s Publicis Deal but It May Not Be Enough to Win Its Other Clients
The Trade Desk’s relationship with Publicis collapsed after a leaked transparency audit, prompting rivals to tout their own openness. However, agency buyers largely dismissed transparency as a decisive factor, focusing instead on margin and control. Competitors such as Nexxen are...
TheWrap’s Creators X Hollywood Summit Unites Top Influencers and Studios to Redefine Marketing
TheWrap hosted its first‑ever Creators x Hollywood Summit in Los Angeles, gathering Issa Rae, Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade, digital storyteller Dhar Mann and former NFL star Brandon Marshall. The event, backed by Whalar, The Lighthouse and major studios, unveiled a multiyear...
Great Content Fails without Compelling Title and Thumbnail
We posted a video that many people said was our best video in years, yet it was one of our worst performing videos in years. People who watch it love it. The problem is the title an/or thumbnail were not...
Email Frequency Drives Revenue—Don’t Fear Over‑Mailing
Skims emails their list 5 times a week with new drops and restocks, driving a multi-billion dollar valuation. Meanwhile you're afraid of "annoying" your list and only send one newsletter a month, leaving thousands of dollars on the table.
HYROX Surpasses CrossFit in Search Interest, Redefining Competitive Fitness
Google search data reveals HYROX climbing while CrossFit declines, signaling a shift in competitive fitness. The rise is driven by HYROX's standardized, low‑friction format, prompting major gym chains to adopt the model. Industry observers see the trend reshaping event calendars...
Macy's AI Chatbot Spurs 400% Sales Lift, Boosting Turnaround
Macy's rolled out its Gemini‑AI‑powered chatbot, Ask Macy's, and shoppers who used the tool spent roughly 4.75 times more than non‑users, a lift of about 400%. The surge in basket size is feeding the retailer’s dividend‑focused cash‑flow strategy and its...
Malaysia: Youth on Social Media Shaping the Digital Economy
Malaysian youth are turning social media platforms into engines of commerce, generating an estimated $4.7 billion in gross value added and supporting 147,000 jobs by 2025. The government highlighted this trend at the launch of a socioeconomic impact report, linking it...
AI‑Generated Popups Capture 200+ Emails Monthly
I built a skill for Claude Code that designs high-converting popups — exit intent, scroll triggers, timed delays, slide-ins, and banners. You tell it what you want to capture and it builds the full popup spec: trigger rules, headline, offer, form...
YouTube Experiments with TV-Style Channels for CTV Viewing
YouTube is piloting TV‑style channels with the launch of “Coachella TV,” a 24/7 streaming channel that will feature archival performances and highlights from the 2026 festival. The experiment follows earlier tests with roughly 40 musicians and is designed to let creators...
Report Shows Document Posts on LinkedIn See More Engagement
Socialinsider’s 2026 LinkedIn Benchmarks, analyzing 1.3 million posts from 16,645 business pages (Jan 2024‑Dec 2025), reveal that native document posts—PDFs displayed in a carousel—generate the highest engagement on the platform. Video and image updates trail behind, a reversal of trends seen on most...
Instagram Allows Creators to Schedule Trial Reels
Instagram introduced a scheduling feature for Trial Reels on April 2, 2026, allowing creators to set future publish times for videos shown to non‑followers. Trial Reels, launched in December 2024, already boosted non‑follower reach by 80 % and prompted 40 % of users to increase...
AI Is Now Deciding Which Emails Get Seen. Here’s How to Stay in the Inbox in the Gemini Era
Google’s Gemini integration turns Gmail into an AI‑driven inbox assistant that decides which messages surface for users. The change means email volume alone no longer guarantees delivery; engagement signals now dictate placement. Marketers must prioritize segmentation, human‑like copy, and continuous...
FMG Acquires Testimonial iQ to Add Another Piece to Its Offering
FMG announced the acquisition of Testimonial iQ, a client‑testimonial platform launched in 2023, and will rebrand it as FMG Testimonials. The tool will be sold both as a standalone product and as part of FMG’s broader digital‑marketing suite, which already spans website...
I Was a Broke American Living in New Zealand. A Viral TikTok Turned My Taco Stand Into 3 Restaurants.
American expatriate Sean Yarbrough turned a TikTok‑fueled taco stand into three New Zealand restaurants within three years. After quitting a burger‑flipping job, he launched Broke Boy Taco with a three‑item menu and leveraged a revenue‑share kitchen partnership. A viral TikTok...
Creators Prefer Long-Term Sponsor Partnerships Over One-Off Deals
some theme of sponsors having more permanent placements in podcasts/newsletter/creator world not what i expected tbh but think it actually seems reasonable especially on content churned quickly i’d love to just have a set few sponsors who make up tools that i use...
Quit Algorithm Chasing, Reclaim Your Creative Labor
This year, I stopped optimizing my content for algorithms. Social media was built to commodify your attention and sell it to advertisers. Every hour I spend chasing perfect posting times, or perfecting every element of a post, is me exploiting my own...
How Your Product Margins Should Dictate Your Ad Budget
Shopify dropshippers often set ad spend arbitrarily, ignoring the decisive role of product margin. By calculating break‑even ROAS—selling price divided by profit per unit—stores can determine the minimum return needed to avoid losing money. Analysis of 211 products shows most...
LinkedIn Pulse Lost 89% of Its Google Traffic.
LinkedIn’s long‑form Pulse articles have seen a dramatic drop in Google visibility, falling from a peak of 33 million monthly visits in March 2024 to just 3.6 million in March 2026 – an 89 % decline. In contrast, the platform’s shorter Posts have surged, climbing...
E‑commerce Ad Spend Loses Cash‑back as Platforms Ditch Credit
Devastating news - the ecommerce points game is over. Amazon was the last ad platform taking credit cards. Meta moved everyone to invoicing last month. Google did it last year. Millions of $ of monthly ad spend that was earning 2% cash...
Flipboard’s New ‘Social Websites’ Help Publishers and Creators Tap Into the Open Social Web
Flipboard unveiled "social websites," a new product that lets publishers and individual creators bundle content from decentralized platforms such as Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, podcasts and newsletters into a single, controllable web destination. The service builds on Flipboard’s Surf reader,...
Grokipedia Loses Visibility Across Google and AI Platforms
Grokipedia drops in search (and more with the March 2026 core update) and then Grokipedia drops in AIOs, AI Mode, and yes, ChatGPT. Again, drop in Google and you can drop in AI Search (across surfaces and platforms). First screenshot...
Align Your Marketing Systems, Turn $250k Yearly Into $250k Monthly
My client went from $250k a year to $250k in a single month. Same offer. Same audience. She didn’t add anything new. She aligned the marketing systems she already had. If you’re a female founder earning $150k–$500k, I want to teach you...
Singular ROI Index 2026 Introduces First-Ever Multi-Touch Attribution Leaderboards
Singular released its 2026 ROI Index, the most extensive mobile‑marketing benchmark built on trillions of impressions, billions of clicks and installs. The report adds the first multi‑touch attribution (MTA) leaderboards, revealing that Meta delivers up to 50% higher ROAS and...
We Analyzed 12,154 Pages. The Most Popular B2B Content Format Has a 44.8% Fail Rate.
A new analysis of 12,154 pages across 24 B2B brands finds that thought leadership accounts for 37% of all content but only generates 27.5% of referring domains, resulting in a 44.8% fail rate. The format’s efficiency score of 0.74× places...
3 Strategy Shifts That Take You From 0 to 5k Followers
The post outlines three strategic pivots creators need to break the 0‑to‑5,000 follower barrier in 2026. It argues the old consistency‑trend‑viral playbook is obsolete, urging a shift toward retention‑focused growth content that aligns with a niche, delivers real value, and...
Viral Posts Follow a Predictable Five‑step Structure
Viral content often looks random only if you don’t study structure. Behind a lot of strong posts and videos there’s a pattern: - a hook family - a framing choice - a pacing decision - a CTA - a distribution fit
Advertiser ID: Weighing Personalized Ads vs Privacy Risks
The more you use your computer, the more personalized the ads become. Helpful, or big privacy problem? Here are the pros and cons of keeping "Advertiser ID" enabled for Windows and MacOS users: https://t.co/2Jztl0woVh #privacy #mac #windows #advertising https://t.co/craO1zPVWY
LiveRamp Extends Partnership with Unity
LiveRamp has broadened its collaboration with Unity, integrating its RampID identity solution into Unity Exchange. The move gives marketers access to Unity’s mobile ecosystem of 2.9 billion monthly active devices globally and 256 million in the United States. By leveraging first‑party data,...
Virality Depends on Attention Structure, Not Just Creativity
#AD @nemovideoai Most people misunderstand why videos go viral. They frame virality as a creativity problem. In reality, it is a structural one. What matters is not just what a video says, but how attention is sequenced, sustained, and resolved. That is where NemoVideo becomes interesting.