Today's Digital Marketing Pulse
Accenture Song acquires creator agency Whalar to boost influencer capabilities
Accenture Song announced the acquisition of Whalar, adding a 170‑person global creator and social team while keeping co‑CEOs Emma Harman and Jo Cronk in place. The deal includes a three‑year strategic partnership that gives Accenture access to Whalar’s talent‑management, technology and venture assets, integrating the creator network with Accenture’s data and AI tools.
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 moves extend Canva beyond a design‑centric tool toward an end‑to‑end work platform that blends design, AI assistants, and full‑funnel marketing. Canva serves over 265 million monthly users and closed 2025 with roughly $4 billion in annualised revenue.
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.
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 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...
Google Launches Developer Hub for Ads and Measurement Tools
Google unveiled an Advertising and Measurement Developers Hub, a single portal that aggregates documentation, tools, and support for its ad‑tech suite. The hub brings together resources for the Google Ads API, Google Analytics, AdMob, and Google Ad Manager, organized by...
Google Rolls Out Onboarding Guide for Universal Commerce Protocol
Google has released an onboarding guide for its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) within Merchant Center, enabling merchants to embed checkout directly into AI‑driven search experiences like Gemini. The guide walks merchants through technical integration, interest‑form submission, and sandbox testing before...
Meta Ads for Hotels: What’s New in 2026
Meta Platforms’ 2026 overhaul forces hotel advertisers into a single, AI‑driven operating model. Automation, once optional, is now the default infrastructure, consolidating campaign types and handing budget, targeting and optimisation to Meta’s algorithms. The platform also trims campaign objectives and...
Meta Simplifies Pixel Setup with Official Google Tag Manager Template
Meta Platforms introduced an official Google Tag Manager (GTM) template for the Meta Pixel, eliminating the need for third‑party workarounds. The template leverages existing GA4 dataLayer events and automatically maps key e‑commerce actions, streamlining cross‑platform tracking. By reducing duplicate tagging...
Is Adobe Bringing AI-Driven Automation to Marketo?
Adobe is expected to announce a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Marketo Engage at its upcoming Summit in Las Vegas. An MCP server acts as a bridge between AI tools and data, allowing marketers to issue natural‑language prompts to create...
Quantilope Launches ‘Ad Optimizer’: Leveraging AI to Bridge the Gap Between Creative Intuition and Brand Strategy
Quantilope has introduced Ad Optimizer, an AI‑driven research tool that evaluates advertising creatives frame‑by‑frame against Category Entry Points. The platform analyzes visual and audio elements, delivering actionable recommendations and intuitive dashboards within hours. By integrating this capability into its Consumer...
Refining an Audience Can Sometimes Lead to Decreased ROI. Audience Expansion Can Help to Mitigate the Problem
Marketers often assume that tightening audience criteria improves lead‑generation performance, but excessive refinement inflates cost‑per‑lead and erodes long‑term ROI. Charlie Swift argues that the real lever is expanding to like‑minded, adjacent audiences while anchoring decisions to dollar‑based outcomes rather than...
Well Spirit Collective Bets That Trust Outlasts Scale in the Wellness Creator Market
Well Spirit Collective, a women‑owned, BIPOC‑led Los Angeles agency, prioritizes selective partnerships over volume, believing trust outweighs scale in the wellness creator market. COO Haley Oberon, who joined in 2021, has grown the firm by refusing misaligned deals, even when...
AI-Driven App Surge Shrinks Organic Discoverability
The App Store discoverability squeeze "If the number of apps available in the App Store explodes through AI-assisted coding agents, yet the surface area for organic visibility remains fixed — or, actually, decreases, given that the second ad placement in search...
Consistency Beats Constant Creation in Reel Strategy
Indie author trial reels testing mode has commenced… (does that sound official enough? 🤣) Instead of constantly creating new reels, I’m testing something different: → Same 5 reels - to the same book → Same proven caption → Same Cover Image → Posted...
Publicis, Microsoft Partner On Agentic Marketing
Microsoft and Publicis Groupe have deepened their alliance to create a full‑stack marketing platform that unites legacy software, AI agents and identity‑based data. Leveraging Microsoft Azure AI, Office 365 and Copilot tools, the solution will run on Publicis’ cloud‑native Slingshot...
The Living Room’s Front Page: Why Home Screen Ads Matter
Home screen advertising is becoming the new front page of television, offering advertisers a high‑attention, native environment. Studies from LG, Omnicom and Telly show double‑digit attention gains, lower media waste and up to a 250% lift in brand recall versus...
Google Serves Spanish Snippets Despite English Query
There's a new one - Google is showing me a title and meta description *in Spanish* even though I'm searching in English from Brooklyn. The URL is zoom . us and the page content is in English. I was recently in...
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...
Google Confirms March 2026 Core Update Is Complete via @Sejournal, @MattGSouthern
Google confirmed that its March 2026 core update finished rolling out on April 8 after a 12‑day rollout that met its two‑week target and was faster than the December 2025 update. The update followed a rapid 20‑hour spam update and a Discover‑only core...
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
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...
GEO Was Invented On Sand Hill Road
The article exposes Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as a venture‑capital‑driven hype rather than a genuine technological shift. Andreessen Horowitz’s May 2025 blog post seeded the term to promote portfolio tools, while fabricated memos and inflated statistics were amplified by engagement farmers....
Link Posts Don't Harm Engagement, Concerns Overblown
I can only speak for myself, but just from my own posting, I don’t see engagement dropping off when I post links. There are a lot of bad incentivizes around here (some inherent to social media), but i think the...
Joe Zappa Shares Sharp Pen Journey and Adtech Outlook
Turned the tables on @joe_zappa for once this week on the pod and put him in the interviewee seat. Really good conversation about his journey w/ Sharp Pen, the state of adtech marketing, and more. Link below.
Core Update Completed—Check Your Rankings Now
🚨 The rollout March 2026 core update was completed today (April 8, 2026). It's time to check your rankings/visibility/organic search traffic shift 👀 https://t.co/qsYSPpXZfz
LLMs Fuel Exaggerated Posts to Game Engagement Algorithms
“Social media algs reward engagement, and LLMs are excellent at writing in different styles, so people use LLMs to translate posts and news stories into [exaggerated, misleading] versions that get more engagement” I see a ton of that here. not good.
Tired of Meta‑only Advice; Want Alternatives for Growth
It is SUCH a bummer that every person I talk to tells me the only real path to meaningful audience growth is via Meta ads. I would rather give my money to *any* other platform.
Own Your Audience: Distribution Beats SEO Reliance
A $50M media company. 19 employees. Built from a small town. The moat wasn’t content... It was distribution. Traffic spikes are rented. Email lists are owned. If you’re still relying only on SEO, you don’t have a strategy. You have exposure. This conversation is...
Higher Pay Boosts Social Media Team Performance
Pay your social media team more money. Pay your social media team more money. Pay your social media team more money.