SMX Now: Learn How Brands Must Adapt for AI-Driven Search
Visibility now hinges on AI-driven search, not just rankings. SMX launches its monthly SMX Now webinar on April 1, featuring iPullRank experts Zach Chahalis, Patrick Schofield, and Garrett Sussman. They will unveil iPullRank’s Relevance Engineering (r19g) framework for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and an omnichannel content strategy. The session highlights the need for testing, customized tactics, and a three‑tier measurement model covering discovery, selection, and citation impact.
Google Brings Vehicle Feeds to Search Campaigns
Google Ads now supports vehicle feed integration in Search campaigns, allowing automotive advertisers to pull inventory from Merchant Center into text ads. The update adds clickable assets that display make, model, price and images alongside standard ad copy. Users can...
Thrad Extends Its Partnership with Betadine Through iNova Pharmaceuticals
Thrad has extended its partnership with Betadine through iNova Pharmaceuticals to launch digital‑first, AI‑native advertising campaigns for healthcare brands. The first effort is a Betadine Feminine Care initiative that aims to create supportive, informative spaces for women. By combining Betadine’s...
Global Signs Nectar Deal to Boost Digital Audio Activity
Global Media has struck a data partnership with Sainsbury’s Nectar360, merging first‑party shopper information with its own listener data on the DAX digital audio platform. The integration lets advertisers target UK audio audiences using anonymised purchase insights and directly measure...
When an Affiliate Marketing Article Turns Into a Tool
KonverJ’s recent thought‑leadership piece argued that affiliate marketing succeeds when treated as a partner ecosystem rather than a single channel. Reader demand for actionable guidance prompted the firm to convert the concept into a practical planning aid called the Audience...
Lottery Operator Launches In-House Agency, Studio 59
National Lottery operator Allwyn is establishing Studio 59, an in‑house creative and content studio slated to open in April. The unit will unify creative, social, production, planning and brand marketing to accelerate content creation across retail, digital and communications channels....
How To Build An SEO Commissioning Workflow: From Tickets To Requirements via @Sejournal, @Billhunt
Enterprise SEO often fails because teams are involved too late, operating reactively with ticket‑based fixes that delay implementation and repeat structural errors. The article proposes an SEO commissioning workflow that embeds search requirements at the design stage, defining intent, eligibility...
Researchers: Meta, TikTok Steal Personal & Financial Info When Users Click Ads
Researchers from Jscrambler allege that Meta and TikTok advertising pixels harvest extensive personal and financial data from users who click ads, even when users explicitly opt out. The pixels collect PII, credit‑card details, and granular shopping‑flow information, running before consent...
Sprout Social Alternatives: Social and Influencer Platforms for Scalable Brand Programs
Sprout Social has long served as an all‑in‑one hub for social publishing, engagement, analytics and, more recently, influencer campaign management. As brands’ influencer programs mature, many find that a single suite can’t meet the deeper relationship‑building, payment tracking, or listening...
Best Instagram Walls for Websites With Real Examples
Instagram walls transform Instagram posts, influencer content, and user‑generated media into continuously updated website assets. By aggregating multiple pieces of social content, they turn fleeting feeds into persistent social proof that supports trust, product discovery, and conversion. The guide outlines...
Twirl Alternatives: Comparing Creator Marketing Platforms for Growing Brands
Twirl remains a popular choice for structured creator‑led content, but growing brands are seeking platforms that can handle larger creator volumes and more flexible workflows. Alternatives such as Modash, Humanz, Creator.co, Billo, Collabstr, Insense, Influee and Trend.io each emphasize different...
Bing Business Profiles With Image Slider
Microsoft Bing has rolled out an image slider within its Business Profiles local panel, allowing users to scroll through a business’s photos directly on the search results page. The feature, confirmed live on March 18, 2026, appears in listings that...
Adpro& Group Wins Fine Tissues Mandate Across the Levant Region
Adpro& Group has been appointed by Fine Levant to lead the creative, social and media mandate for Fine Tissues across Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. The deal revives a partnership that ended in 2017 and adds the Fine Baby...
How CRO Drives Ecommerce Longevity
Founder Adam Pearce explains that ecommerce longevity hinges on diversified traffic sources and a robust conversion rate optimization (CRO) program. He details how CRO improves advertising efficiency, strengthens organic search and generative‑AI visibility, and fuels personalized email marketing. Real‑world examples—from...
Gen Z Fave Dua Lipa Joins George Clooney as Nespresso’s Global Ambassador
Nespresso has appointed pop star Dua Lipa as its new global ambassador alongside longtime face George Clooney. The partnership will launch on April 14 with the “Vertuo World” campaign, signaling a creative shift aimed at attracting Gen Z coffee drinkers. Nespresso’s...
Battersea Power Station Director on Why Social Influence Is Redefining Retail Destinations
Battersea Power Station’s leasing director says social influence has become a critical leasing KPI, reshaping how landlords curate retail mixes. Gen‑Z now turn to social media before search engines, prompting landlords to prioritize brands with strong digital followings. Battersea leverages...
Africa’s Digital Surge: What Affiliates Need to Know for 2026
Africa’s iGaming sector is projected to reach $4.14 billion by 2030, driven by a youthful, increasingly connected population and maturing regulatory frameworks in markets such as Nigeria and Kenya. Mobile connectivity is the primary growth engine, with more than 70% of...
The Economic Value of Outsourced Link Acquisition for Agencies
Agencies are turning to white‑label link‑building marketplaces to outsource link acquisition, allowing them to meet fluctuating client demand without expanding permanent staff. This model shifts costs from fixed overhead to variable, campaign‑based expenses, improving margin flexibility. By leveraging established publisher...
SEO Test Shows It’s Trivial To Rank Misinformation On Google via @Sejournal, @Martinibuster
An SEO professional deliberately inserted an AI‑generated hallucination about a non‑existent March 2026 Google core update into a LinkedIn newsletter. The fabricated article quickly ranked on Google’s first page for “Google March update 2026” and appeared in the AI Overview feature....
New Report ‘Brings the Receipts’ on ROI of Women’s Sports Ads
WPP Media’s new “Women’s Sports Playbook” report shows rapid growth in advertising within women’s sports. Ad impressions rose 79% year‑over‑year and overall spend reached about $127 million, up roughly 70% YoY. Brands such as Ally Financial saw 85% higher engagement on...
Costco Adds Adtech Firm Moloco to Scale Retail Media Network
Costco has teamed up with ad‑tech firm Moloco Commerce Media to enhance the relevance of ads on its e‑commerce platform. The partnership will be rolled out as a beta program in Q2, coinciding with the launch of Costco Velocity, the...
Google Explains Why HTTPS Migration May Negatively Impact SEO via @Sejournal, @Martinibuster
Google’s John Mueller explained that moving a site to HTTPS can temporarily hurt rankings because the change functions like a full site migration. The process forces Google to recrawl and reprocess every URL, and mis‑configured 301 redirects or misuse of...
Coach and Kate Spade Conclude Global Media Pitch
Luxury conglomerate Tapestry, owner of Coach and Kate Spade, has appointed Dentsu as its global agency of record for media planning and buying outside the United States. The agreement covers the APAC region—including Japan, China, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and...
Uber Eats Sponsors Comedy Category on Prime Video UK
Amazon Ads announced Uber Eats as the first brand to sponsor Prime Video’s comedy slate in the UK, launching on March 19 2024 alongside the Season 2 premiere of *Last One Laughing UK*. The partnership runs through the end of 2026 and includes...
Gen Z Doesn’t Hate Your Brand, They Hate Being Talked Down To
Brands that try too hard to mimic Gen Z often backfire, eroding credibility. Successful examples like Tower 28, SULT, and Hinge demonstrate that treating Gen Z as peers, embracing transparency, and leveraging authentic long‑form storytelling resonate better. The article outlines...
Why One Creator Commerce Platform Is Connecting Brands and Creators for ‘Flat-Fee’ Campaigns
Creator commerce platform LTK has introduced Quick Collabs, a new feature that lets brands launch flat‑fee, one‑click campaigns that creators can opt into. The tool leverages LTK’s data on 44 million monthly shoppers, $6 billion in annual spend, 400,000 creators and 8,000...
Advertisers Aren’t Happy About Picking up Meta’s European Tax Tab
Meta will begin charging advertisers a "location fee" starting July 1, 2026 to cover European digital services taxes. The fee varies by country—2 % in the U.K., 3 % in France, Italy and Spain, and 5 % in Austria and Turkey—adding directly to ad spend....
Watsons Malaysia Celebrates Raya with ‘The Raya Glam Stage’ Campaign via MBCS
Watsons Malaysia, in partnership with Omnicom’s MBCS, launched the “Pentas Raya Glam” campaign to celebrate the Hari Raya festive season. The multi‑channel activation features a humorous film starring local celebrities, a #WatsonsPentasGlamRaya dance challenge on Instagram and TikTok, and in‑store sensory...
Amazon Ads and Spotify Expand Partnership in Australia
Amazon Ads and Spotify have integrated Spotify’s premium audio and video inventory into Amazon’s demand‑side platform in Australia. The partnership lets Australian marketers buy across connected TV, display, audio and video through a single programmatic workflow, leveraging Amazon’s shopping and...
The Trade Desk's OpenRow Debate Could Mean Churn In Programmatic Ecosystem
The Trade Desk’s OpenPath platform is facing pushback from major agency networks, with WPP and Dentsu withdrawing over concerns about cost transparency. While the service is free for advertisers and agencies, publishers are charged a 5 % fee tied to advertiser...
ADMA Launches New Podcast Unpacking How Marketers Can Harness AI to Lead the Next Era of Marketing
ADMA has released a new podcast episode that explores how marketers can ethically harness artificial intelligence to drive the next era of marketing. The discussion draws on findings from ADMA’s State of AI in Marketing Survey 2025, which shows 75%...
Google AI Overviews Cut Germany’s Top Organic CTR By 59% via @Sejournal, @MattGSouthern
New SISTRIX data shows Google’s AI Overviews now appear on about 20% of German search queries. When present, they cut the click‑through rate for the top organic position from 27% to 11%, a 59% drop. Across all positions the average...
Reddit Partners with Pacvue to Expand Ad Access
Reddit has partnered with ad‑tech firm Pacvue to let advertisers buy and track Reddit campaigns directly within Pacvue’s management platform. The integration adds Reddit to Pacvue’s suite, which already supports over 100 retail media networks and serves more than 70,000...
YouTube Expands Livestream Gifts to Users in Korea
YouTube has rolled out its Jewels livestream gifting system to Korean users, following earlier launches in the United States and Canada. Jewels are an in‑app currency that lets viewers purchase digital stickers, which appear in chat and generate Rubies for...
Report Finds Reddit Ads Drive Strong Performance for Retailers
Fospha’s State of Retail Commerce 2026 report shows Reddit’s influence on retail conversions surged in 2025, delivering an 82% lift in ROAS when Amazon sales are accounted for and a 257% increase in revenue attributed to the platform. The study...
Wendy’s Seeks An Influencer for New Chief Tasting Officer Role
Wendy’s announced a contest to appoint its first Chief Tasting Officer, a brand‑ambassador role paid $100,000. The company asks applicants to post a one‑minute video on TikTok or Instagram using #WendysCTOContest, highlighting personal taste and creativity. The posting emphasizes a...
From Journeys to Systems
Channel99 launched Paid Search Optimization, an AI‑driven feature that shifts B2B paid‑search measurement from clicks and CPC to cost‑per‑target‑account engaged. The capability surfaces waste, scores keywords and ad groups, and recommends budget reallocations, giving marketers and finance leaders clearer ROI....
Ranking Engineer Agent (REA): The Autonomous AI Agent Accelerating Meta’s Ads Ranking Innovation
Meta introduced the Ranking Engineer Agent (REA), an autonomous AI system that runs end‑to‑end machine‑learning experiments for ads ranking. REA generates hypotheses, launches training jobs, debugs failures, and iterates without continuous human oversight, using a hibernate‑and‑wake cycle for multi‑day workflows....
MyFitnessPal Wants To Start The Health And Wellness Subsector Of Retail Media
MyFitnessPal has launched a data‑driven advertising business, expanding beyond its legacy mobile display unit to include video, interstitials, full‑screen takeovers, newsletter sponsorships and branded recipe integrations. The platform will leverage its opt‑in food‑logging data—averaging 16 items per user per day—to...
Beyond the Frame: Why Video Is the Strategic Supercharger for Modern DOOH
Video is reshaping digital out‑of‑home advertising by converting static billboards into dynamic, cinematic moments that capture fleeting attention. Brands must adapt each video asset to the unique viewing context of DOOH screens, a process the article calls “transcreation,” using modular...
Documenting the Move to Beehiiv
Alex Hilleary outlines his recent migration of a newsletter to the beehiiv platform, using Episode 135 of his "Freelancer Niche Explosion" series as a case study. The piece highlights how beehiiv’s tools streamlined audience growth and monetization. It also references...
YouTube Tests Sticky Banner After Ad Skip
YouTube is piloting a sticky banner overlay that stays visible after a viewer skips a video ad. The banner, linked to the original ad, remains on‑screen until the user dismisses it, extending brand exposure beyond the skip point. This experiment...
Informa TechTarget Launches AI Visibility and GEO Solutions
Informa TechTarget unveiled two new offerings—the AI Visibility Audit and the GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) Topic Planner—to help B2B marketers navigate AI‑driven search ecosystems. The audit evaluates how audiences discover brands via AI, pinpointing gaps in visibility and accuracy, while...
fullthrottle.ai Launches Enhanced SmartMail Capabilities
FullThrottle Technologies introduced an upgraded SmartMail feature on its fullthrottle.ai platform, enabling marketers to fuse identity‑driven direct‑mail with digital display, audio, and CTV campaigns. The solution converts third‑party audiences into verified first‑party households, allowing real‑time, trigger‑based mail activations. Integrated into...
Smartly Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire Measurement Platform Incrmntal
Smartly has signed a letter of intent to acquire Incrmntal, a real‑time marketing measurement platform. Smartly’s AI‑driven suite automates campaign creation, while Incrmntal provides incremental lift analytics across channels. Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition aims to embed live...
As Retail Media Enters Its Second Act, Savvy Brands Diversify Networks and Tactics
Retail media is evolving from a bottom‑funnel, search‑only model to a full‑funnel ecosystem that includes video, display, and off‑site formats. Amazon’s share of retail media spend dropped from 56% to 46% as marketers allocate more budget to Walmart and mid‑size...
AURN Teams With AdGrid For Multicultural Marketer Push
American Urban Radio Networks (AURN), a Black‑owned radio consortium led by Chesley Maddox‑Dorsey, announced a strategic partnership with ad‑tech platform AdGrid. The collaboration will launch a new initiative that blends AURN’s multicultural radio reach with AdGrid’s programmatic technology. The goal...
Compound Growth: How U.S. Bank Uses AI to Drive Revenue and Results
U.S. Bank is embedding artificial intelligence into its core growth engine, using AI‑generated synthetic audiences to slash campaign development time by roughly 50 percent. The bank’s AI‑driven personalization platform is already delivering tens of millions of dollars in incremental revenue by...
14 Digital Marketing Conferences to Attend in 2026
The 2026 digital‑marketing conference lineup spans five continents, featuring flagship events like Social Media Marketing World, OMR Festival, and Web Summit, each adding AI‑focused tracks or new formats. Organizers are blending hybrid access, extended virtual recordings, and intimate networking experiences...
Conversational Keywords as the Foundation of Generative Engine Optimisation
The article argues that generative engine optimisation (GEO) now hinges on conversational keywords rather than traditional, rigid terms. As users pose full‑sentence questions, AI‑driven search engines evaluate intent and context, making keyword stuffing ineffective. Voice‑assistant adoption—over $9 billion in market size...