Today's Marketing Pulse
McKinsey predicts agentic AI will power two‑thirds of marketing activities
McKinsey’s new report forecasts that agentic AI could drive up to two‑thirds of marketing activities, shifting AI from a productivity add‑on to a core campaign engine. Early adopters are already using generative tools, while the next wave will involve autonomous agents that coordinate decisions across workflows. The firm outlines a five‑step roadmap for implementation.
Inside the SXSW 2026 Brand Activations, Ranked in Tacos by ADWEEK
South by Southwest 2026 unfolded without its central convention center, scattering events across downtown Austin and turning Congress Avenue into a pedestrian hub. Brands seized the fragmented landscape with pop‑up activations, though the festival saw fewer large‑scale immersive experiences than pre‑pandemic years. Paramount+ delivered a ski‑lodge themed bar and Rivian built a recycled‑asphalt off‑road course, both earning four of five tacos. Other activations like Prime Video’s photo booth and Focus Features’ Airstream received lower scores for limited engagement.
Unified Attribution Solves Conflicting Credit Across Platforms
The eCom world is obsessed with making decisions based on attribution data...but Meta and Google are claiming the credit for the SAME conversion • You recalculate your break-even ROAS. • You shift budget. • You scale what looks like a winner. But if the...
15 Best SEO Tools for Content, Rankings, and AI Visibility
AI‑driven search engines like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews now surface answers directly, but they still rely on well‑optimized, authoritative content to rank. The article reviews 15 SEO tools—from comprehensive suites such as Semrush and Ahrefs to niche utilities like...
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...
Publicis Advises Clients to Avoid The Trade Desk, According to a Leaked Memo
Publicis has instructed its clients to stop recommending The Trade Desk after a third‑party audit uncovered improper fee applications and a lack of transparent cost invoicing. The audit, performed by FirmDecisions, concluded that The Trade Desk charged fees without clear...
Marketing Skills 1.4 Launches Lead Magnet Suite & 500+
Marketing Skills v1.4.0 is out. What shipped: /lead-magnets — high-converting lead magnet strategy. Format selection, opt-in copy, delivery mechanics, and nurture sequences. Composio integration — one MCP server connects your agent to HubSpot, Salesforce, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Google Sheets, Slack, Notion, and...
Beverage Marketer Sees Cost Savings with Agentic Media-Buying Test
PubMatic and Butler/Till executed Geloso Beverage Group’s first fully autonomous, AI‑driven media campaign using the AgenticOS platform. The test cut buy‑side supply‑chain costs by 5.5× while delivering a 98% video‑completion rate and 40% more impressions than planned. Quality metrics were...
Earn Six Figures Solo: Brand, Proof, Overdeliver, Content
A few years ago... I made $270K in a year as a solo freelancer. No investors. No big city network. No team. Here’s the playbook I ran: 1) Own your name online. 2) Publish proof, not promises. 3) Deliver more than you’re paid for. 4)...
General Mills Revives Taco Shell Maker La Tiara
General Mills is reviving La Tiara, the Kansas City‑origin taco‑shell brand it bought for $10 million, and will sell the products nationwide for the first time through Walmart starting in April. The company is reopening the Gladstone, Missouri plant, creating more than...
Anna Reveals How to Fix Evergreen Funnel Failures
Most evergreen funnels fail before they get a real chance 😥 Show-up rate. Price point. Cold traffic trust. Anna cracked all three. This episode she breaks down exactly how. 👇 Comment POD51 to learn it.
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How to Use Salesforce for Marketing [Maximizing CRM for Effective Campaigns]
Salesforce Marketing Cloud consolidates customer data, campaign management, and analytics into a single platform, enabling marketers to deliver personalized experiences across email, social, mobile, and web. Features such as Journey Builder and Einstein AI automate multi‑step journeys and predict customer...
Never Stop Marketing, Even When Business Is Full
The single biggest mistake agency owners make for their pipeline: They stop marketing when they get busy. My favorite restaurant in the world is Royal Sushi Omakase in Philadelphia. (If you ask me, it’s the best restaurant in the world.) It has...
Sprite Reclaims NBA Soft Drink Sponsorship in Blow to PepsiCo’s Starry
Coca‑Cola’s Sprite has reclaimed its role as the NBA’s official soft‑drink sponsor, ending a three‑year stint by PepsiCo’s Starry. The multiyear agreement activates immediately, giving Sprite presence at marquee NBA events, international games, and digital fan experiences. The partnership revives...
Gamma Adds AI Image-Generation Tools in Bid to Take on Canva and Adobe
Gamma has unveiled Gamma Imagine, an AI‑driven image‑generation tool that lets users create brand‑specific marketing assets such as charts, infographics, and social graphics from simple text prompts. The product plugs into a suite of integrations—including ChatGPT, Claude, Zapier, Atlassian, n8n,...
Stop Selling Unseen Vanilla
The post argues that big brands waste billions on generic "vanilla" advertising that rarely reaches consumers. Traditional metrics like GRPs only estimate potential reach, not actual views, leading to inflated performance claims. Gary Vaynerchuk advocates replacing mass‑market campaigns with highly...
Reinventing a 77-Year-Old Brand: NASCAR’s Modern Playbook with Tim Clark and Jimmie Johnson
NASCAR’s chief brand officer Tim Clark and champion Jimmie Johnson discuss a multi‑pronged strategy to modernize the 77‑year‑old sport. The plan includes staging races in unexpected locations, leveraging gaming platforms like iRacing for talent and fan acquisition, and shifting from...
LinkedIn VP Reveals Winning B2B Ad Strategies
LinkedIn is the number one channel for B2B marketers (for content, social, ads, you know we love it here) so I had LinkedIn VP Marketing Davang Shah on the podcast this week to go right to the source about what's...
Meta's Delays Cost Businesses $30‑40K in Overspend
Meta rarely, if ever, sends comms in a fast enough manner for bugs like last night. Today please demand them too. Some businesses are waking up to $30-40k in overspending from what I'm hearing. That's a significant amount of $...
M&S: Why Brand Health Is the Ultimate Insurance Policy
Marks & Spencer retained its position as the UK’s strongest brand in the YouGov Best Brand Rankings 2026, even after a ransomware attack that erased £300 million of profit and £750 million of market value. The retailer’s long‑term brand strategy—modernising stores, shifting...
Yahoo Scout Pushes AI to Funnel Users to Publishers
Yahoo's @jlanzone to @reckless about why it's important to drive users downstream to publishers via AI responses (and why that's a key feature of Yahoo Scout) Yahoo believes users want to go downstream to publishers, they want to check sources, and...
McDonald’s Rolls Back the Years with Cards Collection
McDonald’s UK, together with Leo UK, has launched a nationwide “McDonald’s Cards” promotion that reimagines iconic brand characters, menu items and rituals as a collectible card set. The collection features 24 hand‑illustrated designs across four categories—Characters, Fans, Retro and Legendary—and...
AI Transforms Website Rebuilds with Better Content
The dirty secret of most website rebuilds is that nothing really changes. You take content written by people who don't know how to write for the web, drop it into a shiny new design, and wonder why the metrics don't improve....
HB Exclusive: Enseo Introduces New Corporate Identity
Enseo, a 26‑year hotel technology provider, unveiled a new corporate identity to signal its strategic evolution from hardware manufacturer to an integrated software platform. The rebrand highlights a unified solution that merges in‑room entertainment, managed Wi‑Fi, marketing tools, property monitoring...
Future Is Training Its AI On Publisher First-Party Data
Future Media unveiled Helix, an AI‑powered audience platform that builds on its first‑party data assets. Helix replaces the legacy Aperture system in the U.S., adding predictive modeling and real‑time audience segmentation for outcome‑based campaigns. Early tests across 20 fashion, retail...
How to Stay Motivated to Keep Building
In this brief episode of the MarTech Podcast, host Benjamin Shapiro talks with Chris Golick, founder of Demandbase and current CEO of Channel 99, about what keeps him motivated after a $380 million exit. Golick explains that his drive comes from...
Malta Broadens Tourism Strategy, Courting LGBTQ Americans and Chinese Travelers
Malta is expanding its tourism outreach by targeting two distinct segments: U.S. LGBTQ travelers attracted by the island’s progressive rights record, and high‑spending Chinese tourists drawn to its Mediterranean heritage and English‑speaking environment. The dual campaign blends Pride‑focused messaging with...
Best Influencer Database Software in 2026
Influencer database software has become essential as brands scale creator programs, with 59.4% of marketers planning to raise influencer budgets in 2026. These platforms turn manual scouting into searchable, filterable datasets that include demographics, engagement, and cross‑platform reach. The article...
Consistency Still Wins in Evolving Social Media Landscape
Back in 2013, I wrote an article for the Online Marketing Institute entitled “Social Media: It’s Not Easy, But It’s Simple.” The core concept was timeless: brands must be ready to send the right message to the right people, in...
Retail Media X Europe 2026: Why Retailers Need to Be in the Room This May
Retail Media X Europe will convene over 750 senior executives, brands, agencies, and tech innovators in London on 14 May 2026 to discuss the fast‑growing European retail media market, projected to reach £25 billion by 2026. The conference features three tracks—scaling networks,...
Gartner: 67% of B2B Buyers Prefer a Rep-Free Experience
Gartner’s survey of 650 B2B buyers shows 67 % now prefer a rep‑free buying experience, while 45 % used AI tools during a recent purchase. The findings highlight a shift toward self‑directed, digitally mediated buyer journeys. As early interactions drop, static sales...
Google Knowledge Panel: What It Is & How to Get One
Google’s Knowledge Panel is an information box that appears in search results when Google identifies a recognized entity such as a brand, person, or place. The panel can occupy up to half of the visible SERP, offering facts, images, and...
OPINION: Retail’s $210 Billion Paid Advertising Blind Spot
Global ecommerce retailers—estimated at nine to twelve million—are collectively spending about $210 billion on paid digital advertising each year, yet confidence in the returns from that spend is eroding. The rise of privacy regulations, cookie deprecation and AI‑driven ad platforms has...
How Software Startup InsightSquared Wrestled with Creating an Optimal Sales and Marketing Strategy
Harvard Business School lecturer Mark Roberge uses the InsightSquared case to illustrate why SaaS startups often stumble when they rush to scale sales after a Series A. He argues that founders rely on superficial Excel forecasts instead of bottom‑up revenue models,...
Perion Is So Over The AI Hype Cycle
Perion CEO Tal Jacobson says the AI hype is merely a re‑branding of technologies the company has used for 15 years, and the firm is now building an AI media‑trading agent called Outmax. The platform allocates spend across CTV, DOOH,...
The Next Phase of Social Strategy: Giving Audiences Ownership of the Story
Social marketers are moving from one‑way authenticity to audience ownership, inviting fans to co‑create brand stories. Panels at Ragan’s Social Media Conference highlighted how gaming, National Geographic, Xbox and U.S. Soccer use two‑way conversation, repeatable formats, and layered content capture...
Rethinking Beer: Andrew Katz of Athletic Brewing on Non Alcoholic Beer, Brand Growth & Hospitality Trends
In this episode, CMO Andrew Katz discusses the rapid growth of Athletic Brewing, the leading non‑alcoholic beer brand, and the broader shift toward wellness‑driven drinking habits. He explains how declining alcohol consumption, increased health awareness, and data‑driven lifestyle tracking are...
Burberry’s Trench Coat Campaign Shows Luxury Marketing’s Shift to Social Platforms
Burberry’s latest trench‑coat campaign marks a decisive shift from traditional, season‑driven luxury advertising to a digital‑first approach. By tailoring assets for Instagram and TikTok, the brand can launch content in real time, reacting to viral moments and algorithmic boosts. The...
The Value of Search Visibility
Despite headlines proclaiming the death of search, Google’s query volume grew more than 20% in 2024, handling billions of searches daily. While zero‑click rates now hover around 60% overall and up to 77% on mobile, the total number of clicks...
Measuring AI Search Impact Beyond Traffic Metrics
🚨 How do you measure AI search optimization success when traffic no longer reflects real impact? I’ll be covering this in my @brightonseo session next month, including: * How to select the right mix of performance and brand influence metrics...
Audacity Bangkok Creates New Campaign for My Chewy Reclaiming the Brands Name
Thai confectionery staple My Chewy, the nation’s best‑selling fruit‑flavoured milk candy, has struggled with consumers calling it by its packaging or flavour rather than its actual name. Audacity Bangkok responded with an emotional online film that asks viewers what name...
Digest: OpenAI Tests Ads Manager and Prepares Agentic Storefronts Feature; Meta Plans Layoffs While Publishers Back Its Expulsion From IAB...
OpenAI is expanding its commercial toolkit, testing an Ads Manager dashboard with a select partner group while preparing the Agentic Storefronts feature that will surface Shopify merchants’ products directly inside ChatGPT. In Sweden, major publishers have backed Meta’s expulsion from...
Misleading Weather Apps Cost Millions; Retro Consoles Surge in Value
📣 This Week's PR Campaigns & Opportunities [March 17, 2026] 👇 From The #TrendingCampaigns Newsletter: 🔥 Top PR Campaigns of the Week 1. Misleading weather apps cost attractions thousands This is such a spectacularly good campaign because (at least for me) it is SO...
Creation Alone Won’t Compound; Prioritize Distribution
Most marketers are addicted to creation. They write. They publish. They move on. Then wonder why nothing compounds. Distribution, folks. Embrace it.
The Vital Role of Advertising in Times of Uncertainty
Terry Kane of The Trade Desk argues that advertising is a critical infrastructure that keeps the free internet, quality journalism, and economic activity alive during periods of uncertainty. Historical research shows brands that maintain or increase ad spend in downturns...
Coca-Cola Leverages ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ for Product Placement
Coca-Cola plans to serve up Diet Coke and SmartWater in 'The Devil Wears Prada 2,' and use tie-ins with the movie to drive conversations about its drinks.... https://t.co/8apnCYoH31 via @variety
Testing Offers Can Add $80K Monthly Revenue
You've never tested your offer. → Same "20% off" since day one. → A 20% AOV lift + 10% CVR lift moves a $100K/month account to $330K. → That's $80K+ a month. From the offer. NOT the ads. 5 offer types...
Why LinkedIn Might Have Two Algorithms — and Why Marketers Should Care
A recent analysis by Christopher Penn suggests LinkedIn runs two distinct algorithmic systems: a retrieval stage that decides whether a post enters a viewer’s candidate pool, and a ranking stage that orders those candidates in the feed. Retrieval relies on signals...
Own a Distinctive Idea, Not Just a Target Audience
Being known for a specific idea beats just choosing a specific audience to target. You don’t need to narrow who you serve—you need to own what you stand for. Your ownable idea is your niche.
Threads, Carousels Dominate; Brands Face Authenticity Gap
Social Media Management Trends: Threads, Carousels, and the “Authenticity Gap” (Research) [NEW POST] - B2B Marketing Blog | Webbiquity - https://t.co/dme2PVKwTC New #socialmedia research from @Sendible . https://t.co/0ejvIF5SK0
AI Marketing Toolkit Grows: New Tools Added
The best list of #AI #marketing tools anywhere continues to expand: https://t.co/1MqMiJP4M3 New tools added recently include @post_everywhere, @HumanticAI, @Jogg_ai, Omnilingual ASR from @Meta, @claudeai Haiku, @hedra_labs, @TrySpiral, @tight_studio, and @averi_ai.