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.
See What Happens when Creative Legends Use AI to Make Ads for Small Businesses.
Google today unveiled The Small Brief, an initiative that teams three advertising legends—Jayanta Jenkins, Tiffany Rolfe and Susan Credle—with local businesses to produce studio‑quality campaigns. The creatives were given unrestricted access to Flow, Google’s AI‑driven creative studio, to craft ads for Archangels, South Ferry and Stonewood Farm. The project aims to demonstrate how artificial intelligence can amplify storytelling for small enterprises while offering a template for other creators. Google will showcase the finished ads and the creators’ process in June.
14 SEO Trends 2026: What's Real, What's Hype and What We Don't Know Yet
In 2026 AI search has moved from pure keyword matching to Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG), where search engines first retrieve relevant pages and then generate answers. Studies show AI overviews appear in nearly half of queries, but the sources they cite...
New Marketing Skills v1.10 Adds Co‑Marketing Toolkit
Marketing Skills v1.10.0 is out. What shipped: 🆕 /co-marketing — Partner identification and joint campaign planning. Partner scoring framework, campaign types (content, webinars, integrations, community), outreach templates, partnership structuring, and checklists. Tools: Crossbeam, Introw, PartnerStack. Now shipping 41 skills and 52 tool integrations. Free, open...
Creator Agency NewGen Launches AI Platform to Help Brands Scale Creator Campaigns With Compliance Controls
London‑based creator agency NewGen has unveiled Multiple, an AI‑driven platform that consolidates every stage of influencer campaigns—from creator matching and outreach to contract generation, payment tracking and performance reporting. The system promises to cut campaign launch times by up to...
‘Stop Posting Pretty Things. Build a Business’ – Hannah Wilson on How to Scale as a Creator Enterprise
Hannah Wilson, a creator with over one million followers, leverages her experience at Insta360, livestream commerce, and CGTN to run her personal brand like a business. She stresses rapid skill acquisition, constant re‑branding, and treating brand deals as relationships rather...
Levanta Makes the Case That Creator Channels Belong Alongside Every Amazon Ad Budget
Levanta, the Seattle‑based affiliate and creator platform, announced the acquisition of Perch+, an early Amazon‑focused affiliate network. The deal brings hundreds of brands and publishers into Levanta’s marketplace, consolidating two of the longest‑standing players in the Amazon affiliate space. Levanta...
How Social Commerce Summit Aims to End the Silo Problem That Has Cost Brands Real Money
The Social Commerce Summit convenes May 14‑15, 2026 at Westdrift Manhattan Beach, offering an invitation‑only, complimentary forum for senior brand operators, platform leaders, and investors. Organized by Social Commerce News, the event is deliberately neutral, avoiding agency or platform sponsorship,...
Your Offer, Not Leads, Holds Back Sales
Harsh truth: You don’t have a lead generation problem. You have an offer problem. Weak offers struggle even with great traffic.
This Canadian Running Brand Just Went Full Arc’teryx on Race-Day Apparel
Ciele Athletics, the Canadian running brand known for its caps, has launched a revamped Elite Collection aimed at premium road‑racing apparel. The line features COOLmatic | EXP TERRAperf fabric infused with graphene for faster heat dispersion and includes shorts with carbon‑fibre yarn, a...
Duluth Trading Launches Cheeky Underwear Marketing Campaign
Duluth Trading Company unveiled a cheeky underwear campaign featuring its new mascot, Max Gluteus, timed with March Madness. The initiative leveraged humor to position low‑priced underwear as a gateway product, driving first‑time purchases and long‑term loyalty. On Meta the campaign...
Jameson Launches Limited-Edition MLS Bottles
Jameson has unveiled a limited‑edition bottle collection celebrating its second year as the Official Whiskey of Major League Soccer. The series features club‑specific designs for Chicago Fire, LA Galaxy, NYCFC and Orlando City, each bearing a QR code that directs...
Gwyneth Paltrow Discusses How ‘Not Giving a F*ck’ Led Goop’s Marketing Strategy
Gwyneth Paltrow, Oscar‑winner and Goop chief executive, opened the Meltwater Summit by explaining how the company’s mantra of "not giving a f*ck" shapes its marketing playbook. She argued that unapologetic authenticity, rather than cautious PR, fuels Goop’s product launches and...
How to Run Prompt-Level SEO Experiments for AI Search
As large language models (LLMs) become primary answer engines, brands must ensure they appear in AI‑generated responses. The article outlines a hypothesis‑driven, prompt‑level SEO framework that structures tests with an if‑then‑because format to isolate variables such as content tweaks or...
Hazel E: The Blueprint of Power — How a Public Relations Architect Built a Global Empire on Vision, Discipline, and...
Hazel E, a former public‑relations architect for TMZ, Viacom and VH1, has turned her name into a global brand through disciplined storytelling and strategic media placement. Leveraging early PR experience, she built a personal narrative that extends beyond reality‑TV appearances into...
ICYMI: Instagram's Return to Long-Form Content (Yes, You Read That Right)
At the Scalable Summit, Instagram’s VP of Product Tessa Lyons revealed the platform is planning a major shift toward supporting long‑form creators, with new features expected within the next one to two years. Instagram is also piloting an “AI creator”...
Amy Martin Ziegenfuss Named CMO of Six Flags
Amy Martin Ziegenfuss has been appointed chief marketing officer of Six Flags, succeeding Christian Dieckmann. Ziegenfuss comes from Carnival Cruise Line, where she served as CMO for three years, and previously held senior marketing roles at Hilton. In her new...
Amazon Brings Content-To-Commerce Technology Into Publisher Services
Amazon Publisher Services has added Shopsense, an AI‑driven content‑to‑commerce platform, to its Connections Marketplace. Shopsense analyzes images in articles, videos and photos, automatically generating product‑listing ads that link to more than 1,000 retailers. The integration requires no code and promises...
Bvlgari Becomes Official Sponsor of Venice Biennale, Showcasing Lotus Kang and Emerging Artists
Bvlgari has signed a five‑year deal to sponsor the Venice Biennale, beginning with the 2026 edition. The luxury house funds a dedicated pavilion featuring Canadian artist Lotus L. Kang’s installation “The Face of Desire Is Loss” and shows by emerging...
Renting Customers or Building a Business: Ishan Manchanda on LTV, Retention, and the Next Wave of B2B Growth
Ishan Manchanda, CEO of GrowthSpree, explains how his agency fills the missing playbook for B2B SaaS growth, emphasizing LTV over vanity revenue metrics. He warns that static LTV calculations and weak retention undermine unit economics, while a 5‑point boost in...
Genesis Shifts to Hybrids in South Korea as EV Sales Slip 24.9% YoY
Genesis announced a hybrid rollout for its GV80, G80 and GV70 models in South Korea after domestic sales fell 24.9% year‑over‑year. The move follows a surge in hybrid demand, which captured 30.3% of Korean auto sales last year, and signals...
Luxury Brands Have a Language for Uncertainty – Not a Strategy
Luxury executives boast sophisticated frameworks—strategic oscillation, temporal calibration, legacy‑driven adaptation—to navigate climate urgency, geopolitical shifts, and Gen Z demand. Yet the article argues these vocabularies often mask a gap between narrative agility and real strategic execution, especially around sustainability and digital...
PubMatic’s Agentic AI Is Going Beyond Direct Deals
PubMatic announced that its AgenticOS platform has run more than 30 fully autonomous, end‑to‑end campaigns and over 1,000 direct publisher deals, signaling a shift from agentic ad tech being limited to direct buys. The AI‑driven product helped lift emerging‑revenue growth...
Amazon Data Will Be Available on Netflix Inventory in the UK May 18
Amazon’s demand‑side platform will let UK and EMEA advertisers overlay Amazon shopping data onto Netflix’s connected‑TV inventory starting May 18. The feature, first rolled out in the United States on April 13, enables Amazon Audiences to be applied to Netflix campaigns via...
HMH Names Jessica Naeve CMO to Drive Data‑Driven Global Marketing
HMH announced Jessica Naeve as its new chief marketing officer. Naeve will steer the publisher's global, data‑informed digital marketing across curriculum, assessment and professional learning solutions. The hire signals HMH’s push to modernize outreach to educators worldwide.
Day 17: The Unique Collab That Drove 3,000 Subscribers
Sean Devlin of All Healthy added roughly 3,000 new subscribers by teaming up with Gretchen Rubin for her "Move 26 in ’26" challenge. The collaboration hinged on a movement‑themed Bingo card that subscribers could use throughout the year, turning a...
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma Rallies Staff with Four‑point Plan and AI Pullback
Xbox chief Asha Sharma addressed hundreds of employees in a Thursday all‑hands, unveiling a four‑point action plan, committing to biweekly console updates, and announcing the winding down of Microsoft Copilot on consoles and mobile. The rally also marked a rebranding...
Inside Beardbrand's Expansion Plan
In this solo episode, Eric Bandholz, founder of Beardbrand, outlines the brand’s post‑crisis growth plan after years of legal battles, tax liens, and a $1 million loss. He explains that the traditional beard‑care market has plateaued and become a red‑ocean, prompting...
Meet Stan, Caitlin Clark's New Teammate
State Farm has transformed its long‑standing stanchion‑pad logo into a animated robot mascot named Stan, pairing him with WNBA star Caitlin Clark in a new advertising campaign. The spots debut with the opening night of the WNBA season and will...
SEO’s New Goal in 2026: Recognition, Not Rankings
The search ecosystem has shifted from ranking‑centric tactics to a recognition‑first model as AI overviews, large language models and zero‑click answers now dominate user journeys. Traditional #1 SERP positions no longer guarantee visibility because generative AI draws on brand citations,...
B2B Appointment Setting Services: A Smart Way to Generate More Qualified Leads
B2B appointment‑setting services outsource the early‑stage prospecting process, delivering pre‑qualified meetings for sales teams. By leveraging phone, email, and LinkedIn outreach, providers identify decision‑makers and schedule appointments that align with a company’s ideal customer profile. The model promises higher conversion...
The AI Voice Agent Stack That Books Calls and Closes Deals — Without a Sales Team
AI voice agents now handle inbound leads by introducing themselves, qualifying prospects, and booking calendar slots in real time, all without human sales reps. The lean stack—Vapi or Bland for calling, GPT‑4o or Gemini for language, Calendly/Cal.com for scheduling, HubSpot...
GetDandy Launches Autonomous AI Workforce for Local Businesses, Delivering 24/7 Customer Engagement With No Setup Required
GetDandy unveiled an autonomous AI workforce that manages every customer interaction for local businesses across phone, SMS, Google Business Profile, web chat, email and social media, requiring no setup or ongoing training. The system automatically trains agents using each business’s...
TIM's Kena Brand Gives Away 70GB in Mother's Day Promo
Telecom Italia’s budget brand Kena is launching a Mother’s Day promotion on May 10, offering a free 70 GB 5G data bundle at speeds up to 250 Mbps. Customers must activate the offer by April 11 through the My Kena app, after which the data...
New Claude Plugin Generates Viral LinkedIn Posts Instantly
Last week, I spent 7+ hours building a set of Claude Skills to help you write viral LinkedIn posts faster. The result? A Claude Cowork plugin anyone can install to write publish-ready LinkedIn posts in minutes. Now, I originally built this to share...
New AI Search Links, Core Update Winners And Losers – SEO Pulse via @Sejournal, @MattGSouthern
Google rolled out five tweaks that add inline links, end‑of‑answer citations, and public‑forum previews to AI Overviews and AI Mode, giving each reference more context. A March core update analysis shows aggregators such as YouTube, Reddit and travel OTAs losing...
Forget Product – Luxury Is Now About Privacy, Trust and Emotional Value
At Spear’s 500 Live, industry leaders argued that luxury is shedding its overt product focus in favor of "quiet luxury" built on privacy, trust and emotional connection. Panelists from Scott Dunn Private, Sevengage and AHD Consulting highlighted that ultra‑wealthy clients...
How Hershey Is Using AI to Future-Proof Its Marketing Model
Chocolate giant Hershey has built an AI‑powered marketing measurement system after nearly a year of development. Trained on three years of sales and marketing data, the tool aggregates social, search and streaming signals to deliver monthly mix updates and prioritize...
Google Ads Expands Out‑of‑stock Display Options
Running Google Ads? This is a good change -> Out-of-Stock Product Landing Page Requirements Updated It used to be a single requirement for a grayed-out button... Advertisers can now indicate out-of-stock products with several options: *Display text such as “Sold Out” or “Item...
Redesigning Your Marketing Organization for the Agentic Age
AI is reshaping product development cycles, delivering continuous releases that double the volume and speed of launches marketers must support. Existing marketing operating models, built on sequential, siloed processes, cannot keep pace, creating bottlenecks for CMOs. Leading firms such as...
One Skillset that Everyone in the Industry Needs to Master
In this 1‑minute‑43‑second episode of The Voices of Search, host Jordan Cooney chats with growth advisor Kevin Indig about the common missteps teams make with AI‑driven search and the true drivers of online visibility. They argue that the essential skill...
Why Intent Alignment Matters More than Perfect Technical SEO
Once a site reaches technical parity with its rivals, further technical tweaks yield diminishing returns, and Google’s ranking algorithm shifts focus to relevance. Relevance is measured by how well a page’s content aligns with the searcher’s intent, influencing signals such...
Google AI Search Evolves; New Tools, Rankings Shift
SEO Video Recap covering Google Search black box AI systems, links improves in Google AI search, UCP checkout expands, ChatGPT Ad Manager live, Ask.com shutters, ranking volatility and so much more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyZx4i5UM3U Sponsored by @ahrefs
Content Marketers Must Evolve Into Editorial Guardians
Content marketers need to shift into more editorial roles. AI makes content *production* easier than ever, but you still need someone to oversee all the various activities and act as the quality bar/voice of taste. https://t.co/MvWpoOG3Gs
Talk About Your Work Daily or Stay Invisible
If you're not talking about your work every day for the next 3 years: You're invisible. And invisible people don't get paid. They don't reach their potential. No matter how good they are.
Google Ads Mandates Passkeys for Sensitive Actions July 15
Google Ads to require passkeys for certain sensitive actions starting on July 15 https://t.co/ERPAYU10eg https://t.co/q4LeLR7byl
Research-Backed Content Earns Links and Authority
If your content is not earning links, ask why. Research does. It gives writers proof. It gives journalists sources. It gives your brand authority. Tools matter. Research dominates. https://t.co/PNytCOQeuq
Wendy's Teams Up with Minions for Banana Frosty
Wendy's has a Minion collaboration coming up that will feature a banana Frosty. $WEN https://t.co/JiX3et5iv8
Wendy's First Agency Switch in 18 Years Coming Soon
Wendy's media agency change was the first time the company did that in 18 years. The change will be evident at the second half of the year. $WEN
Agencies Overspend Because Their Positioning, Not Leads, Fails
Most agencies don't have a leads problem. They have a positioning problem they keep outspending.
Wendy's Accelerates Innovation Pipeline for Faster, Customer‑Focused Promotions
Wendy's says it is strengthening its innovation pipeline. It plans to "prioritize the best ideas and move quickly" to build promotions that resonate with customers. $WEN