Know What's Happening in Marketing
Know What's Happening in Marketing
PopSockets turned phone backs into a $169M revenue engine
PopSockets transformed the unused back of smartphones into a monetizable surface, evolving from a garage prototype in 2011 to a global brand that posted $169 million in revenue by 2017. The simple grip design generated constant repeat interactions and word‑of‑mouth growth, driving its rapid expansion.
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 is to give brands a unified solution for reaching and engaging diverse audiences across digital and audio channels. The partnership positions both firms to capitalize on the growing demand for data‑driven multicultural advertising.
Sam Bakhshandehpour, former Global CEO of the José Andrés Group, leveraged spontaneous restaurant moments—like a rain‑soaked paella—to craft authentic brand stories that span dining rooms, TV series, and product kits. He positioned storytelling as the core of the company’s identity,...
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...
Sephora’s U.S. chief marketing officer Zena Arnold explained how the retailer distinguishes fleeting fads from genuine behavioral shifts, using systematic trend‑filtering processes. She highlighted the shift to continuous beauty discovery, where brands must appear across creators, culture and community. Arnold...
In 2026 sustainability has become a mainstream guest expectation, yet price sensitivity remains a dominant driver of travel decisions. The TravelBoom Leisure Travel Study shows 21.8% of travelers would pay more for eco‑friendly hotels, while 45% are actively cutting back...
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...
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...
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...
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 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 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...
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...
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 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...
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.
![How to Use Salesforce for Marketing [Maximizing CRM for Effective Campaigns]](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://hixhlmpcokxhartfkpyi.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/images/thumbnails/8fde748ee32da7a0d40ab325f1c0debf.webp)
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...
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...
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 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,...
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...
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 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 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 $...
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'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 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...
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....
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 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...
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 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...
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...
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 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’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’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...
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...
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 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,...
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...
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 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...
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...
🚨 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...
Most marketers are addicted to creation. They write. They publish. They move on. Then wonder why nothing compounds. Distribution, folks. Embrace it.
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
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...
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.
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
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.
