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.
Home Depot Helps Advertisers Reach DIY Audiences on Reddit and Pinterest
Home Depot’s Orange Apron Media (OAM) network is expanding its retail‑media capabilities with two off‑site partnerships. An industry‑first integration will feed OAM’s first‑party shopper data into Reddit’s ad inventory, allowing brands to launch campaigns through the Orange Access portal. A beta with Pinterest’s Media Network Connect lets non‑endemic advertisers apply Home Depot’s audience segments to inspiration‑focused pins. OAM also announced enhanced on‑site product‑listing ads, geotargeting, and a forthcoming certification academy for advertisers.
The Real Reason Your SEO Team Hasn’t Made The AI Transition Yet via @Sejournal, @DuaneForrester
The article argues that most SEO teams’ AI transition stalls because of people‑centric change‑management issues, not technology deficits. Only about 30% of enterprise SEO groups have restructured roles, while 82% remain stuck in pilot mode and 61% use AI only...
No Media Team, Just Consistency: How to Build a National CRE Following on LinkedIn
Tina, a broker at NAI Capital Commercial, was named #15 on CREi’s Top 15 LinkedIn Influencers in commercial real estate, up from #22 last year. She attributes her rise to a disciplined habit of posting candid, early‑morning updates about day‑to‑day...
What Marketers Need to Know as Branded Films Return to Screens
Branded films are making a strong comeback in 2024, with major marketers such as Heineken, e.l.f., L’Oréal, Tecovas and Texas Pete allocating sizable budgets to long‑form documentaries, mock‑documentaries and western‑style shorts that debut at festivals and on digital platforms. These productions...
Forrester Warns AI Marketing Spend Falls Short of Revenue Impact
Forrester's latest research reveals that fewer than one‑third of organizations can connect AI marketing spend to measurable revenue or profit. The study highlights a widening gap between investment and accountability, while also noting that AI is reshaping team structures and...
WeekThink Unveils AI-Driven Local SEO Platform, Claims 56% Lead Growth
WeekThink, a Jacksonville‑based digital marketing agency, launched an AI‑driven local SEO platform that it says has lifted client lead volume by more than 56%. The service ties search visibility directly to lead‑generation KPIs, positioning the firm as a pioneer in...
Fixated Acquires Studio71 to Launch Global End‑to‑End Creator Platform
Fixated announced the acquisition of Studio71's North American creator business, creating a combined network of over 1,000 creators and billions of monthly video views. The deal gives Fixated a full‑stack infrastructure—from talent representation to direct‑to‑fan monetization—positioning it as the only...
What’s the Key to Unlocking Retail Media?
PI LIVE Europe is expanding its agenda with a new Retail Media & Commerce Summit, aimed at helping brands and agencies integrate retail media with affiliate and performance marketing. The retail media channel is projected to reach $300 billion by 2030,...
Meta's AI Pixel Blurs Line Between Ads and Data
Meta’s AI pixel and the vanishing ad-product divide Last week, Meta introduced automation updates to its two keystone data ingestion features for advertisers: its pixel and its Conversions API (CAPI). These updates are less significant as product enhancements than as evidence...
When Search Growth Stalls: How to Diagnose What’s Really Holding You Back
Search campaigns often enjoy rapid early gains, but performance eventually plateaus, becomes volatile, or sees rising costs. The article argues that these slowdowns are not failures but signals of underlying constraints such as limited demand, targeting gaps, conversion bottlenecks, paid‑search...
ChatGPT Ads Have Begun Showing Up For Logged-Out Users
OpenAI has begun serving ads to ChatGPT users who are not logged in, expanding the platform's ad inventory. The move follows advertiser complaints about limited ad frequency and a high spend minimum, which was recently reduced from $200,000 to $50,000....
ChatGPT Ads Have Begun Showing Up For Logged-Out Users
OpenAI has begun serving ads to ChatGPT users who are not logged in, expanding inventory beyond the pilot’s logged‑in audience. The move follows advertiser complaints that the $200,000 spend minimum (now reduced to $50,000) left too little inventory to exhaust...
The Sale That Runs Itself
Creators typically run manual flash sales—blocking a week, sending a handful of emails, then waiting for the next seasonal push. The post proposes an evergreen, automated five‑email sequence that triggers 60‑90 days after a subscriber joins, pitching the main course...
Hosted.com Unveils Drag‑Drop Website Builder for Small Businesses
Hosted.com has introduced a new website‑builder add‑on for its cPanel hosting plans, targeting startups and small‑business owners. The tool offers a drag‑and‑drop editor, over 200 templates, ecommerce and SEO features, aiming to cut costs and speed up site launches.
Braze Launches Agentic AI Tools and Creative Studio, Adds EU Hosting for Decisioning Studio
Braze Inc. unveiled two new agentic AI products—BrazeAI Operator and BrazeAI Agent Console—alongside a Creative Studio that pulls designs from Figma and Canva directly into live campaigns. The AI suite lets marketers build, test and deploy content‑generating agents without heavy...
Nike: From Instinct to Optimisation
Nike remains the global benchmark for sports apparel, but its dominance now pushes the brand toward systematic optimisation. The company is integrating AI, data analytics, and supply‑chain automation to refine product design, marketing, and retail experiences. This shift moves Nike...
Rethink Your Product Detail Pages
E‑commerce product detail pages must now serve three AI‑centric goals: rankable in traditional search, extractable for answer engines, and understandable as structured entities. An AI‑driven audit of Amazon, Walmart, Target, L.L.Bean and various D2C sites shows marketplaces and large retailers...
British Airways Caught in Frequent Flyer Backlash as It Extends Loyalty Status to Passengers Who Didn’t Fly
British Airways has sparked a furious backlash after extending elite status to passengers who barely fly, while many members close to a tier upgrade see their status lapse. The carrier replaced its Executive Club with a revenue‑based British Airways Club,...
SEO Content Is Increasingly Fake and Generic
If we are being honest about what's happening in SEO and broader content marketing in general. There are very few people producing original, differentiated, first-hand experience based content. It's all fake. It's all ghost written. It's all just being done...
Lactalis Targets UK Demand for “Clean Protein” With Siggi’s Skyr Launch
Lactalis is introducing Siggi’s skyr to the UK with four SKUs – two 450 g pots (0% and 5% fat) and two 140 g two‑packs – priced at £3.25 (≈$4.40) for the larger pots and £2.50 for the multipacks. The brand touts...
Gatorade Gets A 'Lyte' Overhaul and Laird Goes On A Buying Spree
In this episode of CPG Week, Monica Watrous and Lucas Southard discuss PepsiCo’s revamp of Gatorade, introducing new packaging and a three‑pillar "Advanced Hydration System" aimed at the 150 million Americans who experience mild dehydration, including a new longer‑lasting electrolyte blend....
Manual SEO Wins Over AI-Generated Content Flood
There are many sites scaling like crazy for AI Search with "commodity content". Tons of it generated via AI to target every possible question or prompt users have. Again, manual actions will rule the day while Google builds a system...
Your Notes Performance Just Fell Off a Cliff. Here's the 5-Point Diagnostic to Fix It.
Substack creators experiencing sudden drops in Notes performance can diagnose the cause with a five‑point framework. The guide distinguishes platform throttles, content‑mix shifts, trust dips, posting‑window mismatches, and recommendation‑surface issues. Each symptom has a specific, low‑effort remedy—often simply waiting or...
Madison Logic Launches New Dashboard to Help Marketers Engineer Faster, Predictable Growth
Madison Logic introduced its Pipeline Insights Dashboard, a tool that ties content syndication, programmatic and social engagement signals directly to stage‑by‑stage pipeline movement in real time. The platform shifts reporting from raw engagement metrics to actionable pipeline intelligence, giving B2B...
The 8-Figure Open Source SaaS Playbook
In this episode, Omer Khan talks with Yves Concevoy, the founder of Mailgun and Teleport, about how Teleport evolved from a free open‑source tool into an eight‑figure ARR business by focusing on infrastructure identity and AI agent containment. Yves explains...
The 40 Minute Marketing Playbook
In this episode of the Gary Vee Audio Experience, Gary Vaynerchuk argues that marketing—especially digital and social media—is the single most powerful lever for business growth, eclipsing product changes or sales tactics. He stresses the need for relentless, high‑volume content...
Beehiiv Rolls Out New Creator Tools, Including Webinars and Customizable Paywalls
Beehiiv unveiled a suite of creator‑focused tools, adding live webinars for up to 10,000 attendees, AI‑powered podcast analytics, metered paywalls and flexible paid‑trial options. The updates extend its native podcast hosting, letting creators manage distribution and monetization in one place....
The Facts About Google Click Signals, Rankings, And SEO via @Sejournal, @Martinibuster
Recent DOJ antitrust filings confirm that Google treats clicks as raw signals rather than direct ranking factors. Click data, combined with query information and human‑rater scores, feed AI models such as RankEmbed and its successor RankEmbedBERT, which are trained on...
AI Agents Won’t Kill Shopping – but Agentic Commerce Could Make Most of It Redundant
Klaviyo’s co‑CEOs describe a shift from traditional e‑commerce to "agentic commerce," where AI agents handle product discovery, evaluation, and purchase on behalf of shoppers. During the 2025 holiday season, their customer‑agent pilots helped tens of thousands of consumers find gifts...
Build Linked Post Clusters for Authority
Stop publishing random posts. Start building link clusters. Create 5–7 related posts, and link them together. Now you’re not just publishing, you’re building authority.
CTV Halves Acquisition Costs, Doubles Leads
In Episode 4 of From Screen to Store, sponsored by @JamLoop , Jay Blecker of @mosquitoSQUADco joins @JeremyBloomHere and AdTechGod to describe how CTV helped cut acquisition costs nearly in half while doubling leads. https://t.co/UlXFF0gxDX
AI-Ready CMO Live with Kamil Banc
In a recent AI‑Ready CMO live session, fractional Chief AI Officer Kamil Banc argued that mid‑market firms gain more from "boring AI"—steady, repeatable processes—than from chasing the latest models. He emphasized that AI success is a cultural issue, requiring time,...
Google Tests AI-Generated Podcast‑style Audio Search Results
Whoa, this is creepy. Google is testing a new AI-powered audio section in search results that sounds just like a podcast. Can't imagine publishers will be too happy to stumble across this, even when their content is cited (along with many...
Survive Google: AI for Drafts, Humans Edit Final
Most Google updates are clapping AI-generated sites. The survivors had one thing in common: they used AI for research/briefs/drafts and humans for final editing. Do with that what you will.
RTIC Outdoors’ Journey to Sustained B2B Growth Powered by Anteriad
RTIC Outdoors partnered with Anteriad to launch the Growth Accelerator, a data‑driven, multi‑channel acquisition program aimed at scaling its nascent B2B custom‑shop. Within six months the pilot delivered $2.7 million in incremental revenue, an 11% lift in B2B sales and a...
Distinguish Commodity From Non‑commodity Content for SEO Success
Google's @dannysullivan on commodity vs non-commodity content https://t.co/lOelMIgQtP via @marthavanberkel and @gaganghotra_ and others https://t.co/No6L14MbCX
Google Search Rankings Poised for Increased Volatility
Google Search ranking volatility may be at the verge of heating up - are any of you seeing anything? https://t.co/mzifiUoT1o https://t.co/9TZ6JRmhTG
Drake Sets May 15 Release for Ninth Album 'ICEMAN' After Ice Sculpture Stunt
Drake announced that his ninth studio album, ICEMAN, will be released on May 15. The date was revealed through a 25‑foot ice sculpture in downtown Toronto that a Twitch streamer shattered, uncovering a bag with the official announcement and a...
One Influencer Drives 50+ New Subscribers Instantly
Nothing more exciting than seeing like 50 new newsletter subscribers all land within a couple of days from the same company domain. It means someone important shared it and told them to read...
Segment Google Shopping, Boost Revenue 45% and ROAS 40%
Huel increased revenue 45% and ROAS 40% just by segmenting their Google Shopping campaigns instead of using one generic feed. Meanwhile you're dumping all your products into one generic Google Shopping campaign and wondering why your ad spend is bleeding...
Hayman’s Offers a Trip to London
Family-owned Hayman's Gin has launched an on‑pack competition that lets shoppers in eight markets win an all‑expenses‑paid trip to London worth about £7,000 (US$9,443). Consumers enter by scanning a QR code on the neck tag of a 70 cl bottle, which...
“If You’re Really Strict, You’ll Have No Options Left”: Why Brand Anxieties Around Client Conflict Are Diminishing
As agencies juggle an expanding roster of clients, the risk of brand conflict is rising. Marketers are moving away from rigid, exclusionary policies and toward pragmatic partner selection that balances creative freedom with conflict mitigation. Transparent disclosure clauses, data‑driven vetting...
Adobe Launches CX Enterprise, Agentic AI Platform Aimed at Retail CX Orchestration
Adobe announced CX Enterprise, an end‑to‑end agentic AI system designed to coordinate retail customer‑experience workflows, at its Summit in Las Vegas on April 20, 2026. Built on the Adobe Experience Platform, the suite promises reusable AI agents, brand‑guarding intelligence and...
SiriusXM Secures Exclusive U.S. Audio Ad Representation for YouTube
SiriusXM Media has signed an exclusive agreement with Google’s YouTube to sell audio advertising inventory across the United States. The partnership, launching in fall 2026, gives advertisers guaranteed impressions for more than 212 million monthly YouTube audio listeners, backed by AdsWizz’s...
First Citizens to Drop SVB Name, 3 Years After Crisis
First Citizens Bancshares, the $236 billion‑asset acquirer of Silicon Valley Bank, announced it will retire the SVB brand by the fourth quarter of 2026. The move follows three years of operating the failed bank as a distinct division and aligns the...
Code and Theory Appoints JJ Schmuckler as President to Steer CMO Services Amid AI Surge
Code and Theory, the Stagwell‑owned digital transformation network, has named former VML chief growth officer JJ Schmuckler as president. The move is aimed at strengthening the agency’s CMO‑focused services as brands grapple with AI, data and technology complexity.
Tesla Implements Amazing Abundance Messaging in Mumbai
the Amazing Abundance messaging has been adopted by Tesla worldwide - this one is in Mumbai, India Shared by Abhishek Ram, Store Manager at Tesla Mumbai https://t.co/Z2SMlv4J7a
AI Startup Pomo Raises $4.5 Million Seed Round to Speed Up Product Build
Pomo, the AI‑focused venture founded by former Google colleagues Praneet Dutta and Joe Cheuk, announced a $4.5 million seed round. The funding will back a team of fewer than ten people as they develop a platform that helps marketers make faster...
Women’s Health Brand Valerie Abandons ‘Perimenopause’ Label to Expand Audience
Valerie, a female hormone health brand for women over 35, is dropping the ‘perimenopause’ label to broaden its reach. Co‑founder Wizz Selvey says the change removes a psychological barrier and aligns with feedback that many women feel the term is...
Wayfair Launches Way Day Sale with up to 80% Off, Early Member Access Starts April 23
Wayfair has opened its Way Day sale, giving members early access on April 23 and the public on April 25. Discounts of up to 80% on sofas, mattresses, rugs and more are prompting a traffic spike and highlighting the retailer’s...