Today's Marketing Pulse
Google rolls out AI‑qualified call leads to boost ad measurement
Google Ads introduced an AI‑qualified call leads feature that evaluates the substance of inbound calls, creates call summaries and tags, and feeds higher‑quality signals into smart bidding and reporting. Call recording is enabled by default, except for healthcare and financial services, and the rollout is currently limited in scope.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Publicis Groupe UK acquires Fabric Social
Youth Off The Streets Shows Cascading Effect of Tiny Gestures in Campaign via Innocean + PHD
Youth Off The Streets launched a new campaign with Innocean Australia, PHD Media and UnLtd to illustrate how tiny gestures can transform the lives of at‑risk youth. The ads feature real stories of Layla, who escaped domestic violence and now has stable housing, and Ben, a former street youth turned youth worker. The initiative generated $3.4 million AUD (≈$2.2 million USD) in media value last year and has already secured $1 million AUD (≈$660 k USD) this year, backed by more than 30 partners. By humanising homelessness, the campaign aims to shift public apathy into action.
How Adidas Used ’90s Rock Legends Oasis to Engineer a $2.4 Billion Comeback
Adidas revived its fortunes by pairing heritage with culture, launching the Original Forever collection with 1990s rock icons Oasis. The limited‑edition 24‑piece line sold out at a rate of one transaction per second and sparked secondary‑market premiums. The collaboration helped...
TV Marketing Matters for Branding Boost at Batteries Plus
Batteries Plus is leaning heavily on television advertising to lift brand awareness, dedicating roughly a quarter of its paid media budget to TV. For its 2026 "Experts in Charge" campaign, the retailer shifted to lower‑cost cable inventory, allowing more frequent,...
Focus on 1‑3 Core Strategies, Not Every Channel
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but your marketing doesn't have to touch every channel to be effective. Pick the 1 to 3 strategies that drive most of your growth and come naturally to you. Make sure they...
Why Subscription Growth Breaks After Acquisition … and How Retailers Can Fix It
Retail subscription brands often see strong acquisition but hit a wall once the first purchase is made. The article explains that treating acquisition, onboarding, and retention as separate silos creates fragmented messaging that erodes repeat behavior. This disjointed experience leads...
Pinterest CPG Promotions Outperform Benchmark ROIs
Pinterest released research, commissioned by the platform and executed by Circana, that examined 17 matched market tests of Pin ads for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands across multiple regions. The study found that 82% of campaigns generated positive incremental ROI...
Meta Tests New Add-On Package WhatsApp Plus Subscription
Meta is piloting a new subscription add‑on called WhatsApp Plus, offering premium stickers, custom themes, icons, expanded pin limits and other personalization tools. The service is being tested with a monthly price of €2.49 (about $2.35) and appears alongside a...
Meghan Markle Unveils As Ever Mother’s Day Candles Honoring Archie and Lili
Meghan Markle has expanded her As Ever lifestyle brand with a Mother’s Day collection that includes two $64 signature candles named for her children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. The launch marks the first time the Duchess’s kids appear directly...
Bookstagram Fuels Indian Book Market Surge but Narrows Genre Diversity
Bookstagram has helped lift India's publishing market from roughly $6 bn in 2019 to $9.6 bn in 2024, reviving backlist titles and giving debut authors a spotlight. At the same time, academic research shows the platform pushes a narrow set of genres,...
Amidst Economic Uncertainty, Small Businesses Are Investing in Marketing
Small businesses are bucking recession‑era caution by expanding, not cutting, marketing spend. In Constant Contact’s 2026 Small Business Now survey, 68% of owners say they will increase their marketing budgets and 74% will devote more time to promotion. The majority...
Adobe Launches CX Enterprise, Uniting AI Agents and Global Agency Network
At Adobe Summit, the company rolled out CX Enterprise, an agentic AI platform that links over 20,000 brands with cloud providers and global agency networks. The move aims to eliminate fragmented AI tools, giving sales and marketing teams a single...
Corus’s W Network Partners with Pandora
Corus Entertainment announced that W Network will partner with luxury jewellery brand Pandora for a year‑long, multi‑platform campaign integrated into five Hallmark Channel seasonal movie events. The collaboration will feature Pandora branding across Spring Into Love, Moms in May, Summer...
AEON360 Teams with Google Cloud to Launch AI‑Driven Shopping Ecosystem Across Southeast Asia
AEON360 announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to build an AI‑driven shopping ecosystem that will debut in Malaysia and later expand throughout Southeast Asia. The collaboration centers on a contextual intelligence engine, a new Innovation Foundry in Kuala Lumpur,...
Atlas Cloud Opens Seedance 2.0 API with Transparent Per‑Second Pricing
Atlas Cloud has made ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 AI video model available via an open API, charging $0.127 per second for the full‑power version and $0.101 for the fast variant. The move eliminates waitlists, regional restrictions and opaque token‑based fees, promising creators...
NOVUS Appoints Olivier Pepin as First CTO to Drive AI, Data Engineering and Tech Strategy
NOVUS announced the hiring of Olivier Pepin as its first Chief Technology Officer. The veteran architect will head the agency’s technology, AI and data engineering practice, aiming to expand proprietary tools like DeCoder and FullSail. The move signals a strategic...
Meta Set to Overtake Google in Global Digital Ad Revenue, eMarketer Forecast Shows
Meta is projected to generate $243.46 bn in ad revenue in 2026, surpassing Google's $239.54 bn for the first time. Faster growth, AI‑driven automation and expanding inventory are driving the shift, which could reshape how marketers allocate spend across platforms.
Nomura Research Institute Appoints Steven Rivera as CRO of North America to Accelerate B2B Growth
Nomura Research Institute (NRI) announced today that Steven Rivera will serve as Chief Revenue Officer for its North American operations. Rivera, a 26‑year veteran of cybersecurity, managed services and consulting, will oversee sales, marketing, demand generation and strategic partnerships as...
![How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software Buying [G2 Report]](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://foundationinc.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Foundation-Homepage-Sharing-Image.png)
How AI Search Is Rewiring B2B Software Buying [G2 Report]
G2’s new report, The Answer Economy, shows AI chatbots have become the primary research tool for B2B software buyers, replacing traditional search engines. Fifty‑one percent of respondents now start their vendor search with a chatbot, and 69% say the AI’s...
Design Shows for Clipability, Harvest Millions of Views
TBPN is a 7k-live-viewer pod that sold to OpenAI for $200M because their average clip gets 257k views. Everyone's talking about the strategy. Here's the structure: 1. Format is engineered for clippability, not the other way around 3 hours/day, live, 5 days a...
Inside the Making of Peloton’s Viral Hudson Williams Ad
Peloton unveiled a new "Let Yourself Go" ad starring Hudson Williams dancing to David Bowie’s "Fame," directed by Bethany Vargas, whose résumé includes Lady Gaga’s "Abracadabra" video. The spot, rolling across TV, OTT, social and digital out‑of‑home in the U.S....
A Social Media Solution for Sparking Produce Sales
Social media is emerging as a powerful driver of produce sales, especially among Gen Z and millennial shoppers who spend over two hours daily on platforms. TikTok, YouTube and Instagram dominate meal‑inspiration sources for these younger consumers. Influencer‑led campaigns, such...
How to Do AI SEO (GEO) in 2026? Compare Popular AI Visibility Checker in UK
Onrec evaluated three AI visibility checkers—BuildSOM, Profound, and Semrush—to determine the best solution for UK brands navigating Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) in 2026. The test used a multi‑regional, multilingual brand scenario covering 75 AI prompts across ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Google AIO...
ZoomInfo Adds Free ChatGPT Connector with Enrichment Tools
@ZoomInfo is expanding our partnership with @OpenAI with our @ChatGPTapp connector. Open to ANYONE - free sign up gets you 100 free credits. We've added Intent, Contact and Company Enrichment, Find Similar Companies, and Account Context that marries your...
Explora Journeys Partners with SailGP Swiss Team
Explora Journeys announced a multi‑year global partnership to become the title sponsor of the Swiss SailGP Team, rebranding the squad as the Explora Journeys Swiss SailGP Team. The deal launches on May 9, 2026 at the Bermuda event and will see the...
Cloudflare Forces AI Crawlers to Follow Canonical URLs
This seems to be flying under the radar -> Redirects for AI Training enforces canonical content Once a site opts in via Cloudflare: "When a request arrives from a verified AI Crawler, Cloudflare reads the response HTML. If a non-self-referencing canonical tag...
How Luxury Brands Are Quietly Leaning Into Artificial Intelligence
Luxury brands are quietly integrating artificial intelligence across operations, customer experience, and creative design. The AI market serving luxury is forecast to rise from $1.2 billion in 2024 to $5.6 billion by 2034, growing over 16% annually, with 45% of brands already...
Gap Made $1 Billion in Profit by Doing One Thing.
Gap Inc. posted nearly $1 billion in profit and its highest gross margins in 25 years, driven by eight straight quarters of comparable‑sales growth. New CEO Richard Dickson, famed for reviving Barbie, shifted the brand from mall basics to cultural relevance by...
All Things Creator Marketing with Becky Owen
Becky Owen, CMO of creator agency Billion Dollar Boy, explains why U.S. creator ad spend is expanding four times faster than the broader media market. She emphasizes that creators’ community‑driven, authentic approach delivers performance‑based results that traditional ads struggle to...
Build a $14M Business with a Done‑For‑You System
I didn’t build a $14M company by posting more. I built a machine. Real people. Real strategy. Handmade content. We’ll build yours too. 37 brand assets. 60 days. You show up once a week. DM me “DFY” to see how...
Inside Coachella’s Off-Site Events That Are Rewriting the Festival’s Landscape
Coachella’s 2024 desert edition saw a surge of brand‑driven experiences staged outside the official festival grounds. These off‑site activations ranged from pop‑up lounges to full‑day destination events, giving sponsors creative latitude and exclusive atmospheres. Brands like Rhode transformed product drops...
How Advertisers Are Thinking About Meta’s Affiliate Tool Rollout
Meta unveiled a suite of creator‑focused affiliate and checkout tools at Shoptalk, extending shoppable Reels on Instagram and product‑tagging on Facebook. The affiliate program, backed by partners such as Amazon, eBay, Temu, Shopee and Mercado Libre, lets creators earn commissions...
Placeholder Partners and Frictionmaxxing Fatigue
The After School Monday Edition outlines a wave of cultural and marketing shifts, from Coachella brand activations now topping tens of millions of dollars to AI‑generated influencers flooding festival feeds. It flags the rise of “frictionmaxxing,” a luxury‑focused experience model,...
How Data Analytics and Data Mining Strengthen Brand Identity Services
Brand identity services are increasingly powered by data analytics and mining, shifting from intuition to measurable insight. A Nucleus Research report shows firms earn $13.01 for every dollar spent on analytics, a 1,200% ROI, spurring deeper investment. Real‑time dashboards and...
Personalized PageRank Reveals High-Impact Nodes in 9M-Edge Graph
So... "ai, explain what I just did": we ingested 9M+ directed edges from X into a weighted influence graph, then ran a personalized PageRank variant — tuned for human accounts — to surface eigenvector centrality at scale. once you know the...
Why Storytelling Is Now the Most Valuable Skill in Tech
In this episode, the host argues that storytelling has become the most valuable skill in tech, surpassing even technical expertise. They discuss how the ability to evoke emotion around a product or idea can outweigh coding or engineering prowess, and...
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Starbucks and Dutch Bros Take Different Paths to Growth – Placer.ai Blog
Starbucks’ "Back to Starbucks" turnaround is delivering a 4.9%‑5.9% lift in traffic over the last two quarters, signaling early momentum for the legacy coffee chain. Dutch Bros is generating double‑digit same‑store visit growth—12.3% to 17.9% YoY—through aggressive footprint expansion and a...
Convoso Rolls Out AI‑Driven Outbound Call Center Suite at LeadsCon 2026
Convoso announced a slate of AI-powered outbound call center features at LeadsCon 2026, including a Salesforce‑integrated campaign manager, Agentic AI for automated outreach, and real‑time analytics. The rollout, timed with the company’s 20th anniversary, targets higher answer rates and conversion...
Forbes Prediction Market Gamifies Story About Mass Shooting of 8 Children
Forbes rolled out ForbesPredict in January 2026, a token‑based prediction platform built with Axiom to keep readers on its site longer. The tool embeds interactive boxes in articles, letting users wager non‑cash tokens on outcomes such as whether Congress will...
AI Mode's Side‑by‑side View Could Boost Publisher Traffic
Good to know that AI Mode's new display (opens the page side-by-side with AI Mode) includes Scroll-to-Text highlighting (which is better for analysis in GA4, rank tracking tools, etc.) ALSO this is likely a hot take but I don't think this...
Netflix Targets $3 Billion in Ad Revenue by 2026, Accelerating Shift to Streaming Ads
Netflix announced that its ad-supported tier is on track to generate $3 billion in advertising revenue by 2026, roughly twice the 2025 figure. The projection follows a Q1 where total revenue rose 16.2% YoY to $12.25 billion and the platform added 70%...
Scheduling Posts Doesn't Hurt Reach—Stop Believing the Myth
The "I won't schedule my content becuase it decreases reach" conversation is one I'm tired of having... ... but I'm having it again because I keep seeing people stay stuck behind this idea.
Consolidate Your Meta Ads Into One Campaign
Meta advertisers: when was the last time you tried a fully consolidated, single campaign setup?
GEO Is an Executive Issue, Not Just SEO's Job
Everyone assumes the SEO team should be 100% responsible for all aspects of GEO, meanwhile they only influence a small portion of how LLMs form their opinion of a brand. That's why GEO is an executive level problem. Not a technical...
Most E‑commerce Cart Abandonment Flows Repeat Six Fatal Mistakes
Every ecom brand has a cart abandonment flow, but most of them are making the same mistakes. Here are the 6 most common ones: https://t.co/izm397S5n3
Track AI/LLM Traffic and Conversions with Looker Studio Template
Time to track AI / LLM traffic and conversions. Clone this Looker Studio Template. Link -> https://t.co/nGXnF2Duut
Claude Pinpoints Rank‑11‑20 Pages Ready for #1
Upload your Google Search Console CSV to Claude with this prompt: "Identify pages ranking 11-20 that could hit page 1 with content updates." It'll analyze click-through rates and suggest exactly which pages need work. Beats manually scrolling through 2,000 keywords....
The Onion to Rebrand Infowars as Comedy Site
SCOOP with @NYTLiz: The Onion has a new plan to take over Infowars. It has entered into an agreement to license the Infowars brand and plans to operate it as a comedy site. A Texas judge must approve the deal. https://t.co/YYPmqDHvnv
Validate Sales Organically Before Spending on Ads
'Just run Facebook ads' is the worst advice for beginners in 2026. Build a simple funnel. Get 10 people to buy it organically. THEN run ads. If you can't sell it without ads, you won't sell it with ads.
Fastest 5G Hype Fades; Reliability Now Wins
Telecom is still selling “fastest 5G.” That era is over. When every network “just works,” speed bragging becomes expensive marketing, not a moat. 🚨🧵 #Telecom #5G
Snapchat's Growth Hacking Sparks DAU and Engagement Concerns
⚡️ Snapchat Growth Hacking Raises Concerns on DAUs/Engagement ⚡️ $SNAP Ever since becoming a public company, Evan Spiegel, Snap’s Co-Founder, has been critical of growth hacking... https://t.co/cUVqO01ZFu