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 all marketing functions, shifting AI from a productivity add‑on to a core strategic engine. The analysis notes early adopters are using generative tools, while the next wave will involve autonomous agents that orchestrate decisions across workflows, guided by a five‑step implementation roadmap.
Analysts Question CDP Dominance as AI and Zero‑Copy Integration Rise
Analysts and marketers are reevaluating the supremacy of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) amid AI‑driven orchestration, zero‑copy data activation and tighter privacy rules. Zeta Global’s CTO warns static CDP software may be replaced by generative, composable interfaces by 2026, signaling a broader shift in enterprise data strategy.
Google Uses Gemini AI to Block 8.3 Billion Harmful Ads, 99% Stopped Before Running
Google announced that its Gemini‑powered AI system blocked more than 8.3 billion harmful ads in 2025, stopping 99% before they reached users. The sweep also suspended 24.9 million advertiser accounts and removed 191.9 million ads in Indonesia, setting a new benchmark for AI‑driven...
Start with a Deep Marketing Audit for Real Opportunities
Here's what a Fractional CMO Partnership with me actually looks like: 🧵 1. We start with a full marketing audit. I go deep on everything: your ecosystem, your messaging, your data, your team setup. I want to know what's working, what's...
More Brands Employing Affiliate and Partnership Marketing: IAB State of Nation Report
The IAB Australia released its 2026 Affiliate and Partnership Marketing State of the Nation Report, showing that affiliate programs are delivering strong commercial results for brands and agencies. Forty‑two percent of advertisers increased their affiliate spend over the past year,...
When AI Writes the Answer, Can Your Brand Still Earn Trust?
Marketers once relied on high search rankings to drive clicks and growth, but AI‑driven discovery platforms like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity are shifting the focus to being cited within synthesized answers. In this new model, brand authority hinges...
Your Personal Brand Is Today's Most Valuable Business
The best business you can build right now is your personal brand. Agree or disagree?
Google’s Jan 20 Update Cracked AI‑Heavy SaaS Blogs
The Jan 20 Google update was the most interesting update of the year for me so far (I’m still working on March Core analysis btw 🥵) Still finding new examples that all match the same patterns. A few things seemed to...
Podcast Distribution Strategy: How To Reach More Listeners
A podcast distribution strategy is a three‑layer system—technical hosting, platform reach, and active promotion—that turns a simple RSS upload into a scalable marketing channel. The guide stresses validating the RSS feed and metadata before submitting to major directories such as...
Latina Poets Turn Instagram Into Publishing Powerhouse
Instagram poet Yesika Salgado, with 170,000 followers, leveraged social media to land a bestseller debut and spark a wave of Latino voices online. Scholars say the shift is redefining how poetry reaches young readers and diversifying the publishing pipeline.
Adobe Unveils CX Enterprise, an AI‑Driven Platform to Orchestrate Customer‑Experience Workflows
Adobe announced CX Enterprise at its Summit conference, a new end‑to‑end AI platform that coordinates agents across the entire customer lifecycle. The suite, built on Adobe Experience Platform’s trillion‑experience data layer, promises sales and marketing teams a single governance layer...
AI‑Driven SEO and Shopping Agents Promise Fully Automated Product Discovery and Content Creation
Two AI-powered solutions unveiled in the past 24 hours aim to overhaul demand generation. Md Ismail Sojal introduced an end‑to‑end SEO and content production system that claims to run with minimal human input, while Search Engine Journal highlighted AI shopping agents that...
Treasure AI Launches Agentic Marketing Platform to Cut Costs up to 50% for E‑Commerce Brands
Treasure AI announced an agentic experience platform that automates customer engagement for digital commerce brands. The solution claims to lower marketing costs by as much as 50% and deliver ten‑fold ROI in ten minutes, positioning AI as the primary interface...
ACKO Appoints Nitin Khanna as CMO to Steer Brand and Growth
ACKO has elevated Nitin Khanna to chief marketing officer, succeeding Ashish Mishra who is leaving after nearly six years. Khanna, a 15‑year marketing veteran, will now lead brand strategy, consumer outreach and growth marketing as the company expands its digital...
DoubleVerify Unveils DV AI SlopStopper™ for Social to Fight AI‑Generated Ad Fraud
DoubleVerify announced the launch of DV AI SlopStopper™ for Social, extending its DV AI Verification suite to detect AI‑generated low‑quality content on social and video platforms. The service aims to safeguard brand safety and improve ad‑spend efficiency amid a surge...
Anthropic Unveils Claude Design, AI Tool Targeting Designers and Marketers
Anthropic released Claude Design, an AI‑powered visual creation platform for prototypes, presentations and marketing assets. Available in research preview for paid Claude subscribers, the tool leverages the new Claude Opus 4.7 vision model and automatically applies a company’s design system....
OMO Australia Teams up with Arsenal’s Aussie Footballers to Champion Outdoor Play and Tackle the ‘Gender Activity Gap’ in New...
OMO Australia has joined forces with Arsenal Women’s Football Club to launch the "It Starts Outside" campaign, part of Unilever’s Dirt Is Good platform. The initiative spotlights Australian football stars Kyra Cooney‑Cross, Steph Catley and Caitlin Foord, urging parents to...
Royale Rolls Out Brand Platform ‘There for All’
Royale, Canada’s leading paper‑product brand, unveiled its new brand platform “There for All.” The campaign positions the brand as an irreplaceable part of everyday Canadian life, linking its products to intimate moments such as wiping tears or cleaning spills. A...
When Claude Makes Anyone a 'Designer', What Happens to Creative Craft?
Anthropic unveiled Claude Design, an AI‑driven visual creation platform built on the Claude Opus 4.7 vision model. The tool lets users generate prototypes, presentations, marketing assets and landing pages through conversational prompts, merging ideation and execution into a single iterative loop....
Stern+: How One of Germany’s Biggest Magazine Brands Rebuilt a Subscription Business From Scratch
German publisher RTL Deutschland rebuilt its digital subscription arm, stern+, from a seven‑person team to nearly 100 staff focused on product, data, engineering and marketing. The rollout introduced weekly pricing, personalized trial offers and a dynamic paywall that tailors free...
Scape Turns Student-Inspired Stories Into National Campaign via Jane Doe Creation
Jane Doe Creation launched “You Had To Be There,” an integrated campaign for Scape that turns student‑inspired moments into national brand storytelling across YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, Meta, Reddit and out‑of‑home. The mixed‑media films showcase everyday campus connections, from hallway greetings to shared...
From Testing to Scaling: Building a Sustainable TikTok Ads Strategy for Ecommerce
The article outlines a repeatable framework for ecommerce brands to move from isolated TikTok test wins to sustainable, high‑volume scaling. It stresses that creative fatigue, account instability, and poor campaign architecture cause performance plateaus once spend reaches $5K‑$20K per month....
Semrush Launches a Framework for Measuring Brand Visibility in AI Search as the Old SEO Playbook Breaks Down
Semrush unveiled a Brand Visibility Framework at Adobe Summit, introducing “Agentic Search Optimisation” to measure brand presence across AI‑generated answers, traditional search, and autonomous agents. The model draws on more than 213 million LLM prompts and highlights that organic click‑through rates...
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...
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...
AI Traffic: From Worst Customer to Top Performer
A Year Ago AI Traffic Was Your Worst Customer. Now It Is Your Best. https://t.co/xQGflQOMl2
Unified Hub Links Agents to SMB Ad & Analytics Tools
What is the best platform for connecting agents to the everyday systems needed by SMBs? Eg support for Google and Meta ads and analytics
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