Growing up with instant access to decades of archived content is compressing the nostalgia cycle for Gen Z, who now form emotional attachments to eras that predate their birth at a far higher rate than older generations. Two-thirds of Gen Z report this "borrowed nostalgia", compared with Gen X's tilt toward the 80s and millennials' toward the 90s and 2000s. Music ranks as the strongest trigger across generations, which is why campaigns like Gap's Katseye ad, built around Kelis's 2003 hit "Milkshake", land with both the generation that remembers the song and the one discovering it fresh.
The Associated Press is turning 180 years of journalism into a data business, deconstructing its reporting into structured and unstructured data sold to other industries alongside its traditional news distribution. The shift runs alongside a deliberately short AI licensing strategy, one-to-three-year deals built on protecting journalists' intellectual property and securing fair value as models train on AP content. Newspapers, once AP's dominant customer base, now generate under 10% of its revenue, with data licensing and diversified income filling the rest.
Millennials show higher advertising recall than Generation Z across nearly every channel, digital and traditional alike, from a 30-point gap on television, 56% vs. 26%, to smaller but consistent gaps on social media, search, and streaming video. The exception is video games, where recall is nearly identical between the two generations. Gen Z's lower recall tracks lower overall media consumption, but the generation is more responsive to influencer-driven purchases than Millennials, 39% vs. 34%.
B2B teams often confuse lifecycle marketing with lead lifecycle. Lifecycle marketing drives activation, retention, and expansion, while lead lifecycle manages pipeline stages. The two work together through pre-sale nurture, closed-lost reactivation, expansion campaigns, and lead quality feedback loops. Sales-assisted PLG teams can also use signals like usage limits, feature requests, and ICP fit to trigger sales handoffs.
Focus first on profitability before adding advanced features to your e-commerce website. Reduce returns, improve customer service, and build a shipping model that works before investing in AI tools or extra apps. Design every product and collection page as a landing page because visitors often arrive from ads, social posts, or other links instead of the home page. A 15 to 30 second product video can increase conversions, and fast-loading MP4 videos with clear audio create a better brand experience than GIFs or poor-quality video.
Connect paid media to the CRM before launching campaigns so every optimization ties back to pipeline instead of platform metrics. Use multi-touch attribution, causal modeling, and incrementality testing together because each method fills gaps the others miss and gives a more reliable view of channel performance. Report results in business metrics such as contribution margin, LTV to CAC, payback period, cost per first meeting, and cost per pipeline dollar because those numbers align marketing with finance. Companies that optimized for pipeline instead of clicks cut cost per MQL by 27%, increased conversion rate by 18%, and improved ROAS by 138%.
This webinar breaks down what retailers expect before listing a product, focusing on data, not gut feel. It covers how to bridge the gap between DTC traction and in-store readiness and how to build a credible data story months before pitching to improve your chances of landing shelf space. It takes place today at 2:30 PM ET.
Cyrus Shepard, founder of Zyppy SEO, analyzed 400+ sites to find 5 traits driving organic growth and 17 content types that still perform in a zero-click world. This webinar will explain how to rethink AI's role by cutting low-impact output and focusing on assets that earn visibility in Google and AI search. It will take place on July 23 at 3 PM ET.
TikTok Shop expert Jason Termechi analyzed $14M+ in live sales and found most brands go live before building the foundation needed to convert. He recommends establishing TikTok Shop sales history first, then optimizing broadcasts with metrics like GPM, tap-through rate, watch time, and click-to-order rate. His playbook includes flash sales, weeks of pre-promotion, rotating hosts, and real-time adjustments to improve engagement and sales.
Search ROAS often looks strong only because paid social is running alongside it, generating brand awareness that later surfaces as branded search queries search then gets credited for capturing. Last-click attribution can't see social impressions that never converted directly, creating a structural bias where search inherits demand it didn't create. The effect is delayed by four to eight weeks, so teams that cut social based on isolated ROAS comparisons often see search CPAs climb months later without connecting the two. Geo holdout tests and brand search volume tracking are the more reliable way to measure the actual cross-channel effect.
X is now weighting mutual followers more heavily in replies and recommendations, after finding its ranking algorithm wasn't using relationship data.
Pick a tiny niche, talk to users before building, and ship fast, ugly versions early to get real feedback and traction before wasting time on guesses.
Conferences feel costly and exhausting, but they accelerate relationships and opportunities faster than remote work.
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More than 200 economists, including 16 Nobel Laureates, have warned that AI could accelerate job displacement and reshape the economy faster than previous industrial shifts. A new open letter urges policymakers and tech leaders to create safeguards that ensure AI complements workers rather than replaces them. The warning comes as companies announce AI-related layoffs, with 99% of executives expecting AI to reduce headcount in some capacity within two years.
AI marketing platforms like Jasper standardize “brand voice” by applying generic tone guidelines to content that's already interchangeable, producing average output at scale. This creates a feedback loop of sameness. The issue isn't the tools, it's the input. Simple checks like swap, output, and reconstruction tests reveal weak voice. Brands grounded in clear beliefs and real decisions avoid being flattened.
AI agents don't struggle with your site, they struggle with your pricing. When it's hidden, hard to parse, or blocked, they default to third-party sources. Even published pricing often fails if it's buried in JavaScript, calculators, or messy layouts. Make pricing explicit, centralized, in plain text, and crawlable. Add structure and reduce friction.
Press coverage can be lost when reporters can't quickly access the assets they need. Make it easy to cover a company by creating a public press kit with downloadable logos, screenshots, brand assets, and copy-ready stats. Avoid gated folders or hard-to-find pages, since journalists will move to easier sources. Adding a dedicated press page with clear URLs and frequently used metrics helps reporters quickly find and cite information.
A curated gallery of landing pages that generate verified revenue. It highlights what drives conversions, helping users avoid copying designs that don't perform. The platform also offers teardowns and diagnostics to identify what's hurting a page and how to fix it.
Mutiny built its growth engine by combining rapid testing and focused channel investments instead of spreading effort across many initiatives. It improved conversions by 71% after testing a more specific homepage headline, then paired broad awareness tactics with account-based outbound that focused on a small list of high-value prospects. It used borrowed audiences and ecosystem partnerships to expand reach while tracking performance across every stage of the funnel. The team treated every experiment as a way to find repeatable growth, then doubled down on the channels and tactics that produced results.
Empathy and delight haven't improved software because respect is missing. Products remove user control and push work onto users through rigid flows and forms. This starts with designers who overestimate their role and scales through systems that prioritize efficiency over agency. LLMs extend this by defaulting to doing tasks for users, generating low-value output that increases review burden and rewards volume over judgment. The result is bloated features and worse experiences. Respectful software gives users control, keeps useful friction, and communicates clearly.
About 20% of working-age adults used long-term savings to pay for groceries in the past year.
Meta may face fines and forced product changes in Europe after the EU ruled that Facebook and Instagram's addictive features likely violate its laws.
Sulwhasoo is collapsing the funnel by pairing CTV and DOOH with retargeting.
YouTube growth is attributed to subscribers, suggested, search, and shorts.
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Brands are shifting toward influencer-style marketing built around real customers and employees instead of traditional creators. Companies like ResMed are hosting events, running “baddie” community pages, and encouraging everyday users to create content that feels organic. The strategy reflects declining trust in traditional ads and stronger influence from peer-like content, with 40% of Gen Z favoring influencer recommendations. These efforts can drive engagement and normalize niche products, but they're still highly orchestrated and don't always work.
Marketing is getting a tech makeover with titles like “narrative engineer” to make the same work sound higher status. Around 70% of marketers are women, and as fields skew female, pay and status tend to drop, so companies borrow engineering language to boost credibility and shift who it attracts. AI is pushing tech to recognize storytelling and taste, but instead of calling it marketing, they relabel it. This keeps the idea that work only feels important when it sounds technical.
Strong persuasion follows a clear pattern. Start quietly to pull attention instead of pushing for it. Build trust with honest admissions that make claims more credible. Anchor everything to one core idea and make it concrete with specific details people can picture. Frame the decision as a clear choice where doing nothing has a cost. Then let the audience reach the conclusion themselves, which increases buy-in.
Atlan won a 35% share of AI vendor citations by building 52 high-quality pages that answer complete buyer questions instead of chasing individual keywords. It focused on comparison pages, buyer guides, and decision content that include expert authors, fresh updates, cited research, proprietary data, case studies, and balanced product assessments that AI models can trust. The same pages also perform well in search because 71% of its 3,886 ranking US keywords trigger AI Overviews, which lets one page earn both search traffic and AI citations. Strong content quality matters more than publishing volume because well-structured pages can earn AI citations even when organic rankings are not at the top of search results.
Running email inside Claude replaces fragmented workflows with a single system that connects your ESP via API, analyzes performance, generates campaigns, and improves over time. The setup uses Claude with API connectors, claude.md for brand context, custom email skills, scheduled audits, and Claude Design for templates. Data flows into live dashboards built with Claude Code widgets, while competitor emails are tracked via Gmail connectors and ReallyGoodEmails scraping. All tests and learnings are stored in a shared GitHub repo, creating a continuous loop where campaigns and iterations compound automatically.
ChatGPT Search & Fan-Outs Capture helps you see exactly what searches ChatGPT performs behind the 4scenes to generate responses. It's an advanced Chrome Extension designed to capture, analyze, and export SearchGPT conversations. It differentiates between Search (traditional queries), Shopping (shorter queries using SearchApi.io to scrape Google Shopping), and Images fan-outs.
Context switching is becoming one of the biggest drivers of bad AI-driven customer experience. An airport restaurant's QR ordering system asked a customer to switch WiFi networks, create an account, and check topping boxes before a frustrated server stepped in and took the order in under a minute. People still prefer human support to AI overall, though that gap narrows in lower-risk categories like retail and travel where AI already outperforms. The fix isn't more automation, it's building AI that's judged by the same speed and ease standard as the human it replaces.
Free streaming made up 18.7% of US TV watch time in April.
The campaign treated the movie like a living fashion event instead of a film release.
Adding clickable product tags beat standard product cards by making Klaviyo's multi-product offering clearer and faster to scan.
AI search roles are emerging fast, with 50+ open positions across major brands and industries. These are senior roles with budget and ownership, not entry-level add-ons. Salaries match leadership positions, reflecting long-term investment. Demand is rising as AI search usage grows, while the talent pool remains small, creating a seller's market. The function is splitting from SEO into its own discipline, with companies building dedicated teams. AI search is becoming a core marketing function, not an experiment.
Scannable packaging is turning products into dynamic digital touchpoints. QR codes are replacing static labels with interactive, updatable experiences that deliver personalization and real-time engagement at the moment of use. Packaging becomes a media channel and data layer, giving brands post-purchase visibility and ongoing interaction. With Digital Product Passports accelerating adoption, packaging is shifting from fixed design to flexible infrastructure. Static packaging is fading as consumers expect products to inform and respond.
Weekend sends now match weekdays, shrinking the old gap and making Monday the least crowded inbox. Subject lines are getting shorter and less shouty, favoring clear specifics over urgency. Per-brand volume is flat, but more brands are sending consistently, with weekly cadence on the rise. Emails remain heavy on images and links. Industry differences are wide, so broad benchmarks mislead. Attention is shifting toward newsletters and re-engagement, not one-off promos.
Founders who fire off thousand-contact cold outbound sequences in month two are usually avoiding the harder work of a handful of real conversations earned through warm intros. That shortcut skips the only way to learn what a target market actually cares about before trying to scale it. The same premature-scale instinct shows up in handing buyers product access and calling it a pilot, when a real pilot needs defined success criteria, a timeline, and an internal champion driving usage. Hiring a salesperson follows the identical trap, since no rep can run a closing process a founder hasn't already proven works.
A five-phase pipeline that tells you which questions are likely triggering AIO appearances and whether Google is treating you as a source or a recommendation. Start with Google Search Console's Generative AI report to find the pages that appear in AI Overviews. Analyze those pages with Screaming Frog and Claude Sonnet to identify citable topics, likely search prompts, and content gaps. Test those prompts in Gemini to see which ones cite your site and which ones mention your brand.
Meta-analysis combines the results of similar A/B tests into one dataset to identify patterns across many experiments. It can help generate new experiment ideas, but it should not become a source of best practices. Test categories rely on subjective labeling, and different teams can classify the same experiment in very different ways. Most experiments happen under different conditions, so combined results rarely isolate a single variable or reveal the real cause of performance changes.
Clicks are disappearing as users stay in-platform, making brand mentions more valuable than citations. Trust is becoming the deciding factor in what people believe and whether they verify elsewhere. Visibility is highly inconsistent across models and prompts, and “ghost citations” make attribution mostly invisible. AI scans for answers, so content that gets to the point quickly performs best.
Adding a manager to high-value sales meetings can increase revenue if the salesperson stays in the lead and the manager supports the conversation. Research across 5.5 million sales found manager and salesperson teams produced 13.2% higher sales value for new customers and 12.5% higher sales value for returning customers than teams with two salespeople. The manager signals that the customer and the deal matter while the salesperson gains credibility when the manager defers to their expertise. Use lead scores to decide when senior leaders should join sales calls instead of sending them to every meeting.
AI search engines score every brand claim for confidence before deciding whether to recommend it, weighing backlink quality, media coverage, and third-party mentions the same way search algorithms once weighed keywords. Earned coverage carries outsized weight in that scoring, as AI systems cite premium publisher content 3 times more often than brand-owned pages. Traffic that arrives via AI referral converts at up to 4 times the rate of standard organic search.
Logitech turned a commodity mouse into a premium product by rebuilding its brand around design, productivity, and quality before launching the MX Master. It made the higher price feel credible through visible product craftsmanship, patented features, and productivity claims such as scrolling 1,000 lines per second and a reported 33% reduction in work time. The product gained strong word of mouth before remote work created a surge in demand. Logitech then built repeat purchases through regular product updates instead of competing on price.