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THE 10 FASTEST-GROWING US INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS OF JUNE

These accounts include @olivertree, @ishowspeed, and @chatgpt.

VIBE-CODING WORKFLOWS

Beyond lead-gen tools, teams are building internal utilities like UTM link builders and brief generators with the same one-prompt approach.

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USER-CONTROLLED ALGORITHMS: SHOULD YOU CARE?

User-controlled feed settings should not change your core ad strategy because platforms still rely more on user behavior than declared interests to decide what people see. Create ads that hold attention and earn meaningful engagement because watch time, rewatches, and skips reveal more than interest categories. Test multiple creative formats and messages so the platform can identify which version resonates with each audience based on real viewing behavior. Use performance data to guide creative decisions instead of relying on the preferences users select in platform settings.

THE SAME ARTICLE IS RUNNING ON A HUNDRED LOCAL NEWS SITES. GOOGLE HAS NOTICED

Local news outlets are increasingly publishing syndicated articles created from public datasets, with the same stories appearing across hundreds of sites. While publishers get free content, syndicators gain backlinks, distribution, and brand partnerships by leveraging trusted mastheads. The model weakens local journalism by replacing original reporting with duplicate content that competes in search and erodes reader trust. As Google cracks down on duplicate and third-party content, outlets may need to prioritize original reporting and owned audiences over rented reach.

HUBSPOT REVERSES COURSE AFTER CUSTOMERS REJECT DATA SHARING

HubSpot's attempt to build a shared enrichment pool across customer accounts exposed a broader tension in how vendors profit from data flowing through their own platforms. Customers contribute business contact, engagement, and tracking data simply by using the product, so once that data becomes an input for a commercial dataset sold back to every other account, including competitors, the value exchange shifts without customers getting anything new in return. HubSpot's five enrichment controls only governed whether an account's own records got refreshed, not whether its data flowed into the shared pool, making participation effectively mandatory.

EMAIL COURSE > PDF LEAD MAGNET

Most lead magnets fail because PDFs get downloaded once and forgotten, missing the opportunity to build an email habit. Instead, turn the content into a 5-day email course that delivers each lesson, framework, and takeaway through daily emails. This keeps subscribers engaged and creates a natural transition into a 3-5 email pitch sequence that drives the next step.

WIN REPORT: HOW REVERSING THE FUNNEL INCREASED ORDERS BY 22%

Moving a customer's first moment of personal investment earlier in the purchase journey can increase conversions. A flower and gift retailer moved the card message step to immediately after product selection and orders increased by 22%. Writing a personal message creates commitment and helps customers picture the outcome before payment. Look for opportunities to let customers personalize or create something early in the funnel and test whether it increases purchase completion.

IS RUNNING THE SAME AI PROMPT ONCE A DAY ACTUALLY ENOUGH?

Analysis of one million AI responses found running prompts 10X daily offers minimal gains over once per day, with only a 0.25 point difference in citation share. While higher frequency slightly reduces variability, the impact is small. The bigger driver of accuracy is prompt selection, not repetition. A well-constructed, representative prompt portfolio matters more than run volume, since poor prompt choices can skew results far more than day-to-day AI response variation.

HOW AI-NATIVE ARE YOU AS A MARKETER? (QUIZ)

Built by CXL, this quick assessment gauges how AI-native you are as a marketer. It tracks how consistently you use AI across workflows, research, content creation, experimentation, and team operations. Your level reflects how broadly and often you apply these behaviors in your day-to-day work.

SEE HOW CONTENT FROM SOCIAL AND VIDEO PLATFORMS PERFORMS ON GOOGLE SEARCH

Google launched platform properties in Search Console, enabling creators to track how Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube content performs on Search and Discover. It surfaces queries, clicks, impressions, and engagement through performance and insights reports, with options to filter or export data. Users can connect accounts via verification, with a gradual rollout designed to give a unified view of content discovery across platforms.

WHY DOES THE MIDDLE OF THE FUNNEL ALWAYS GET THE MIDDLE FINGER?

CMOs now spend 71% of budget on performance media and just 29% on brand-building, with performance gaining 11 percentage points since 2023, moving further from the 60/40 optimal split. A comparison of premium and non-premium publisher placements found the gap was modest at the top and bottom of the funnel but reached +267% in the middle, the exact zone budgets are abandoning. Mid-funnel performance depends on media quality, specifically placement prominence and contextual receptiveness, neither of which shows up in reach and frequency or click and ROAS metrics.

EVERYONE'S A MARKETING EXPERT ... UNTIL THEY'RE NOT

Marketing's biggest blind spot is not inexperience but certainty, since years of success can calcify a personal lens that has quietly drifted out of alignment with the audience. Performance metrics like conversions and cost per acquisition measure whether a campaign worked, but they cannot explain why an audience felt connected or alienated in the first place. The marketers who avoid that trap treat their own reactions as a starting hypothesis rather than a final verdict, testing and adjusting based on what the data shows rather than what they personally like.

META'S NEW AI CAN GENERATE IMAGES OF YOU FROM YOUR INSTAGRAM, AND YOU'RE OPTED IN

Muse Image lets anyone @-mention a public Instagram account to generate AI images of that person, switched on by default with no consent request or notification.

WHOOP HIRES NIKE MARKETING VETERAN AS WEARABLES WARS HEAT UP

Former Nike CMO Dirk-Jan van Hameren joins Whoop as CMO.

EMAIL OPEN TRACKING NOW NEEDS CONSENT IN FRANCE AND ITALY

France's CNIL and Italy's Garante now require consent for email tracking pixels; deadlines July 14 and October 28, respectively.

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HOW TECH WORKERS ARE FEELING IN 2026: A WORKFORCE SPLITTING IN TWO

55.7% of tech workers now report significant burnout, up from 44.7% a year ago, while career optimism has dropped to 48.7% from 54.8%. Only 22% cite losing their job to AI as a top fear, and the correlation between AI replacing parts of a job and layoff worry sits at essentially zero. What's actually driving the anxiety is the squeeze, since AI raised the bar for output and the reward has been more work for the same pay rather than fewer hours. More than half of respondents say they would steer a newcomer away from their own field, producing an average career recommendation score of -39.

AI OVERVIEWS ARE EXPANDING ACROSS COMMERCIAL INTENT SEARCH

AI Overviews appeared on 71% more commercial-intent search results, expanding well beyond the informational queries where they first took hold. Finance saw the sharpest jump, up 231% in the period, followed by computers and electronics at 108% and games at 77%. Transactional queries moved in the opposite direction, with AI Overview appearance falling 5% as Google increasingly reserves them for the research phase of a purchase rather than the moment someone is ready to buy. Google Ads and AI Overviews are also showing up together roughly twice as often as a year ago, putting more paid and AI-generated real estate on the same results page.

TURN DAILY MOMENTS INTO VIRAL LINKEDIN POSTS

Content works better when it starts with a relatable moment because personal stories stand out in a feed full of AI-generated advice. Start with a real event, build one clear message, and match the post to one of three goals: personal, proof, or promo. The STORM structure gives each post a simple flow from hook to takeaway and helps readers stay engaged. Specific hooks and a closing that connects back to the opening create stronger engagement and clearer calls to action.

BRANDS SEE CONTENT GOLD IN MICRODRAMAS. WILL THEY MUCK UP THE MOMENT?

Microdramas give brands a low-cost way to build attention through entertainment instead of traditional ads, but success depends on strong storytelling before product promotion. Short episodes that open with a hook, end with a cliffhanger, and include clear business goals can create stronger engagement and commerce opportunities. Audience interest is growing fast as time spent with short drama apps increased by 5.78 billion hours in 2025, while Crocs generated nearly 10 million views from its first branded microdrama. Start with small tests, measure repeat viewing and binge behavior instead of only impressions, and avoid forcing products into the story because audiences quickly reject content that feels like an infomercial.

PAID ADS PLAYOFF: PROVEN B2B PLAYS THAT TURN SPEND INTO PIPELINE (WEBINAR)

This live session on July 10 brings B2B marketers together to break down paid ads that drive qualified pipeline. Speakers quickly share top-performing ad examples and results, then face rapid Q&A before the audience votes on which plays deserve a deeper dive. The format is interactive, with attendees able to ask questions and influence what gets explored further, ending with a final crowd-selected standout.

SEE HOW CONTENT FROM SOCIAL AND VIDEO PLATFORMS PERFORMS ON GOOGLE SEARCH

Google Search Console now lets marketers measure how social and video content performs in Google Search and Discover across Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube. The new platform properties show which search queries generate clicks and impressions for individual posts, so teams can find the content and topics that attract search traffic. The Insights report gives a quick view of traffic trends and top posts, and the Performance report lets users filter, sort, and export the data for deeper analysis. This gives brands a single place to measure search visibility across owned websites and major social platforms.

HOW WE'RE KEEPING REDDIT REAL AND SAFE IN THE AI ERA

Reddit is using AI-driven systems to proactively detect spam, bots, and harmful content before users see it. These upgrades now block 23M spam views daily, cut user exposure to spam by 20%, and revoke nearly 2M fake votes per day. Enforcement on hate and violent content has also dropped to under five seconds, reducing exposure by over 40%.

IT'S ALL ABOUT FRAMING

Framing can increase customer value as much as product quality because the right partner changes how people perceive and use an offer. Robinhood generated more than 50% of Kalshi's trading volume by presenting prediction markets inside an investing app, which made larger wagers feel normal to investment-minded users. Partnerships can also reposition a brand, as Apple used Hermès to present the Apple Watch as a luxury accessory and New Balance used fashion collaborations to change its image. Products are easier to copy than brand perception, so partnerships that expand reach and create stronger mental associations can create a lasting advantage.

NETFLIX INVENTED BINGE-WATCHING. NOW IT MAY HAVE OUTGROWN IT

Viewers are increasingly abandoning popular Netflix shows before a second season, driven by frequent cancellations, long gaps between seasons, and algorithm-shaped programming. Netflix's binge model was built to beat linear TV, a fight streaming already won when it overtook combined broadcast and cable viewing in 2025, but the platform now competes with short-form video and microdrama apps instead.

THE RISE OF RAGEBAIT LIT

Buzz-heavy memoirs and novels are sparking intense online debate. Group chats, Substack, and book clubs are driving the conversation. These books center on messy personal lives and polarizing choices. Readers engage for the drama but often feel personally invested in the authors, which sharpens reactions. Conversations move beyond hot takes into questions about feminism, relationships, and autonomy. The trend echoes the confessional era but feels more fractured today. Cultural regression shapes the tone, turning outrage into a way to process collective anger.

10 LOW-LIFT EMAIL TIPS

Use separate subdomains for transactional and marketing emails, clean your database regularly, and apply more precise suppression logic.

THE 5 AEO AUTOMATIONS I'M RUNNING THIS MONTH

These include weekly citation gap sweeps, auto-refreshing pages that convert, and the ship-it-twice LinkedIn system.

OPENAI CAN GENERATE CHATGPT ADS FOR YOU

ChatGPT Ads now offers to generate a complete ad, pulling from an advertiser's website and campaign settings, then handing it back for review, editing, and approval before it goes live.

PHYSICAL MEDIA IS DYING. SO IS THE IDEA THAT YOU OWN WHAT YOU BUY

Physical media is fading as gaming shifts to digital-only distribution, with Sony planning to sell only digital PlayStation titles by 2028. While convenient, this shift weakens ownership, as purchases become revocable licenses rather than permanent assets. Content can disappear due to licensing changes, as seen with removed films from user libraries. Broader trends in gaming and streaming reinforce this shift, prompting regulatory responses. The traditional idea of buying media to own is eroding, replaced by limited, conditional access.

WHY META AI COULD BECOME SEARCH'S SLEEPING GIANT

Meta AI could become a major search and product discovery channel by embedding AI in existing apps instead of separate tools. It reached 1B monthly users by May 2025, while Meta's apps reach 3.56B daily users, giving it an edge in capturing intent across social, messaging, and shopping. Brands should test how it surfaces products, creators, reviews, and content. Visibility may rely less on traditional SEO and more on social content, partnerships, product data, and community activity.

CAROUSEL ADS VS. DOCUMENT ADS. CONVO ADS VS. MESSAGE ADS

Small format changes can drive big swings in LinkedIn Ads performance, so testing similar formats is critical. Document ads often beat carousel ads for multi-slide creative due to better mobile usability and engagement, but not consistently. Message and conversation ads also vary widely despite similar setups, with no clear winner. Performance differences can be significant, making side-by-side testing the only reliable way to decide.

YOUR NEXT VIRAL POST IS ALREADY WRITTEN

Three viral formats dominating social feeds right now all hijack a real news event instead of inventing a joke. Sony's PlayStation-goes-digital-only announcement drew 70K angry replies, and Domino's UK parody about digital pizzas answered within two hours for 488K likes, with more brands piling on. Software companies ran the joke in reverse, and GitHub took it furthest by actually shipping code on CD-ROMs, landing on Hacker News's front page. A third format copies the US government's real Claude Fable 5 shutdown statement onto unrelated products.

GOOGLE ADS SEARCH TERMS WASTE ANALYZER

Paste or upload your Google Ads Search Terms Report to find wasted spend, negative keyword candidates, n-gram patterns, and high-intent query opportunities. The analysis runs locally in your browser. The tool is free to use.

FIND CHATGPT'S DATA SOURCES IN THE SOURCE CODE

Chrome DevTools can reveal the source for each of ChatGPT's cited URLs through the "result_source" tag. Its current data sources include Labrador for training data, SERP for search data, BrightData, and Oxylabs. This helps you identify where ChatGPT finds information and build content that is more likely to appear in AI-generated citations.

AI VISIBILITY SCORES ARE USELESS

AI visibility tools rely on prompts that can be easily manipulated, making their scores unreliable and disconnected from how users actually search. Citations also vary widely, so optimizing for them alone is flawed. A better approach is to analyze consistently cited sources, study competitors, and focus on content that answers real user questions. Visible brand mentions matter more than links, making strong, clear positioning key to showing up in AI responses.

BOTH SIDES OF THE MARKETING EDUCATION ROW ARE RIGHT

Debate over marketing education has become polarized, but both sides are largely right. Foundational knowledge still matters, while the traditional canon needs updating for a changing industry. The real issue is confusion between knowledge, competencies, and skills, with too little focus on applying learning in real contexts. Universities and training each play a role, but neither is sufficient alone. Underneath the debate is deeper uncertainty about marketing's future, which is fueling division and making constructive progress harder.

SELF-PROMOTIONAL CONTENT WORKS—UNTIL IT BACKFIRES

Publishing self-promotional pages pulled a new conference brand into 72 previously empty AI answer slots, with 82% of those mentions citing the brand's own content. The same tactic barely moved an already-established brand, where only 6% of new mentions traced back to owned pages. Even where citations landed, they backfired 43% of the time, with AI citing the page while recommending a competitor from the same list. The effect scaled with query specificity, hitting 66% of answers for a narrow "best SEO conferences" search versus 16% for a broader "best marketing conferences" one.

AI TOOLS CAN QUIETLY SHIFT YOUR OPINIONS WHEN THEY “CLEAN UP” YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS

AI writing tools can nudge tone in specific directions across topics, even when asked to preserve meaning.

WHY MOST ORIGINAL DATA NEVER GETS CITED

Original data earns disproportionate citations, but almost only when packaged as clear, comparable benchmarks that directly answer “which is best” questions.

‘TOUGH PILL TO SWALLOW': LADBIBLE BOSS ON THE TRAFFIC HIT FROM META'S FEED SHAKE-UP

Digital publishers are getting squeezed from both sides. Meta is prioritizing creator content over publisher links, cutting ad revenue, while Google's AI Overviews reduce search traffic by answering queries directly. Some publishers report CTR drops as high as 89%. Search traffic is projected to fall over 40% in three years, after steep declines from Facebook and X. A new UK ruling allows publishers to block Overviews without losing search rankings, adding leverage.

AI WON'T SAVE ADVERTISING

AI hype is sweeping advertising, expectations are overblown. Fully automated ad creation isn't realistic and risks hurting the ecosystem. Like programmatic before it, AI won't replace human judgment. Its real value is improving productivity and workflows. Meanwhile, creators are becoming full-stack businesses, blurring lines with agencies. The industry is shifting toward data-driven marketing, but AI alone won't deliver the transformation many expect.

ADD YOUR BEST CASE STUDIES IN YOUR FOOTER

Placing key customer proof in your website footer can influence how AI systems describe your product. In a test, Clay surfaced its case studies in the footer, and ChatGPT pulled listed customers directly from those links when asked which brands use the product. Companies that bury case studies deeper on their sites were cited far less.

4 WAYS TO NOT LET YOUR LOYALTY PROGRAM LIVE IN A SILO

Most loyalty programs fail because they're barely visible. Email flows should surface points, rewards, and status in welcome, post-purchase, and ongoing campaigns. Subscription flows should reinforce value with milestone updates and highlight what's lost during cancellation. Landing pages should surface perks upfront instead of burying them in footers. Retail experiences should connect online and in-store so that earning and redemption work both ways.

A GOOGLE ADS TARGETING TACTIC THAT CUT INVALID CLICKS BY 50%

Use Google Ads audience targeting as a filter to reduce invalid clicks when click fraud is hurting your campaign performance. One account cut its invalid click rate by 50% after adding hundreds of Google predefined audiences and setting them to Targeting instead of Observation. The approach limits ads to users who match both keywords and Google's audience signals. It works best for accounts with unusually high invalid click rates because it can also exclude legitimate users who do not fit Google's predefined audiences.

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