Google's Preferred Sources feature lets users increase the likelihood of a website appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode by marking it as a preferred source. This can also earn a “Preferred” label in results. To set this up, first create a Google preferences link using this format: “google.com/preferences/source?q=yourwebsite.com”. Then distribute that link across newsletters, social posts, and your website. When users click it, they check a box to select your site as a preferred source, signaling to Google to surface your content more often.
This free 2-hour event on June 17 will explore how AI is reshaping experimentation for product and growth teams. It will feature live demos of AI agents that support ideation, test building, prioritization, and results analysis. Speakers will also share practical frameworks teams can apply immediately. The keynote is by Elena Verna, who shares insights on the gap between AI hype and real experimentation practice and what teams need to adapt.
People react negatively when they know a brand used AI to write emotional marketing messages, especially announcements, apologies, and founder-style notes. Across six experiments with more than 2,200 participants, AI-written emotional messages reduced brand recommendations by up to 24.6% and increased feelings of moral disgust by 58.4%. The backlash is strongest when companies present AI-generated copy as if it came from a real person. Avoid using AI for emotionally charged communications, and instead use it only as a light editing tool while keeping the final voice human, specific, and authentic.
What Happened Last Night is a five-person comedy collective that has grown to over 100K Instagram followers without a single front-facing creator. The team relied on one highly produced video per week made by longtime friends. They spent months building a backlog before launch, then settled into a tight cycle of writing and filming that prioritizes cinematic storytelling over volume.
The Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop Collection is a co-branding exercise in managed desirability that pairs Audemars Piguet's heritage and scarcity with Swatch's accessibility and cultural irreverence. The collection created a controlled entry point into the luxury brand without touching the core product. For younger audiences who cannot yet access a Royal Oak, the collaboration offers cultural proximity to the brand at a price point that preserves rather than undermines the aspirational distance.
A walkthrough of how to edit a “moving postcard” using Blackmagic Camera and Slate.
The new Shopping ad format groups multiple products from a single retailer into one branded unit alongside store ratings and brand signals, shifting competition from the product level to the retailer level.
New York became the first state to legally require disclosure of AI-generated performers in advertising.
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Join CEO Ben Brook on June 16 for a practical roadmap to first-party data activation and AI governance, plus a maturity diagnostic you can apply immediately.
68.01% of Google searches ended without a click in early 2026. This is up from 60.45% in 2024 and about 45% a decade ago. AI Overviews now appear on 20%+ of queries and cut CTR by nearly 60%, accelerating a broader shift toward zero-click behavior across platforms. Google is reinforcing this through product design, boosting repeat searches and ad revenue while sending 8 points less traffic to sites YoY.
Run LinkedIn organic and paid as a single system. Write all organic content for your ICP first, then promote it through paid regardless of organic performance. Structure distribution with awareness and engagement campaigns and tight ICP targeting. Use planned reach and frequency goals and retargeting exclusions to control exposure. Track landing page clicks, dwell time, pipeline, and CAC to see what resonates. Scale winning themes and formats and reduce or remove those that do not drive results.
Toro grew content from 5% to more than 25% of revenue by focusing on high-intent SEO instead of chasing traffic volume. Its strategy targeted category, comparison, and template keywords that signaled buying intent, then paired them with detailed product-led content built from customer and employee interviews. The approach produced 43 first page rankings from 46 articles, a 93% success rate, and increased opportunity volume by 350% and booked revenue by 362% year over year. The content mirrored real sales conversations by addressing workflows, use cases, and product strengths in depth rather than publishing generic comparisons. The same content also improved AI discoverability, giving Toro 91% visibility in Google AI Overviews and helping it appear in AI-generated software recommendations.
Instagram's Reorder Grid turns profiles into conversion surfaces. Brands should design grids with intent around 3 goals: drive purchases, increase content views, or earn follows. Use custom thumbnails and a clear design system. Lead with strongest brand visuals rather than viral posts, and place best-selling products above the fold. Keep the grid balanced so it reads as intentional.
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If AI handles discovery and research for buyers, your site needs to work for retrieval bots, not just humans. Scrunch reveals how AI agents experience your site—what gets surfaced, ignored, and why. Get a FREE AI SITE AUDIT [13] to find content gaps and technical blockers.
Spotify will bring together marketers, creators like Rachel Lindsay and Casey Lewis, and industry leaders to unpack what fandom means for brands today and how to show up in ways audiences actually care about. They'll also share an exclusive first look at Culture Next, Spotify's youth trend report. The free virtual event is today at 10 AM PT.
You can use the =AI or =Gemini function in Google Sheets to convert your SEO keywords into associated ways that users might type that same question into an AI assistant. The post includes the full prompt to use.
Audiences are rewatching or discovering older TV series like Mad Men, The Sopranos, and Seinfeld, turning them into shared cultural touchpoints again. This is happening alongside fatigue with reality TV saturation and fragmented streaming releases. There's also a growing preference for fictional worlds that feel emotionally predictable. Older shows offer clear stakes and resolution. They create a sense of coherence that contrasts with algorithm-driven media and constant real-world noise.
Siri AI reframes Apple's voice assistant as a persistent conversational layer across apps and device data rather than a task-by-task utility, capable of chaining requests across messages, maps, calendar, and email in a single exchange. The update introduces a two-tier model structure that reserves the most capable features for newer hardware meeting specific chip and memory requirements, leaving older supported devices on a reduced version. Google's Gemini powers the underlying foundation model following a deal struck earlier this year, and some features rely on private cloud compute with daily usage limits for off-device processing.
Canva found that AI adoption stalled not because of tools but because people lacked the mindset to effectively use them.
Apple's update reflects a maturing ecosystem where editorial features and top charts no longer reliably drive growth, pushing Apple toward algorithmic discovery to help developers reach new users.
Higher retention spend correlates with greater AI maturity, suggesting that organizations optimizing for the most measurable channels may be trading long-term capability for short-term efficiency.
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Ads get ignored on social media but not in TLDR! Reach developers, PMs, marketers, founders and other tech leaders where they actually
Branding is moving from aesthetic storytelling to machine-readable structure as AI systems take over discovery. Generative engines extract structured, semantic facts and treat websites more as data sources than destinations. Visual identity and brand “vibe” matter less because models prioritize calculable signals over design. In this environment, visibility depends on how clearly information can be parsed and connected, not how it is presented.
Retail media has become important enough that agencies now treat Amazon and Walmart expertise as a growth asset and acquisition target. Independent agencies are buying Amazon and Walmart specialist companies to quickly add capabilities in retail media buying, marketplace optimization, performance marketing, and first-party data activation. This helps agencies offer end-to-end commerce services as brands shift more budget toward channels that influence purchases closer to checkout.
An 8% conversion lift came from adding reassurance at the pricing page instead of showing prices alone. User research found that more than half of participants stalled on the pricing page, while reviews and recommendations were the biggest purchase driver for existing customers. The winning test added a benefit-focused headline, a customer testimonial with a photo and attribution, and a visible Google five-star rating above the pricing tiles. The result shows that sites should place social proof and value messaging at key decision points in the funnel.
Winning mainstream buyers depends on positioning a product as the full solution to a category rather than a list of features. Simple signals like “all” or “everything” can reinforce category ownership and make the product feel like the obvious choice. Removing limiting language can also expand perceived scope, as seen with Wiz dropping “in the Cloud”.
TLDR is hiring a VP of Marketing to scale growth, pipeline, and brand across 8M+ subscribers, 13 newsletters, and advertisers like AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and Anthropic. Apply here [11].
Google states that the Accessibility Tree serves as a "high-fidelity map" for AI agents. To find it for any page in Chrome DevTools, “inspect” the page, select “elements”, then “accessibility”. Finally, toggle on "Show Accessibility Tree". Now you can quickly analyze it and see how various pages get formatted for AI agents.
AI visibility tracking works best when treated like polling rather than keyword rank tracking. Single prompt runs create misleading data because AI responses vary heavily, with only 2.2% of citations remaining consistent after three identical ChatGPT runs. The stronger approach uses repeated prompt runs, confidence intervals, persona-specific prompts, and platform-level reporting. Full buyer journeys matter more than isolated prompts since persistence from problem discovery through vendor selection signals stronger visibility than a single mention.
Consumers don't choose between brands as much as they eliminate them. Long before comparison, buyers filter options based on recall, credibility, or safety, leaving only a few eligible brands to compete. Most marketing focuses too late on persuasion within this narrow set, which drives rising costs and stalled growth. Real advantage comes earlier by shaping eligibility and triggering reconsideration, not just optimizing conversion.
Google AI Brief, announced at Google Marketing Live, replaces keyword lists with prompt-based briefs that let advertisers describe targeting intent and audience parameters in plain language. AI Mode has crossed 1B monthly users, average query length is now three times that of traditional searches, and exact match has lost nearly 10 percentage points of spend share since 2022. Short transactional keywords still have a role at the bottom of the funnel, but brands absent from the conversational layers above them will see that volume erode.
Three converging forces are accelerating experiential marketing's rise. Visual platforms reward shareable real-world moments, post-pandemic behavior has driven a strong return to in-person connection, and live sports has emerged as one of the last contexts where fragmented attention reliably consolidates. Research puts the purchase lift from live brand events at 85% and finds brand experiences nearly 90% more memorable than TV advertising. Measurement still lags with a shift back toward brand metrics like consideration and loyalty over direct response proxies.
The dataset, released in partnership with Google, allows you to see which tags are popular and worth adding to your website.
Don't overcomplicate personalization in pursuit of perfection, when simpler, data-driven relevance delivers more value and speed.
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Behind every post is a person. And right now, many social teams are running at full speed for longer than they should. When that pace isn't sustainable, the impact shows up everywhere: in creativity, in consistency and in results.
Bluesky warns that teen social media bans could strengthen Big Tech by raising compliance costs that smaller platforms struggle to meet. Australia's under-16 ban is cited as a key example, with major platforms required to add strict age verification systems. While the goal is youth protection, critics argue these rules may concentrate power in a few dominant companies and make it harder for new entrants to compete or build alternative social platforms.
Discovery now spreads through short clips rather than original content, so content should be designed for remixable moments that travel across platforms. A 30-second scene from Apex made a 2015 Chemical Brothers song go viral, driving a 429% spike in Spotify streams and increasing the film's viewership from 38 - 40 million in its second week. Attention moves quickly, with audiences often engaging with clips without consuming the source. Brands that package and monetize assets during spikes can capture demand in real time.
E-E-A-T matters more in AI search because models prioritize credible sources over keyword-heavy pages. Unlike traditional SEO, AI systems pull from content that shows clear expertise signals, consistent messaging, and strong external validation. Key tactics include building original insights, maintaining consistent narratives across platforms, and earning coverage from reputable domains. Strengthening entity recognition also increases the likelihood of being cited in AI-generated responses.
Email is positioned as the main revenue engine across five business models, sending 25+ emails weekly to 250,000+ subscribers. Each business runs a structured system built on a 5-day email course that converts traffic into subscribers, followed by segmented sequences tied to behavior like clicks, applications, trials, and purchases. Core systems include onboarding flows, abandoned cart and call follow-ups, product launch campaigns, and win-back sequences. Different cadences range from daily sends to 2-3 emails weekly. The key idea is treating email as multiple segmented relationships, not a single list, with higher frequency for engaged users and conversion-focused automation at every stage.
2026.06.08·aioperatornewsletter.substack.com·7 min read·TLDR Marketing TLDR is hiring a VP of Marketing to scale growth, pipeline, and brand across 8M+ subscribers, 13 newsletters, and advertisers like AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and Anthropic. Apply here [13].
Chris Long, co-founder at Nectiv, will give his take on everything that's happened recently in the world of AEO/SEO and the direction he thinks it's headed. He'll discuss Google's newly released guidance on AI search as well as major announcements made at Google I/O. This webinar will take place on June 9 at 10 AM PT.
Reddit Answers is an underrated AI audience research tool that's free to use. This post includes a prompt that provides a list of pain points, relevant subreddits, and specific threads to explore.
A study of 30,000 citations across Google AI Mode, Gemini, AI Overviews, and ChatGPT found that citation overlap is extremely low, with 76.1% unique to a single platform and only 0.8% shared across all four. Even Google's own tools show moderate divergence. Wikipedia is the main point of agreement, appearing in 35% of shared citations, but overall results show AI systems rely on largely different sources depending on platform and query type.
A Starbucks Korea campaign for its “Tank” tumbler, launched on the anniversary of the Gwangju massacre, unintentionally evoked painful memories of historical events and sparked mass outrage. The backlash led to boycotts, protests, and a police investigation. Despite apologies, the incident exposed deep societal sensitivities and highlighted how cultural missteps, combined with AI use and weak internal review, can escalate into national crises.
Roblox is allowing ads for users under 13 for the first time through an exclusive partnership with SuperAwesome. Ads will be sold via direct deals only, not programmatic, and limited to home screen banners and in-game billboards. Targeting uses contextual signals and broad demographics, not behavioral data or personalized tracking, to comply with COPPA and GDPR.