The strategy behind Obsession focused on turning the film into a shareable experience that fans could participate in before and after seeing it. Focus Features used in-world storytelling, physical products, text lines, and billboards to extend the film beyond the screen and build anticipation without revealing too much. By collaborating closely with the filmmaker and tapping into existing fan communities, the campaign prioritized authenticity and audience ownership. This approach helped drive strong word-of-mouth and viral fan content.
Brands can compete in mature markets, expand niche ones, or create a new category.
An awards show highlights how fast AI-generated ads are improving and blurring the line between real and synthetic content.
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Marketers and creators should shift from maximizing reach to building trust through demonstrated expertise and productized knowledge. AI is making top-of-funnel content easier to replicate, so audiences place more value on unique perspectives, real world experience, and proof that a brand or creator practices what it teaches. Smaller, highly engaged communities often outperform large audiences because they generate purchases, referrals, and long-term loyalty. Kajabi is betting on this trend by positioning itself as infrastructure for expert-led businesses, using AI tools and integrated analytics to help users create offers, optimize funnels, and track trust across the entire customer journey.
Clear value messaging lowers customer acquisition costs because shoppers convert faster when they immediately understand why a purchase is worth it. Walmart, Costco, and Dollar Tree all posted strong quarterly growth by making their value proposition easy to understand. Brands should focus less on product features and more on outcomes such as durability, savings, convenience, and long-term performance. Product pages, content, reviews, testimonials, and guarantees help reduce hesitation and objections, which increases conversion rates and makes every ad click more effective.
Small, highly targeted LinkedIn lead gen campaigns can work when paired with relevant creative and a broader multi-touch strategy. A tightly defined B2B C-level DACH audience was targeted using firmographic and role-based filters, then served straightforward whitepaper ads alongside Thought Leader and single-image campaigns to build familiarity. No retargeting was used due to the small audience, with frequency driving reach and conversions. Leads were used for nurture and social selling rather than direct sales.
This post describes an AI content system that turns one person into a scaled media company by automating most of the workflow while keeping humans in key decision points. AI sources ideas from internal tools and external feeds. It runs research with fact checking and uses interviews to extract specific stories and data. It drafts in the creator's voice, passes an AI review loop, then gets repurposed into multiple formats. A final human review ships it. A feedback loop improves future output.
AI visibility drives B2B vendor selection before buyers ever visit a website, so brands need an off-site strategy to influence that process. Research found that only 10.15% of AI citations come from brand-owned domains, while 68% of AI answers don't cite a brand's content at all. This makes channels like Reddit (21% of citations), YouTube (13%), and LinkedIn (13%) critical sources of influence. Brands should treat AI visibility as a distribution challenge, not just an SEO challenge, by building authority across community platforms, video content, earned media, review sites, and industry publications.
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].
Google Labs introduced Dreambeans, an experimental AI app that creates personalized daily story collections instead of an endless feed. With permission, it connects to Google apps to generate contextual stories and inspiration based on daily activity. The goal is to reduce scrolling by delivering a finite set of relevant, actionable content focused on what matters most.
Meta has launched a Business Agent that moves beyond rule-based chatbots to take autonomous actions like booking appointments and completing payments across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. More than 1 million businesses were already using earlier chatbot versions, and the new agent will be free initially with paid tiers planned. A broader Business Agent Platform connects to hundreds of third-party systems including Shopify and Zendesk.
Moving the marketing site out of a CMS unlocked faster experimentation because AI agents could now directly update, optimize, and test content at scale. After moving content into code, site performance improved and conversions grew to roughly 4x previous levels. The website became a conversion engine and AI signal source rather than a traffic driver. Storing content in code gives marketing teams the ability to launch site-wide messaging updates, SEO improvements, and landing page experiments quickly without CMS bottlenecks. It also pushes you to adopt AI workflows and technical skills that can support future automation across SEO, localization, and conversion optimization.
The W3C's proposed attribution standard risks entrenching one of digital advertising's most persistent measurement problems by implying that attribution systems can identify which ads and creatives perform best. Attribution observes exposures and subsequent behavior but does not estimate whether advertising actually caused a conversion, making it structurally biased toward channels positioned closest to purchase activity. Brand-building media like television, audio, and out-of-home are systematically undercredited because their effects are delayed and probabilistic, meaning advertisers optimizing against attribution signals risk steering spend toward demand harvesting rather than demand creation.
Transparent packaging can significantly increase product selection by reducing the psychological barrier between shoppers and the product. Across seven experiments, consumers were 4x more likely to choose products in transparent packaging, found them 67.2% more attractive, and showed 40.6% higher purchase interest. The effect appears to come from increased psychological ownership, as seeing the product makes people feel more connected to it before purchase. Marketers should test transparent packaging or product windows for visually appealing items, but avoid the tactic for products that look unappetizing since purchase interest can decline.
An example of how Customer.io handled an email subject line mistake.
HubSpot found most high-intent citations come from Reddit, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and brands win them by publishing product-focused content tailored to each platform.
More than 60% of grocery shoppers have purchased a product immediately after seeing it advertised on an in-store screen.
Meta's move into CTV could make TV advertising accessible to millions of smaller advertisers by bringing streaming inventory into the same self-serve platform, targeting system, and optimization workflow they already use on Meta. The strategic opportunity is not winning large TV budgets but unlocking a new pool of advertisers that have never bought TV before. Success depends on whether Meta's performance algorithms can deliver results on third party CTV inventory that costs far more than social placements, since CTV CPMs average $20 to $40 versus $6 to $9 on Meta. Early evidence suggests unified audience management across CTV can drive strong outcomes, including 51% overdelivery on reach targets and a 342% lift in product searches. As streaming reaches 20.8 million UK households and accounts for 38% of TV viewing, Meta's ability to connect demand, targeting, and measurement across channels could become a major advantage.
The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index hit 44.8, the lowest reading in the survey's history. The argument is that the data misreads the situation, since consumers are not broke but adapting, waiting longer on big purchases and trading goods for experiences. The deeper issue is a consumer balance sheet built for a declining nuclear-family model, with oversized homes, family-sized cars, and groceries aimed at households that increasingly do not exist.
Treat your website as only one of many surfaces and actively build presence on platforms like Reddit, G2, and forums where AI pulls evidence. Manage sentiment because reviews and unresolved complaints become training signals and citations in future answers. Target platform-specific authority since different models favor different sources, such as Wikipedia and Reddit for ChatGPT or LinkedIn and G2 for Perplexity.
This piece argues that llms.txt is often misunderstood because discovery and functionality are separate problems. It doesn't improve AI search visibility and shows no measurable impact in studies or testing, with very low real usage by AI crawlers. It can help in developer documentation where coding agents need simplified context, but offers little value for most sites. The real focus should be on agent-ready infrastructure like semantic HTML, accessibility, stable layouts, and emerging standards such as WebMCP that enable direct interaction with site functions.
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This webinar, on June 17, will share real workflows from Customer.io teams and customers using AI for personalization automation. The goal is to show how AI supports end-to-end lifecycle marketing rather than simple content edits.
Google's new reports in Search Console provide direct visibility into how content performs inside AI-generated search experiences. The reports break out impressions, pages, countries, devices, and time-based trends for AI features such as AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative AI results in Discover. This makes it easier to measure whether SEO efforts drive visibility in AI surfaces instead of relying on overall search performance data. The rollout is limited to a subset of sites for now.
Audience insight should guide marketing, but treating customer feedback as the sole source of direction often leads to safe, predictable work. The article argues that marketers should distinguish between three audiences: the imagined audience that drives self-censorship, the real audience that provides valuable customer insight, and the future audience that can only recognize innovation after it exists. Strong marketing comes from understanding real customer needs while leaving room for original ideas that audiences cannot yet articulate. Instead of asking what people say they want, marketers should focus on what resonates emotionally and creates a sense of relevance, challenge, relief, or delight. The practical takeaway is to balance audience understanding with conviction, especially when developing positioning, campaigns, and category-defining ideas that require leading customers rather than simply reflecting existing demand.
Email production is moving into AI chat interfaces as marketers use generative tools to speed up workflows. Only 5% of teams are not using AI for email, and 76% now send campaigns within three days. However, chat alone cannot produce reliable, production-ready emails because it lacks access to brand systems and email client constraints. The emerging workflow connects AI to three layers: real campaign inspiration from large email libraries, a Figma-based design system with approved components, and ESP integrations via MCP that push finished HTML directly into sending tools.
Companies are increasingly spamming Reddit communities with content engineered to manipulate the answers that AI chatbots generate. Tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI search now rank Reddit among their most-cited sources, so marketing firms target it directly using bots, paid posters, and sock puppet accounts built to pass as human. The sophistication has escalated well beyond simple comment promotion, with agencies reverse-engineering the prompt patterns LLMs prioritize, seeding vague high-traction questions to farm engagement, then embedding brand mentions in seemingly organic ways.
YouTube's average daily viewing per account hit 99.1 minutes in 2025, overtaking Netflix's 93.4.
The dual-CMO split between consumer and enterprise is an admission that the two brand propositions have diverged too far to hold together.
More than 60% of planned 2027 capacity is not yet under construction.
Young creatives want the big budget TV assignments, yet they're writing for a platform they never watch. Marketers now invest more in social than any other channel and search ranks ahead of TV in media spend. Brands should align incentives, production budgets, and agency structures with where audiences actually spend time instead of treating social as an afterthought. Marketers should build flexible brand systems rather than centering campaigns on a single TV execution, then create content that fits multiple channels from the start. The author also recommends partnering with agencies that move quickly with AI tools and can produce content in-house, which helps brands respond faster and sustain always-on marketing.
Follower count no longer predicts post performance as LinkedIn's 360Brew algorithm prioritizes relevance, early engagement, and creator authority. Smaller, focused accounts now outperform larger ones, while reach is concentrating among niche creators. Followers still seed initial distribution, but strong early signals and clear topical focus now determine how far a post spreads.
B2B marketers need to stop targeting a single decision maker and start building campaigns that help entire buying groups reach consensus. LinkedIn data shows 40% of B2B deals are lost to indecision, while the average buying group includes 10 stakeholders and 94% of buyers now use LLMs during research. Consideration content should focus on addressing perceived risks and objections rather than simply differentiating from competitors. Video is especially effective because it creates shared context across stakeholders and drives a 1.6x higher likelihood of lead form completion. Creative should prioritize specific, problem-focused hooks and authentic, low-production formats that build trust with informed buyers.
The 3 signal rule improves re-engagement by targeting users who showed value, then lapsed, and hit friction. Instead of generic reminders, it focuses on high-intent users who are more likely to return. Define a clear “aha” moment, identify a common drop-off or error point, and trigger a short sequence that helps them complete that action. The goal is to guide users back to value, not just drive a login.
More budget does not reliably produce more revenue, and feeding an already-optimized campaign raises costs without incremental gains. Budget changes above roughly 15% on some platforms trigger learning periods and volatility, so incremental week-over-week increases protect performance better than aggressive jumps. When impression share lost to rank exceeds 50%, more budget rarely helps. The strongest case for scaling is a campaign constrained by budget rather than rank, with added spend paired with demand generation.
Google's new Lighthouse Agentic Browsing report gives you a practical way to assess whether AI agents can discover, understand, and use your website. The report focuses on three areas: accessibility, WebMCP integration, and LLMs.txt support. A strong accessibility tree matters because agents use it to identify key page elements and complete actions, which could influence future recommendations from AI systems. WebMCP helps agents interact with site tools and forms through structured instructions, making it valuable for brands that want AI assistants to use their products or services. LLMs.txt is less important for most sites today, but it can help guide agent behavior and surface key information as websites become more agent-focused.
Raindrop.io is an all-in-one bookmark manager for saving and organizing links, files, and media. It uses collections, tags, and full-text search to keep everything easy to find. You can preview content and highlight key parts. It also offers backups, integrations, and sharing, turning scattered links into a searchable library.
Recent research analyzing word-of-mouth data across Yelp, Amazon, Twitter, and Instagram finds that larger companies systematically receive lower online ratings even when product quality is equal. The driver is empathy, since consumers feel a stronger emotional connection to smaller businesses and are more inclined to support them with positive reviews while sharing negatives about big brands. One restaurant comparison illustrates the gap, where a larger chain rated 3.36 stars would be predicted at 4.06 once size is statistically controlled.
Search tactics that drove massive World Cup traffic four years ago may not convert this year, as AI Overviews and richer SERP features have fundamentally changed how fans find information. Top-of-funnel informational queries now get answered directly by AI, so publishers should focus on highly specific tactical breakdowns, political commentary, and investigative angles that demand a human eye. The event will be heavily multimodal, with YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok gaining SERP visibility, making indexable video and structured data essential.
Google's "preferred source" feature can be used to improve the likelihood of your site appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Emergence AI found that when top models ran identical simulated societies, they quickly diverged into very different worlds despite the same rules.
Prime Day is coming this June 23 to 26.
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AI Overviews are making user behavior more uniform across query types and weakening intent as a signal of engagement. When an AI Overview appears, 42% to 48.5% of users stay on the results page after about 21 seconds regardless of intent. Optimization now centers on competing with AI answers, especially the second impression on scroll back.
Dance is increasingly used in advertising because it communicates brand traits in seconds. Apple and Gap use choreography as the central creative idea, not decoration. Social platforms have trained audiences to engage with movement, making dance feel native to feeds. Large ensemble sequences create shareable moments and help signal product benefits, culture, and inclusivity without dialogue. Diverse casting and credited choreographers also improve authenticity.
Positioning starts with a core decision on which category a product belongs to. One path targets category-aware buyers who already understand the space and require differentiation against existing competitors. The other targets category-unaware buyers who are solving a job-to-be-done through status quo tools and need the category introduced first. Mature markets tend toward category-aware positioning, while newer markets often require category creation before competition even matters. Choosing the wrong side leads to unclear messaging.