A 3-person team built its own scheduling tool in 20 mins after its AI agent identified a limitation with Calendly. The custom booker connects scheduling to Salesforce and prospect data, showing each prospect a personalized prospectus and routing them to the right salesperson based on account ownership. The team could have integrated Calendly, but the agent determined that most of the custom logic would still need to be built. The default remains buying software, with custom builds reserved for narrow workflows where proprietary data creates an advantage.
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OpenAI is testing visual ads in ChatGPT that show products and services through images during image generation. The format lets advertisers demonstrate products in use and link to more information. ChatGPT Ads are also adding conversion tracking and attribution through partners including Hightouch, Tealium, LiveRamp, AppsFlyer, and Triple Whale. Testing starts in the US later this month.
Google tends to rewrite its documentation shortly before a major update, and it has just rewritten its guidance on AI content and authorship. Publishing AI text at scale without manual review now counts as little to no effort, and invented authors with AI headshots count as deception. The GEO tactics built to win AI answers, including self-ranking listicles and paid mentions, repeat old SEO spam patterns that Google has historically shut down. Cutting or consolidating scaled content before an update is often easier than recovering after one.
AI shopping assistants need to balance choice with guidance to build purchase confidence. ChatGPT won by showing 3 soccer shoe options with a recommended pick and clear comparison. Claude offered useful product details but lacked images and purchase links. Muse made shopping more engaging with interactive questions and visuals but recommended the wrong shoes. The test suggests giving shoppers a few options plus a clear recommendation can make AI-assisted purchases easier.
Loyalty programs use loss aversion and goal gradients to make accumulated points feel like possessions worth protecting. A 100-day streak can become more motivating to preserve than the underlying habit, while being close to a reward or tier encourages extra spending. Programs also benefit from unredeemed points through breakage and collect purchase data. They can reward behaviors customers already value or drive spending and engagement mainly to avoid losing accumulated progress.
Search Google Tag Manager for old “Universal Analytics” or “UA-” tags, pause them for a week, then remove them if nothing breaks.
B2B marketing salaries range from a $119K median for early-career roles to $300K for VP and CMO roles.
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3rd party pages make up 85% of AI citations, but they're not the strongest predictor of whether a brand gets mentioned. Of the answers that mentioned the brand, 87% cited its own site, while 3rd party pages featuring it were cited far less often. When the brand's site was cited, it was mentioned 90% of the time in Google AI Overviews and 73% in ChatGPT.
Most markets are crowded because building is cheap and distribution is easy. Supply keeps growing while demand stays flat and buyers stick with familiar options. Customer research often confirms what competitors already know. Growth increasingly comes from redefining the category by challenging an accepted convention. Find what the industry treats as non-negotiable and break it where doing so creates new value for buyers.
A low-cost way to build a LinkedIn retargeting audience is to run 60-70 second videos with a Website Visits objective. Use a headline that discourages clicks because advertisers only pay when someone clicks. Anyone who watches at least 50% of the video is added to the retargeting audience. This tactic reportedly builds audiences for about $0.50 per member versus $1-2 per click for standard engagement campaigns.
Community events work best as part of an ongoing community strategy rather than one-off activations. Assess whether the community is ready for in-person interaction, then design smaller peer-led formats that prioritize conversation over production value. Plan follow-ups before the event with a dedicated conversation channel. Turn attendees into active members by helping them build connections and stay involved.
Furniture brand Vitsœ uses its pricing page to justify why its products cost more than cheaper alternatives. It breaks the cost into smaller time-based amounts and points to resale prices as evidence of durability. It also avoids sales and financing options that could boost short-term revenue. These choices make its pricing claims more credible because customers can verify them and see what the company gives up to maintain them.
Google Ads is rolling out A/B testing for Performance Max asset groups. Advertisers can test new headlines, descriptions, images, or videos against existing creative without immediately replacing it. Tests can isolate changes such as messaging or UGC to measure their impact. Advertisers cannot make other asset changes while a test runs.
Apple's iOS 27 may expand WebKit's blocking of ad tech beyond companies such as The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, and ID5. A new remote list reportedly covers hundreds of CDPs, DMPs, DSPs, data sellers, and identity providers. Apple can now add or remove companies without an iOS update, and vendors may not know their status.
Only 2-3% of players spend money in mobile games, making the first purchase especially difficult when it requires leaving the app. Publishers should assess the game economy before setting D2C offers. Extra entitlements can outperform discounts because they preserve revenue per purchase while adding value. Direct checkout reduces friction. Creator codes, loyalty currencies, and exclusive web content can drive purchases without lowering prices.
AI agents recommend products mostly from what they learned in training, not from what search returns at the moment of the question. On advisory questions, agents rarely search unless prompted, and search behavior depends on the prompt and tools set by whoever runs the agent. Even when every search was forced and every query secretly rewritten to favor one vendor, that vendor was selected only 17.1% of the time, up from 9.2%. SEO can still shape future training data, but it has limited influence on recommendations in the short term.
AI-generated synth personas work best as preparation for consumer research.
Frameworks that cover overlooked leads, executive outreach, and compensation planning.
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AI shopping could reduce ecommerce returns by helping shoppers resolve uncertainty before they buy. Adobe found that 69% of consumers who used AI for shopping said they were less likely to return an AI-assisted purchase, while AI-referred traffic converted 60% higher than non-AI-referred traffic. Merchants can improve these results by giving AI assistants detailed product information such as specifications, dimensions, compatibility, variants, delivery estimates, reviews, and FAQs. Better product data can help AI recommend products that fit shoppers' needs more accurately, potentially producing both more sales and fewer returns.
The marketing engineer is pitched as part builder and part marketer, someone who deploys AI agents to automate work like media buying and personalized ads while supplying the taste those agents lack. Profound, recently valued at $1.8B, has tied its brand to the title with a dedicated job board, a hackathon, and a podcast. Skeptics see a dressed-up successor to "digital ninja" and "storyteller" in an attempt to borrow engineering's sense of precision.
Human and physical signals are becoming a way to show that content wasn't machine-made. J.Crew's Barn Jacket campaign featured 160 real, recognizable people across five cities, giving it cultural context that AI can imitate visually but can't manufacture. Other brands are commissioning artists, showing the messy process before a launch, and moving into print and physical retail. The more content AI can produce, the more value shifts to proving what a human did that AI didn't.
Start Reddit moderator outreach by researching the subreddit, reading its rules, and understanding what its members care about. Use a named account with genuine activity, then introduce yourself and your company clearly in the first message. Explain what you can contribute to the community, such as expert answers, product context, or early access, and commit to following its rules without asking for promotional permission upfront. If a moderator says yes, respect its preferred communication style and keep checking in even when you have nothing to promote. Over time, consistent participation can turn moderators into trusted partners and valuable sources of community and product feedback.
Data from 9 million AI answers shows that most common GEO assumptions are wrong. Sentiment shows no positive link to citations, and listicles lose out to ordinary, thorough pages. YouTube delivers the biggest third-party lift at 2.8x, ahead of LinkedIn and Reddit, while up to 58% of citations never reappear. Up to 75% of answers citing a brand's page never name the brand, so citation counts alone overstate impact. Volatility tracks the brand far more than the platform, and the most stable performers share deep topical coverage and strong third-party mentions.
This webinar, on October 28, will cover how to consistently generate LinkedIn post ideas that resonate with an audience and build authority. It will explore the psychology behind getting stuck, then show how to use AI prompts to expand ideation. It will also walk through a step-by-step workflow for making the process easier and more repeatable.
Dots are always-on AI agents powered by GPT-6 Astra that can work independently toward goals using their own cloud computer and connected apps. They learn your preferences and context over time, then use that knowledge to handle ongoing work without needing step-by-step direction. Dots can also work across ChatGPT, Slack, and Teams. You control what they can access and which actions require approval. OpenAI is also developing specialist dots for specific organizational responsibilities.
A forgotten WordPress site became the entry point for an attack that infected 19 websites on the same hosting account. The attacker used a stolen password and a file manager plugin to install malware, which spread in 68 seconds and eventually created roughly 400,000 casino spam pages. The malware also hid the pages from site admins, blocked SEO crawlers, and added rogue Google Search Console access. The author details how he contained the breach, traced the source, and rebuilt the sites.
56% of people who shop with AI prefer recommendations that draw on creator reviews. Creators matter most early, building confidence and shortlists, while ratings and retailer data still carry the final purchase decision. Shoppers want AI to prioritize everyday customers sharing real experiences (52%) over celebrities (13%), and only 21% say a large following makes a creator credible. Interest falls with age, from 65% among Gen Z and Millennials to 34% among Boomers.
A self-serve Ads Manager lets smaller studios run campaigns without a direct sales relationship, while Video Quests becomes a reservation-based format for bigger brand moments.
RSS will shut off November 13 and the public API by March, cutting off social listening tools, researchers, and AI assistants.
AI will automate many entry-level marketing tasks by 2030, forcing teams to redesign junior roles.
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ChatGPT Ads adoption is accelerating, with roughly 15K companies detected using OpenAI's ad tracking pixel. Early adopters skew toward software and tech, growth-stage companies, and US businesses. Reddit advertisers show the strongest overlap, with 9.6% also using ChatGPT Ads. Companies already investing in ChatGPT visibility are also far more likely to advertise there, suggesting some businesses are beginning to treat ChatGPT as a broader acquisition channel spanning organic visibility, referrals, and paid ads.
Search is growing even as the click disappears. Google Search revenue rose 17% to $63.3 billion last quarter, while revenue from the ads it places on publishers' sites fell. The remaining traffic has moved from news, health, and cooking sites to sites that sell products. How-to content no longer pays because the answer strips out the brand, but a buying question can't be answered without naming a product. That makes detailed product documentation the content worth publishing and paywalled expertise the content worth selling.
Reduce purchase hesitation on ecommerce pages by expressing quantities in the terms shoppers already use. Gush labels its pack sizes by occasions, while The Farmer's Dog shows portions and prices them per day, so shoppers don't have to calculate how much they need or what it costs. Product pages should spell out bundle contents, show prices per relevant unit, and answer “How long will this last?” beside the quantity selector. Watching shoppers choose a quantity can show you where unclear options create hesitation.
A clearer CTA can increase conversions by making an existing offer easier to understand and less intimidating. Exclaimer changed its homepage button from “Start free trial” to “Try it free for 14 days,” which made the trial length explicit and framed the action as a low-commitment opportunity. The rewrite increased trial sign-ups by 39% without changing anything else on the page. The result shows that improving how an offer is communicated can sometimes outperform creating a new offer.
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LinkedIn is testing separate For You and Network feeds, with Network showing only posts from connections and followed accounts. The ranking system itself is unchanged, but connections could become more important for distribution. Comments are now ranked differently for each viewer based on relevance and connections. LinkedIn also launched a Premium proofreading tool and says long-form LinkedIn articles are cited more often in AI search than feed posts.
Stop tailoring your resume for every job and optimize your LinkedIn profile for the roles you actually want. Compare 3-5 target job postings and identify repeated titles, skills, and responsibilities. Use those terms in your headline, About section, current title, skills, and Open to Work settings. Replace internal job titles with market-standard ones and move relevant experience higher on your profile. Small changes to a few fields can improve recruiter relevance faster than rewriting resumes for every application.
More AI-generated ad variations aren't producing more winning ads. The growth is concentrated among the biggest spenders and is mostly localization and small edits rather than new ideas. Ad algorithms, meanwhile, put a growing share of spend behind a handful of winners, and the traits that win on video often lose on statics.
Choose a staffing model based on the work, not just the workload or budget. Ongoing work that requires ownership and institutional knowledge points toward a full-time hire. Temporary workload spikes or specialized projects are better suited to freelancers or contractors. Contract-to-hire can bridge the gap when it's unclear whether a need will become permanent. Distinguish a temporary capacity problem from an ongoing role before adding headcount.
18% of senior marketing leaders have already eliminated roles due to AI, and a majority of high-performing marketing teams are expected to cut traditional entry-level jobs by 2030. Cutting those roles entirely would break the talent pipeline. Junior hires should instead take on higher-value work earlier, such as evaluating AI outputs and tying recommendations to outcomes, backed by coaching and mentorship.
An overview of how Google indexes webpages.