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80% OF COMPANIES CUT JOBS FOR AI. IT DIDN'T IMPROVE THEIR RETURNS. NOT EVEN A LITTLE

There's no correlation between AI-driven layoffs and improved ROI.

THE PERSONALIZED INTERNET IS HERE

Google is rolling out a fundamentally new approach to search personalization that uses AI to build a continuous profile of each user from their search history, Gmail, calendar, Maps, and browsing behavior. Unlike previous personalization attempts that amounted to appending location signals to keyword lookups, this system sets interest flags with every search and uses them as background context for all future queries. The feature is live in Gemini and AI Mode, and is expected to eventually become the default search experience, meaning two people searching the same phrase could receive entirely different results.

AS AI FLOODS THE VIDEO FEED, BE PREPARED FOR PEOPLE TO WATCH LESS

The near-zero cost of AI-generated video is creating a supply explosion at the worst possible time, as fatigue data shows audiences are actively pulling back from platforms. Recent consumer research found that 1 in 4 people have deleted a social media app to take a break, and 62% of adults report digital burnout. Meanwhile, viewers are not losing attention capacity but exercising more selective choice, with average Facebook sessions falling from 2.7 minutes in 2013 to 54 seconds by 2025. The real constraint on video marketing was never production cost but human attention, and brands relying on volume over authenticity will struggle as audiences become more selective.

THE CLAUDE CODE RESEARCH PLAYBOOK BEHIND MY STATE OF MARKETING REPORTS

Claude Code works best for marketing research when you build repeatable workflows instead of relying on one-off prompts. The recommended process is to start with a single company, create reusable “skills” for each research type, store all outputs in spreadsheets, and validate one data point at a time before scaling across dozens or hundreds of companies. Claude often invents plausible-sounding data, so you need to batch test methodologies, flag unknowns instead of forcing yes or no answers, and manually review outliers before publishing insights. The workflow also relies on lightweight tools like curl, HTML artifacts, and structured prompts to reduce token waste and turn competitive research into an ongoing system instead of a manual project.

HOW TO TELL IF A JOURNALIST IS A F.I.T. FOR YOUR STORY

Targeted journalist outreach drives better PR results than mass pitching. One BuzzStream study found that smaller and more relevant outreach lists generated 17x more links. The article frames journalist fit around three checks: Format, Industry, and Timing. Review recent headlines instead of relying on bios because journalists often focus on narrow story formats like breaking news, product roundups, or data-driven features. Timing also matters because pitching the same story too soon, contacting inactive reporters, or over-emailing the same journalist can damage relationships and reduce response rates. Tracking outreach in a CRM and tailoring pitches to current coverage patterns helps you avoid wasted outreach and improve the odds of placement.

PRE-RENEWAL LIFECYCLE FLOW

The 90 days before renewal should not be treated like a normal campaign window. Start by reinforcing value at 90 days with clear ROI and shareable summaries, then expand engagement at 60 days with tailored content and broader stakeholder reach. At 30 days, shift control to CS and limit marketing to supportive touchpoints only. In the final stretch, suppress most marketing sends to avoid conflicting with renewal conversations.

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THIS CLAUDE SKILL AUTOMATES BRAZE CAMPAIGN REPORTS IN MINUTES

This Claude skill was built to eliminate the repetitive, time-consuming process of pulling data and writing campaign reports, which often leads to delayed or shallow insights. It automates the full workflow and frames results around relative lift and business impact, not just raw numbers. The key outcome is better decision-making. Teams move faster, reports actually get read, and small-sample tests are less likely to be killed early because the analysis highlights real signal over volume.

STATE OF SEARCH Q1 2026: BEHAVIORS, TRENDS, AND CLICKS ACROSS THE US & EUROPE

This report analyzes how people search, browse, and engage online using large-scale clickstream data from millions of users across the US, EU, and UK. It covers platform share, AI search adoption, shifts in behavior and intent, query length changes, zero-click trends, and differences in e-commerce and content discovery across regions. Access requires an email sign-up.

HOW TO CONNECT YOUTUBE TO GOOGLE MAPS

YouTube can surface a “Featured Places” module that connects videos directly to a business's Google Maps listing, showing a Maps button alongside related content in the video description. This happens when YouTube recognizes a clear link between a video and a physical business, typically through signals like mentions of the business name and city, metadata, and connected Google accounts. For local businesses, this improves visibility across both video and local search. It also shortens the path from viewing content to taking action via Google Maps.

INSIDE THE ARTEMIS II SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

The digital strategy behind NASA's Artemis II mission produced 3,270 social media posts in 10 days and turned a crewed spaceflight into one of the most engaging social media moments in recent memory. A two-person team spent six years building the Artemis social presence, focusing on a balance between institutional credibility and creative content that could resonate broadly. Several of the mission's biggest viral moments were unscripted, including a crew video styled after an 80s sitcom intro that was spontaneously filmed by the astronauts. The strategy also leaned on public participation through a global contest to design the mission's zero gravity indicator, which received thousands of entries from over 50 countries.

DIARY OF A BRAND: BANDIT RUNNING

Bandit grew into a high-engagement running brand by treating community as its acquisition engine instead of relying on paid ads. It built loyalty through membership perks, run clubs, training programs, and community-first retail spaces that doubled as fulfillment hubs and gathering spots. The brand paired fashion-driven product design with performance features like hidden storage pockets, which helped it stand out in a crowded category and drive an $850 customer lifetime value from members. Bandit scaled awareness by creating media-friendly activations like the Unsponsored Project and the Grand Prix, which turned niche running culture into shareable content and press coverage. The broader lesson for marketers is that community scales when brands create shared values, give customers a place to engage, and build activations that naturally generate amplification beyond the core audience.

BE TLDR'S FIRST VP MARKETING ($300K-$400K, FULLY REMOTE)

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 [17].

3 JOBS IN THE AI INDUSTRY THAT SEOS ARE ALREADY QUALIFIED FOR

SEOs are uniquely qualified to be Skills MD Optimizers, Eval Managers, or Knowledge Managers.

HOW TO FILM LOTS O' CONTENT IN 1 DAY (2 MINUTE VIDEO)

How Slate plans its “content blitz” days to film 13 pieces of content in 8 hours.

AI BRANDS ARE PUMPING AD DOLLARS INTO LINEAR TV

Major AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta are rapidly increasing spending on linear TV ads. Some are close to matching or surpassing their 2025 totals in just a few months. The goal is to shape public perception and drive AI adoption. Consumer sentiment is mixed and trust in AI remains low. Big campaigns, including Super Bowl spots, position AI as useful and accessible. Trust building is becoming a central competitive focus.

THE BALANCE OF POWER IN INFLUENCER MARKETING IS SHIFTING

Spending on boosting influencer posts is on track to overtake what brands pay creators for sponsored content by 2028. The trend is driven by shrinking organic reach on major platforms, which has made paid promotion essential for extracting ROI from influencer campaigns. Some agencies now operate on a performance model where brands promote creator content and track downstream actions like customer acquisition costs. Creators still hold leverage as the source of content brands need to amplify, but the economics increasingly favor those who can demonstrate consistent organic engagement.

IMPLEMENT “AGE VS. SERP” INTO YOUR CONTENT PROCESS

Content freshness in SEO is relative, not absolute. Google compares a page's age to competing results rather than its publish date. Older pages can rank as fresh if rivals are older, while newer pages can be seen as stale if competitors are more recent. Track the last updated age of the top results for key queries and compare it to your own pages. When you fall behind the SERP median, make substantial updates like rewrites, new data, or intent shifts, not minor edits.

YOUR EMAIL A/B TEST WINNER MIGHT BE LYING

Email A/B tests are often interpreted too narrowly, with marketers rolling out "winners" based on a single metric without examining what happened further down the funnel. One example showed a "winning" subject line with higher click-through rates actually produced lower conversion rates, lower average order values, and less revenue per recipient than the losing version. Test results are shaped by timing, audience composition, inbox conditions, and competing messages, making them unreliable as a permanent strategic direction. The recommended shift is to use testing as a learning system focused on behavioral patterns rather than isolated wins.

TARGET'S DIGITAL CHIEF BREAKS DOWN THE RETAILER'S CREATOR OVERHAUL

Target is overhauling its creator strategy after winding down its 2023 affiliate program, replacing it with two distinct offerings. Club Target is a gamified platform for smaller creators with as few as 500 followers, rewarding them for completing weekly challenges on TikTok and Instagram. It already has around 8,000 participants after its pilot. Target Ambassadors is an invite-only program for established influencers with tiered commissions and campaign opportunities.

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HOW TO IMPLEMENT WEBMCP: A BREAKDOWN OF GOOGLE'S LIVE DEMO

WebMCP lets you expose structured site actions directly to AI agents, which creates a new surface for discovery and conversion. Google's demo shows that implementation relies on defining clear “tools” such as search and filtering, each with strict inputSchema and outputSchema that control what an agent can request and return. This structure turns site functionality into machine-readable actions, which makes it easier for AI systems to interact with and recommend your offerings. Registering these tools through navigator.modelContext is the key step that makes them callable, which effectively opens your site to agent-driven experiences. You can use this to shape how AI agents surface products, control outputs, and guide user journeys through predefined actions instead of relying on traditional page crawling.

YOUR MANAGED WORDPRESS MIGHT BE BLOCKING AI BOTS AND YOU CAN'T SEE IT

Some managed WordPress hosts may be silently blocking AI crawlers at the platform level, preventing sites from appearing in AI-generated search results. An investigation into one site hosted on WP Engine found that bots like ClaudeBot and GPTBot were receiving 429 rate-limit responses on cache-miss requests, while browser and Googlebot requests passed through normally. The block operates below both customer Cloudflare dashboards and WordPress security plugins, making it invisible to standard SEO audits.

LINKEDIN IS QUIETLY KILLING VIDEO REACH, AND THE DATA PROVES IT

LinkedIn is pushing short-form video, but performance is dropping. Video views are down 36% year-over-year while engagement per post is only up 7%. At the same time, overall reach has fallen sharply, especially for company pages, as organic visibility shrinks and personal profiles dominate the feed. The 360Brew ranking system prioritizes dwell time and depth of engagement, which favors documents and carousels over video. Despite platform messaging, video is becoming less efficient while text and carousel formats consistently outperform.

META WILL USE AI TO ANALYZE HEIGHT AND BONE STRUCTURE TO IDENTIFY IF USERS ARE UNDERAGE

Meta is expanding AI systems to detect underage users on Facebook and Instagram by analyzing photos, videos, and profile activity for cues like height, bone structure, captions, and interactions. The goal is to estimate age, not identify individuals. Accounts flagged as under 13 may be deactivated until age verification is completed. The system is already live in select regions and will expand globally alongside stricter Teen Accounts with added safety controls for younger users.

ONE BRIEF, TWO GENERATIONS: BRANDS ARE LETTING THE MILLENNIAL VS GEN Z TREND DO THE WORK

Millennials still lean on structure and carefully explained benefits, while Gen Z has little patience for that.

CLAUDEAI PROMPTS FOR JOB APPS

5 Claude prompts to help with job applications.

3 COMMON MISTAKES WITH TOFU

Founders either overdo personal content and lack positioning, make it too generic to stand out, or avoid it and lose the reach that drives their funnel.

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THE CONTENT DISTRIBUTION SHAM

B2B content distribution operates as a multi-layer arbitrage system where publishers, PR agencies, and syndication vendors take hidden margins while obscuring performance. Paid placements often appear as earned media, while programmatic channels flood campaigns with bot traffic and low quality inventory that inflate leads but lack real intent. Metrics reward volume, not outcomes, so dashboards show growth while pipelines lag. The issue is structural, driven by weak disclosure and poor measurement, and favors owned media, stricter audits, and outcome-based evaluation.

OFF-SITE IS THE NEW MOAT

Google AI Overviews appear in 84% of B2B queries and often surface third-party content instead of vendor pages. Reddit and YouTube together account for more AI citations than all other external sources combined, while 51% of Google AI Overview citations come from off-site platforms. Across engines, visibility is increasingly driven by presence on external communities, video platforms, and review sites rather than owned websites. An email is required to download the report.

SUGGEST PRACTICAL ITEMS TO REDUCE CART ABANDONMENT

Recommend practical items based on cart composition to reduce abandonment and increase conversions. Carts heavy on indulgent items drive higher drop-off since guilt rises, and abandonment increases by 8.3% to 17.3% as the ratio of pleasurable items grows. Add 1 to 2 functional items through product page or cart recommendations to rebalance perceived utility and lower friction at checkout. Practical recommendations cut abandonment by up to 21% and reduce shopper guilt by 14.2%, while pushing more indulgent items has the opposite effect. Align cross-sell logic to mix utility into fun heavy carts instead of promoting similar products.

BEFORE YOU ADD ANOTHER VIDEO TO YOUR GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE, READ THIS FIRST

Make videos more effective on your Google Business Profile by first uploading it to Instagram or TikTok, adding captions, and then downloading it. This produces a captioned version of the video that provides context because videos on Google Maps don't play audio by default, stands out because moving text is more eye-catching, and helps Google's AI understand your video.

WHY DON'T EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS CLICK?

A re-engagement trigger change revealed that many engaged subscribers never click, making click rate a weak signal of engagement. Clicks are often lost or suppressed due to email clipping, AI inbox summaries, and corporate security filters. Many readers also consume content without clicking because emails contain too many links or already satisfy intent in the inbox. The result is that engagement often happens without measurable clicks. Reduce unnecessary links and design emails that deliver value on their own. Measure performance using replies, conversions, and pipeline impact instead of click activity.

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NEW WAYS TO BUY CHATGPT ADS

ChatGPT is moving from a limited ads pilot to a scalable platform by adding self-serve buying, CPC pricing, and better measurement. Advertisers can now run campaigns through partners or a US beta Ads Manager that handles budgets, bids, and performance in one place. New tools like Conversions API and pixel tracking connect ad exposure to outcomes like purchases or sign-ups while only sharing aggregated data.

AI SKILLS CONF (EVENT)

This free virtual event on May 14 runs for five hours across multiple time zones. It features over 20 speakers from Google, Meta, AWS, Spotify, SAP, and DoorDash. Topics include AI workflows, agent building, and real business use cases. Attendees get copyable prompts, frameworks, and trend insights.

META ADS AI CONNECTORS AND CLAUDE: SETUP, USES, AND RISKS

Meta's new AI Connectors allow advertisers to manage campaigns directly through Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity using Meta's ads MCP server, with 29 tools currently available for tasks ranging from performance reporting to campaign creation. Use cases include pulling granular performance data with natural language queries, surfacing anomalies like CPM spikes or frequency creep, and running account-wide error sweeps in a single prompt. All campaigns created through the connector launch in a paused state by default. However, the rollout comes just two months after advertisers reported unexplained account shutdowns tied to unapproved AI integrations, and the connector inherits full access to every ad account linked to a user's business portfolio.

BRANDS NEED TO PUMP UP THE VOLUME WITH CREATORS. BUT THERE'S A CATCH

Brands are being urged to scale their creator advertising output, but research covering 1.4M ads across 105 countries suggests that doing so without enforcing brand fundamentals may waste budget. The study found that creator content featured brand logos at roughly half the rate of brand-produced ads and used correct brand colors significantly less often, contributing to weaker recall performance. This matters more now that creator work is migrating from organic posts into paid media, where it competes directly with traditional ad spend for budget justification.

BUILD AGENT-FRIENDLY WEBSITES

Google has outlined how websites should be optimized for AI agents, reflecting a move toward agent-driven browsing. Agents interpret pages using screenshots, accessibility trees, and semantic HTML, combining visual and structural signals to decide actions. Sites should use stable layouts, clear visual hierarchy, and actionable elements like `button` and `a` tags instead of generic divs. Google also notes that cursor pointer styling helps signal interactivity, while shifting UI elements can confuse agents during navigation.

REWARDING ORIGINAL CREATORS ON INSTAGRAM

Instagram will stop recommending accounts that don't post original content.

QUERY INTENT VS. CONVERSION INTENT: WHY THE DIFFERENCE MATTERS

Query intent describes what is said, while conversion intent reflects what the human needs to accomplish.

IMAGE AI MODELS NOW DRIVE APP GROWTH, BEATING CHATBOT UPGRADES

Image AI models are now the main driver of AI app growth. They generate about 6.5X more downloads than traditional model upgrades. Gemini added over 22M downloads after its image model launch. ChatGPT saw more than 12M incremental installs from its GPT-4o image update. Users are more motivated by visual creation features than conversational improvements. However, most apps fail to convert this surge in attention into revenue, with only ChatGPT seeing meaningful consumer spend.

AI CHANGED MY WORK. AND YOURS, TOO

AI has collapsed the cost of building software, content, and tools. Agents deliver 1.5 - 13X time savings and up to 50% productivity gains. Software is moving from code to integrated systems where enterprise tools persist due to accountability and switching costs, while self-serve products must move upmarket. Distribution is tightening as platforms reduce traffic and AI keeps users inside, making velocity and product-led growth the key levers. The main constraint is no longer building, but deciding what to build and what to ignore.