Roughly 80M US adults closely follow the news, making them a highly desirable audience for advertisers. Studies show “news junkies” have 16 percentage points higher purchase intent than the general population and stronger trust and favorability toward brands. Yet many advertisers avoid news sites due to outdated brand safety fears, missing out on a demographic that includes most business leaders. Evidence shows ads in news perform just as well as those placed in entertainment, sports, or lifestyle content.
7 growth tactics to overcome buyer hesitation with psychology.
20 overrated trends that separate substance from hype.
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Remember those “best practice” blogs that told you to post 10x on every social channel?
Instagram users routinely underestimate how many ads appear in their feeds as platforms are designing promotions to blend with organic posts. In tests with 152 participants, nearly one-third of posts were ads, yet most failed to notice the volume. Users engaged with the content at rates similar to organic posts when advertising cues like “Buy Now” buttons or logos were subtle. The findings show how banner blindness has evolved into seamless ad absorption.
Publishers that built affiliate revenue on SEO face mounting pressure as search platforms shift toward zero-click results and lower commission structures. Amazon now pays creators baseline rates of 10-15% while publishers receive only 2-3%, widening the economic gap. As a result, marketers are allocating incremental budgets to creators who deliver higher engagement and measurable sales impact.
Instead of starting with a blog, begin with LinkedIn posts to leverage built-in distribution and test what resonates with your target audience. Publish 30 posts over a month, identify the top 3 that connect, expand them into 800 to 1200-word newsletters, and then scale the best ones into longer blog posts. This approach validates ideas early and ensures content resonates before investing in larger formats.
Clay uses customer hackathons as a growth engine. It runs 20-30 per quarter, driving expansions up to 5X and viral LinkedIn content. Targeting customers 3-6 months in, the sessions help build advanced workflows with real business impact. They generate authentic video content that fuels inbound demand and retention, while also serving as R&D labs where engineers test features, creating a flywheel of adoption, marketing, and discovery.
A good benchmark for landing page performance is an overall median conversion rate of 6.6%, though results depend heavily on industry. Ecommerce and SaaS pages typically convert around 4% at the median, but strong campaigns can achieve nearly 3X that rate. Professional services and financial services outperform the average with medians above 6% and 8% respectively, while the travel and hospitality sector can climb past 15% at the high end. Entertainment campaigns stand out with average conversion rates above 12%.
Brainlabs tested adding Broadcaster YouTube content to a Unified CTV campaign with Netflix and YouTube during the Women's Euros. The campaign reached 1.4M additional people without extra budget, achieving 142% of planned reach at the same cost. It drove a 77% lift in product search and 61% in brand search, capturing engagement spikes after key matches. Brand-safe content like highlights and interviews extended audience attention, showing that combining Broadcaster YouTube with Unified CTV improves reach, frequency, and performance in a fragmented market.
To understand your buyers, focus on why they purchase, what solution they want, and how their organization makes decisions. Ask about motivations, desired outcomes, and required features. Also consider approval steps, budget, timing, and compliance needs. Together, these insights give a clear view of the buying journey and help avoid vague assumptions.
Selling on online marketplaces is a cost effective way for small or new brands to acquire customers and drive direct website sales. Research found that every 71 sales on a marketplace led to one customer switching to the brand's website. Customer acquisition costs were lower on marketplaces compared to owned websites. Brands can use marketplaces to gain visibility and then encourage repeat buyers to purchase directly by offering unique products, benefits, or promotions on their own sites.
Over 50 major brands have used ‘The Life of a Showgirl' as a reference on their social media.
To get buy-in for SEO, use metrics stakeholders understand, like ROI, technical debt, and market impact.
A study analyzing over 1,000 global advertising campaigns found that pairing traditional media, such as TV and outdoor ads, with digital channels like YouTube and Facebook can increase key brand metrics by more than 50%. Successful campaigns adapt their media mix to specific objectives, using TV with YouTube to build broad awareness and combining Facebook with in-store promotions to drive local engagement while prioritizing shifts in brand perception and consideration over simple reach.
With TV ad revenue falling and streaming ad dollars surging, the FCC is weighing whether to scrap a rule that caps broadcast ownership at 39% of the national audience. Broadcasters and industry groups say loosening the limit would allow networks to become more modern, attract younger viewers, and better compete with tech platforms like Google and Facebook. Opponents caution that such a move could give more power to large corporations or politically aligned owners, reducing competition and media diversity.
Hallucinated URLs are web addresses generated by AI that look real but don't exist on a site. To reclaim AI search traffic from them, filter analytics to show only AI assistant visits, export the data to Google Sheets, and use an Apps Script to check each URL's HTTP status. Identify URLs with a 404 status and significant traffic, then set up 301 redirects to relevant existing pages. This approach turns non-existent, AI-invented URLs into traffic drivers while revealing the kinds of content LLMs expect your site to have.
Unlike SEO, AEO focuses on how AI represents your brand across the web. To increase brand visibility in AI chatbot responses, track current mentions of your brand. Find the top-cited domains and pages in your niche. Secure placements on authoritative sites. Keep high-traffic pages accurate and well-structured. Write in clear, simple sentences. Engage on UGC platforms like Reddit and Quora. Create AI-friendly content with original research, statistics, comparisons, and experiments. Close topic gaps where competitors are cited but you are not. Bet early on emerging topics. Build branded search demand with unique frameworks and research. Repurpose content into videos and capture AI “hallucinated” URLs with redirects.
Restructuring a Google Ads account can be a powerful tactic to restore growth and improve efficiency, but it also comes with risks such as wiping out historical data and disrupting Google's learning algorithms. Common warning signs that a full rebuild might be needed include bloated or mismatched keyword groups, persistent irrelevant search queries, budgets being spent in the wrong places, and performance flattening despite regular optimization efforts. The most effective restructures start with a detailed audit to identify what's truly working, preserve those high-performing elements, and then roll out changes in planned stages.
Golpo AI transforms written content, internal workflows, and course materials into professional explainer videos and podcasts. It offers whiteboard animations, supports over 50 languages, and includes script validation, voice options, and API access for scalable content creation. It integrates with GitHub, Jira, and Google Calendar, making it easy to convert complex information into shareable audio and video content.
ChatGPT allows you to add custom instructions that guide its responses, even on free accounts. These instructions act as an invisible layer of your prompt, letting you set your name, work context, and ChatGPT's personality traits, as well as specify writing preferences like style, tone, and banned words or phrases. To set them up, go to Settings → Customize ChatGPT, fill in the sections, toggle “Enable for New Chats,” and save. Adding prompt-style directions and prioritization notes helps ensure consistent outputs. Keeping a backup is recommended, as changes can dramatically alter results. This feature, especially with GPT-5, can significantly improve output quality.
In July, göt2b hosted an interactive pop-up in Brooklyn's Domino Park featuring a humidity-powered “Emergency Box” that dispensed free full-size products when humidity reached 60% or higher. The vending machine allowed guests to select their hair type before receiving frizz-fighting products, while a scrolling LED sign indicated when the box was unlocked. Visitors could also take photos in a “Frizz-Free Photo Zone” and enjoy curl-pattern-inspired rolled ice cream. TXG, the agency behind the project, also sent influencer mailers styled as “Emergency Frizz Kits” with faux glass packaging.
Google Ads offers eight automated bidding strategies, with some falling under Smart Bidding, which uses auction-time optimization for conversions or conversion value. Each strategy serves different goals, such as Maximize Conversions for lead volume, Maximize Conversion Value for high-value leads, Target CPA for cost control, and Target ROAS for profitability. Successful automated bidding requires accurate conversion tracking, realistic targets, and enough recent conversion data. Advertisers can mix strategies across campaigns, ad groups, or portfolios based on goals and data availability. While automation saves time, performance should be monitored regularly to ensure campaigns meet objectives.
A good BOFU blog post focuses on the reader's pain, shows how your product solves it, and proves success with social proof.
The best brands don't mirror the market, they mess with it.
Younger workers are rapidly disappearing from the advertising industry, with those aged 20-24 making up just 6.5% of the workforce in 2024, down from 10.5% in 2019. Unemployment among college graduates aged 22-27 has now surpassed the overall US jobless rate, a reversal of decades-long trends. Factors like economic uncertainty play a role, but AI is significantly reducing entry-level opportunities in marketing and advertising.
YouTube is rolling out an AI system to estimate users' ages and automatically apply teen safety measures for minors. If adults are misidentified as minors, they must verify their age with a government ID, credit card, or selfie, raising privacy concerns. The system uses viewing habits, searches, and account age to make determinations and currently applies only to logged-in users. This move follows broader industry efforts to prevent teens from bypassing age restrictions, but some users worry about sharing sensitive data.
By combining good prompting with Deep Research, GTM teams can get detailed and actionable reports on projects such as marketing attribution, competitor analysis, or international expansion in a fraction of the time. The method works best when you provide business context and force the AI to use credible and recent sources. Different AI tools excel in different situations, with ChatGPT offering the most depth, Gemini providing balance, and Perplexity giving strong source control, making tool choice an important part of the strategy.
Practical SEO strategies for startups include buying expired domains with backlinks and setting up 301 redirects, listing on high-DA sites for do-follow links, using Google Ads AI for keyword suggestions, and generating thousands of blog topics via tools like blogtopics.net and AnswerThePublic. Creating content around these questions builds topical authority. Diversifying content types, including programmatic SEO, free tools, blogs, and interconnected content rings, helps boost rankings.
LinkedIn has introduced Thought Leader Event Ads, allowing advertisers to sponsor member posts that link directly to an event page. The update reflects the finding that 76% of B2B marketing leaders believe collaborating with creators builds brand authenticity, and 58% prioritize authenticity and credibility when selecting influencers. The ads are available globally and can be set up in Campaign Manager with member permission.
ChatGPT-5 is faster, more accurate, and more expert-like. To appear in AI-driven answers, brands must be findable in search engines, cited across high-quality content, and present across multiple AI platforms. Brand mentions now matter more than backlinks, and content should be clear, structured, and semantically relevant. Keywords are less important than prompts, so build content around the questions real customers ask, creating a library of high-intent prompts.
This article reviews six AI writing tools, each with different strengths for academic, business, or creative work. StudyPro stands out for academic writing with built-in plagiarism checks, logical outlining, and context-aware generation, while Copy.ai excels at persuasive marketing copy, and AI-Writer focuses on source-based, cited content. Simplified offers design-friendly drafting, Buffer AI Tools handle quick polishing tasks, and Writer specializes in consistent, professional business writing.
AI-generated ads are transforming marketing by giving brands the ability to produce original, personalized, and culturally resonant content faster and at a scale traditional methods cannot match. Campaigns from major companies show how AI can be applied to humor, emotional storytelling, cultural commentary, and even social good, often turning experimental ideas into global talking points. This post provides practical guidance on which AI tools can be used to replicate these successes with an emphasis on ethical oversight to protect authenticity and audience trust.
ChatGPT users are shifting from keyword searches to detailed, task-focused conversational queries. Many involve coding help, hyper-local commercial requests, and persona-based instructions. This points to the rise of an agentic web where AI acts as a collaborator. This piece shares specific tactics for adapting, including structuring content and code for AI, creating brand personas for AI, and answering high-intent local queries. It also covers building resources like conversion guides, error glossaries, and comparison pages to capture opportunities in AI-driven search.
Focus on competitors by asking what workarounds people use now, not just which startups offer similar solutions.
A flowchart of whether you should be investing in live shopping and social commerce.
Gen Z is almost 30 and leading culture, while Gen Alpha is already shaping trends and household spending. Both generations expect brands to go beyond surface-level purpose and empty trends. They demand real values built into everything from products to policies. They want brands that entertain and connect authentically, with content that ranges from quick, catchy moments to meaningful stories across different platforms. These groups also care deeply about social issues and sustainability, and they expect brands to show, not just say, their commitment. If a brand can't keep up with their evolving tastes and cultural influence, it risks being left behind.
Perplexity has made an unsolicited $34.5 billion all-cash offer to buy Chrome from Google, more than twice its $14 billion valuation. The bid is funded by venture investors and comes amid a possible court-ordered Chrome divestment.
This 4-step model creates homepage copy that resonates by aligning with what buyers need to hear. It starts by understanding the buyer's context, including who they are and the situation they face, and then identifies the core friction that makes their current state unsustainable. Next, it presents a strategic unlock, bridging their pain to the transformation your solution enables, followed by proving why you are the best choice to deliver that shift. By moving from audience context to specific problems, then to the solution and your unique fit, this approach ensures messaging is relevant.
Simplifying a website's confirmation modal increased checkout page visits by 21% and overall transactions by 13% for a company selling sustainably harvested countertops. The original modal contained upsells, email capture, and multiple value propositions, which analytics showed caused a significant drop-off. The new version featured a larger product image, fewer details, no upsells, and two clear calls to action. The results showed that removing unnecessary elements reduced friction and improved conversions.
ASO is moving from static keyword playbooks to adaptive, AI-powered growth engines. Search results are now tailored to the individual, meaning the same query can result in different listings. Winning brands will personalize product pages, adopt AI-driven metadata updates, and optimize for voice and predictive discovery. Marketers should treat ASO like a performance channel, running rapid experiments and signaling app use cases clearly to surface at the right moments.
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ThreatSpike ditched underperforming channels like Google and LinkedIn for TLDR. The results?
These templated prompts perform real-time competitor analysis, discover recent high-engagement marketing tips from Reddit, and track the latest viral trends on TikTok, Instagram, X, and Reddit. They identify target industries, data collection methods, pricing visibility, key conversion pages, summarize practical marketing insights, and suggest brand tie-ins for trending content.
Google is using LLMs to detect and block invalid traffic across its platforms. In partnership with Google Research and DeepMind, the Ad Traffic Quality team developed systems that analyze content, ad placements, and user interactions to identify deceptive practices, reducing invalid traffic by 40%. Automated and manual checks ensure advertisers are not charged for this activity.
Reddit is unifying its core search and AI-powered Reddit Answers, which has 6M weekly users, into a single experience alongside its 70 million weekly standard searches. The platform is looking to make search central to community navigation while capitalizing on its position as the 6th most searched term in Google in the US last year. Improved contextual ad relevance from conversation placements is also expected to extend into search advertising.
Okta launched a six-person newsroom in April, moving editorial work from marketing to comms with a focus on second-day analysis that adds context after headlines break. C-suite videos replaced lengthy case studies to capture decision-making processes and bypass slow approvals. AI accelerates research, outlining, and personalization while humans handle the final third to preserve voice and judgment.
Threads now has 400M monthly active users and has grown daily mobile activity 127.8% year-over-year to 115.1M.
A roundup of “good” B2B marketing from Vector, Help Scout, and AirOps.