GenAI apps saw major growth this year with 1.7B downloads and $1.87B in revenue. Users spent over 15.6B hours across 426B sessions. Asia led global adoption with 42.6% of downloads and 80% growth, driven by India and Mainland China. ChatGPT remained the top app for in-app revenue and showed strong engagement, with usage levels matching X and Reddit. Only Google ranked higher in average days used per month. ChatGPT's weekend usage also rose, showing it is increasingly used beyond the workplace.
ChatGPT is now a core tool in the modern GTM stack. In product marketing, it supports persona research, positioning, and messaging analysis. Content teams use it to summarize transcripts, localize assets, and build SEO landing pages. Growth marketers apply it to analyze paid spend, create employee social posts, and prioritize experiments. Sales teams use it to personalize events, prepare for calls, and extract insights from recordings.
Shift focus from keywords to core topics tied to your brand's offerings and audience needs. Start by mapping 5-10 parent topics, then expand using personas, audience research, and zero-volume subtopics to build authority. Create content that aligns with real user problems and search intent. Organize internal and external links by topic rather than recency. This deep, persona-driven coverage builds visibility in search and AI-driven platforms, and creates a self-reinforcing flywheel of topical authority.
Google is adding new AI Mode features in Search to support learning and planning. Users can now ask questions about images and PDFs on desktop, with more file types coming soon. The new Canvas tool helps organize study plans or projects in a side panel that updates over time. Search Live enables real-time, video-based help through mobile cameras using Google Lens. In Chrome, users can now click “Ask Google about this page” to get AI insights on screen content.
HubSpot introduced a Claude AI connector that integrates CRM data to provide contextual answers and visualizations for marketing, sales, support, and success teams. The tool enables natural language queries, data-driven recommendations, and action execution without leaving HubSpot. It reflects the company's broader AI push, which includes a recent ChatGPT deep research connector aimed at enhancing decision-making efficiency.
An analysis of 640 Meta incrementality tests over the last 18 months, which included head-to-head tests that compared Advantage+ to Manual campaigns, shows that Meta's automation consistently delivers incremental impact. On average, it drove 19% lift to brands' primary KPIs. Advantage+ campaigns identify high-intent users faster than Manual campaigns but show 12% lower DTC iROAS on average due to reduced long-term impact. Despite this, Advantage+ remains valuable for new customer acquisition and short-term promotions, with 42% of brands seeing it outperform Manual campaigns. Mid- and upper-funnel strategies are gaining interest for their stronger omnichannel and funnel-building effects, even though they underperform on DTC ROAS alone. While Incremental Attribution is still in early stages with a 43% success rate, Meta's vast dataset gives it a strong foundation to refine this tool and improve campaign efficiency.
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly using AI-generated influencers to promote drugs in areas like dermatology and mental health. These are synthetic personalities designed to mimic ideal patients. While these avatars offer cost benefits, they also raise concerns about accountability and gaps in regulation, as FDA oversight of social media remains limited. In response, lawmakers are calling for stricter rules. Experts advise clear disclosure, ethical standards, and collaboration with real patients to keep AI-driven marketing compliant.
Tips for marketers to reach Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, or Baby Boomers where they are and how they consume media.
A visual that outlines the 5 lifecycle stages of a social media trend.
American Eagle's latest campaign faced criticism for implying genetic superiority, showing sexualized imagery, and conflicting with its charitable message.
Search traffic is declining, but search engines are still the top method for discovering new brands, with one in three online adults introduced to brands through search. The share of users citing search as their primary discovery method has grown by 2.5 percentage points over two years, representing over 100 million more shoppers. Google's traffic has dropped by 4% over the past three years, now at 19 billion visits per week, and it is referring hundreds of millions fewer visitors to third-party sites. Despite these shifts and the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, which has 500 million monthly users, marketers should not overhaul their search strategies yet.
TikTok is ramping up investment in search ads. With over 120 open roles tied to search and rising adoption among brands, TikTok aims to compete with Google for performance marketing dollars. Early data shows promising results, including lower CPCs and higher CTRs.
Advertisers are navigating WhatsApp's limited targeting by prioritizing creative messaging and contextual factors like time of day or device type. While user privacy concerns remain high, brands in retail, tech, and telecom are testing the waters. Early ad formats include low-cost Status ads and AI-powered agents for personalized engagement.
Consumers perceive higher priced sustainable products as more eco-friendly, regardless of actual quality. In experiments, lower priced sustainable backpacks were seen as 8.35% less eco-friendly than higher priced ones, and a more expensive detergent was seen as 6.1% more sustainable. This bias stems from the belief that sustainability increases production costs, so low prices trigger skepticism. The effect weakens if companies clearly explain how they keep prices low through methods like automation or bulk buying.
Email open rates rose 6% and click-to-conversion rates jumped 27.6% in 2024, showing email remains a high-performing channel despite privacy and security challenges. BIMI implementation can increase consumer confidence by 90% while interactive AMP features and AI optimization improve in-email actions and revenue per recipient. These innovations leverage first-party data to maintain deliverability and engagement as tracking cookies disappear.
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Delve ran 4 ads across 2 TLDR newsletters and brought in 66 leads, with a meaningful chunk from enterprise. The result: $1M in attributed pipeline and a 52x ROI.
MyLens converts raw materials into visuals. It can generate timelines, flowcharts, tables, or quadrant diagrams. Additionally, users can upload data to create line, bar, or doughnut charts.
Google is adding AI-generated store summaries to Chrome for US desktop users. These provide quick insights on product quality, pricing, and service by aggregating reviews from sites like Trustpilot and Yotpo. The feature enhances shopping safety and efficiency while helping Google compete with Amazon and newer AI-powered browsers.
AI is now deeply embedded in social media marketing, helping brands generate content, analyze trends, and automate interactions, but raising ethical concerns around transparency, privacy, and trust. Consumers are increasingly aware, with 41% most likely to call out unethical behavior over anything else, and regulators are responding with stricter disclosure requirements for both ads and AI-generated content. Brands must build trust by being open about data use and AI involvement, protecting privacy, and ensuring inclusive, respectful content. Transparency boosts credibility, as shown by a 2024 study where disclosing AI use in ads increased trust by 96%. Without clear ethical guardrails, brands risk losing customers, talent, and investor confidence.
Zoom's five-person content team produced 300 assets last year while shifting content from a cost center to a revenue driver. They used a pod model that united product marketing, demand generation, and content teams to plan quarterly campaigns and measure success through demo bookings and sales calls. AI tools streamlined intake, transcription, and reporting, enabling the team to scale output and prove content's direct impact on pipeline.
An AI-generated model in a Guess ad published in Vogue has led to widespread criticism from readers and influencers calling for boycotts of the magazine.
Screenshots showing how @lenamoriarty reposted the same video 7 times in a month (with small tweaks) before it went viral.
Many brands remain stuck in transactional engagement, chasing clicks and discounts without building trust with consumers.
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Pretty much every marketing team on Earth is thinking about ways to improve brand visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and co.
Social-first content is evolving into serialized entertainment, with brands now commissioning full creator-led shows rather than one-off posts. Creator content performs 3-5X better than traditional branded assets when scaled across channels. 63% of 18-34 year-olds stream daily via connected TVs. Brands should act like producers, building operational systems to manage IP, streamline approvals, and repurpose content across platforms.
Amazon pulled its ads from Google Shopping across all major markets between July 21 and 23. This included the US, UK, Germany, and Japan, dropping its impression share from up to 60% to zero. This move follows months of reduced ad spend and appears to be a strategic shift aimed at cutting costs, testing paid search value, and asserting greater control over traffic as AI-driven shopping tools gain traction. The withdrawal marks Amazon's most significant advertising exit since its 2020 pullback.
Start by brainstorming ideas and using AI image generators like a sketchbook to explore concepts. Leverage style codes for consistency, prompt AI to help write prompts, and try multiple platforms to find what works best. Focus on signal strength and clarity, not perfection. Use AI to refine your creative process and build reusable workflows with tools like Gemini's Custom Gems for more consistent image generation over time.
Calendly's upgrade email is effective because it spells out the value of paid features. It recommends a specific plan based on user behavior, reducing decision fatigue. It also taps into loss aversion by letting users try premium tools during a free trial. This makes the upgrade feel hard to give up, especially after getting used to the perks.
ChatGPT appears to use Google's index and cache to retrieve web content, based on tests showing it returns information only from pages submitted to Google. Visibility in ChatGPT depends largely on whether a page is indexed. Issues like “crawled but not indexed” are common and not always critical, but improving internal linking and creating unique content can help important pages get indexed. For better AI visibility, structure content clearly, answer questions directly, use Schema.org markup, and ensure pages work without JavaScript.
Google launched an alpha version of the Google Trends API. It allows a limited number of developers to access search trends data programmatically. The API provides consistently scaled search interest data over the past 1,800 days, with daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly aggregations. It supports geographic filtering by region and subregion. The API improves on the website version by allowing comparisons across multiple terms and timeframes without re-scaling each request.
McDonald's revived its cult-favorite Snack Wrap in July, boosting foot traffic and triggering fresh competition in the chicken category. Popeyes responded with new Chicken Wraps and an AI-generated diss track, while Taco Bell, KFC, Wingstop, and White Castle launched or marketed new chicken items. Chicken remains a key innovation driver in the quick service restaurant space, with brands leaning into nostalgia, cultural campaigns, celebrity tie-ins, and loyalty plays to win market share.
GTM teams now use intent data to drive pipeline and speed up sales by focusing on signal strength, not lead volume. Effective programs treat intent as a layer that improves existing channels and combine first-, second-, and third-party data for broader insight. AI now helps teams score signals, predict buyer readiness, and automate follow-up, making intent data more actionable across the entire customer lifecycle.
Referral, content, and community loops drive more growth than ads alone.
Publishers are shifting toward newsletters, subscriptions, and events to build direct reader relationships.
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At GrowthX [5], we spent the last 12 months building content engines for the world's best companies.
This is normally something we charge $200 per session, _BUT FOR TL;DR;
Most marketers are not seeing major traffic losses from AI Overviews, with 55.5% reporting traffic increases and only 8.3% seeing declines. Many have already adapted, with 57% modifying SEO or content strategies, and 54.5% diversifying channels like email and paid social. 68% of marketers focus on tracking AI search visibility in ChatGPT rather than Google's AI Overviews due to its clearer referral data. Brand mentions and technical strategies like schema markup, E-E-A-T, and clear content formatting are now central to visibility.
Internet users now spend 13 hours and 48 minutes per week on social media, 35% more than time spent watching TV. Short-form video leads the way, accounting for 6 hours and 42 minutes weekly, surpassing both long-form video and traditional television. Among women aged 16-24, social media usage is 2.6X higher than TV viewing. YouTube tops mobile app usage and web traffic, while 22.3% of adults globally report using ChatGPT, with adoption reaching over 40% in countries like Kenya and Israel.
The best companies avoid direct feature comparisons with competitors and instead reframe the conversation by positioning themselves as solving entirely different problems. Asana, Superhuman, and ClickUp use analogies that place competitors in narrow roles while casting themselves as broader solutions. Good messaging defines competitors in small, accurate terms and presents the company as a more expansive, transformational option. Use templates like Tool vs. Platform or Past vs. Future to build this positioning.
Reddit is more than an SEO tool. It's a major data source for LLMs, meaning authentic content can shape how AI platforms understand and present your brand. Unlike paid ads, Reddit relies on genuine community engagement. Effective use means listening first, contributing meaningfully, tracking mentions, and avoiding shortcuts. Companies should join existing conversations rather than starting new subreddits and ensure someone on the team can engage authentically.
A list of 8 AI playbooks from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
LinkedIn has overtaken X as the top social platform for journalists in 2025, making it the most effective place for PR professionals to build relationships. Despite some rise in DM-based outreach, 96% of journalists still prefer to receive pitches via email. Journalists now value exclusives more than original research and prioritize access to credible sources over story ideas or data. Irrelevant pitches are increasing, with 47% of journalists saying they seldom receive relevant outreach, and response rates continue to decline as pitch volumes rise. With ongoing layoffs and more journalists moving to independent platforms like Substack, PR professionals must focus on relevance, personalization, and consistency to cut through the noise.
Video is now the primary format for B2B marketing. LinkedIn video viewership rose 36% in 2024, and video posts are shared 203% more than other content types. 5 key creative principles drive success: Cultural Coding, Human Touch, Expert Takes, Attention Hacking, and Inspiring Imagination. Videos with expert speakers increase dwell time by 31%, human-centered content boosts engagement by 18%, and authentic, emotive videos see up to 84% higher engagement.
Users are less likely to click on links when Google shows an AI-generated summary, with only 8% clicking on a search result compared to 15% when no summary appears. Just 1% of visits to AI summary pages result in users clicking links within the summary itself. About 26% of users end their browsing after seeing a summary, compared to 16% for pages without one. Longer and question-based searches are more likely to trigger an AI summary, with 60% of question-word searches and 53% of 10-word-or-longer searches producing one.
Platforms now suppress outbound links, hide referral data, and hoard traffic. This makes traditional click-based marketing unreliable. Instead of chasing clicks, zero-click content delivers standalone value directly in-platform. Links aren't off-limits but should be used sparingly, supported by consistent value-driven content. Success can be measured through branded search lift, audience growth, and conversions like booked demos.
The strongest loyalty comes from brands that reflect how customers define themselves and what they care about most. Identity marketing involves researching how customers talk about their struggles and aspirations, validating those themes through real-world feedback, and naming identity groups with deeper meaning rather than surface-level slogans. When customers feel that a brand helps express who they are and what they believe in, they become voluntary ambassadors who spread the message out of pride and alignment, not obligation.
Instead of prioritizing your company LinkedIn page, identify a charismatic employee to serve as your public voice. People trust individuals far more than brand logos, and employee-led content builds a stronger audience connection. Ideal candidates often have public speaking experience, creative backgrounds, or represent underrepresented groups. Support them with a ghostwriter, feature them on your company page, put them on stages, and compensate them accordingly.