Posts

The Marketer’s Guide to Reddit

/0 Comments/in /by

Reddit is an online forum that’s part search engine, part social network. 

Millions of people use it to swap advice, review products, and argue about virtually every topic under the sun. It all happens inside niche communities called subreddits. 

All this makes it a powerful place for Reddit marketing. As long as you know how to play by its rules, that is. 

The No. 1 rule? You can’t treat Reddit like another broadcast channel. Users hate obvious self-promotion and call out spam instantly. They reward brands that show up to add value, so just popping in and dropping links won’t cut it.

The upside? If you’re useful and authentic, the reward is real trust and traffic you won’t get anywhere else.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to market on Reddit the right way, including both organic and paid strategies. We’ll also toss in some tips on etiquette to keep you from getting buried (or banned).

Key Takeaways

  • Reddit is a network of niche communities. Winning here means respecting each sub’s rules and culture.
  • Organic comes first. Use a Crawl-Walk-Run approach in your Reddit marketing strategy: Listen and comment, then start useful threads, then scale into branded subs, SEO plays, and selective paid campaigns.
  • Self-promotion is allowed but heavily policed. Contribute more than you pitch and follow Reddiquette and subreddit rules to avoid bans and backlash.
  • Reddit ads run on an auction model and work best when they feel native to the feed. 
  • Reddit threads influence Google results, “Discussions and forums” boxes, and even AI answers.

Why Is Reddit Important as a Marketing Platform?

Reddit is massive and growing fast. Recent estimates put it at around 100 million daily active users and hundreds of millions of monthly users, spread across more than 100,000 active subreddits. 

It’s basically a giant ecosystem of niche communities where people compare products, troubleshoot problems, and share unfiltered opinions.

What makes Reddit especially relevant today is how often its content shows up outside Reddit. Google’s “Discussions and forums” search feature appears on millions of queries and is heavily dominated by Reddit threads, especially for product reviews and how-to topics. 

Check out the “Discussions and forums” results for “best VPN for travel.” Reddit grabs the top spot above Facebook groups, which tells you two things: Google trusts Reddit threads for experience-based queries, and real travelers would rather hear from other travelers than from brand pages. 

Google search results page for ‘best VPN for travel’ showing a ‘Discussions and forums’ box, with a Reddit thread from r/TravelHacks at the top and two Facebook discussions listed below. 

When someone searches “running shoes for bad knees,” for example, a Reddit discussion appears on page one.

Google search results page for ‘running shoes for bad knees’ showing an AI Overview at the top, followed by blog results and a highlighted Reddit thread from r/running about good running shoes for ankle and knee pain appearing on page one.

“Google, specifically, is prioritizing the platform because it highlights true first-hand experiences,” says Becky McManus, senior SEO strategist at NP Digital. 

Reddit’s also a growing force in AI search. It has data-licensing deals with Google and OpenAI, which use Reddit posts to train and power their large language models. In some analyses, Reddit is one of the most commonly cited domains in AI-generated answers. 

So, when you show up on Reddit, you’re not just reaching users on one platform. You’re influencing search results, AI-generated summaries, and the conversations that shape buyer decisions.

Fundamentals to Know About Reddit

Maybe the most fundamental thing to know about Reddit is that it isn’t one big audience. It’s a web of niche communities (subreddits). Each has its own rules and culture. And not all of them have a high tolerance for brands. 

“Reddit is a different kind of digital marketing space,” McManus says. “It’s all about being real and adding value to the conversation, not just pushing promotions, which you can do more of on standard social media platforms.”

That’s what makes Reddit marketing powerful. It’s also what makes it easy to screw up.

Start with the basics by reading Reddit’s page about self-promotion and what’s allowed and what isn’t. Once you’ve read that, look at the “Reddiquette” page so you can see Reddit’s main rules. 

The list includes:

  • Contributing more than you promote and avoiding spammy, link-only posts
  • Being transparent about who you are and any affiliations you have
  • Speaking to other users respectfully, even when you disagree
  • Following each subreddit’s specific rules instead of assuming they’re all the same

Next, zoom in on each subreddit. 

Read the sidebar and pinned posts. Some communities allow links only on certain days. Others ban surveys, coupon codes, or branded content of any kind. Moderators (mods) enforce those rules, and they won’t hesitate to remove posts or ban accounts.

Take a look at how the r/digitalmarketing subreddit clearly spells out its rules.

r/digitalmarketing subreddit sidebar showing a description that bans promotional posts and a rules list highlighting ‘No posting of services,’ ‘No posting of seminars,’ ‘No self-promotion,’ and ‘No Surveys/Feedback/Reviews.

Your job is to show up as a helpful user first and a marketer second. Answer questions, share experiences, post useful resources, and only occasionally mention your product when it genuinely fits the thread. 

If you’re unsure whether something crosses the line, message the mods and ask.

Organic Reddit Strategies

Organic participation is the name of the game with Reddit marketing. 

Ads can help, but many brands win by showing up as real users first. That means answering questions and sharing useful resources, which helps build karma over time. 

Done right, this also feeds into your Reddit SEO strategy before you ever touch paid campaigns.

Use a Business Account

If you’re going to do anything promotional on Reddit, start with a branded account. Redditors care a lot about transparency, and a handle that clearly represents your company or team builds more trust than a random personal username that secretly belongs to “Marketing.”

Create an account that signals who you are (for example, BrandName_Official or FirstNameAtBrand). Add a short bio that explains your role and what people can expect from you, such as support or product questions.

Here’s an example profile from Cleveland.com, whose parent company, Advance Local, has had success with organic Reddit marketing strategies.

Reddit profile for cleveland.com showing branded news posts shared into local subreddits like r/Browns and r/Ohio, along with a sidebar that labels it as the official account and lists its karma, contributions, account age, and social links.

From there, resist the urge to start dropping links. Instead, comment, answer questions, and join existing threads. That way, your profile doesn’t look like it was created only to push content. If teammates also use personal accounts, have them be open about their affiliation when it’s relevant.

An honest business presence boosts the credibility of every future promo. It also looks less like spam.

Provide Value to Communities

Reddit rewards accounts that make threads better. If your first instinct is “Where can I post my link?”, you’re already in trouble. 

Focus on being useful long before you mention your brand.

Look for questions you can answer in detail. Share things like: 

  • How-tos
  • Real examples
  • What actually worked for you, even when the answer doesn’t involve your product. 
  • Summarize complex topics in plain language. 
  • Drop frameworks, checklists, or quick diagnostics people can try on their own.

You can also add value by recapping good resources, explaining trade-offs between options, or sharing honest pros and cons from your experience. Link sparingly and only when it clearly adds context.

Over time, that kind of participation builds karma, name recognition, and trust. Then, when you occasionally share something from your own site, it feels like a contribution, not an intrusion.

Ask Me Anything (AMA)

AMAs can be useful, even if you’re not a household name. The key is to find a clear, interesting angle that fits the subreddit.

Instead of “I’m a founder; ask me anything,” pitch something specific to the mods first:

  • “I run growth for a bootstrapped SaaS that just hit $1M ARR. Ask me anything about what actually moved the needle.”
  • “I’ve moderated a 200K-member fitness community for five years. Ask me anything about what keeps people engaged.”

For example, this AMA works because it leads with a high-stakes, personal hook: someone risking their life savings on a mobile game. People want to hear the story and ask what happened next.

Reddit post titled ‘I spent my life savings to build a mobile game, AMA,’ where a solo founder explains quitting his job and using his savings to create a fantasy football strategy app.

Most subreddits require proof and mod approval, so follow their instructions closely. During the AMA, focus on being candid and helpful. Share stories, mistakes, and lessons. Avoid turning every answer into a soft pitch.

If people like you, they’ll click through to your profile and brand on their own. The AMA’s job is to build credibility, not to read like a live ad.

Start a Subreddit

Starting your own subreddit is more of a “phase two or three” move than a starting point. If you don’t already have people talking about you on Reddit, a brand-new sub will sit empty and make you look inactive.

Once there’s clear interest—mentions in other subs, recurring questions, or an existing community elsewhere—you can launch a subreddit as a hub. Think of it as a place for support, feature requests, user wins, and deeper discussions around your niche, not just announcements.

Set clear rules, pin a simple “Start here” post, and seed the sub with genuinely useful threads: FAQs, guides, templates, product walkthroughs, or office-hours posts. Commit to moderating and replying.

When you promote the subreddit, invite people in for the value (“Come ask questions and see real use cases”), not just to “follow” your brand.

Reddit Paid Advertising

Organic participation is the foundation of your Reddit marketing efforts, but paid ads are how you scale once you know what resonates.

Reddit now reaches a massive, mostly younger audience across thousands of active communities, and a lot of those users are actively researching products (not just scrolling).

The big advantage for marketers is context. 

You can target by subreddit, interest, keyword, location, and device, so your ads show up inside conversations that already match your offer. Formats range from promoted posts and video ads to conversation placements and takeovers, with newer options like dynamic product ads for e-commerce.

If your creative matches the culture of the communities you’re in, Reddit ads can drive serious awareness and consideration.

Reddit Advertising Policies

Reddit’s ad policies are strict because ads sit right next to user posts. If your campaigns feel spammy or misleading, you’d better believe they’ll get rejected fast. Even when they’re approved, users will downvote them into oblivion.

Creative and Video Quality

Ads should look and sound professional. Make sure your audio and visuals are clear and text is readable. 

Also be sure your video is relevant to the audience you’re targeting and correctly labeled if it includes mature themes. Anything graphic or heavily profane needs the proper rating and warnings, and strobing or flashing effects are off limits.

Style and Copy Standards

Reddit expects clean, honest copy. So, check your spelling and grammar, keep emojis and symbols to a minimum, avoid shouty all-caps, and don’t stuff personal data into your ad unless regulations require it. And be sure that your images are high quality and match what you’re promoting.

Accuracy and Transparency

Your ad has to reflect the real product or service. That means no clickbait headlines or no bait-and-switch offers. And don’t promote specific Reddit comments or posts unless you’re using approved formats.

URLs and Landing Pages

Your landing page should clearly feature the product you advertised. You’ll also want it to load reliably and stick to Reddit’s content rules. Keep the language consistent with your ad and avoid aggressive pop-ups or spammy tactics.

When in doubt, review Reddit’s full advertising policy before you launch. It’s easier to fix issues in draft than after a denial.

What Are the Different Types of Reddit Ads?

Reddit’s ad formats are designed to feel like part of the feed, not banner clutter. Here’s how the main options break down in Reddit’s own language:

  • Free-form ads: Reddit-native units that can mix text, images, video, and GIFs in one post. Great for storytelling or more complex messages.
  • Image ads: Single-image promoted posts that look like standard Reddit posts with a “Promoted” label. Solid for simple offers and clear CTAs.
  • Video ads: Autoplay video in the feed, built to grab attention and work across awareness, consideration, and conversion.
  • Carousel ads: Swipeable units that showcase multiple images or videos in one ad—perfect for product lines, before/after stories, or feature highlights.
  • Conversation ads: Let you join or spark discussions directly in conversation spaces, so your brand shows up where people are already talking.
  • Product ads: Shopping-focused units that pull from your product catalog and recommend items to redditors who are ready to buy.
  • AMA ads: Sponsored “ask me anything” experiences that put a subject-matter expert or brand rep at the center of a Q&A thread.
(L) A video ad from u/EpicEntertainment announcing a spooky fall TV lineup; (C) an image ad from u/innisfree_usa highlighting a pore-clearing volcanic clay mask; (R) a video ad from u/Canva_Official promoting Canva’s Brand Kit for fast, on-brand design.
(L) A video ad from u/EpicEntertainment announcing a spooky fall TV lineup; (C) an image ad from u/innisfree_usa highlighting a pore-clearing volcanic clay mask; (R) a video ad from u/Canva_Official promoting Canva’s Brand Kit for fast, on-brand design.
(L) A video ad from u/EpicEntertainment announcing a spooky fall TV lineup; (C) an image ad from u/innisfree_usa highlighting a pore-clearing volcanic clay mask; (R) a video ad from u/Canva_Official promoting Canva’s Brand Kit for fast, on-brand design.

Most of these are available in the self-serve ads manager, so you can test formats quickly and double down on what your audience actually engages with.

Examples of Great Reddit Ads

Before diving and creating your own Reddit ad, let’s look at a few examples.

ChatGPT

Reddit promoted post from the official u/OpenAI account with the headline ‘Transform your words into works of art with ChatGPT. Try ChatGPT Today,’ featuring a mock ChatGPT interface that shows a generated image of a golden retriever dressed in an ornate 18th-century royal gown.

This ad works because it feels like a Reddit post, not a banner. The headline clearly promises the benefit (“transform your words into works of art”), and the creative shows the product in action—a funny, hyper-specific dog portrait that fits Reddit’s meme-y culture. 

The user interface screenshot makes it obvious how ChatGPT is used, so there’s no learning curve. The copy is light, the visual does the selling, and the single “Sign Up” call to action (CTA) keeps the next step simple. 

All in all, it’s fun, clear, and native to the feed.

The Coupon Nerd

Promoted Reddit post from u/thecouponnerd titled ‘I'm a massive savings nerd. Here are the stupidest money mistakes I see people make,’ followed by a numbered list starting with advice on overpaying for car insurance.

This ad works because it leans into Reddit’s strengths: story and specificity. 

The headline (“I’m a massive savings nerd… stupidest money mistakes…”) sounds like a real thread you’d click, not brand copy. The post leads with concrete value—numbers, personal savings, and clear next steps—before it ever feels promotional. 

It’s written in plain language, framed as advice from a fellow user, and backed by strong engagement (upvotes, comments), which signals social proof right in the feed.

How to Build Your Reddit Marketing Campaigns

Reddit doesn’t reward brands that rush in with a big ad budget. It rewards the ones that show up and learn the culture first.

That’s why it helps to think about Reddit marketing in stages instead of “launching a campaign” overnight. 

Start with low-risk actions that teach you how each community works. Then layer on more visible content and light promotion. Once you know what lands, you can treat Reddit like a full channel. 

In the sections below, we’ll walk through a practical Crawl → Walk → Run model you can use to move from basic participation to a scalable Reddit program that drives traffic and revenue (and not just karma).

Crawl

In the Crawl stage, your main job is to learn the ropes of Reddit and show up like a real user. You’ve set up a branded account, know the Reddiquette, and have your eyes on the subreddits where your audience already hangs out.

From here, keep it simple:

  • Read top and “hot” posts to get a feel for tone and what flies.
  • Comment on existing threads where you have real experience to share.
  • Answer questions in detail without instantly pushing your product.

Use Reddit search and “site:reddit.com” Google searches around your main topics to find the discussions that matter most to your buyers. 

This screenshot shows the Crawl stage in action using a site search to see which subreddits and threads already rank for “gravel bikes.” It includes threads on clarifying the definition of a gravel bike and calls for product recommendations.

Google search results page for ‘site:reddit.com gravel bikes,’ showing multiple r/gravelcycling threads ranking.

As you explore, pay attention to the phrases people use and the problems they describe. Also take note of the kind of answers they upvote.

Crawl is about listening and learning. You’re gathering intel on which communities are worth investing in. That way, you don’t sound like a marketer who just discovered Reddit yesterday.

Walk

In the Walk phase, you’re moving beyond “lurking” and turning your Reddit presence into a repeatable habit. Now, you’re showing up in a handful of high-value subreddits on purpose. You’re not just scrolling anymore.

Start by narrowing your focus. Pick three to five communities where your audience already hangs out and where you can add real expertise. Look for threads that match your core topics and keywords. 

Your job at this stage is to:

  • Comment thoughtfully on existing threads, especially questions you can answer from experience.
  • Share occasional links to genuinely useful resources (yours or others), but always wrapped in context.
  • Track what gets upvotes, saves, and replies so you can see which angles resonate.

Think of Walk as your calibration stage. You’re learning the language and formats that work in each subreddit. You’re also starting to spot patterns you can later turn into content pillars, SEO topics, and even product ideas.

You’re not trying to dominate Reddit yet. You’re trying to become a familiar, helpful name in the spaces that matter.

“It’s all about trust,” says Becky McManus, the senior SEO strategist at NP Digital.

“Teams should expect to earn trust gradually by engaging authentically and consistently within the communities that genuinely care about what they offer.”

Run

Run is where Reddit becomes a proper channel, not just a side experiment.

By this point, you know:

  • Which subreddits respond best.
  • Which topics reliably spark quality discussion.
  • Which profiles (brand and team) have real credibility.

Now you can scale intentionally. This may include launching and actively moderating a branded subreddit as a hub for FAQs, feedback, updates, and success stories. You might also keep a presence in adjacent communities and jump into high-impact threads quickly. 

From there, you can coordinate with your SEO and content teams to help keep responses and resources consistent.

Reddit becomes:

  • A content engine: Your best threads turn into blog posts, landing pages, videos, and email content.
  • An SEO asset: More of your conversations show up in SERPs and “Discussions and forums” modules.
  • A live focus group: You see unfiltered reactions to ideas, messaging, and features in real time.

At this stage, you can also layer in paid campaigns, but be sure to promote angles you already know resonate organically. That way, you’re not just guessing with ad dollars. 

What Reddit Marketing Success Looks Like

A good example of Reddit done right is NP Digital’s work with TurboTax. 

From January to April 2025, TurboTax-branded profiles joined relevant tax and personal finance threads, adding 159 thoughtful comments and starting targeted conversations during filing season. 

The impact showed up well beyond Reddit. Several of those threads were pulled into Google’s “What people are saying” for searches like “quarterly tax deadlines” and “turbotax early refund,” and one comment was cited in AI-generated Reddit answers within days. 

Brand mentions hit 5,404 (up 10 percent year over year), and positive mentions nudged up even in the middle of tough conversations about pricing and early refunds. 

We also paired that Reddit work with SEO. A refreshed “Ways to File for Free” guide captured the featured snippet for “is turbotax free,” helping outrank older negative Reddit threads and giving TurboTax more control over how the brand shows up in search. 

FAQs

How do you do marketing on Reddit?

Act like a helpful user, not a billboard: join relevant subreddits, add value in threads, then layer in carefully targeted information that can be tied back to your brand.

Can you self-promote on Reddit?

Yes, but only within strict limits. Reddit and most subreddits take a hard line on spammy self-promotion. If most of your activity is just dropping your own links, you’ll get downvoted or banned. Read Reddit’s self-promotion and Reddiquette guidelines and participate in conversations, but make sure any link you share is genuinely helpful and clearly relevant to the thread.

How do I create a Reddit marketing strategy?

Start with your goal (awareness, traffic, leads, or support), then map the subreddits your audience already uses. Create a branded account, learn each community’s rules, and spend time commenting before you post anything promotional. From there, plan a mix of organic participation (answers, explainers, AMAs, resource threads) and small paid tests once you know what resonates. 

How do I market on Reddit without getting banned?

Read the FAQs, Reddiquette, and each subreddit’s rules before you start posting anything. And be sure to contribute more than you promote: answer questions, share experiences, and only link to your own content when it clearly adds value. 

How much do Reddit ads cost?

Reddit ads run on an auction model, so prices vary widely. It sets its rates at $5 a day minimum, and costs vary from $1.50 to $10 per 1,000 impressions (or more for premium placements).

Conclusion

Reddit is a unique platform with millions of active users. It might seem like the ideal place to promote your business, but you could get banned (or ridiculed) if you aren’t careful. 

Although Reddit is tougher on self-promotion on other platforms, that doesn’t mean marketers should steer clear of it altogether. Provided you stick to the rules and don’t stray into spamming or being “salesy,” you have the opportunity to grow a keen, engaged following. 

Reddit can become one of your most valuable channels if you do it right. You can build trust inside niche communities, earn traffic from threads that rank in search, and even shape how your brand shows up in AI summaries.

With thousands of subreddits, there’s almost always a corner of Reddit where your audience is already talking. Show up to listen and answer questions as you learn the ropes. 

Promotion comes later, after you’ve proven you’re there to add value, not just to cash in.

Read more at Read More

B2B Marketing Strategies: A Complete Guide

/0 Comments/in /by

B2B marketing often gets treated like a second-class citizen compared to B2C. But here’s the truth: business-to-business marketing is growing fast and generating real results across industries.

Eighty percent of B2B buyers expect a B2C-like experience when interacting with brands. That means the old-school, relationship-only playbook won’t cut it anymore. You need a digital-first strategy that attracts high-quality leads, builds trust at scale, and drives measurable revenue.

In this guide, we’ll walk through proven B2B marketing strategies that actually work in 2026 and how to build your own roadmap from scratch.

Key Takeaways

  • B2B buyers are research-driven, digital-first, and selective.
  • Content marketing, SEO, and email are foundational for long-term growth.
  • LinkedIn and Google Ads are ideal for paid B2B campaigns.
  • You need a strategy built on your ideal customer profile, clear goals, and constant testing.
  • Trends like AI-generated content, video, and ABM are shaping the future of B2B digital marketing.

What is B2B Marketing?

B2B marketing stands for business-to-business marketing. Instead of selling directly to consumers (like B2C), you’re selling to other businesses.

That means longer sales cycles, more stakeholders, and a bigger focus on ROI. B2B decisions are driven by logic, not emotion. Buyers want to solve a pain point, improve operations, or generate a clear return.

In B2C, you might sell running shoes to a single customer. In B2B, you could be selling supply chain software to a procurement team of 12. That’s a very different game.

But even though you’re selling to companies, it’s still humans making the call. So your B2B strategy still needs to connect on a personal level.

How B2B Marketing Works Today

The modern B2B buyer looks a lot like a B2C consumer:

  • They start online.
  • They do extensive research.
  • They talk to peers.
  • They want to be educated before they talk to sales.

According to Gartner, 83% of a typical B2B purchasing decision happens before a buyer speaks with a sales rep. That means your marketing needs to do the heavy lifting.

The journey isn’t linear either. One stakeholder might download an e-book. Another might follow your brand on LinkedIn. A third might attend your webinar two months later. You need to stay visible and valuable at every stage.

Digital-first, multi-touch, always-on marketing wins in B2B today. It’s about building trust long before the sales team gets involved.

Core B2B Marketing Strategies That Work

There isn’t one silver bullet for B2B growth, but there are a handful of tried-and-true strategies that consistently deliver results. From attracting leads to nurturing them into customers, each of these plays a key role in your overall marketing mix.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is at the heart of every successful B2B strategy. It’s how you build authority, answer buyer questions, and stay visible throughout long sales cycles. Whether it’s blog posts, whitepapers, or customer success stories, great content gives prospects a reason to trust you before they buy.

Create a content calendar that includes top-of-funnel topics (like how-to posts or industry trends), mid-funnel pieces (case studies and solution guides), and bottom-funnel assets (ROI calculators, product comparisons). Use SEO research to guide your topics, and always write with your ICP’s pain points in mind. Update old content regularly to stay relevant, and use internal linking to guide users deeper into your funnel.

A graphic explaining the marketing funnel and its stages.

Blogs, whitepapers, guides, and case studies all play a role in educating and nurturing your audience. For example, security software provider Entrust does an annual report on fraud, relevant to their audience of enterprise, finance, and government professionals.

An Identity Fraud report from Entrust.

Long-form SEO-driven content builds authority and captures top-of-funnel traffic. Tie your strategy to the funnel. For example, TOFU is best suited for blogs, MOFU for case studies, and BOFU landing pages.

SEO

Search is where most B2B buyers begin. If you’re not showing up for high-intent keywords, you’re missing out on warm leads who are actively looking for a solution like yours. That’s why SEO is a non-negotiable for any serious B2B strategy.

Start by identifying search terms your audience uses throughout their buying journey through tools like Ubersuggest. Prioritize informational and commercial keywords, not just branded terms. Sometimes a low MSV may be okay if it’s relevant to your core audience, like the example below:

A keyword overview for enterprise cloud storage solutions.

Optimize your site structure, title tags, meta descriptions and content. Build backlinks through guest posts and digital PR. Use schema markup to help search engines understand your pages. B2B SEO takes time, but it compounds, make it part of your long game.

Email Marketing

Email marketing continues to be the highest-performing B2B channel when it’s done right. It’s personal, direct, and measurable. But today’s buyers won’t tolerate one-size-fits-all blasts. You need segmentation, automation, and value in every send.

Use gated content and lead magnets to build your list, then segment it based on industry, buyer stage, or behavior. Set up automated drip campaigns that educate and nurture. Include useful resources, not just sales CTAs. Monitor open and click rates, and A/B test everything from subject lines to CTA placement. Good email marketing feels like a helpful nudge, not a pushy pitch.

A marketing email from Webflow.

Source

Segment your lists by persona, behavior, and funnel stage. Use lead magnets like checklists or templates to grow your list. Automate nurture flows, and track opens, clicks, and replies.

Paid Ads

Organic takes time. Paid gives you speed and scale, especially when targeting high-value buyers. The key is precision. B2B paid ads work best when you combine targeting capabilities with smart messaging.

A B2B ad on Linkedin.

LinkedIn ads let you reach decision-makers by job title, industry, and company size. Google Search ads help you show up when someone searches for your product or service. Retarget website visitors with display or video ads to stay top of mind. Use UTM tracking to measure effectiveness, and continuously refine your copy and creatives. Paid ads work best when they amplify a strong organic strategy.

Webinars and Events

Webinars and virtual events are lead generation machines when done well. They give you the chance to educate prospects, show off your expertise, and interact with potential buyers in real time.

Pick topics that align with pain points your audience is actively researching. Bring in subject matter experts, use polls to engage viewers, and offer the replay as a gated asset post-event. Promote your webinar via email, social, and paid channels, especially after the initial release where it will show the most impact:

A chart showing B2B webinar funnel breakdown over time.

Events are also a content goldmine—turn recordings into short video clips, blog recaps, and nurture emails to extend their value.

They let you demonstrate expertise, answer objections, and collect leads. Keep topics specific. Invite prospects already in your pipeline. Repurpose the content as video clips, blog posts, or gated downloads.

B2B Vs B2C Marketing: How Do They Compare?

The biggest difference between B2B and B2C marketing comes down to the buyer’s mindset and how they make decisions. 

A chart comparing priorities of B2B and B2C content marketers.

Here’s a breakdown of how each approach typically differs:

B2B Marketing

  • Driven by ROI, efficiency, and logical outcomes
  • Longer sales cycles with multiple stakeholders
  • Higher-value deals and more complex products or services
  • Content is educational, technical, and data-backed
  • Messaging targets decision-makers and buying committees

B2C Marketing

  • Driven by emotion, desire, and personal benefit
  • Shorter sales cycles with individual decision-makers
  • Lower price points and more impulse-driven purchases
  • Content is entertaining, persuasive, and brand-oriented
  • Messaging targets individuals based on lifestyle or interests

These differences also extend to the type of content that performs well for each segment based on these needs.

A comparison of content that drives the most revenue for B2B versus B2C.

How To Build a B2B Marketing Strategy From Scratch

You don’t need a huge team or budget to build a powerful B2B strategy. What you do need is clarity: on who you’re targeting, what you want to achieve, and how you’ll measure success. These are the building blocks every marketing plan should be built on.

Know Your Ideal Customer (ICP)

Everything starts with knowing who you’re selling to. Your ideal customer profile (ICP) should be specific and rooted in data—not assumptions. Outline key characteristics like industry, company size, annual revenue, and tech stack. Then go deeper: what roles make the buying decisions? What keeps them up at night? What objections do they raise in the sales process?

An example customer persona.

Source

Use interviews, win/loss analysis, and CRM insights to map these out. A strong ICP informs your messaging, targeting, offers, and even product positioning. Without it, your marketing will feel generic—and miss the mark.

Who do you want to reach? What are their roles, pain points, objections, and decision criteria? Use interviews, surveys, and CRM data to build accurate personas.

Set Goals and KPIs

A marketing plan without measurable goals is just guesswork. Define success using metrics that align with business outcomes. Think beyond vanity metrics like impressions or traffic. Focus on KPIs such as MQLs, SQLs, CAC, CLV, and pipeline velocity.

Set benchmarks based on past performance or industry standards. Make sure sales and marketing agree on definitions and expectations. Use dashboards and regular reporting to track progress. When your team knows what “good” looks like, they’re more likely to hit it.

Track MQLs (marketing qualified leads), SQLs (sales qualified leads), CAC (customer acquisition cost), and CLV (customer lifetime value). Tie your KPIs to revenue.

Choose Your Channels

Don’t spread yourself thin trying to be everywhere. Choose marketing channels based on where your ICP actually spends time and how they make decisions.

LinkedIn is a powerhouse for targeting professionals. Email is ideal for nurturing. SEO brings long-term compounding returns. Paid ads provide immediate visibility. Webinars and events build authority. Select a mix of 2–4 core channels and go deep before you go wide.

Document how each channel maps to your funnel. Assign ownership and set clear goals for each.

Use a blend of organic and paid. For example: content + SEO + LinkedIn Ads.

Create a Content Plan

A content plan connects your ideas to outcomes. Start by mapping topics to each stage of the funnel: awareness, consideration, and decision. Awareness content (like blog posts) attracts traffic. Consideration content (like case studies or webinars) builds trust. Decision content (like pricing pages) removes friction.

Balance evergreen content that compounds over time with campaign-specific pieces tied to launches or seasonal priorities. Repurpose content across formats, turn webinars into blog posts, or blogs into LinkedIn posts. Make distribution part of the plan, not an afterthought.

Test and Optimize

No B2B strategy is perfect out of the gate. The best teams test constantly. Start with A/B tests on subject lines, CTAs, landing pages, and ad copy. Measure what actually moves the needle, not just what looks good.

Review performance weekly or monthly, depending on volume. Use heatmaps, CRM data, and attribution tools to identify where leads drop off. Small improvements add up fast, especially in long sales cycles. Optimization is where great marketing gets better.

A/B test CTAs, landing pages, ad creatives, subject lines. Run monthly reviews and adapt based on performance.

B2B Marketing Trends To Watch

Staying ahead in B2B marketing means paying attention to what’s gaining traction across digital channels. 

  • AI Content Creation: Tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and Writer.com are speeding up workflows and lowering content costs. That said, AI is best used for drafts, outlines, or ideation. Final outputs should still go through human editing to preserve quality, tone, and brand voice.
  • Video for Trust: Short-form video continues to dominate attention spans. Think beyond YouTube. Platforms like LinkedIn and TikTok now prioritize native video. B2B brands are using testimonial videos, product explainers, and founder messages to build credibility fast.
  • Account-Based Marketing (ABM): ABM is moving from enterprise-only to mid-market and even SMBs. With more tools available, it’s easier than ever to target specific accounts with personalized content, ads, and outreach. Align sales and marketing to increase close rates and shorten cycles.
  • First-Party Data Focus: With the decline of third-party cookies, companies are investing more in building their own data. Expect more gated content, newsletter offers, and community-building plays to capture emails and preferences directly from users.
  • Sales and Marketing Alignment: Marketing can no longer just focus on lead gen. It’s also about sales enablement, creating assets that help close deals. Look for tighter integration between CRM systems, shared KPIs, and ongoing collaboration between both teams.
  • Conversational Marketing: Chatbots and live chat are becoming standard on B2B websites. Instant answers and qualifications can speed up pipeline velocity. Use tools like Drift or Intercom to build conversational flows that feel personal, not robotic.

FAQs

What is B2B marketing?

B2B marketing stands for business-to-business marketing,strategies used to sell products or services to other businesses. B2B marketers use a mix of digital channels, from content, SEO, social media, email, PPC, and webinars to gain authority and interest from customers. 

How do you do B2B marketing?

Build a strategy based on your ideal customer, set measurable goals, pick the right channels, and consistently test and improve.

How does content marketing help B2B?

Content builds trust and educates potential buyers before they talk to sales. It drives organic traffic and supports every stage of the funnel.

Conclusion

If you’re serious about growing in B2B, you need a digital strategy that reflects how modern buyers behave. They expect value at every interaction. They need proof that your solution works.

Focus on building trust through content, SEO, email, and targeted campaigns. Measure what matters. Optimize relentlessly.

And if you need help building a scalable, high-converting B2B strategy, NP Digital is here for you.

Read more at Read More

Top Tracking Issues We Help Our Clients With

/0 Comments/in /by

You’re investing in ads and other marketing strategies, but have you ever stopped to think about the data you’re using to inform those investments? For many companies, the biggest blind spot is tracking. Hidden misfires are skewing channel reporting and attribution, ultimately throwing off your marketing decisions.

At NP Digital, we’ve helped hundreds of clients uncover recurring patterns of tracking failure. Today, we’re sharing the most common issues we see and exactly how you can fix them. No fluff. Just real problems, real fixes, and proven next steps.

Key Takeaways

  • Attribution: Attribution bias is mitigated by using a shared taxonomy across data sources and maintaining clean first-party data.
  • GA4: Discrepancies around revenue and event tracking with business systems are solved by integrating GA4 data with those business systems.
  • Consent Management: Consent misconfigurations can lead to legal risk and lost data when CMPs are not mapped correctly to tag categories in the tag manager.
  • Cross-device: Use customer IDs to unify fragmented cross-device journeys. 
  • Campaign Tracking: Custom setups need governance, so be sure to standardize campaign tracking structures, audit tags regularly, and align dashboards across marketing channels.

The Impact of Bad Data Tracking

Poor data tracking can be dangerous because it has the potential to distort every decision downstream. If your tags misfire, if a user doesn’t opt in and your scripts still run, or if your UTM query parameter structure breaks mid-campaign, you won’t know it until the numbers don’t add up. And by then, the damage is done.

We’ve seen firsthand how these silent issues erode marketing performance. The root causes usually fall into a few key categories:

  • Incomplete or incorrect tracking setups
  • Tracking that isn’t validated regularly
  • Misaligned naming conventions or taxonomies

And what happens when those issues go undetected?

  • Data gaps that make campaign comparisons impossible
  • Attribution errors that over-credit paid and undercount organic and vice-versa
  • Privacy violations if tags fire before consent, creating legal risk

Accurate tracking is the foundation of good marketing. And when it’s off, your strategy is too.

The Tracking Issues We See With Clients

Website tracking issues come in all shapes and sizes, but the same trends seem to emerge over the years of our experience working with clients. Across industries and platforms, we’ve found five tracking challenges that consistently disrupt clean data:

  • Broken or biased attribution
  • GA4 discrepancies.
  • Vendors restrict audience splits or don’t provide raw data
  • Algorithms self-optimize in ways that obscure true lift
  • Privacy-driven consent issues
  • Fragmented cross-platform journeys
  • Custom setups without a scalable structure

These issues don’t just mess with reporting, they impact performance and decision-making. In the next few sections, we’ll break down the causes of each issue and the solutions we provide to our clients.

Incrementality Measurement & Attribution Bias

Clients come to us with concerns about the accuracy of their reporting and questions on how they can determine what’s working/not working using their web analytics data. Once we dig into the attribution model, we realize it’s only telling half the story.  

Attribution bias occurs when platforms over-credit or under-credit paid clicks and under or over-count the earlier part of the customer journey. Skewing the data this way creates inflated ROI on paid channels, while undervaluing organic search or even direct traffic.  

It also leads to budget decisions based on faulty data. In either case, decisions made on data that consider attribution in a silo are faulty ones for most brands .Even with incrementality testing, that in theory controls for attribution bias, there can be issues. 

Savings can be attributed to fixing attribution:  

A graph showing ad spend wasted due to poor attribution.

What we recommend:

  • Use a cross-platform testing platform that lets you build holdouts and unify taxonomy across campaigns.
  • Design holdouts that abide to allowed audience splits.
  • Leverage raw ad platform data mapped to a business, meaningful taxonomy, and business-sourced total conversions data to model incrementality. 
  • When analyzing results, consider factors that might skew the measurement (e.g. self-optimizing platforms) and how that might change the decisions you make based on the results before you run the test, not after.      
  • Run ongoing incrementality tests, not one-and-done experiments.
  • Map paid and organic together when evaluating top-of-funnel performance.

Incrementality doesn’t have to be a guessing game, but you need the right framework in place to get real answers.

GA4 Data Reliability & Integration

Since the switch to GA4, we’ve seen a surge in tracking headaches. It’s not that GA4 is broken, it’s that many teams rely on it to reconcile platform data and drive reporting dashboards. But GA4 doesn’t always sync cleanly with everything else.

Here’s what we’ve seen go wrong:

  • GA4 data lags behind real-time performance, which delays optimization
  • Revenue in GA4 doesn’t match backend systems, causing reporting conflicts
  • A/B test data often doesn’t align with GA4 sessions or events
  • Key events are misconfigured or underreported due to GA4’s stricter event model

How we help clients fix this:

  • Integrate GA4 with other platforms via a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to unify user-level data
  • Create source-of-truth dashboards that include backend data, not just GA4
  • Align testing platforms with GA4 event structure to ensure clean comparisons

GA4 can be a powerful part of your analytics stack, but only if it’s connected to everything else.

Consent Management & Privacy Compliance

Marketing teams need to prioritize tracking and consent management because tracking issues can occasionally turn into legal issues. Privacy regulations like GDPR and CPRA are becoming stricter, and many businesses aren’t ready. We’ve seen major data loss and even risk exposure due to simple missteps in consent setup.

Here’s what typically goes wrong:

  • Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) fire too late or not at all
  • Tags run before consent is granted, leading to compliance risks
  • Cookie categories aren’t mapped correctly in GTM, causing incorrect cookies to fire 
  • Cookie deprecation isn’t planned for, so key audiences can disappear because steps haven’t been taken to solve for lost cookie data

These gaps could mean lost data and legal trouble.

How we help:

  • We run audits using tools like ObservePoint to check tag behavior against consent status
  • We configure CMPs (like OneTrust) to block tags until users opt in, mapped by cookie category
  • We support clients with server-side tracking and cookieless solutions to maintain data flow

You can’t afford to guess when it comes to consent. A single misfire can cost you visibility and trust.

Cross-Platform & Funnel Visibility

Even with great tracking on individual platforms, we still see clients struggle with stitching it all together. In our experience, teams often struggle to connect the dots between a user’s first ad exposure and their final conversion, especially across devices, platforms, and channels.

Common problems include:

  • No consistent customer ID across tools
  • Offline or backend actions (like CRM updates or sales calls) not tied to digital campaigns
  • Metrics that mean different things across platforms (e.g., “conversions” in Facebook vs. Google Ads)

The result is fragmented customer journey tracking and incomplete funnel visibility.

Here’s how we address it:

  • Implement first-party data strategies that collect and unify customer IDs
  • Use platforms like Segment or Tealium to connect CRM and analytics data
  • Build funnel dashboards that reflect the full customer path, not just last-click attribution

Without complete visibility, optimization becomes a matter of guesswork. Clean data across platforms turns your funnel from a black box into a roadmap.

Custom Tracking & Tagging Infrastructure

Every client wants data tailored to their business, but too often, custom tracking setups become unmanageable over time. We’ve seen teams inherit messy GA4 configurations, inconsistent UTM naming conventions, and dashboards that pull data from five sources with little to no alignment.

That makes auditing a nightmare and decision-making unreliable.

Common breakdowns we’ve seen:

  • Event tracking is implemented manually, inconsistently, or without clear documentation
  • Tools like Claravine or Funnel.io are underused or misconfigured
  • Data (SEO, paid media, etc.) and backend teams all report on different numbers

How we fix it:

  • Run full tag audits to spot inconsistencies or redundancies
  • Standardize UTM frameworks and naming conventions across channels
  • Set up integrated dashboards that map channel and revenue data in one view

Clients need a more complex measurement solution to accommodate today’s users. The modern customer is more mature and selective. They’re doing more research on who you are as a brand, across channels, before they convert. Teams are doing a great job of implementing multiple channels to bring these customers into the fold, but you need to implement a unified solution to make the most of the data they provide. 

Tracking Issues in 2025 vs 2024

Tracking in 2025 looks very different from where we were just a year ago.

Last year, the biggest issues were setup-related: getting GA4 live, consistently tagging campaigns, and stitching data together across ad platforms. Clients were exploring tools and figuring out where things were breaking.

This year, the challenges have matured. Now it’s about optimizing what’s in place, shifting from basic implementation to smarter, scalable solutions.

What’s changed:

  • Tagging stability has improved, but the pressure is on to prove ROI with less data
  • Consent compliance and cookie deprecation are non-negotiable, not “nice to haves”
  • Incrementality testing and attribution refinement are top priorities
  • Teams are pushing beyond dashboards to revenue-backed insights
  • New platforms (like ArtsAI and OptiMine) are being evaluated with deeper scrutiny

The takeaway: In 2024, it was about getting things up and running. In 2025, it’s about whether your setup can scale, adapt, and stay compliant.

How You Can Start Improving Your Data Tracking Today

If you’re running into tracking issues or even suspect something’s off, don’t wait for a reporting crisis to assess the situation. You’ll save yourself time and headaches by looking into the issue now.

Here’s where we recommend starting:

  1. Run a Full Audit: Use tools like ObservePoint to validate which tags are firing, where, and under what conditions. Focus on consent compliance, event coverage, and load order.
Example of ObservePoint, a tool to help scale and automate scans for tag validation and cookie compliance: 

Source: https://www.observepoint.com/blog/how-to-import-your-onetrust-consent-categories-in-a-snap/

A graphic showing different types of digital marketing audits.

Source: https://lakeone.io/blog/digital-marketing-audit

  1. Standardize UTM and Taxonomy: Create a documented framework across your paid, organic, and internal teams. Inconsistent naming kills cross-platform clarity.
A taxonomy example chart.

Source: https://www.campaigntrackly.com/utm-link-tracking-strategy-in-6-steps/

  1. Reconcile GA4 With Backend Data: Build a dashboard that includes both GA4 and revenue data from your CRM or database. That’s your source of truth. Don’t only rely on platform-reported numbers.
GA4 and back end data.

Source: https://segment.com/product/unify/?ref=nav 

  1. Fix Consent Setup: Audit your consent management platform (CMP) setup and make sure no tags fire before consent. Use active group triggers (like in OneTrust) mapped to tag categories.
A graphic showing how consent setup works.

Source: https://wplegalpages.com/blog/consent-audit-and-logging-best-practices-tools-for-compliance/

  1. Integrate Customer IDs Across Tools: Use platforms like Segment or a customer data platform (CDP) to unify first-party data and connect journeys across devices.
How first-party data works in customer engagement.

Source: https://velaro.com/blog/what-is-first-party-data-a-definition-and-how-to-use-it

  1. Rethink Attribution: Move beyond last click. Explore incrementality testing or multi-touch attribution models that actually reflect how your audience buys.
Multi-touch attribution models.

Source: https://usermaven.com/blog/last-click-attribution

Conclusion

If your tracking setup isn’t solid, your data and every decision built on it is at risk. From attribution errors to consent gaps, we’ve seen how small misfires create major problems. But the good news is that most of these issues are fixable with the right audits and tools in place.

Whether you’re optimizing GA4, cleaning up cross-platform reporting, or getting your consent setup compliant, now’s the time to level up. Better data means better marketing, and it starts with tracking that works.

Need help getting there? Start with our conversion tracking guide or explore how technical SEO impacts your data foundation.

Read more at Read More

Google launches Data Manager API

/0 Comments/in , /by
GPT-4 or Google Cloud’s API library- What should you choose for SEO task automation

Google is rolling out a new Data Manager API that lets you plug first-party data into Google’s AI-powered ad tools with less friction. The goal: stronger measurement, smarter targeting, and better performance without the hassle of managing multiple systems.

Why we care. The Data Manager API helps you get more value from the data you already have by sending reliable first-party data into Google’s AI. This improves your targeting, measurement, and bidding. It also replaces several separate APIs with one easy connection, cutting down on engineering work and getting insights back into your campaigns faster.

About the Data Manager API. It will replace several separate Google platform APIs with one centralized integration point for advertisers, agencies, and developers. It builds on Google’s existing codeless Data Manager tool, which tens of thousands of advertisers already use to activate their first-party data.

You can use it to:

  • Upload and refresh audience lists.
  • Send offline conversions to improve measurement.
  • Improve bidding performance by giving Google AI richer signals.

Partnership push. To speed adoption, Google is launching with integrations from AdSwerve, Customerlabs, Data Hash, Fifty Five, Hightouch, Jellyfish, Lytics, Tealium, Treasure Data, Zapier, and others.

Available today. The API is available starting today across Google Ads, Google Analytics and Display & Video 360, with more product integrations on the way.

Google’s announcement. Data Manager API helps advertisers improve measurement and get better results from Google AI

Read more at Read More

Mentions, citations, and clicks: Your 2026 content strategy

/0 Comments/in , /by
Mentions, citations, and clicks- Your 2026 content strategy

Generative systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are quietly taking over the early parts of discovery – the “what should I know?” stage that once sent millions of people to your website. 

Visibility now isn’t just about who ranks. It’s about who gets referenced inside the models that guide those decisions.

The metrics we’ve lived by – impressions, sessions, CTR – still matter, but they no longer tell the full story. 

Mentions, citations, and structured visibility signals are becoming the new levers of trust and the path to revenue.

This article pulls together data from Siege Media’s two-year content performance study, Grow and Convert’s conversion findings, Seer Interactive’s AI Overview research, and what we’re seeing firsthand inside generative platforms. 

Together, they offer a clearer view of where visibility, engagement, and buying intent are actually moving as AI takes over more of the user journey – and has its eye on even more.

Content type popularity and engagement trends

In a robust study, the folks at Siege Media analyzed two years of performance across various industry blogs, covering more than 7.2 million sessions. It’s an impressive dataset, and kudos to them for sharing it publicly.

A disclaimer worth noting: the data focuses on blog content, so these trends may not map directly to other formats such as videos, documentation, or landing pages.

With that in mind, here’s a run-through of what they surfaced.

TL;DR of the Siege Media study

Pricing and cost content saw the strongest growth over the past two years, while top-of-funnel guides and “how-to” posts declined sharply.

They suggest that pricing pages gained ground at the expense of TOFU content. I interpret this differently. 

Pricing content didn’t simply replace TOFU because the relationship isn’t zero-sum. 

As user patterns evolve, buyers increasingly start with generative research, then move to high-intent queries like pricing or comparisons as they get closer to a decision.

That distinction – correlation vs. causation – matters a lot in understanding what’s really changing.

The data shows major growth in pricing pages, calculators, and comparison content. 

Meanwhile, guides and tutorials – the backbone of legacy SEO – took a sharp hit. 

Keep that drop in mind. We’ll circle back to it later.

Interestingly, every major content category saw an increase in engagement. That makes sense. 

As users complete more of their research inside generative engines, they reach your site later in the journey or for additional details, when they’re already motivated and ready to act.

If you’re a data-driven SEO, this might sound like a green light to focus exclusively on bottom-of-funnel content. 

Why bother with top-of-funnel “traffic” that doesn’t convert? 

Leave that for the suckers chasing GEO visibility metrics for vanity, right?

But of course, this is SEO, so I have to say it …

Did you expect me to say, “It depends?”

Here’s a question instead: when that high-intent user typed the query that surfaced a case study, pricing page, or comparison page, where did they first learn the brand existed?

Dig deeper: AI agents in SEO: What you need to know

Don’t forget the TOFU!

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’ll have to keep making TOFU content. 

You might need to make even more of it.

Let’s think about legacy SEO.

If we look back – waaaaay back – to 2023 and a study from Grow and Convert, we see that while there is far more TOFU traffic…

…it converts far worse.

Note: They only looked at one client, so take it with a grain of salt. However, the direction still aligns with other studies and our instincts.

This pattern also shows up across channels like PPC, which is why TOFU keywords are generally cheaper than BOFU.

The conversion rate is higher at the bottom of the funnel.

Now we’re seeing this shift carry over to generative engines, except that generative engines cover the TOFU journey almost entirely. 

Rather than clicking through a series of low-conversion content pieces as they move through the funnel, users stay inside the generative experience through TOFU and often MOFU, then click through or shift to another channel (search or direct) only when it’s time to convert.

For example, when I asked ChatGPT to help me plan a trip to the Outer Banks:

After a dozen back-and-forths planning a trip and deciding what to eat, I wanted to find out where to stay.

That journey took me through many steps and gave me multiple chances to encounter different brands and filtering or refinement options. 

I eventually landed on my BOFU prompt, “Some specific companies would be great.” 

From there, I might click the links or search for the company names on Google.

What matters about this journey – apart from the fact that my final query would be practically useless as insight in something like Search Console – is that throughout the TOFU and MOFU stages, I was seeing citations and encountering brands I would rely on later. 

Once I switched into conversion mode, I wanted help making decisions. That’s where I’m likely to click through to a few companies to find a rental.

So, when we read statistics like Pew’s finding that AI Overviews reduce CTR by upwards of 50%, and then consider what happens when AI Mode hits the browser, it’s easy to worry about where your traffic goes. Add to that ChatGPT’s 700 million weekly active users (and growing):

And according to their research on how users engage with it:

We can see a clear TOFU hit and very little BOFU usage.

So, on top of the ~50% hit you may be taking from AI Overviews, 700+ million people are going to ChatGPT and other generative platforms for their top-of-funnel needs. 

I did exactly that above with my trip planning to the OBX.

Dig deeper: 5 B2B content types AI search engines love

Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.

See terms.

But wait!

The good news is that while that vacation rental company or blue widget manufacturer might not see me on their site when I’m figuring out what to do – or what a blue widget even is – I’m still going to take the same number of holidays and buy the same number of products I would have without AI Overviews or ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc.

Unless you’re a publisher or make money off impressions, you’ll still have the same amount of money to be made. 

It just might take fewer website visits to do it.

More about TOFU

Traffic at the bottom of the funnel is holding steady for now (more on that below), but the top of the funnel is being replaced quickly by generative conversations rather than visits. 

The question is whether being included in those conversations affects your CTR further down the funnel.

The folks at Seer Interactive found that organic clicks rose from 0.6% to 1.08% when a site was cited in AI Overviews. 

And while the traffic was far lower, ChatGPT had a conversion rate of 16% compared with Google organic’s 1.8%.

If we look at the conversion rate for organic traffic at the bottom of the funnel – which we saw above – it was 4.78%. 

Users who engage with generative engines clearly get further into their decision-making than users who reach BOFU queries through organic search. 

But why?

While I can’t be certain, I agree with Seer’s conclusion that AI-driven users are pre-sold during the TOFU stage. 

They’ve already encountered your brand and trust the system to interpret their needs. When it’s time to convert, they’re almost ready with their credit card.

Why bottom-funnel stability won’t last much longer

Above, I noted that “traffic at the bottom of the funnel is holding steady for now.”

It’s only fair to warn you that through 2026 and 2027, we’ll likely see this erode. 

The same number of people will still travel and still buy blue widgets. 

They just won’t book or buy them themselves. And at best, attribution will be even worse than it is today.

I spoke at SMX Advanced last spring about the rise of AI agents. 

I won’t get into all the gory details here, but the Cliff Notes are this:

Agents are AI systems with some autonomy that complete tasks humans otherwise would. 

They’re rising quickly – it’s the dominant topic for those of us working in AI – and that growth isn’t slowing anytime soon. You need to be ready.

A few concepts to familiarize yourself with, if you want to understand what’s coming, are:

  • AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol): A standard that allows agents to securely execute payments on your behalf. Think of it as a digital letter of credit that ensures the agent can only buy the specific “blue widget” you approved within the price limit you set. Before you say, “But I’d never send a machine to do a human’s job,” let me tell you, you will. And if you somehow prove me wrong individually out of spite, your customers will.
  • Gemini Computer Use Model API: A model with reasoning and image understanding that can navigate and engage with user interfaces like websites. While many agentic systems access data via APIs, this model (OpenAI has one too, as do others) lets the agent interact with visual interfaces to access information it normally couldn’t – navigating filters, logins, and more if given the power.
  • MCP (Model Context Protocol): An emerging standard acting as a universal USB port for AI apps. It lets agents safely connect to your internal data (like checking your calendar or reading your emails) to make purchasing decisions with full context and to work interactively with other agents. Hat tip to Ahrefs for building an awesome MCP server.

Dig deeper: How Model Context Protocol is shaping the future of AI and search marketing

Why do these protocols matter to a content strategist?

Because once AP2 and Computer Use hit critical mass, the click – that sacred metric we’ve optimized for two decades – changes function. 

It stops being a navigation step for a human exploring a website and becomes a transactional step for a machine executing a task.

If an agent uses Computer Use to navigate your pricing page and AP2 to pay for the subscription, the human user never sees your bottom-of-the-funnel content. 

So in that world, who – or rather, what – are you optimizing for?

This brings us back to the Siege Media data. 

Right now, pricing pages and calculators are winning because humans are using AI to research (TOFU and MOFU) and then manually visiting sites to convert (BOFU). 

But as agents take over execution, that manual visit disappears. The “traffic” to your pricing page may be bots verifying costs, not humans persuaded by your copy.

The 2026 strategy

This reality pushes value back up the funnel. 

If the agent handles the purchase, the human decision – the “moment of truth” – happens entirely inside the chat interface or agentic system during the research phase.

In this world, you don’t win by having the flashiest pricing page. 

You win by being the brand the LLM recommends when the user asks, “Who should I trust?”

Your strategy for 2026 requires a two-pronged approach:

  • For the agent (the execution): Ensure your BOFU content is technically flawless. Use clean schema, accessible APIs, and clear data structures so that when an agent arrives via MCP or Computer Use to execute a transaction, it encounters no friction.
  • For the human (the selection): Double down on TOFU. Focus on mentions and citations. You need to be the entity referenced in the generative answer so that users – and agents – trust you.

As we move toward 2026 and then 2027 (it’ll be here sooner than you think), the “click” will become a commodity more often handled by machines. 

The mention, however, remains the domain of human trust. And in my opinion, that’s where your next battle for visibility will be fought.

Time to start – or hopefully keep – making the TOFU.

Read more at Read More

How to evaluate your SEO tools in 2026 – and avoid budget traps

/0 Comments/in , /by
How to evaluate your SEO tools in 2026 – and avoid budget traps

Evaluating SEO tools has never been more complicated. 

Costs keep rising, and promises for new AI features are everywhere.

This combination is hardly convincing when you need leadership to approve a new tool or expand the budget for an existing one. 

Your boss still expects SEO to show business impact – not how many keywords or prompts you can track, how fast you can optimize content, or what your visibility score is. 

That is exactly where most tools still fail miserably.

The landscape adds even more friction. 

Features are bundled into confusing packages and add-on models, and the number of solutions has grown sharply in the last 12 months. 

Teams can spend weeks or even months comparing platforms only to discover they still cannot demonstrate clear ROI or the tools are simply out of budget.

If this sounds familiar, keep reading.

This article outlines a practical framework for evaluating your SEO tool stack in 2026, focusing on:

  • Must-have features.
  • A faster way to compare multiple tools.
  • How to approach vendor conversations.

The new realities of SEO tooling in 2026

Before evaluating vendors, it helps to understand the forces reshaping the SEO tooling landscape – and why many platforms are struggling to keep pace.

Leadership wants MQLs, not rankings

Both traditional and modern SEO tools still center on keyword and prompt tracking and visibility metrics. These are useful, but they are not enough to justify the rising prices.

In 2026, teams need a way to connect searches to traffic and then to MQLs and revenue. 

Almost no tool provides that link, which makes securing larger budgets nearly impossible. 

(I say “almost” because I have not tested every platform, so the unicorn may exist somewhere.)

AI agents raise expectations

With AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity – along with the ability to build custom GPTs, Gems, and Agents – teams can automate a wide range of tasks. 

That includes everything from simple content rewriting and keyword clustering to more complex competitor analysis and multi-step workflows.

Because of this, SEO tools now need to explain why they are better than a well-trained AI agent. 

Many can’t. This means that during evaluation, you inevitably end up asking a simple question: do you spend the time training your own agent, or do you buy a ready-made one?

Small teams need automation that truly saves time

If you want real impact, your automation shouldn’t be cosmetic. 

You can’t rely on generic checklists or basic AI recommendations, yet many tools still provide exactly that – fast checklists with no context.

Without context, automation becomes noise. It generates generic insights that are not tailored to your company, product, or market, and those insights will not save time or drive results.

Teams need automation that removes repetitive work and delivers better insights while genuinely giving time back.

Dig deeper: 11 of the best free tools every SEO should know about

A note on technical SEO tools

Technical SEO tools remain the most stable part of the SEO stack. 

The vendor landscape has not shifted dramatically, and most major platforms are innovating at a similar pace. 

Because of this, they do not require the same level of reevaluation as newer AI-driven categories.

That said, budgeting for them may still become challenging. 

Leadership often assumes AI can solve every problem, but we know that without strong technical performance, SEO, content, and AI efforts can easily fail.

I will also make one bold prediction – we should be prepared to expect the unexpected in this category. 

These platforms can crawl almost any site at scale and extract structured information, which could make them some of the most important and powerful tools in the stack.

Many already pull data from GA and GSC, and integrating with CRM or other data platforms may be only a matter of time. 

I see that as a likely 2026 development.

What must-have features actually look like in 2026

To evaluate tools effectively, it helps to focus on the capabilities that drive real impact. These are the ones worth prioritizing in 2026.

Advanced data analysis and blended data capabilities

Data analysis will play a much bigger role. 

Tools that let you blend data from GA, GSC, Salesforce, and similar sources will move you closer to the Holy Grail of SEO – understanding whether a prompt or search eventually leads to an MQL or a closed-won deal. 

This will never be a perfect science, but even a solid guesstimation is more useful than another visibility chart.

Integration maturity is becoming a competitive differentiator. 

Disconnected data remains the biggest barrier between SEO work and business attribution.

SERP intelligence for keywords and prompts

Traditional SERP intelligence remains essential. You still need:

  • Topic research and insights for top-ranking pages.
  • Competitor analysis.
  • Content gap insights.
  • Technical issues and ways to fix them.

You also need AI SERP intelligence, which analyzes:

  • How AI tools answer specific prompts.
  • What sources do they cite.
  • If your brand appears, and if your competitors are also mentioned.

In an ideal world, these two groups should appear side by side and provide you with a 360-degree view of your performance.

Automation with real-time savings

Prioritize tools that:

  • Cluster automatically.
  • Detect anomalies.
  • Provide prioritized recommendations for improvements.
  • Turn data into easy-to-understand insights.

These are just some of the examples of practical AI that can really guide you and save you time.

Strong multilingual support

This applies to SEO experts who work with websites in languages other than English. 

Many tools are still heavily English-centric. Before choosing a tool, make sure the databases, SERP tracking, and AI insights work across languages, not just English.

Transparent pricing and clear feature lists

Hidden pricing, confusing bundles, and multiple add-ons make evaluation frustrating. 

Tools should communicate clearly:

  • Which features they have.
  • All related limitations.
  • Whether a feature is part of the standard plan or an add-on.
  • When something from the standard plan moves to an add-on. 

Many vendors change these things quietly, which makes calculating the investment you need difficult and hard to justify. 

Dig deeper: How to choose the best AI visibility tool

Plus, some features that might be overhyped

AI writing

If you can’t input detailed information about your brand, product, and persona, the content you produce will be the same as everyone else’s. 

Many tools already offer this and can make your content sound as if it were written by one of your writers. 

So the question is whether you need a specialized tool or if a custom GPT can do the job.

Prompt tracking 

It’s positioned as the new rank tracking, but it is like looking at one pixel of your monitor. 

It gives you only a tiny clue of the whole picture. 

AI answers change based on personalization and small differences in prompts, and the variations are endless.

Still, this tactic is helpful in:

  • Providing directional signals.
  • Helping you benchmark brand presence.
  • Highlighting recurring themes AI platforms use.
  • Allowing competitive analysis within a controlled sample.

Large keyword databases

They still matter for directional research, but are not a true competitive differentiator. 

Most modern tools have enough coverage to guide your strategy. 

The value now stems from the practical insights derived from the data.

How to compare 10 tools without wasting your time

Understanding features is only half the equation. 

The real challenge is knowing how to evaluate specialized tools and all-in-one platforms without losing your sanity or blocking your team for weeks. 

After going through this process for the tenth time, I’ve found an approach that works for me.

Step 1: Start with the pricing page

I always begin my evaluation on the pricing page. 

With one page, you can get a clear sense of: 

  • All features.
  • Limitations.
  • Which ones fall under add-ons.
  • The general structure of the pricing tiers. 

Even if you need a demo to get the exact price, the framework should still be relatively transparent.

Step 2: Test using your normal weekly work

No checklist will show you more than trying your regular BAU tasks with a couple of tools in parallel. 

This reveals:

  • How long each task takes.
  • What insights appear or disappear.
  • What feels smoother or more clunky.

How difficult the setup is – including whether the learning curve is huge. 

I work in a small team, and a tool that takes many hours just to set up likely will not make my final list.

Not all evaluations can rely on BAU tasks. 

For example, when we researched tools for prompt and AI visibility tracking, we tested more than ten platforms. 

This capability did not exist in our stack, and at first, we had no idea what to check. 

In those cases, you need to define a small set of test scenarios from scratch and compare how each tool performs. 

Continue refining your scenarios, because each new evaluation will teach you something new.

Dig deeper: Want to improve rankings and traffic? Stop blindly following SEO tool recommendations

Step 3: Always get a free trial

Demos are polished. Reality often is not. 

If there is no option for a free trial, either walk away or, if the tool is not too expensive, pay for a month.

Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.

See terms.

Step 4: Involve only the people who will actually use the tool

Always ask yourself who truly needs to be involved in the evaluation. 

For example, we are currently assessing a platform used not only by the SEO team but also by two other teams. 

We asked those teams for a brief summary of their requirements, but until we have a shortlist, there is no reason to involve them further or slow the process. 

And if your company has a heavy procurement or security review, involving too many people too early will slow everything down even more.

At the same time, involve the whole SEO team, because each person will see different strengths and weaknesses and everyone will rely on the tool.

Step 5: Evaluate results, not features

Many features sound like magic wands. 

In reality, the magic often works only sometimes, or it works but is very expensive. To understand what you truly need, always ask yourself:

  • Did the tool save time?
  • Did it surface insights that my current stack does not?
  • Could a custom GPT do this instead?
  • Does the price make sense for my team, and can I prove its ROI?

These questions turn the decision into a business conversation rather than a feature debate and help you prepare your “sales” pitch for your boss.

Step 6: Evaluate support quality, not just product features

Support has become one of the most overlooked parts of tool evaluation. 

Many platforms rely heavily on AI chat and automated replies, which can be extremely frustrating when you are dealing with a time-sensitive issue or have to explain your problem multiple times.

Support quality can significantly affect your team’s efficiency, especially in small teams with limited resources. 

When evaluating tools, check:

  • How easy it is to reach a human.
  • What response times look like.
  • Whether the vendor offers onboarding or ongoing guidance. 

A great product with weak support can quickly become a bottleneck.

Once you have a shortlist, the quality of your vendor conversations will determine how quickly you can move forward. 

And this may be the hardest part – especially for the introverted SEO leads, myself included.

How to navigate vendor conversations

I’m practical, and I don’t like wasting anyone’s time. I have plenty of tasks waiting, so fluff conversations aren’t helpful. 

That’s why I start every vendor call by setting clear goals, limitations, a timeline, and next steps. 

Over time, I’ve learned that conversations run much more smoothly when I follow a few simple principles.

Be prepared for meetings

If you are evaluating a tool, come prepared to the demo. 

Ideally, you should have access to a free trial, tested the platform, and created a list of practical questions. 

Showing up unprepared is not a good sign, and that applies to both sides.

For example, I am always impressed when a vendor joins the conversation having already researched who we are, what we do, and who our competitors are. 

If you have spoken with the vendor before, directly ask what has changed since your last discussion.

Ask for competitor comparisons

When comparing a few tools, I always ask each vendor for a direct comparison. 

These comparisons will be biased, but collecting them from all sides can reveal insights I had not considered and give me ideas for specific things to test. 

Often, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Ask how annual contracts influence pricing

Annual contracts reduce administrative work and give vendors room to negotiate, which can lead to better pricing. 

Many tools include this information on their pricing pages, and we have all seen it. 

Ask about any other nuances that might affect the final price – such as additional user seats or add-ons.

Don’t start from scratch with vendors you know

Often, the most effective approach is simply to say:

“This is our budget. This is what we need. Can you support this?”

This works especially well with vendors you have used before because both sides already know each other.

What to consider from a business perspective

Even if you select a tool, that does not mean you will receive the budget for it.

Proving ROI is especially difficult with SEO tools. But there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of getting a yes.

Present at least three alternatives in every request

This shows you have done your homework, not just picked the first thing you found. Present your leadership with:

  • The criteria you used in your evaluation.
  • Pros and cons of each tool.
  • The business case and why the capability is needed.
  • What happens if you do not buy the tool.

Providing this view builds trust in your ability to make decisions.

Avoid overselling

Tools improve efficiency, but they cannot guarantee outcomes – especially in SEO, GEO, or whatever you call it. 

Spend time explaining how quickly things are changing and how many factors are outside your control. Managing expectations will strengthen your team’s credibility.

But even with thorough evaluation and negotiation, we still face the same issue: the SEO tooling market has not caught up with what companies now expect. 

Let’s hope the future brings something closer to the clarity we see in Google Ads.

Dig deeper: How to master the enterprise SEO procurement process

The future of the SEO tool stack

The next generation of SEO tools must move beyond vanity metrics. 

Trained AI agents and custom GPTs can already automate much of the work.

In a landscape where companies want to reduce employee and operational costs, you need concrete business numbers to justify high tool prices. 

The platforms that can connect searches, traffic, and revenue will become the new premium category in SEO technology.

For now, most SEO teams will continue to hear “no” when requesting budgets because that connection does not yet exist. 

And the moment a tool finally solves this attribution problem, it will redefine the entire SEO technology market.

Read more at Read More

AI tools for PPC, AI search, and social campaigns: What’s worth using now

/0 Comments/in , /by
AI tools for PPC, AI search, and social campaigns: What’s worth using now

In 2026 and well beyond, a core part of the performance marketer’s charter is learning to leverage AI to drive growth and efficiency. 

Anyone who isn’t actively evaluating new AI tools to improve or streamline their PPC work is doing their brand or clients a disservice.

The challenge is that keeping up with these tools has become almost a full-time job, which is why my agency has made AI a priority in our structured knowledge-sharing. 

As a team, we’ve honed in on favorites across creative, campaign management, and AI search measurement. 

This article breaks down key options in each category, with brief reviews and a callout of my current pick.

One overarching recommendation before we dive in: be cautious about signing long-term contracts for AI tools or platforms. 

At the pace things are moving, the tool that catches your eye in December could be an afterthought by April.

AI creative tools for paid social campaigns

There’s no shortage of tools that can generate creative assets, and each comes with benefits as well as the risks of producing AI slop. 

Regardless of the tool you choose, it must be thoroughly vetted and supported by a strong human-in-the-loop process to ensure quality, accuracy, and brand alignment.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the tools we’ve tested:

  • AdCreative.ai: Auto-generates images, video creatives, ad copy, and headlines in multiple sizes, with data-backed scoring for outputs.
  • Creatify: Particularly strong on video ads with multi-format support.
  • WASK: Combines AI creative generation with campaign optimization and competitor analysis.
  • Revid AI: Well-suited for story formats.
  • ChatGPT: Free and widely familiar, giving marketers an edge in effective prompting.

Our current tool of choice is AdCreative.ai. It’s easy to use and especially helpful for quickly brainstorming creative angles and variations to test. 

Like its competitors, it offers meaningful advantages, including:

  • Speed and scale that allow you to generate dozens or hundreds of variants in minutes to keep creative fresh and reduce ad fatigue.
  • Less reliance on external designers or editors for routine or templated outputs.
  • Rapid creative experimentation across images, copy, and layouts to find winning combinations faster.
  • Data-driven insights, such as creative scores or performance predictions, when available.

The usual caveats apply across all creative tools:

  • Build guardrails to avoid off-brand outputs by maintaining a strong voice guide, providing exemplar content, enforcing style rules and banned words, and ensuring human review at every step.
  • Watch for accuracy issues or hallucinations and include verification in your process, especially for technical claims, data, or legal copy. 

Dig deeper: How to get smarter with AI in PPC

AI campaign management and workflow tools for performance campaigns

There are plenty of workflow automation tools on the market, including long-standing options, like Zapier, Workato, and Microsoft Power Automate. 

Our preferred choice, though, is n8n. Its agentic workflows and built-in connections across ad platforms, CRMs, and reporting tools have been invaluable in automating redundant tasks.

Here are my agency’s primary use cases for n8n:

  • Lead management: Automatically enrich new leads from HubSpot or Salesforce with n8n’s Clearbit automation, then route them to the right rep or nurture sequence.
  • UTM cleanup: When a form fill or ad conversion comes in, automatically normalize UTM parameters before pushing them to your CRM. Some systems, like HubSpot, store values in fields such as “first URL seen” that aren’t parsed into UTM fields, so UTMs remain associated with the user but aren’t stored properly and require reconciliation.
  • Data reporting: Pull metrics from APIs, structure the data, and use AI to summarize insights. Reports can then be shared via Slack and email, or dropped into collaborative tools like Google Docs.

As with any tool, n8n comes with caveats to keep in mind:

  • It requires some technical ability because it’s low-code, not no-code. You often need to understand APIs, JSON, and authentication, such as OAuth or API keys. Even basic automations may involve light logic or expressions. Integrations with less mainstream tools can require scripting.
  • You need a deliberate setup to maintain security. There’s no built-in role-based access control in all configurations unless you use n8n Cloud Enterprise. Misconfigured webhooks can expose data if not handled properly.
  • Its ad platform integrations aren’t as broad as those of some competitors. For example, it doesn’t include LinkedIn Ads, Reddit Ads, or TikTok Ads. These can be added via direct API calls, but that takes more manual work.

Dig deeper: Top AI tools and tactics you should be using in PPC

Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.

See terms.

AI search visibility measurement tools

Most SEOs already have preferred platforms for measurement and insights – Semrush, Moz, SE Ranking, and others. 

While many now offer reports on brand visibility in AI search results from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and similar tools, these features are add-ons to products built for traditional SEO.

To track how our brands show up in AI search results, we use Profound. 

While other purpose-built tools exist, we’ve found that it offers differentiated persona-level and competitor-level analysis and ties its reporting to strategic levers like content and PR or sentiment, making it clear how to act on the data.

These platforms can provide near real-time insights such as:

  • Performance benchmarks that show AI visibility against competitors to highlight strengths and weaknesses.
  • Content and messaging intel, including the language AI uses to describe brands and their solutions, which can inform thought leadership and messaging refinement.
  • Signals that show whether your efforts are improving the consistency and favorability of brand mentions in AI answers.
  • Trends illustrating how generative AI is reshaping search results and user behavior.
  • Insights beyond linear keyword rankings that reveal the narratives AI models generate about your company, competitors, and industry.
  • Gaps and opportunities to address to influence how your brand appears in AI answers.

No matter which tool you choose, the key is to adopt one quickly. 

The more data you gather on rapidly evolving AI search trends, the more agile you can be in adjusting your strategy to capture the growing share of users turning to AI tools during their purchase journey.

Dig deeper: Scaling PPC with AI automation: Scripts, data, and custom tools

What remains true as the AI toolset keeps shifting

I like to think most of my content for this publication ages well, but I’m not expecting this one to follow suit. 

Anyone reading it a few months after it runs will likely see it as more of a time capsule than a set of current recommendations – and that’s fine.

What does feel evergreen is the need to:

  • Monitor the AI landscape.
  • Aggressively test new tools and features.
  • Build or maintain a strong knowledge-sharing function across your team. 

We’re well past head-in-the-sand territory with AI in performance marketing, yet there’s still room for differentiation among teams that move quickly, test strategically, and pivot together as needed.

Dig deeper: AI agents in PPC: What to know and build today

Read more at Read More

Judge limits Google’s default search deals to one year

/0 Comments/in , /by

Google is being forced to cap all default search and AI app deals at one year. This will end the long-term agreements (think: Apple, Samsung) that helped secure its default status on billions of devices. Just don’t expect this to end Google’s search dynasty anytime soon.

Driving the news. Judge Amit Mehta on Friday called the one-year cap a “hard-and-fast termination requirement” needed to enforce antitrust remedies after his 2024 ruling that Google illegally monopolized search and search ads, Business Insider reported. In September, Mehta ruled on Google search deals:

  • “Google will be barred from entering or maintaining any exclusive contract relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app. Google shall not enter or maintain any agreement that
    • (1) conditions the licensing of the Play Store or any other Google application on the distribution, preloading, or placement of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app anywhere on a device;
    • (2) conditions the receipt of revenue share payments for the placement of one Google application (e.g., Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app) on the placement of another such application;
    • (3) conditions the receipt of revenue share payments on maintaining Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app on any device, browser, or search access point for more than one year; or
    • (4) prohibits any partner from simultaneously distributing any other GSE, browser, or GenAI product search access point for more than one year; or (4) prohibits any partner from simultaneously distributing any other GSE, browser, or GenAI product.”

Why we care. A more fragmented search landscape means user queries could start anywhere. If AI-powered rivals like OpenAI, Perplexity, or Microsoft make even small gains in search, you’ll face a broader and more complicated world to compete in.

Reality check. This is a speed bump, not a shake-up. Google’s cash, brand power, and user habits still give it a big edge in yearly talks.

Read more at Read More

Google denies ads are coming to Gemini in 2026

/0 Comments/in , /by

AdWeek reported that Google told clients it plans to add ads to its Gemini AI chatbot in 2026, but Google’s top ads executive is publicly denying it.

Driving the news. Google reps reportedly told major advertisers on recent calls that Gemini would get its own ad placements in 2026, according to Adweek. This is separate from the ads already running in AI Mode, the AI-powered search experience Google launched in March.

  • Buyers said they saw no prototypes, formats, or pricing.
  • They described the conversations as exploratory and light on technical detail.

Google says that’s wrong. Dan Taylor, Google’s VP of Global Ads, disputed the report directly on X, writing:

  • “This story is based on uninformed, anonymous sources who are making inaccurate claims. There are no ads in the Gemini app and there are no current plans to change that.”

Why we care. Advertisers are watching closely for monetization inside AI assistants, which many see as the next major ad frontier. Conflicting signals about ads in Gemini hint at where Google may take AI monetization, even as the company denies any immediate plans. Any move to add paid placements to a high-engagement chatbot could reshape budgets, shift user behavior, and create a new ad surface separate from search.

Between the lines. There is a great debate over whether AI chatbots should stay pure utility tools or evolve into new ad surfaces. Even early speculation about ads inside Gemini is already prompting agencies to start planning.

What’s next. For now, Google says Gemini is still ad-free. But rivals are already testing ways to make money from AI, and advertisers are eager for new places to run ads. The debate over ads in Gemini isn’t going away – only the timeline is shifting.

Adweek’s report. EXCLUSIVE: Google Tells Advertisers It’ll Bring Ads to Gemini in 2026

Read more at Read More

November 2025 Digital Marketing Roundup: What Changed and What You Should Do About It

/0 Comments/in /by

November pushed the industry further into AI-shaped discovery. Search behaviors shifted. Platforms tightened control. Visibility started depending less on who publishes most and more on who earns trust across the ecosystem.

AI summaries reached Google Discover. ChatGPT released a browser. TikTok exposed true attribution paths. Meta refined placements. Google rolled out guardrails for AI-written ads. Social platforms changed how your data trains models. Streaming dominated households, and schema picked up a new strategic role.

Here’s what mattered most and how to stay ahead.

Key Takeaways

• AI is rewriting the click path. Google Discover summaries and AI Overviews are reducing CTRs across categories.
• Cross-channel influence is becoming measurable. TikTok attribution now shows how much value standard reporting misses.
• Visibility depends on authority across ecosystems, not just your site. LLMs pull from places brands often ignore.
• Platforms are tightening data controls and usage rules. Expect stricter compliance requirements across ads and content.
• Structured data has moved from “SEO extra” to critical infrastructure for AI-driven search.

Search & AI Evolution

AI is now shaping what users see before they click and in many cases, removing the need to click at all.

AI summaries hit Google Discover

Google added AI-generated recaps to Discover for news and sports stories. Users now get context from summaries instead of visiting publisher sites.

Our POV: Discover has been one of the few remaining high-intent traffic drivers untouched by AI. That buffer is gone. Zero-click consumption will rise.

What to do next: Track Discover CTR in Analytics. Refresh headline structure and imagery to compete with summaries. Expand content distribution beyond traditional articles, since Discover now surfaces YouTube, X, and other formats.

ChatGPT releases an AI-powered browser

ChatGPT Atlas launched with built-in summarization, product comparison, agent actions, and persistent memory settings.

ChatGPT Atlas's interface.

Our POV: The browser itself isn’t the threat. The shift in user behavior is. People will expect AI to interpret pages for them, not just display them.

What to do next: Strengthen structured data. Audit category and product pages for clarity. Start monitoring brand visibility inside AI-driven search using LLM-aware tools.

AI Overviews drive a drop in search CTRs

A new study shows that when AI Overviews appear, both organic and paid clicks fall sharply. They currently trigger for about fifteen percent of queries, most of them high-volume informational searches.

Paid and organic CTR trends driven by AI Overviews.

Our POV: AI Overviews function like a competitor. If your content doesn’t get pulled into the summary, discovery becomes significantly harder.

What to do next: Optimize for inclusion. Use schema, succinct summaries, and expert signals. Track performance beyond rankings. Visibility inside AI answers must become a KPI you can track through tools like Profound.

Schema’s new role in AI-driven discovery

Schema moved from a snippet enhancer to a foundational layer for machine understanding. W3C’s NLWeb group is helping standardize how AI agents consume the web.

Our POV: Schema is now infrastructure. AI agents need structured context to interpret brands, products, and expertise.

What to do next: Expand schema sitewide. Prioritize entity definitions, not just rich result templates. Add relationships between key content pieces to help machines map authority.

Paid Media & Automation

Platforms are folding more automation into ad delivery. Control now comes from strategy, not settings.

Google adds Waze to PMax

PMax can now serve location-targeted ads inside Waze for store-focused campaigns.

Our POV: This extends real-world intent targeting. For multi-location brands, Waze becomes a measurable foot-traffic lever.

What to do next: Audit store listings and geo-extensions. Monitor budget shifts once Waze impressions begin flowing. Validate whether foot-traffic lifts justify expanded proximity targeting.

Asset-level display reporting rolls out

Google Ads added per-asset reporting for Display campaigns. Marketers can now evaluate individual images, headlines, and copy.

Our POV: Better visibility helps refine creative, but it’s only part of the truth. Placement, bid strategy, and audience still determine performance.

What to do next: Organize assets with naming conventions before rollout hits your account. Use data to retire low-impact creatives and test new variants.

Meta introduces limited-spend placements

Advertisers can allocate up to five percent of budget toward excluded placements when Meta predicts performance upside.

Our POV: This creates a middle ground between strict exclusions and Advantage+ automation. It reduces risk without cutting off potential high-efficiency wins.

What to do next: A/B test manual vs. limited-spend placement setups. Evaluate cost per result and incremental conversions instead of pure CPM efficiency.

Social & Content Trends

Brands are being pushed into new storytelling styles, shaped by identity, utility, and AI-assisted behaviors.

Lifestyle branding gains momentum

Consumers are gravitating toward brands tied to identity and aspiration. Affordable luxury and status signaling are driving engagement.

Our POV: Features alone don’t move people. Identity and belonging do. If your copy focuses only on product attributes, you’re leaving impact on the table.

What to do next: Rework product messaging to show how your offering fits into a buyer’s desired lifestyle. Update CTAs, social captions, and headlines to evoke identity.

LLM-briefed CTAs redefine engagement

CXL tested CTAs that include a ready-made prompt for ChatGPT. Engagement improved because users received higher-quality AI outputs.

An example of an LLM-informed CTA.

Our POV: As users ask AI to interpret brand content, shaping the question becomes part of conversion optimization.

What to do next: Experiment with prompt-style CTAs in guides, templates, and tools. Test which phrasing drives more accurate and useful AI interpretations.

Influencer partners expand beyond typical creators

Brands are leaning into unconventional creators; think niche experts, offbeat personalities, and micro-communities.

Our POV: As traditional influencer pools saturate, originality becomes a differentiator.

What to do next: Identify unexpected storytellers your competitors ignore. Prioritize people with unique voices and strong community trust over polished aesthetics.

PR, Reputation & Brand Risk

Data control, AI training, and brand representation became major flashpoints in November.

Reddit files legal action over AI scraping

Four companies allegedly scraped Reddit content through Google search results instead of its paid API. Reddit is suing.

Our POV: Reddit is a major training source for LLMs. Legal pressure will reshape how models access user-generated content.

What to do next: Monitor how your brand appears in Reddit threads. Insights from these conversations often influence AI outputs, even indirectly.

LinkedIn will use member data to train AI

LinkedIn updated its policy to allow profile content and posts to train in-house models unless users opt out.

Our POV: This raises transparency questions and could affect brand safety for professional voices.

What to do next: Review employee account settings. Update your governance policies to clarify how team-generated content may be reused.

ChatGPT reduces brand mentions

ChatGPT lowered brand references per response while elevating trusted entities like Wikipedia and Reddit.

A graphic showing reduced brand mentions by ChatGPT.

Our POV: Authority now comes from third-party validation, not just your site. If you’re missing from high-trust platforms, AI tools won’t surface you consistently.

What to do next: Strengthen your presence on Wikipedia, industry directories, and review platforms. Build citations that AI models depend on.

AI search tools mention different brands for the same queries

BrightEdge found almost zero overlap between brands recommended by Google’s AI Overview and ChatGPT.

Our POV: Each model prioritizes different signals based on its training data. Ranking in one environment doesn’t guarantee visibility in another.

What to do next: Expand Digital PR efforts beyond search. Build authority in the sources each LLM favors.

Streaming & Media Shifts

Streaming hits ninety-one percent of U.S. households

Homes now average six subscriptions and spend over one hundred dollars per month on streaming.

Our POV: Streaming is now a core channel for shaping intent long before search happens.

What to do next: Add OTT to your awareness mix. Use it to influence demand before users reach paid search or social ads.

Conclusion

AI pushed every channel toward greater automation, heavier reliance on structure, and stricter expectations for authority. Success now depends on clarity, credibility, and presence across platforms that train and inform AI, not just traditional search engines.

Brands that adapt their data, content, and distribution strategies now will stay visible as user behavior shifts.

Need help applying these insights? Talk to the NP Digital team. We’re already working with brands to navigate these changes and rebuild visibility in an AI-first world.

Read more at Read More