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LinkedIn Video Uploads Jump 36% 😱 Instagram And TikTok Now Lead Buying Journey For Gen Z 🛍️ New Performance Max Tools And Updates 🥳

Also: OpenAI Unveils Agent For 'Deep Research'

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🗞 Marketing News

LinkedIn Video Uploads Jump 36% [2 min read]

LinkedIn is experiencing substantial growth in video engagement, with uploads up 36% year-over-year and platform video creation doubling, alongside reaching over 1 billion users and seeing a 9% revenue increase. The platform is expanding its video capabilities by rolling out full-screen vertical video display for all users, allowing them to swipe or click through videos in their feed, though it hasn't yet fully embraced the TikTok-style experience. To boost engagement, LinkedIn is introducing new features including profile previews within videos, video carousels in search results, and creator analytics tools for tracking watch times, signaling a strategic push into video while maintaining its professional networking focus.

Google Falls As Instagram And TikTok Now Lead Buying Journey For GenZ [2 min read]

A major shift in product discovery patterns shows Instagram and TikTok surpassing Google as the primary platforms for Gen Z consumers aged 18-27, while older generations maintain their preference for traditional search engines. Social commerce continues its rapid growth, with 62% of respondents making direct purchases through social media apps and U.S. sales projected to exceed $100 billion in 2025, marking a 22.4% increase. Short-form video has emerged as the preferred content format across all age groups, with platforms responding by expanding their commerce capabilities to include features like interactive shopping tags and direct checkout, as users increasingly engage with video content showing products in use rather than static images.

New Performance Max Tools And Updates [5 min read]

Microsoft is rolling out several new Performance Max tools, including LinkedIn Profile targeting in major markets, enhanced reporting capabilities, and new customer acquisition strategies, while completing the transition of smart shopping campaigns to the Performance Max platform. The company has globally expanded its unique impression-based remarketing feature, which is now available worldwide including China and can be managed through Microsoft Ads Editor, enabling advertisers to reach audiences throughout the marketing funnel. Also, Microsoft has introduced multi-format campaigns for Audience ads, allowing advertisers to manage native, display, and video formats within a single campaign, streamlining budget management and targeting across different ad formats.

🤖 AI

OpenAI Unveils Agent For 'Deep Research' [4 min read] ❤️

OpenAI introduced a new feature designed for intensive knowledge work in fields like finance, science, policy, and engineering, taking 5-30 minutes to generate thorough, well-cited responses from multiple sources. The feature is powered by a specialized version of OpenAI's o3 "reasoning" AI model, which has demonstrated superior performance with 26.6% accuracy on Humanity's Last Exam, significantly outperforming competitors like Gemini Thinking and Grok-2. The rollout begins with ChatGPT Pro users who will be limited to 100 queries per month, with plans to expand to Plus and Team users followed by Enterprise users, though the initial launch excludes the UK, Switzerland, and the European Economic Area.

The Rise Of The 10X Marketers And AI Native Teams [9 min read]

A new category of "10X AI Marketers" is emerging who can achieve exponentially better results by leveraging artificial intelligence to automate and optimize their work processes. This shift is driving a fundamental transformation in marketing team structures, moving away from traditional siloed roles toward integrated "AI-native pods" where marketers function as systems orchestrators rather than individual contributors. Success in this new paradigm requires a comprehensive skill set combining technical capabilities like automation, coding, and prompt engineering with strategic thinking and adaptability, all supported by an evolving stack of AI tools and platforms.

Investigating ChatGPT Search: Insights From 80 Million Clickstream Records [11 min read]

Research reveals that ChatGPT has experienced dramatic growth as a traffic referrer, expanding from 10,000 to over 30,000 unique domains daily between July and November 2024. ChatGPT queries are fundamentally different from traditional search patterns, with 70% of queries falling outside conventional search intent categories and users writing significantly longer prompts when not using the search feature. The platform's impact is particularly strong in educational and technical sectors, with a user base that skews younger and more student-heavy than traditional search engines like Google, suggesting a shift in how newer generations interact with and discover information online.

🧠 Hacks & Tactics

9 SMS Segments: Increase Engagement & Drive Sales [6 min read]

SMS marketing is highly effective, with a significant percentage of consumers making purchases after receiving promotional texts. By creating targeted SMS segments, such as highly engaged subscribers and location-based groups, brands can enhance engagement and optimize their marketing efforts. Strategic management of SMS communications, including re-engaging inactive users and addressing delivery issues, is important for maximizing the impact of an SMS marketing strategy.

Master Influencer Gifting: 7 Non-Obvious Tips For Brands [10 min read]

Brands should focus on personalizing influencer gifting by tailoring products and messaging to make influencers feel valued as individuals. Combining no-strings-attached gifts with barter deals can maximize campaign effectiveness, balancing authenticity with predictable content outcomes. Also, offering product choices and carefully selecting influencers can increase engagement and ensure long-term success in gifting strategies.

5 Ways To Incorporate Trends Into Your SEO Content Strategy [9 min read]

Incorporating trends into your SEO strategy involves creating timely content that captures audience interest before competitors, re-optimizing existing content with trending keywords to maintain and boost visibility, and leveraging or even driving trends through broader activities like digital PR and influencer marketing. Using tools like Glimpse and Google Trends can help identify emerging trends, and enable brands to stand out and connect meaningfully with their audience. By proactively integrating trends, brands can enhance their visibility, engagement, and overall search performance.

⚙️ Machine Shop

It Now Takes 12 To 15 Touches Before Prospects Are Ready To Meet With Sales [7 min read]

Engaging prospects effectively requires a strategic and persistent approach that acknowledges the increasing difficulty of capturing attention in a crowded marketplace. To reach prospects successfully, a multi-channel strategy combining personalized emails, LinkedIn messages, and relevant content like videos and blog articles is essential. Continuous optimization and careful monitoring of these efforts are vital for successfully moving prospects along their buyer journey toward a sales meeting.

How To Close More Sales With Emotion-Driven SEO [19 min read]

Incorporating emotion into SEO content is essential for resonating with audiences and aligning with Google's people-first guidelines. Specific strategies like mapping emotion to search intent, using power words, and leveraging storytelling can make content more engaging and effective. This emotion-driven approach enhances organic search performance and boosts sales by creating deeper connections with audiences.

Driving Paid Traffic To A Landing Page Vs. Product Page: What Is Better? [14 min read]

Landing pages are designed to align with specific marketing campaigns, guiding users through a targeted journey, while product pages provide detailed information for customers ready to make a purchase. It's generally more effective to drive traffic to landing pages for a seamless user experience, except when users are searching for a specific product, which may justify sending them directly to a product page. To optimize landing pages, it's important to focus on clear, benefit-oriented messaging, align content with the audience, and minimize distractions to maximize conversions.

🔮 The Future

6 Common Manual Bidding Mistakes To Avoid [11 min read]

As Google phases out enhanced CPC bidding by March 2025, advertisers must choose between automated smart bidding and manual CPC bidding, making it important for marketers to understand proper manual bid management. Success with manual CPC bidding requires implementing a systematic review process with different timeframes - from weekly adjustments for immediate performance to quarterly reviews for strategic changes and long-term analysis to catch underperforming keywords. Beyond just adjusting keyword bids, effective manual CPC management demands attention to appropriate bid adjustment percentages, multiple bid modifiers like audiences and devices, and various lookback windows while maintaining regular monitoring of key performance indicators like Cost Per Acquisition.

The End Of Search, The Beginning Of Research [8 min read]

A major breakthrough in AI has emerged from the convergence of two key developments - Reasoners and agents - as demonstrated by OpenAI's Deep Research, which can now conduct research with human-expert-level depth but at machine speed. Reasoners mark a fundamental advance in AI "thinking" by producing "thinking tokens" before answering, allowing for improved problem-solving through longer computation time rather than requiring larger models. While general-purpose AI agents still face significant limitations, narrow agents focused on specific tasks are already proving valuable, as shown by the contrast between Operator's struggles with general tasks and Deep Research's ability to produce PhD-level analysis in minutes.

No, AI Is Not Going To Kill SEO [6 min read]

SEO remains fundamentally about user intent and discovery across all platforms, whether through traditional search engines or new AI interfaces, making it just as relevant in an AI-driven future as it is today. The continued importance of well-structured, high-quality content is reinforced by AI systems, which need to pull information from existing websites to provide accurate and helpful responses to users. While AI can analyze data and generate content, the human elements of SEO - creativity, empathy, and deep understanding of audience needs - remain irreplaceable, ensuring that authentic, original content will continue to outperform generic AI-generated material.

Google Has 'Very Good Ideas' for Ads In Gemini [2 min read]

Google has unveiled plans for native advertising in their Gemini AI platform, though they're prioritizing user experience first and likely won't implement ads until after 2025. Gemini's reach continues to expand significantly, with AI Overviews available in over 100 countries and Circle to Search running on more than 200 million devices, while new developments like Project Mariner and Project Astra promise to enhance its capabilities further. The company's advertising business remains robust with a $110 billion run rate at the end of 2024, and notably, AI Overviews ads are performing at comparable rates to traditional Google Search ads, suggesting successful integration of AI into their revenue model.

👩‍🏫 Vocab

Marketing Funnel: A model that describes the journey customers take from first learning about your brand to making a purchase. The funnel typically moves from awareness to interest, consideration, and finally conversion. It helps marketers plan different strategies for each stage of the customer's decision process.

Example: A car dealership uses ads to create awareness, offers test drives to build interest, provides financing options during consideration, and closes sales with special deals.

Conversion Rate Optimization: The systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take desired actions like making a purchase or signing up. It involves testing and improving website elements to make them more effective. CRO uses data to make decisions about design, content, and functionality changes.

Example: An online store tests different button colors, product descriptions, and checkout processes to increase the number of completed purchases.

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