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Instagram Introducing 'Testimonials' ⭐️ Is YouTube Still An Underrated Marketing Channel? 😳 Not Appearing In Google AI Overviews Causes Significant Harm? 😬

Also: Anthropic Launches New AI Model That 'Thinks' As Long As You Want

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🗞 Marketing News

Instagram Expanding Partnership Ads With 'Testimonials' [2 min read]

Instagram will allow creators to earn money through brief written endorsements that appear as comments on brands' posts and advertisements. These testimonials and Partnership Ads are designed to offer creators higher payouts by letting them charge more when brands put ad spend behind their content, while simultaneously helping creators reach larger audiences. The monetization system works through a negotiated process where creators either develop new content following brand requirements or leverage their previous content through account-level permissions for long-term partnerships or content-specific "ad codes" for one-off collaborations.

Is YouTube An Underrated Marketing Channel Right Now? [8 min read]

YouTube dominates reach across demographics, particularly among teens where it surpasses both TikTok and Instagram, making it an underutilized platform for marketers targeting younger audiences. The platform's ad revenue has grown dramatically from $8.15 billion in 2017 to $36.15 billion in 2024, now representing 13.66% of Google's total revenue and offering the highest ROI increase (11%) compared to other platforms. YouTube provides versatile content formats that perform well across devices, from highly engaging Shorts for brand awareness to longer content on both mobile and Connected TV, where viewing has grown substantially with TV screens rising from 26% to 39% in ad campaign share in just one year.

Study Finds Not Appearing In Google AI Overviews Significantly Harms Webpages [3 min read]

Webpages featured in Google's AI Overviews receive significantly more traffic than excluded ones, with included pages getting 2-3.6 times more clicks depending on query type and ranking position. The impact varies by query intent, with informational queries redirecting traffic from top positions while benefiting lower positions, whereas transactional queries show benefits for included pages regardless of position. This dramatic shift in traffic patterns is causing industry concern, with companies like Chegg pursuing legal action against Google while others report varying degrees of impact on their traffic and revenue.

🤖 AI

OpenAI Plans To Shift Compute Needs From Microsoft To SoftBank [1 min read]

OpenAI plans to significantly shift its computing infrastructure, moving 75% of its data center capacity from Microsoft to the SoftBank-backed Stargate project by 2030, though this transition will be gradual with continued Microsoft investment in the near term. The company anticipates dramatic cost increases, projecting a $20 billion cash burn in 2027 compared to $5 billion in 2024. By 2030, OpenAI expects its model inference costs will exceed training costs as part of this major operational transformation.

Anthropic Launches New AI Model That 'Thinks' As Long As You Want [4 min read]

Claude 3.7 Sonnet is the industry's first "hybrid AI reasoning model" that combines real-time responses with extended reasoning capabilities for complex questions, though only paying customers will access the full reasoning features. The new model, priced at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, outperforms competitors on benchmark tests and reduces unnecessary refusals by 45% compared to previous Claude versions. Alongside this release, Anthropic is introducing Claude Code, an agentic terminal tool that enables developers to analyze and modify codebases using natural language commands, currently available as a limited research preview.

50 Unique Ways To Use AI Deep Research For Marketing [23 min read]

OpenAI's Deep Research mode and similar AI tools offer marketers significant time savings by providing detailed, citation-backed research reports that draw from multiple specified sources. These powerful research tools can be applied across numerous marketing functions including competitor analysis, SEO strategy, campaign planning, social media optimization, customer engagement, testing, content creation, and specialized techniques. Deep research AI streamlines the typically "boring" analytical aspects of marketing strategy that marketers often skip over, with more specific prompts consistently yielding substantially better results than broad queries.

🧠 Hacks & Tactics

The Tiny Layout Tweak That Led To 20% More Conversions [7 min read]

A subtle layout modification at HubSpot yielded impressive results when they relocated customer logos to a slim slider beneath the hero banner while maintaining testimonials at the bottom, leading to a 19.5% increase in software signups. The importance of testing such changes became evident when their attempt to replace testimonials with data points actually decreased conversions by 10%, demonstrating that not all intuitive changes produce positive outcomes. Success with such modifications requires following three key principles: basing decisions on data-driven insights rather than hunches, considering the specific context of visitor intent, and thoroughly validating results after implementation to catch any unintended consequences.

You Should Post Your Best Social Content Again And Again [4 min read]

Social media managers should embrace reposting content since most of their audience hasn't seen it in the first place, with small brands typically reaching only 32% of followers and larger brands reaching just 12%. Previously successful content can actually perform even better when reposted, as demonstrated by the author's personal example where a basketball video increased from 1 million to 2.8 million views when reshared a year later with a larger following. Beyond improved reach, reusing content provides significant operational benefits, as dedicating one day per week to reposts can reduce the content creation workload by 14%, giving social media teams more time for strategy and analytics.

Reddit Marketing [6 min read]

Reddit marketing hinges on a strategic approach that prioritizes authentic engagement over hard selling, requiring careful subreddit selection, community understanding, and a balance between business and personal content. This strategy's effectiveness is demonstrated through several case studies, most notably the "$19.98 Oil Change strategy" which converted an intentionally vague offer into significant contracts worth $60K and a $7K monthly retainer. Success on Reddit ultimately depends on mastering platform-specific best practices, including building karma as authority, maintaining a non-spammy post history with a 1:4 ratio of business to interest posts, and engaging with humor while understanding how to leverage both large and niche subreddits strategically.

🔮 The Future

How AI Is Set To Impact Marketers [2 min read]

LinkedIn's has conducted a comprehensive study to examine the specific impact of generative AI on marketing roles and B2B marketing practices. While the research confirms that AI is indeed influencing the marketing landscape, their findings suggest that its current impact is less revolutionary or dramatic than many might have anticipated. These insights are further contextualized by LinkedIn's Chief Economist Karin Kimbrough, who provides additional analysis on how these technological shifts are affecting the marketing industry.

YouTube Says One Billion Users Watch Podcast Content On Its Platform [2 min read]

YouTube has established itself as the dominant force in podcasting with one billion monthly active users consuming podcast content on its platform. Major podcast hosts and competing companies like SiriusXM are adapting to this reality by creating video-first content and utilizing YouTube to expand their reach. To further cement its position, YouTube has implemented podcast-specific features including recommendation algorithms and revenue sharing programs, while noting that users watched over 400 million hours of podcast content on living room TVs, suggesting a shift away from traditional television programming.

The Ins And Outs Of Ad Tech Bloat [3 min read]

Marketing technology stacks have become bloated over the past 15 years, with marketers continuously adding new tools that create unnecessary complexity and expense in their pursuit of better results. Rather than building tech stacks to meet perceived needs, marketers would be better served by adapting their processes to maximize existing tools instead of immediately implementing new solutions for every challenge. A recommended "one in, one out" philosophy where marketers remove a tool each time they add a new one would create simpler, leaner stacks that are more efficient and ultimately make marketing leaders more valuable to their organizations.

👩‍🏫 Vocab

SEO: The practice of optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results pages. It involves both technical improvements and creating content that matches user search intent. Good SEO makes your website more visible to people searching for your products or services.

Example: A pet store optimizes their website with terms like "best dog food for puppies" to appear when pet owners search for this information.

Voice Search Optimization: The process of optimizing your content to appear in voice-activated search results. It focuses on natural language patterns and conversational keywords that people use when speaking to devices. Voice search optimization adapts traditional SEO for how people talk rather than type.

Example: A local restaurant optimizes for phrases like "Where's the best pizza near me?" instead of just "best pizza" to match voice searches.

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