Right now, CMOs are navigating a fast-moving environment, marked by economic pressures, new technologies, and shifting consumer expectations.
The pressure to demonstrate impact while adapting to new platforms, regulations, and expectations has never been greater.
For marketing leaders, this means constantly adjusting strategies to stay competitive and relevant.
To prepare for the marketing equivalent of the Olympic high hurdles, the article below outlines the 10 key hurdles that CMOs must overcome in 2025 and beyond.
Economic volatility and tighter marketing budgets are forcing CMOs to do more with less.
Although most are asked to show the return on investment of marketing expenditures, the right metric to use is return on marketing investment (ROMI).
While both are measures of profitability, ROI measures money that is “tied up” in plants and inventories (which are capital expenditures or CAPEX), while ROMI measures money spent on marketing in the current quarter (which are operational expenditures or OPEX).
The formula for calculating ROMI is:
(Incremental Revenue from Marketing × Contribution Margin – Marketing Spend) / Marketing Spend = ROMI
For example, Amazon reportedly paid MrBeast $100 million to produce the first season of his reality show “Beast Games.”
MrBeast says he’s lost “tens of millions” producing the show. But how does Amazon’s CMO, Julia White, calculate the ROMI for “Beast Games,” which launched in November 2024?
Let’s say the estimated lifetime value of an Amazon Prime member is around $2,000, and a scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG) for the paid membership program’s contribution margin is about 12.5%.
So, “Beast Games” needs to generate roughly $2 billion in incremental revenue for Amazon Prime to get a ROMI of 1.5.
Here’s how to calculate that:
[$2 billion × 12.5% – $100 million] / $100 million = 1.5
That means “Beast Games” needs to generate a million new Amazon Prime members for the paid membership program to get $1.50 in profit for every $1.00 it spends on MrBeast.
CMOs should read Kevin Indig’s article, “The First-Ever UX Study Of Google’s AI Overviews: The Data We’ve All Been Waiting For,” which paints the most significant new picture of how people use Google that I’ve seen since Gord Hotchkiss, the former CEO of Enquiro, produced his first search engine user eye tracking study back in 2007.
Indig’s groundbreaking usability study, which was conducted with Eric van Buskirk and his team, analyzed how 70 users interact with Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs), involving nearly 400 AIO encounters. The findings reveal that AIOs significantly reduce outbound clicks: desktop click-through rates (CTR) can fall by two-thirds, and mobile CTR by almost half.
Most users (70%) only read the top third of an AIO, with a median scroll depth of 30%. Trust in AIOs correlates with scroll depth. Younger mobile users (25-34) are more likely to accept AIOs as final answers (50% of queries).
Brand authority is now the primary decision filter, followed by relevance.
When users do click out after viewing an AIO, about a third of that traffic goes to community forums like Reddit and videos on YouTube.
The study concludes that search is shifting from a “click economy” to a “visibility economy,” where being cited high in an AIO is crucial, as users treat AIOs like quickly scanned fact sheets.
CMOs should also watch the IMHO interview with Indig that Search Engine Journal’s Shelley Walsh recorded about his research.
CMOs also face the challenge of addressing changing customer interests throughout their multichannel journeys.
To overcome this high hurdle, a recent SparkToro article said that true audience research needs to go beyond basic demographics or keywords.
This requires delving into what genuinely interests consumers, the specific language they use, their motivations, and potential barriers to action.
Understanding where they spend their time online and which information sources they trust is also crucial.
For example, Jeff Baker and his partners created Beach Commute, a startup aimed at the “location-independent” community.
Their primary challenge was identifying the correct terminology and phrases used by professionals seeking a location-independent lifestyle, since their target audience is still developing and lacks standardized language.
This made it difficult to connect with potential users through traditional keyword research, since search terms were varied and intent was often unclear.
For example, “work and travel” often led to individuals seeking work-exchange programs rather than career-focused remote work.
Beach Commute used SparkToro to gain deeper insights into consumer behavior and search intent.
By comparing potential homepage keyword targets like “become a digital nomad” and “make money while traveling,” SparkToro revealed distinct audience motivations.
The “digital nomad” audience was more interested in aspirational travel and advice, aligning better with Beach Commute’s offerings.
In contrast, the “money and travel” group focused on entrepreneurial “hacks.” This data allowed Beach Commute to refine its keyword strategy and effectively target the right audience.
CMOs are also tasked with strategically integrating AI to enhance marketing effectiveness, drive efficiency, and enable hyper-personalization. But how do their teams balance AI capabilities with human creativity?
For over a quarter-century, the PODS container has served as a mobile advertisement across American streets, acting as a constant reminder of the brand.
In a recent initiative, Tombras, the creative agency for PODS, collaborated with Google Gemini to transform one of its containers into the “World’s Smartest Billboard.”
This innovative billboard was designed to be aware of its surroundings, capable of identifying its precise location, the current time, prevailing traffic conditions, weather patterns, and even subway delays.
Leveraging this data, the smart billboard could generate and display highly specific and relevant messages for each neighborhood it was in, all in real-time.
As part of an ambitious demonstration, the team undertook the challenge of taking this intelligent billboard to every single neighborhood in New York City within a tight 29-hour timeframe.
This feat, considered humanly impossible, was achieved through the combined efforts of human creativity and AI.
The creative team worked closely with Google Gemini to ensure the AI could replicate the company’s distinct tone and content style on a massive scale.
This collaboration resulted in the creation and instant display of over 6,000 hyper-local, real-time ads on the PODS container.
The project highlights the remarkable outcomes that can be achieved when creative professionals, advanced multimodal AI, and a moving company join forces.
CMOs are increasingly expected to drive business growth, necessitating a close alignment of marketing strategies with overall company goals like revenue generation and market expansion.
It requires CMOs to demonstrate marketing’s financial contribution and, as Avinash Kaushik advises, refine their use of dashboards and scorecards.
In an Occam’s Razor article, Kaushik highlights that CMOs often track non-essential metrics, leading to data overload.
To counter this, he proposes categorizing data into key performance indicators (KPIs), diagnostic metrics, and influencing variables. This framework helps focus senior leadership on critical business impacts, particularly profits, while allowing teams to manage tactical optimizations separately.
This strategic approach to data aims to clarify what truly matters for achieving business objectives, distinguishing between strategic measures and in-flight tactical adjustments.
Despite its apparent simplicity, Kaushik notes that many marketing teams struggle with this differentiation, prompting him to outline distinct characteristics for each category across eleven factors.
For example, Hilton and Dentsu Americas collaborated on the “For The Stay” campaign, using video as a central element of their marketing efforts.
A key question they sought to answer, according to Hilton’s Rebecca Panico, was how to effectively tailor creative content to specific audiences.
By doing so, they achieved substantial growth in brand awareness, customer consideration, purchase intent, and booking conversions, demonstrating the effectiveness of their strategy in a changing travel market.
In an increasingly crowded digital space, producing high-quality, engaging, and differentiated content consistently is a major hurdle, especially with limited resources.
With the rise of AI-generated content, the emphasis on authentic, human-crafted storytelling and unique brand messaging becomes even more critical to stand out.
To surmount this hurdle, CMOs should start by reading AI & Creators: The future of Tech and Creativity, which provides an in-depth exploration of the current and future effects of generative AI on creator businesses.
To support this, YouTube conducted its largest global survey to date, examining how creators around the world are integrating Gen AI into their work.
Then, CMOs should read Your Brandcast 2025 recap: Culture, creators, and commerce.
At the event, YouTube celebrated its 20th anniversary, highlighting its evolution as a dominant media platform and “the new TV.”
Brandcast 2025 also emphasized the growing impact of creators on culture and commerce, noting that 81% of U.S. viewers use creator content for product discovery, and YouTube ads deliver a 4.5X higher return on ad spend than other streaming TV.
YouTube also unveiled new advertising innovations for Connected TV (CTV). These include Cultural Moments Sponsorships for major events, and “Peak Points” powered by Google AI to place ads during peak audience engagement.
Additionally, new immersive Masthead ads and Shoppable CTV features aim to drive awareness and action directly from the living room, connecting creators, fans, and brands across all viewing experiences.
In today’s climate of consumer skepticism and the prevalence of cancel culture, maintaining brand trust and authenticity has become increasingly difficult.
CMOs must ensure that brand messaging remains consistent, transparent, and aligned with a company’s core values and behaviors.
For example, Kantar’s May 2025 Monthly Trends Report says transparency, particularly around data usage, can offer a competitive edge in a world marked by extreme disruption and uncertainty.
This volatile environment is not entirely new. For years, critiques of globalized commerce and culture have been gaining momentum from both ends of the political spectrum: the left condemns cultural imperialism, while right-wing populism has grown since the Great Recession.
These long-standing tensions have intensified recently, with inflation, COVID-19, climate change, and war disrupting the marketplace. Tariff threats have added further strain, placing American brands under heightened scrutiny.
Historically, brands functioned within a relatively stable ecosystem of supply chains, digital media, and retail consolidation, largely removed from political turmoil.
Today, however, they find themselves entangled in it, struggling to preserve brand equity and market share.
Kantar research highlights a rise in anti-American sentiment due to tariffs, yet paradoxically shows American brands are stronger and more valuable than ever.
Despite this resilience, future stability is uncertain. The challenge for brands is not merely survival but sustained growth, which is becoming increasingly rare.
To thrive, CMOs must resist the temptation to retreat under pressure and instead focus on consistently adding consumer value – offering more reasons to engage, not fewer.
With the decline of third-party cookies and the strengthening of data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, CMOs face the critical challenge of ethically managing customer data.
This involves prioritizing the collection of first-party and zero-party data, ensuring transparency in data usage, and investing in secure platforms to build and maintain customer trust.
How do CMOs overcome this high hurdle while outrunning their competitors? They should start by reading Google Analytics Adds New Features For Privacy-Era Tracking.
Google has updated Google Analytics to improve data accuracy and help marketers identify issues faster, adapting to evolving privacy rules.
Key enhancements include “Aggregate Identifiers” to prevent misattribution of paid traffic when Google Click Identifiers (GCLID) are unavailable, and “Smart Fallback Methods” using UTM tags as a backup.
CMOs should then read, “Where Are The Missing Data Holes In GA4 That Brands Need?”
This article highlights that Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data, while useful, often misses crucial information about initial user acquisition, like how users first discover a brand.
SEO professionals should use audience research and surveys to understand these “missing bullet holes” and verify their GA4 interpretations.
The shift to hybrid work environments and the rapid evolution of marketing technologies necessitate innovative approaches to talent management.
CMOs face the challenge of attracting, retaining, and developing top marketing talent with the right skills, particularly in areas like AI, data analytics, and digital transformation.
Fostering a formidable team culture and providing continuous learning opportunities are the keys to avoiding tripping over this hurdle.
But CMOs should also read “I’m a LinkedIn Executive. I See the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder Breaking.”
According to Aneesh Raman, the chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn, AI increasingly threatens entry-level jobs, traditionally crucial for young workers to gain experience.
This mirrors past manufacturing declines, now impacting office roles in tech, law, and customer service, where AI automates basic tasks.
Data shows rising unemployment for recent graduates, with Gen Z being particularly pessimistic about their futures.
While AI will also create new jobs, and executives still value fresh perspectives, the loss of entry-level positions can significantly hinder early career development and exacerbate inequality.
To address this, the essay proposes reimagining entry-level work. This includes training workers in AI-relevant skills and redesigning jobs to offer higher-level tasks, leveraging AI as a tool for growth and adaptability rather than mere automation.
Finally, marketing can no longer operate in a silo. Effective CMOs must champion cross-functional collaboration to ensure cohesive strategies and a unified customer experience.
This may be the hardest obstacle to overcome because it requires CMOs to unlearn what they have learned about the marketing department organization.
The most common organizational structure for marketing departments is called “functional” – because it puts distinct functions into different departments. But this creates dysfunctional silos with limited flexibility to adapt quickly or effectively to changes in market demand.
What’s the alternative? CMOs can organize their marketing teams by market segments, target audiences, or groups of people with specific interests, intents, and demographics.
This customer-centric organizational structure ensures that all their marketing teams are focused on putting customer needs and interests first in every interaction with the brand.
It also improves the likelihood that each team will understand their customers’ needs, concerns, and desires, and tailor marketing efforts to deliver value and exceptional experiences.
Now, I realize that most marketers mistakenly believe “reorgs” are bad, but reorganizations are infinitely less terrible than “layoffs.”
I also realize that most agencies dread “reorgs” because these often trigger “agency reviews.” But agencies should focus on delivering value, rather than simply providing services, to stand out and achieve long-term success.
This means moving beyond traditional service models and offering solutions that directly address client business needs and lead to measurable results.
To successfully navigate these 10 key hurdles, CMOs must become master jugglers, balancing technology with creativity, short-term performance with long-term brand building, and data-driven insights with authentic customer connections.
By addressing these critical hurdles, from adapting to AI-powered search to building consumer trust in a privacy-first world, marketing leaders can future-proof their organizations and drive meaningful growth.
Marketing is more complex than ever, but there is plenty of opportunity if you can move quickly, think strategically, and lead cross-functional teams with clarity and purpose.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Elnur/Shutterstock
Criteo is bringing programmatic ad buying to retail media.
The adtech company is rolling out a change to its platform that allows advertisers to buy retail media display ads programmatically. The change is aimed at making it simpler for advertisers to buy across multiple retail media networks at once.
Auction-based buying could make it easier for retailers to sell leftover ad inventory that isn’t sold through traditional media buying methods like joint business plans, sponsorship deals, or preferred deals that require long-term, negotiated investments. It could also help retailers make more money off their ad slots during peak seasons when ad prices spike due to demand.
“Display advertising is a proven retail media format, but the needs of advertisers and retailers are evolving,” Melanie Zimmerman, general manager of global retail media at Criteo, said in a statement. “Our new auction-based offering is modernizing display technology.”
Criteo said that Costco and Shipt are using the new product.
Criteo’s offering competes with Google, two retail media sources told ADWEEK. The features that Criteo has built into its tech have traditionally been found in Google’s Ad Manager or Ad Exchange, the sources said.
“The way inventory is prioritized on the publisher side is basically a copy-paste of how Google Ad Manager handles inventory reservations,” said one source who has spoken directly with Criteo about the new offering.
Being able to buy Criteo’s inventory programmatically could also allow advertisers to worry less about hitting required investment numbers from joint business plans, the source said.
Joint business plans are yearlong deals between brands and retailers where brands agree to pay for advertising in exchange for selling their products with individual retailers. One of the complaints of joint business plans is that they lock brands into ad commitments that are not guaranteed to drive sales.
Instead of using joint business plans to fund ad dollars, the source suggested that Criteo’s new feature could help brands identify which retailers to spend with based on the retailers where Criteo finds the most sales. That could begin to shift the power dynamic between brands and retailers—putting more power back into the hands of advertisers, with Criteo as the middleman.
Andrew Lipsman, independent retail media consultant, added that Criteo’s product could be a “significant market enabler for retail media—especially with the emergence of second and third-tier RMNs plus the overall growth in upper-funnel ad units onsite.”
Every weekend morning when I’m taking my dog (Boris the Blade) on his morning walk, we are met by the same thing: a group of 20 to 30 predominantly middle-aged men and women running towards us.
And it’s not just one group. As Boris stops and smells the exact same street corner he did just hours ago to decide if it’s worthy of his lifted leg, several of these breathable-material, carbon-plated herds will swoosh by us.
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To my fellow marketers, I first wrote this title in the summer of 2020, back when I thought, “Wow, surely things couldn’t get worse.” Needless to say, I was wrong.
Here’s the actual quote I started with last time:
“If you’re reading this, then it is early July, you’ve made it this far in the game of ‘Let’s See What Else Can Happen in 2020’.”
We have largely left the world of all-day Netflix and sourdough, and moved on to more pressing things like understanding the impact of tariffs on a brand’s willingness to run digital, and wondering how, five years later, my NY Jets are still so terrible.
With those changes has come a shifting dynamic in search, once called “PPC” (I have always disliked that term), more recently referred to as search engine marketing (SEM) and paid search, which is now simply “paid media.”
With this shift in ad types, ad placements, and management comes a shift in how we target audiences for our ads.
Why? Ad technologies change, ad units change, and thus, targeting changes. Not to mention, a shift in “what is demand?” affects more people than those who are actually qualified to see your ads.
I didn’t see economy-driven searches overtaking COVID-19 in my future (Screenshot from Google Trends, June 2025)
And once again, there are caveats:
Consumer sentiment is in flux as the economy rocks back and forth from concerning to good.
Google’s look-alike audiences (similar audiences) sunsetted (except for Demand Generation).
Audience targeting can easily be mixed up with various forms of AI targeting (i.e., Meta Advantage+).
Cookie deprecation started and then stopped, but first-party and modeled audience data became worth as much as gold.
The concept of the keyword match type (or even the keyword itself) is continuing to erode away.
Not everyone who views your ad is truly qualified. Whether it is in-market, demographic, geographic, behavioral, etc., not everyone should see your ad.
To put it bluntly (and I am trying my best not to sound rude), some individuals are not worth spending ad dollars on for a specific ad.
For high price point items:
Income often correlates with CVR based on category (Image from author, June 2025)
For more age-specific items:
Age is often a deciding factor as well (Image from author, June 2025)
With times being as uncertain as they are, brands must tighten their purse strings and become more selective in their prospecting efforts to help the bottom line.
One would think that this concept, focusing ads on a particular audience, would always be the case, but the reality is, mid to larger brands will still often do the “spray and pray” approach, with just small audience adjustments.
Why?
Tighter audiences help with return on investment and efficiency, but they can wreak havoc on volume and total revenue when done too excessively.
This leaves the advertiser with a decision to make: What is the best approach?
The most important (and first) step: Identify who your ideal customer is.
Important disclaimer: Identify who your ideal customer is/has been, not who you think it is going to be/should be.
Be sure to pore over your analytics and conversion data to decipher this. Otherwise, any future steps are pointless.
Learn exactly who your converter is (Image from author, June 2025)
Previously, to weed out the less qualified and still feed the top of the funnel and prospect, you would need to lean heavily into audience exclusion and audience targeting. That is still true, to a degree, and more specifically in the case of paid search.
However, for more modern concepts, such as Performance Max, Demand Generation, LinkedIn, or Meta, we are leaning more toward the target, as the exclusion may not be as readily or easily available for use.
Audience targeting vs. exclusion: Yes, they are similar, but different. Here’s a quick refresher:
Targeting: The direct targeting of a specific group of consumers who fall within a certain characteristic(s), enabling everyone who meets it to see the ad.
For example: “I am selling a luxury car with a high price point, so I am only showing the ad to those whose household income is in the top 10%.”
Note: This is still valid in most scenarios. However, certain platforms and verticals do have limitations or restrictions.
Excluding: Indirectly targeting an audience by minimizing the ad units’ reach, based on consumers’ characteristics, by intentionally preventing ads from showing to those individuals.
For example: “I am excluding homeowners, so they are not served my apartment rental ads.”
Not doing one or both is as good for you as trusting a truthful outcome from Theranos.
How does one use these targets and exclusions to tighten one’s belt?
This is not rocket science, and more importantly, it doesn’t need to be applied account-wide, just high (sometimes mid) funnel initiatives.
Particularly in search, the more specific the query (often mid- to long-tail searches), the higher the qualification, the higher the likelihood of conversion.
But those are often few and far between (terrible for prospecting in terms of feeding the top of the funnel).
So, audience targeting becomes a necessity for high-volume search keywords. Otherwise, you’re spending your already limited budget on everyone (not ideal).
We break audience targeting into two types: actualized behavior and user traits.
The most common form (and easiest to use) of actualized behavior is retargeting.
Cart abandoners are the lowest-hanging fruit. It is a simple setup and deployment (I am a huge advocate of it via Google Analytics 4):
As much as I dislike GA4 UI vs. GA UA, they make audience creation fairly simple. (Image from author, June 2025)
But keep in mind: If you’re still getting those queries off a top-of-funnel query (generic, short-tail), then the qualification is already lower to start off with.
Frequently, we separate out retargeting past shoppers, retargeting site/cart abandoners, and prospecting (brand new visitors) from one another. Thus, controlling spend, creative, and user experience for each category.
At the same time, these lists can be used as exclusionary, ensuring there is no overlap, and a consumer receives an experience they were not intended for, which works well for prospecting audiences.
When thinking about user traits, these can be tied to platform-predicted behavior (i.e., affinity or in-market), or even self-identified characteristics (i.e., age, gender, income, etc.).
User traits are great at isolating targeting to your most qualified/relevant audience.
For example, anyone can eat at one of my fast-casual restaurant locations across the major cities of Connecticut.
But suppose I want to maximize the cost-per-customer efficiency for the “kids eat free” special. In that case, I will target parents of children under 12, not in the top 25% of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), but who have some disposable income, who enjoy eating, and are within a five-mile radius of one of our locations.
Make the audience that meets your typical customer (Image from author, June 2025)
But a nice little function these days is that Google and Meta are learning from current activity to help build out in-market audiences on a rolling basis.
It is great for all of Meta, PMax, YouTube, Demand Gen, etc.
Google is finally being helpful without a sales rep (Image from author, June 2025)
Using these tools, we have taken a step to prequalify the audience we’re prospecting. If they don’t convert at first (but do engage with the page), at least they’re pulled into our remarketing lists as a higher degree of qualification for later.
Net-net: These consumers are deemed worthy of seeing our ads.
To put it bluntly, exclusion is a vastly underrated, yet wildly glorified version of a search negative keyword list.
But rather than saying we don’t want to show if someone searches for XYZ, we say, we don’t want to show for you.
When we apply exclusions in any channel, we are saying, “I am open to anyone seeing my ads, provided they aren’t [fill in the blank].”
I know it sounds harsh, but it is highly effective and important.
Remember, not everyone is right for your brand, but they may still try and find a way to see the ads.
Exclusions can be simple, such as geography or time of day, or they can be much more specific.
One of the key times I see this needed is for YouTube and Google Display Network (GDN).
You want to capture a wide audience, but you know not everyone is right.
I should note, though, that certain verticals (those falling under Housing, Employment, and Credit or HEC policies in Google and anti-discriminatory policies in Meta) limit what can be excluded.
In addition, the rapidly growing share of wallet ad unit, Performance Max, in both Google and Bing (I still refuse to call it Microsoft), you cannot exclude audiences (yet), but you can exclude keywords (Google only beta) and brands.
Some day… (Image from author, June 2025)
It is a glorified negative keyword (Image from author, June 2025)
You’ll get fewer visitors, but a more qualified audience. You also maintain control of who you’re spending ad dollars on.
We are in the early stages of exiting the world of keywords and focusing on the audience. At the same time, platforms continue to reduce control and transparency of who/what/when/why/how your ad is served. That hurts your wallet and your bottom line.
When you can’t use first-party audiences, learn your typical customer’s profile, and build audiences for it.
By ensuring you target the right audience and exclude the wrong ones, you can make sure your operation continues to thrive another day.
More Resources:
Featured Image: ICONMAN66/Shutterstock
Updated with details on TikTok’s new AI tools for advertisers.
TikTok is mainly seen as a prime venue for Gen Z to share dance crazes, which can be perfect for B2C marketers. However, its reach is far broader than that. According to Meltwater, TikTok ads have the potential to reach 48.8% of people over the age of 18 in the U.S.
So, it’s useful for B2B marketers, too. Also, the Gen Z cohort is moving up into positions make purchase decision
What makes it suitable for B2C applies to B2B as well. It is an essential tool for brands to connect directly with customers. It offers opportunities for in-app shopping, live-streaming and branded hashtag challenges. However, marketers must understand and work with TikTok’s culture to succeed.
This guide covers key data, user demographics, marketing strategies, content creation and best practices for B2B success on TikTok.
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While the platform initially appealed primarily to Gen Z and younger millennials, it experienced significant growth among older demographics and professional audiences. Today, many decision-makers and industry professionals turn to TikTok for both informational content and entertainment, positioning it as a valuable channel for engaging B2B audiences. Additionally, it is important to note that B2B decision-makers have been getting younger in recent years, and a significant proportion are now of digital natives.
The app’s short video format allows for presenting intricate topics in an engaging and easily digestible manner. Furthermore, TikTok provides various advertising options, including targeted ads and influencer collaborations, making it easier to reach specific B2B audiences.
Dig deeper: How influencer marketing became an essential marketing channel
Data from TikTok and Nielsen also found that the platform is the fastest-growing channel for product discovery. According to the data, 15% of product discoveries begin on TikTok. According to TikTok data, advertisers are now seeing an average return of $2 for every $1 spent.
Gender distribution: TikTok’s user base is relatively balanced in gender, with 54% identifying as male and 45% identifying as female.
Age distribution: While TikTok is popular among younger generations, a substantial portion of its audience comprises older demographics. For example, 21.7% of TikTok’s US user base are Millennials. Also:
Geographic distribution: The top three countries with the most TikTok users are the United States, Indonesia and Brazil. The U.S. has the largest TikTok audience, with 148 million monthly unique users. Indonesia has 126.83 million users and Brazil has 98.59 million users.
Small business owners: Small business owners represent a significant community on TikTok. More than half (52%) of users exposed to SMB (small and mid-size business) content on TikTok made purchases, demonstrating the platform’s power to drive intent, according to a report by The Drum.
Dig deeper: 6 things to look for in a B2B influencer
TikTok’s algorithm is the key to the site. It’s so important that the Chinese government has said it cannot leave China (further clouding a possible sale of the platform). The algorithm determines which content appears on a user’s For You Page (FYP).
Key influence factors include:
To leverage TikTok’s algorithm, marketers can:
Smaller accounts gain the highest impression percentage from the ‘For You’ feed, showing that TikTok’s algorithm gives any content an equal opportunity to go viral, regardless of followers. Good content can go viral if it has captured targeted user interest.
Dig deeper: Behind the scenes of Betterment’s B2B brand awareness campaign
Here are some specific use cases for B2B companies on TikTok:
Many B2B brands have established a presence on TikTok to connect with a broader audience, showcase their expertise and humanize their brand. Here are some examples of B2B brands on TikTok and how they have used the platform:
These brands adjust their voice to match TikTok’s focus on humor and entertainment. They create demo videos to illustrate product features, share valuable tips and fun facts, highlight their product from the customer’s perspective and provide behind-the-scenes glimpses of their company’s operations.
Dig deeper: How to balance ROAS, brand safety and suitability in social media advertising
TikTok is the only social media platform that might be banned in the U.S. The incredibly popular social media app is supposed to stop operating in the U.S. on June 18.
Government officials in the U.S. and elsewhere have repeatedly raised concerns that TikTok poses a national security risk. They believe the Chinese government could use the app from the China-based company ByteDance to spy on citizens or manipulate public opinion by boosting or burying certain content.
The app is banned or restricted to non-governmental employees in several countries, including India, Jordan, Senegal, Uzbekistan and other Central Asian nations.
In 2019, the Department of Defense banned the app on governmental devices. President Trump threatened to ban TikTok the following year unless ByteDance sold it to a non-Chinese company. In 2024, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — essentially President Trump’s threat in the form of a law — passed both houses of Congress with large, bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by President Biden.
The ban went into effect on Jan. 19, 2025. Under the law, the president could invoke a 90-day delay in enforcement. That delay was supposed to end on April 5, but President Trump signed an executive order extending it 75 more days.
President Trump, in keeping with the administration’s policy of selective law enforcement, says he won’t let TikTok be banned.
What brought about this change of heart? Two things. One is that many of the apps’ more than 170 million U.S. users started calling their Congresspeople to complain. The other is that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has become good friends with President Trump—so good that the company staged a publicity stunt on his behalf.
On Jan. 18, 2025, the day before the ban took effect, the app briefly went dark. TikTok put up a statement that read, in part, “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution… once he takes office.”
At President Trump’s inauguration two days later, Mr. Chew was in very close attendance.
At the start of February, Mr. Trump ordered the Department of Justice to send letters to Google and Apple saying the tech giants won’t be prosecuted under the law for making the TikTok available in their app stores. The two companies stopped offering TikTok when it went dark, but have since restored it.
Approximately none. According to Cloudflare, “DNS traffic for TikTok-related domains” dropped 85% during the shutdown. Traffic rebounded quickly when the app returned and is now at 90% of pre-shutdown level. As of January 2025, it had 170 million monthly active users (MAU) in the United States.
No surprise, then, that advertisers have continued to invest. “Month-over-month U.S. TikTok video ad spend has been increasing significantly even from December, a high ad spend month due to holiday shopping and promotions,” according to Charm.io. To give you an idea of what that means: For the first six months of 2024, monthly video ad spending on the site averaged $55 million.
In total, brands spent $4.8 billion on TikTok during 2024, a 27% year-over-year increase from 2023, according to MediaRadar. The top ten brands on the platform, which include heavyweights such as Disney, Walmart and Amazon, combined for $690 million, or 14% of this spend.
TikTok is replacing its Creator Marketplace with the TikTok One creative platform. The marketplace, which facilitated brand and creator collaboration, is closed for new campaigns and will fully shut down on April 1, 2025. The social media site also shut down its Video Generator tool, an online editor where people could upload videos and add music.
These features have been combined in TikTok One, along with tools to help creators find inspiration, research trends and connect with experts to make “native-looking” TikTok videos for ad campaigns.
TikTok’s CPM is the best bargain in social media right now — which isn’t good news for the platform. The cost per mille has dropped by 80% year-over-year, according to AdRoll’s latest State of Digital Advertising report. “The decline reflects growing uncertainty about the platform’s future in the United States, leading advertisers to pull back their investments.”
Source: AdRoll State of Digital Advertising 2025
Pinterest has done the best of the social media platforms covered in the report. Its CPMs are up 120% year-over-year “as brands reallocate budgets to more stable platforms with an established user base.” The report also speculated that advertisers may prefer Pinterest’s user base of “more established” generations (I think they mean older) to TikTok’s younger ones, especially as the U.S. economy continues to ride the whirlwind.
Uncertainty may also be spurring turnover in TikTok’s top-level leadership. Eight executives have left since the start of the year, per The Information. They include the North American ad sales boss and the head of the Music unit.
Many platforms are trying to position themselves as the TikTok alternative, in case it does go away. YouTide released a report saying its popular Shorts has room to grow. The report describes Shorts as a hub of Gen Z users who are becoming a larger percentage of platform-wide viewership. Daily Shorts viewership among logged-in users is up 25% year-over-year, per the report.
TikTok upgraded its generative AI offering—Symphony—with tools to streamline creative work and move faster without sacrificing quality.
Here’s what’s new in the Symphony toolbox:
TikTok is also expanding its reach through partnerships. The Image to Video tool is coming to Adobe Express so that creators can build content directly inside Adobe’s social media platform. Some Symphony tools (like AI dubbing and avatars) are also making their way into WPP Open, WPP’s AI-powered marketing suite. The tools—Image to Video, Text to Video and Showcase Products—aren’t in WPP Open yet.
Outside the Symphony suite, TikTok’s “Generate with AI” feature in Ads Manager provides another way to quickly create creative assets. Drop in a product URL, TikTok Shop ID or a few manual inputs, and it will generate videos, images, scripts, voiceovers and avatars. Then, it picks the top 10 based on AI insights, which you can tweak as needed. It is available (for now) to select advertisers using English content.
TikTok says it’s committed to transparency: All Symphony-generated content is clearly labeled as AI, and everything, including the input and final output, goes through multiple layers of review.
Of course, all this raises some big questions. With AI avatars able to endlessly crank out content, what happens to human influencers? Brands get scalability and fewer contracts to manage, but there’s concern that an AI flood might put downward pressure on creator rates.
How does this all work? The application process is straightforward and insightful, working with research partners, Part + Sum, for a methodology specifically made for creative teams. This consists of two parts:
The team will collate results and announce the winner in October. Full application details can be found here.
This year, we’re also offering optional reports for those who want to benchmark their business, whether or not you win:
If you’ve completed the application process entirely for both Part 1 and Part 2, you get a Comprehensive Report for free and Individual Evaluation Framework Report for your own team’s insights at a nominal admin fee of £99.
Both reports will be available to purchase separately and can provide valuable insight whether you enter or not. You will be charged a higher fee if purchased outside of the application cohort. You must be a UK based company operating for over a year and have a total headcount of ten. Entry is completely free.
Ready to be recognised as one of the top creative employers in the UK?
Click here to apply. Applications close 29 August 2025.
Google has updated its Search Console documentation, confirming it includes AI Mode data in Performance reports.
This is a change to note when reviewing your metrics, as it may impact traffic reporting patterns.
AI Mode is Google’s interactive AI-powered search experience, which builds on AI Overviews to provide more detailed responses.
The feature breaks questions into smaller topics and searches for each one at the same time. This “query fan out” technique, as Google calls it, lets people explore topics more deeply.
The key change in Google’s documents is that AI Mode data counts toward the totals in Search Console.
Per the updated changelog:
“Data from AI Mode is now counting towards the totals in the Search Console Performance report.”
The documentation explains how AI Mode measures different actions:
When users ask follow-up questions within AI Mode, they start new queries. The documentation notes:
“All impression, position, and click data in the new response are counted as coming from this new user query.”
Google’s documentation says:
“The best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search.”
There are no extra technical requirements beyond standard Google Search rules.
Google’s documentation clarifies:
“You don’t need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There’s also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add.”
Website owners can control the appearance of their content’s AI features using existing tools, such as nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, or noindex controls.
With AI Mode data now included in Search Console reports, you may notice changes in traffic patterns and metrics. The data appears within the “Web” search type in the Performance report, mixed with other search traffic.
The documentation notes that clicks from search results pages with AI features tend to be “higher quality.” Users are “more likely to spend more time on the site.”
However, without dedicated tabs for traffic from Google’s AI features, it’s impossible to verify those claims.
Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
There’s a threat to the creative side of the agency business, and it’s called generative AI. News announcements in the past few weeks have drilled that home, as Meta and other publishers announce ways to make it easier for brands to make their own ads using generative AI.
But in at least one case, there’s another way in which brands are leaving creative agencies by the wayside: creating social creative content and messaging with media-side shops.
Fiercely independent media agency Acadia, founded by Jared Belsky and Sean Belnick in 2021 and based in Atlanta, specializes in all manner of social, commerce/retail media and other digital media work, and has grown through acquisitions (in April it bought e-commerce agency Crush) to hit mroe than 250 staff.
Digiday has learned that Acadia has picked up creative duties from a few of its clients that are leaning heavily into paid and organic social efforts. And they’re finding it’s easier to work directly with their media agency than with separate media and creative shops.
“For so long, organic social was in a box, and now we’re seeing these media pitches where we bring to the table all these creative campaign ideas,” said Margot Eddy, a partner and head of social at Acadia, whose agency Imagine Media Consulting was purchased by Acadia in 2021. “They are always tied into media objectives and the audience that they’re trying to reach, but those big ideas are grabbing the client’s attention, and as we’ve gotten a few wins in that realm, we’re able to build out a creative team to meet those demands.”
Eddy said Acadia has hired a creative director with a media background to have that expertise sitting at the table with the client. “Clients will come to us new business opportunities that have been spending so much on the larger creative holding company [agencies]. And they’re looking for a solution to the problem of going to a two-day shoot, and just getting one video out of it.”
Acadia, she said, will organize the shoot with a content creator, a videographer and a photographer present as a way to amass “hundreds of assets that they can use for various media, as opposed to focusing on one campaign at a time.”
Applying social strategy to the creative is what makes the difference for clients, “You can’t win on Instagram or Tiktok by purely media,” added Eddy. “There’s got to be the organic social presence. There’s got to be a higher creative campaign you have to be able to adjust.”
It’s worked for smaller startup clients as well as established brands.
TruBar, a startup protein bar brand, initially put out an RFP for separate media, creative and retail media agencies, but ended up consolidating all of it with Acadia built mostly around social.
“I’ve always felt that you lose so much when there are separate agencies,” said Natasha Port, the startup’s vp of marketing, who acknowledged she’s working with a small budget and needs to get near-instant results. To her, Acadia came “fully loaded with expertise and a built-out infrastructure and agility. That really is the most important part, creating that cohesive model … It wouldn’t work with a mega creative agency, where we need to wait to get media performance back and then brief them for the next quarter, and then they take those considerations into account.”
According to Port, the results have been strong, as the protein bar brand hopes to break through on a consumer basis with an awareness campaign launched last week, but also by securing more distribution with major retailers including Costco and Target. And Acadia has been testing out different ways to directly drive sales across different retail media platforms, such as recommending exactly what the product detail pages should look like. “”Where, if you’re with a traditional retail media agency, they’re very much numbers focused,” added Port.
Restaurant chain Perkins turned to Acadia to handle all its social media work, realizing it needed to adapt from a TV-first strategy. Acadia “reduced the amount of time and resources we spend internally on areas that quite frankly aren’t our areas of expertise and in return we are getting better quality ideas, content, and partnerships,” said Kimberly Bean, vp of marketing at Perkins. Resultingly, “we’ve never had so much organic engagement on these channels as we have in the past three weeks.”
Acadia has helped Bean flip the creative and production script and approach. “For so long, I have seen the content and assets get developed for linear first and then social or digital would get the leftovers, but this provides a space for cost effective production that can still be used in other channels as appropriate,”
Anush Prabhu, the former chief strategy officer for EssenceMediacom, who earlier this year started his own consultancy, Braindrops Strategy, to help brands and agencies work more effectively together, has long advocated for both sides to come back together again.
“[agency] culture today is still very reliant on being channel first and ad first, rather than people first. Insights and strategies to create an idea and inform where it lives need to be integrated to every aspect of the brand’s approach to their market,” said Prabhu. “But currently, the way it is fragmented — where we have created worlds of creative, media, social, commerce, and hundreds of different agencies that brands have these days — make it very hard to integrate. And that, to me, is what is required for the culture moving forward.”
On top of recent revised ad estimates for 2025 from the likes of Brian Wieser and WPP Media, IPG’s Magna is also downshifting its expectations for total ad revenue growth by 1.2 percentage points — from 6.1% growth to 4.9%, equalling $979 billion. Some details in the Magna report:
“In an era where media budgets rival asset portfolios, clients increasingly expect more than just transactional delivery — they want partnership. Whether you trust your media investment to a giant or choose an indie, the question remains: Who will really have your best interest at heart?”
\—Crossmedia co-founder and global CEO Kam Asghar from a LinkedIn post differentiating holdcos from indies.
When creating your own cosplay props, costumes, and accessories, a 3D pen is an excellent tool to have. I had no idea how useful a 3D pen could be until I started making cosplay masks and helmets using one of the best 3D printers on the market – the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon.
Having tested a handful of some of the best 3D pens, I think these creative tools are hugely overlooked. Plenty of consumers believe that 3D pens are only for kids (thanks to poor marketing), and can’t seem to grasp the concept of how a 3D pen might be used for bigger projects. For example, the 3Doodler PRO 3D pen is intended for professionals, and after using it for the past month, I really think this 3D pen is a must-have tool for cosplayers and crafters.
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Miles Morales helmet by Budwin (Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)
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Miles Morales helmet by Budwin (Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)
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(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)Lord Darth Maul file by Yosh Studios(Image credit: Future)
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Lord Darth Maul file by Yosh Studios(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)
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Today’s best deals on 3Doodler 3D pens
3D pens are intended to work with 3D printing filament materials, including PLA, ABS, PETG, PHA, etc, but unlike a traditional 3D printer, some 3D pens also have the added advantage of being compatible with materials like wood, copper, and brass for a truly unique project.
Be sure to double-check which materials your specific 3D pen is compatible with (it should say in the included manual with the device), as not all 3D pens are the same. In some cases, you can use the same 1.75mm filament as your 3D printer with your 3D pen for consistency; however, there will be a risk with this, especially if the material hasn’t been manufactured by the same brand as your 3D pen, so keep this in mind.
If you’re new to using a 3D pen, then it’s definitely a good idea to start off using stencils to get the hang of how your 3D pen works. Even simple shapes such as a circle or square can be really difficult to draw at first, while you get used to the power and speed of your 3D pen.
I found that it was tricky to draw a perfect circle without using a stencil, and doing so helped me to learn that stencils are essential sometimes for avoiding wobbly lines and trying to craft the perfect model.
Yes, absolutely! Learning to use a 3D pen can take just a few minutes, though you will need practice and a fair amount of patience to learn how your 3D pen works. On some 3D pen models you’ll find that there are dials to control settings like the speed and flow of the material, and getting to grips with this is essential to mastering a 3D pen.
3D pens are so beginner-friendly and safe to use that they’re often marketed for children, though keep in mind that you should never leave a child unattended with a 3D pen no matter how safe it might seem.
Last week, I sent out an update on my marketplace SEO issue, and it would be a complete miss if I didn’t do the same for the topic of product-led SEO, because they’re directly related.
In this issue, you’ll get:
And premium subscribers will get access to:
Also, a quick thanks to Amanda Johnson, who partnered with me on this one. Boost your skills with Growth Memo’s weekly expert insights. Subscribe for free!
Some companies, not all, can take a hyperscalable approach to organic growth: product-led SEO.
While most sites drive SEO traffic through company-generated content (i.e., content libraries), product-led SEO allows certain sites to scale landing pages with content that comes out of the product.
This product-forward strategy can lessen the burden on your team to generate pages for a content library, and it opens the gates to SEO A/B testing, scaled internal linking strategies, and building growth loops.
In this post, I highlight five different examples and types of product-led SEO.
Guidance here has also been fully updated to reflect the recent changes in search, including the impact of AIOs, AI Mode, and LLMs, as well as how these changes affect a product-led SEO approach.
The term product-led SEO (or PLSEO for short) was first coined by Eli Schwartz in his book of the same name.
PLSEO is an organic growth strategy where your SEO practices are focused on improving the discoverability, adoption, and user experience of your product itself within search results, instead of focusing on growing organic visibility through traditional content marketing efforts.
In plain terms, the content comes from your product instead of writers.
A few examples:
The key distinction from marketing-led SEO is that a product or growth team considers SEO in the development of the product itself, surfacing user-generated content or other inventory directly into (Google) Search.
Unlike company-generated content, product-led SEO leverages user interactions, integrations, or data to create content.
It’s an aggregator strategy, meaning it only works for companies that “aggregate” (think: collect and group) goods like reviews, suppliers, locations, and more.
Product-led SEO has been quite the buzz, especially amongst SaaS companies, but it often gets misunderstood.
Product-led SEO is not:
Some companies carry out a product-led SEO strategy with user-generated content (UGC), while others might use integrations or apps.
Here, I’m going to provide a look into three primary modalities of product-led SEO – and with three real-world, current examples.
A site might choose to employ multiple modalities, depending on its offerings, but I’ll also dive into what approach may work best based on your business type or goals.
Important note before you dive in: All marketplaces are product-led SEO plays, but not all product-led SEO plays are marketplaces. For a deep dive into marketplace SEO practices, check out Effective Marketplace SEO is more like Product Growth.
With UGC-based PLSEO, user contributions (templates, profiles, reviews) become the primary SEO fuel.
Design tool Figma is an archetypal example of an SEO aggregator that drives product-led SEO through user-generated content.
The scaling mechanism for Figma is the community, where users can upload and sell templates for all sorts of use cases, from mobile app design to GUI templates.
As you can see in the screenshot below, Figma’s organic traffic is exploding.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
If you do a quick check of Figma in your preferred SEO tool, you’ll notice the following:
What this likely means:
Notion or Typeshare follow the same approach:
This type of SEO excels for sites and businesses that can continuously scale content based on what users contribute or interact with, including:
For supply-driven product-led SEO, remember: The product itself “supplies” data. That’s the content that produces pages for optimization.
An excellent B2C example of this (and a site that you’re likely familiar with already) is IMDb.
IMDb’s massive repository of movie and TV metadata – cast lists, release dates, ratings, and filming locations – produces SEO pages that rank for film enthusiasts’ long-tail queries.
Whenever new data (e.g., “new Netflix release 2025”) is ingested via AWS Data Exchange or partner feeds, IMDb’s platform auto-generates or updates the corresponding title page, ensuring fresh content for searches like “when is [Movie Title] coming out on streaming?”
Plus, IMDb benefits from a boost with a side of UGC from user ratings and commentary.
This data-supply-driven approach turns product updates into continuous SEO signals.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
If you do a quick check of IMDb in your preferred SEO tool, you’ll notice:
What this likely means:
This type of PLSEO excels when you have unique, defensible datasets and a templating system to publish pages at scale, capturing long-tail and high-intent queries without manual content creation.
Examples of orgs that could benefit from this modality include:
The locale-driven PLSEO modality leverages hyperlocal or geo-specific inventory – restaurants, homes, hotels – to create SEO pages for every location or zip code.
Food delivery service Doordash scales organic traffic by aggregating restaurants and types of food, similar to Uber Eats or Instacart.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
Since food delivery has a strong local intent, near me queries are essential. Doordash addresses that with an extensive list of city pages.
The right page layout and content are key for sites that scale through product inventory.
Doordash has also created pages for schools (order near a campus), hotels (order near a hotel), and zip codes to cover all possible user intentions.
Other examples of product inventory-driven sites are real estate site Zillow or coupon code site Retailmenot.
If you do a quick check of Doordash in your preferred SEO tool, you’ll notice:
What this likely means:
I predict that search engines and LLMs will continue to give favor to hyperlocal content, which is hard to match.
These product inventory sites that are centered on location (like Doordash, Zillow) or millions of products have the right infrastructure to do it well.
This particular approach to product-led SEO can work well for businesses that can programmatically generate search-ready pages from their product or listing inventory, including:
While product-led SEO can drive the creation of SEO growth loops around your business – ones that are difficult for your competitors to replicate – this approach doesn’t come without some big challenges.
Keep the following in mind:
Inventory changes (menus, listings, hours, availability) on the site can keep content fresh – an advantage for both classic SEO and potential LLM training inputs.
However, the hygiene and maintenance required to keep these pages functioning and accurate are significant. Don’t employ this practice without the proper infrastructure in place to maintain it over time.
And if you rely on UGC? It’s mission-critical to have smart QA processes and spam filters in place to ensure content quality.
PLSEO is not exempt from the impact of Google’s AIOs, AI Mode, and LLM-based search. In actuality, many aggregator marketplaces have been disproportionally affected.
One of the biggest challenges, especially for product-led UGC SEO plays, is that all your hard work may go unclicked.
Creating systems to do this kind of SEO at scale is labor-intensive.
It’s highly likely that AIOs, AI Mode, and LLMs will reference the user generated content without you earning the organic traffic for it.
However, building a strong, trusted brand through community, publication mentions, and shared links can earn more mentions in LLMs.
Because I recently reworked my in-depth guide to marketplace SEO, I’m going to save you some extra scrolling here.
If you’re interested in the best use cases and how to approach marketplace SEO from a product growth mindset, take a leap over here for some great examples and a full framework: Effective Marketplace SEO is more like Product Growth.
For many sites, the key to scaling product-led SEO is deploying a programmatic approach.
But programmatic landing pages should still contain a depth of information, have strong technical SEO, and engaging content with sufficient user value.
If you don’t have these resources and practices in place, along with the proper processes to maintain pages over time, then it’s likely programmatic SEO isn’t for your org.
With the rise of AI-based search, LLMs like ChatGPT, as well as Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, are moving toward understanding and presenting information in more conversational and context-rich formats, which programmatic pages often lack.
Another watch-out? If these programmatic pages are highly templated with lots of elements, they’re often a lot for a human reader to take in at once. And that can lead to poor UX if not done correctly.
While it’s likely we don’t need to be worried about this today, we need to start brainstorming how to adapt our content creation for what the web could look like tomorrow.
In what ways would your product-led SEO approach need to change to adapt to AI agent traffic, while also prioritizing human UX?
If users start using queries and commands like “order my favorite dish from the Indian food restaurant I went to last month and have it delivered,” or “give me 3 for-sale listings of 2 bed, 2 bath condos in my area that I didn’t review last week,” to send an AI agent to your site, how would your PLSEO practices need to adapt?
What about PLSEO practices that surface unique integrations, templates, and workflows?
If AI agents become users of products and software themselves – and therefore also have the ability to generate their own apps, integrations, and product workflows as needed – humans, and even their AI counterparts, then skip the need for this search entirely. (Brands that solely rely on these types of searches could say goodbye to organic traffic and visibility.)
I don’t have the answers here – I’d argue no one does right now. So, no need for immediate alarm or dramatic changes.
But it’s important to start investing time and testing to consider what your brand may need to change for an AI agent future.
Adopting a product-led SEO strategy can unlock substantial growth – and growth that holds and is sustained despite the increase in AI-based search – but it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.
When executed well, PLSEO turns your product (or product data) into an ever-expanding library of SEO assets.
Instead of relying solely on a content team to crank out new blog posts or landing pages, you leverage in-product signals – user contributions, integrations, inventory feeds – to automatically spawn indexable pages.
But before starting or reworking your product-led SEO program, you need to have the right motions in place. For this SEO approach, there are many essential moving parts – and each one is important.
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
