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
On Monday, TikTok unveiled a slate of generative AI tools, designed to help automate creative production. They’ll not only live natively on TikTok but will also be integrated within Adobe Express and WPP Open for marketers’ use.
As part of its Symphony suite of AI-powered creative products, TikTok will now offer image-to-video generation to transform still product images, inspiration mood boards, or brand visuals into five-second branded video clips. Text-to-video capabilities will also be available, letting marketers enter short prompts to produce automated video content.
The news coincides with the first day of Cannes Lions, where TikTok this year has taken over part of the famed Carlton Hotel for four days of programming.
TikTok sees the tools helping marketers test creative variations and scale custom content. The company’s global head of creative and brand products, Andy Yang, described the offerings as “accessible” and “agile” in a statement.
TikTok is also building on its 2024 rollout of humanlike digital avatars—AI-generated creators that can be deployed to promote brands’ products or services. With a new offering called Symphony Showcase Products, marketers can upload a visual with a brief text blurb and get lifelike videos with avatars that can hold products, model clothing, or demo mobile apps.
Symphony features are also extending beyond the TikTok platform, the company said.
The new image-to-video feature will be integrated into Adobe Express, Adobe’s platform for social-first content development. Using the Symphony Assistant plug-in, launched last year for TikTok music licensing, users can now use the image-to-video feature.
The arrangement builds on TikTok’s longstanding partnership with Adobe; the two have worked together previously to adapt Adobe Express and Adobe Premiere Pro products to streamline TikTok content creation.
Some of TikTok’s automated creative tools will also become accessible via WPP Open, the holdco’s proprietary AI marketing platform. WPP employees can access Symphony AI Dubbing for translation, Symphony Digital Avatars, and the Generate & Remix video tool, which generates various video content suggestions in response to simple prompts.
The new image and text-to-video tool, plus Showcase Products tools, however, will not be integrated into WPP Open.
“With TikTok’s Symphony Suite, we’re giving our creatives even more firepower to push boundaries and experiment for our clients,” said Rob Reilly, WPP’s chief creative officer, in a statement. “It’s about making creativity smarter, faster, and more effective, blending the magic of the human touch with the power of AI to deliver killer results for the world’s biggest brands.”
Content created with Symphony comes with a label indicating to viewers that it’s AI-generated. It also undergoes “multiple rounds of safety review” that include oversight of uploaded images and input prompts, TikTok said.
Meanwhile, TikTok’s future in the U.S. remains uncertain.
After an initial nationwide ban went into effect on January 19, only to be quickly reversed when Donald Trump returned to the White House, the app faces a June 19 deadline by which it must be divested by parent company ByteDance or face a nationwide ban. While a handful of high-profile organizations and investors have signaled interest in acquiring the video-sharing platform, its fate is yet to be determined. Trump has hinted that he may issue a further extension on the deadline.
Some TikTok competitors, like Snap and BeReal, are champing at the bit for an opportunity to gobble up displaced ad spend.
Reminiscence has always been a large part of the art that defines our culture. H.G. Wells, Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain all wrote definitive stories in the 19th century about nostalgia and the mystery of the distant past. Think time travel movies such as Back To The Future or Peggy Sue Got Married, classic 80s flicks that idolise the 60s. Most recently, Stranger Things renewed a cultural interest in 80s creature features, neon lights and synthwave soundtracks and vapourwave, a musical subculture sometimes associated with 80s consumer capitalism, became popular in 2015. It seems to be in our nature to always sentimentally look backwards at how things used to be – a sort of safe place and retreat from our realities. Whereas philosophers such as Mark Fisher called this obsession “hauntology”, which carries implications of an eschatological omen, others see a Shangria-La of endearing, bygone media that doesn’t haunt but has the breeze of a fond memory.
Static Rerun, AKA Matt Stetson, runs an Instagram archive with the mission objective of “recreating, reliving and rewinding back to the 80s and 90s” through impressively curated objects of the past. “I just want to create something that will instantly transform the viewer to a warm memory or happier time,” says Matt. His highly designed videos appear more like set pieces than the typical archival page, with a ton of thought put into the construction of the image and the relation between the presented media. “Ever since I was little I’ve been obsessed with themed calendars and books like I Spy and they have definitely influenced what I do in my photography,” says Matt. Influences of wimmelbooks (wordless picture books filled with detailed scenes) and spotters’ guides make sense – artefacts of the time give viewers visual clues on the specific era; Vanilla Ice, Super Mario World and bottles of the rare Crystal Pepsi take the viewer to the early 90s, whereas E.T, Big and Rambo take us to the 80s. It’s like Where’s Wally, but one that involves your own childhood.
For many, the 80s and 90s won’t be their idea of childhood. Nowadays, revivals of fashion trends and emerging internet aesthetics are flavoured primarily by the noughties and 2010s. But for Matt, staying true to his own personal history is important. “My biggest influence would have to be my father, whom we lost in 2017,” says Matt. “Once he passed I felt an obligation to chase my creativity to show him honor and as a thank you for everything he gave up for me.” Perhaps why nostalgia prevails so much in our culture is because it is our nostalgia, our own personalised and untouchable feeling. When Matt creates cathedrals of Gen-X memorabilia, he transforms it from clutter to curio, from trash to testimonial. “It doesn’t hurt that the 80s and 90s were easily the best two decades to grow up,” says Matt.
Google’s John Mueller used a clever technique to show the publisher of an educational site how to diagnose their search performance issues, which were apparently triggered by a domain migration but were actually caused by the content.
Someone posted a plea for help on the Bluesky social network to help their site recover from a site migration gone wrong. The person associated with the website attributed the de-indexing directly to the site migration because there was a direct correlation between the two events.
SEO Insight
An interesting point to highlight is that the site migration preceded the de-indexing by Google but it’s not the cause. The site migration is not the cause for the de-indexing. The migration is what set a chain of events into action that led to the real cause, which as you’ll see later on is low quality content. A common error that SEOs and publishers make is to stop investigating upon discovering the most obvious reason for why something is happening. But the most obvious reason is not always the actual reason, as you’ll see further on.
This is what was posted on social media:
“Hello SEO Community,
Sudden Deindexing & Traffic Drop after Domain Migration (from javatpoint.com to tpointtech.com) – Need Help”
Google’s John Mueller answered their plea and suggested they do a site search on Bing with their new domain, like this:
site:tpointtech.com sexy
And when you do that Bing shows “top ten list” articles about various Indian celebrities.
Google’s John Mueller also suggested doing a site search for “watch online” and “top ten list” which revealed that the site is host to scores of low quality web pages that are irrelevant to their topic.
A screenshot of one of the pages shows how abundant the off-topic web pages are on that website:
The irrelevant pages originated from the original domain, Javatpoint.com, from which they migrated. When they migrated to Tpointtech they also brought along all of that low quality irrelevant content as well.
Here’s a screenshot of the original domain, demonstrating that the off-topic content originated on the old domain:
Google’s John Mueller posted:
“One of the things I noticed is that there’s a lot of totally unrelated content on the site. Is that by design? If you go to Bing and use [site:tpointtech.com watch online], [site:tpointtech.com sexy], [site:tpointtech.com top 10] , similarly probably in your Search Console, it looks really weird.”
See also: What to Do About Old Low Quality Content
Bing Is Useful For Site Searches
Google’s John Mueller showed that Bing can be useful for identifying pages that Google is not indexing which could then indicate a content problem.
SEO Insight
The fact that Bing continues to index the off topic content may highlight a difference between Google and Bing. The domain migration might be showing one of the ways that Google identifies the motivation for content, whether the intent is to rank and monetize rather than create something useful to site visitors. An argument could be made that the wildly off-topic nature of the content betrays the “made-for-search-engines” motivation that Google cautions against.
Irrelevant Content
A site generally has a main topic, with branching related subtopics. But in general the main topic and subtopics relate to each other in a way that makes sense for the user. Adding wildly off-topic content low quality content betrays an intent to create content for traffic, something that Google explicitly prohibits.
Past Performance Doesn’t Predict Future Performance
There’s a tendency on the part of site publishers to shrug about their content quality because it seems to them that Google likes it just fine. But that doesn’t mean the content is fine, it means that it hasn’t become an issue yet. Some problems are dormant and when I see this in site reviews and generally say that this may not be a problem now but it could become a problem later so it’s best to be proactive about it now.
Given that the search performance issues occurred after the site migration but the irrelevant content was pre-existing it appears that the effects of the irrelevant content were muted by the standing the original content had. Nevertheless the irrelevant content was still an issue, it just hadn’t hatched into an issue yet. Migrating the site to a new domain forced Google to re-evaluate the entire site and that’s when the low quality content became an issue.
Content Quality Versus Content Intent
It’s possible for someone to make a case that the content, although irrelevant, was high quality and shouldn’t have made a difference. What calls attention to me is that the topics appear to signal an intent to create content for ranking and monetization purposes. It’s hard to argue that the content is useful for site visitors to an educational site.
Expansion Of Content Topics
Lastly there’s the issue of whether it’s a good idea to expand the range of topics that a site is relevant for. A television review site can expand to include reviews of other electronics like headphones and keyboards and it’s especially smoother if the domain name doesn’t set up the wrong expectation. That’s why domains with the product types in them are so limiting because they presume the publisher will never achieve so much success that they’ll have to expand the range of topics.
See also: Site Migration Issues: 11 Potential Reasons Traffic Dropped
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Ollyy
MarTechCharts regularly highlights data of interest to marketers and marketing operations professionals.
When measured by conversion rate, the average AI search visitor (tracked to a non-Google search source like ChatGPT) is 4.4 times as valuable as the average visit from traditional organic search, according to research by Semrush. (Semrush is parent company of MarTech publisher Third Door Media.)
Semrush predicts that as AI search grows (and traditional search declines) for websites over time, AI channels will drive similar amounts of economic value globally by the end of 2027 and potentially grow far beyond that in later years.
When it comes to conversions, the visitors from AI search show up at websites with a wealth of information supplied by their LLMs. That makes them more prepared to make a purchase decision.
The post Average LLM visitor worth 4.4x organic search visitors appeared first on MarTech.
Designing for other creatives has got to be one of the hardest tasks out there. It’s a challenge we took on last year when rebranding our very own Brand Impact Awards, and in 2025, JKR has created a new identity for one of the biggest events of the design year, D&AD Awards and Festival.
Everywhere you went at D&AD Festival and Awards, you were surrounded by riffs on the idea of Drawn to Create. The identity centres around the iconic Pencil (how could it not?) and a bold new typeface created with Studio DRAMA, Pencil Gothic. The typeface and identity morphed into different shapes on stage, lent itself to signage, backdrops and was front and centre of the glitzy awards ceremony.
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The new AI Mode tab in Google’s results, currently only active in the U.S., enables users to get an AI-generated answer to their query.
You can ask a detailed question in AI Mode, and Google will provide a summarized answer.
Google AI Mode answer for the question [what are the best ways to grow your calf muscles], providing a detailed summary of exercises and tips (Image Credit: Barry Adams)
Google explains how it generates these answers in some recently published documentation.
The critical process is what Google calls a “query fan-out” technique, where many related queries are performed in the background.
The results from these related queries are collected, summarized, and integrated into the AI-generated response to provide more detail, accuracy, and usefulness.
Having played with AI Mode since its launch, I have to admit it’s pretty good. I get useful answers, often with detailed explanations that give me the information I am looking for. It also means I have less need to click through to cited source websites.
I have to admit that, in many cases, I find myself reluctant to click on a source webpage, even when I want additional information. It’s simpler to ask AI Mode a follow-up question rather than click to a webpage.
Much of the web has become quite challenging to navigate. Clicking on an unknown website for the first time means having to brave a potential gauntlet of cookie-consent forms, email signup pop-ups, app install overlays, autoplay videos, and a barrage of intrusive ads.
The content you came to the page for is frequently hidden behind several barriers-to-entry that the average user will only persist with if they really want to read that content.
And then in many cases, the content isn’t actually there, or is incomplete and not quite what the user was looking for.
AI Mode removes that friction. You get most of the content directly in the AI-generated answer.
You can still click to a webpage, but often it’s easier to simply ask the AI a more specific follow-up question. No need to brave unusable website experiences and risk incomplete content after all.
Contrary to AI Overviews, AI Mode will provide summaries for almost any query, including news-specific queries:
AI Mode answer for the [latest news] query (Image Credit: Barry Adams)
Playing with AI Mode, I’ve seen some answers to news-specific queries that don’t even cite news sources, but link only to Wikipedia.
For contrast, the regular Google SERP for the same query features a rich Top Stories box with seven news stories.
With these types of results in AI Mode, the shelf life of news is reduced even further.
Where in search, you can rely on a Top Stories news box to persist for a few days after a major news event, in AI Mode, news sources can be rapidly replaced by Wikipedia links. This further reduces the traffic potential to news publishers.
A Google SERP for [who won roland garros 2025] with a rich Top Stories box vs. the AI Mode answer linking only to Wikipedia (Image Credit: Barry Adams)
There is some uncertainty about AI Mode’s traffic impact. I’ve seen examples of AI Mode answers that provide direct links to webpages in-line with the response, which could help drive clicks.
Google is certainly not done experimenting with AI Mode. We haven’t seen the final product yet, and because it’s an experimental feature that most users aren’t engaged with (see below), there’s not much data on CTR.
As an educated guess, the click-through rate from AI Mode answers to their cited sources is expected to be at least as low, and probably lower, as the CTR from AI Overviews.
This means publishers could potentially see their traffic from Google search decline by 50% or more.
The good news is that user adoption of AI Mode appears to be low.
The latest data from Similarweb shows that after an initial growth, usage of the AI Mode tab on Google.com in the U.S. has slightly dipped and now sits at just over 1%.
Data courtesy of Similarweb and Aleyda Solis (Image credit: Barry Adams)
This makes it about half as popular as the News tab, which is not a particularly popular tab within Google’s search results to begin with.
It could be that Google’s users are satisfied with AI Overviews and don’t need expanded answers in AI Mode, or that Google hasn’t given enough visual emphasis to AI Mode to drive a lot of usage.
I suspect that Google may try to make AI Mode more prominent, with perhaps allowing users to click from an AI Overview into AI Mode (the same way you can click from a Top Stories box to the News tab), or integrate it more prominently into their default SERP.
When user adoption of AI Mode increases, the impact will be keenly felt by publishers. Google’s CEO has reiterated their commitment to sending traffic to the web, but the reality appears to contradict that.
In some of their newest documentation about AI, Google strongly hints at diminished traffic and encourages publishers to “[c]onsider looking at various indicators of conversion on your site, be it sales, signups, a more engaged audience, or information lookups about your business.”.
Broad adoption of AI Mode, whatever form that may take, can have several impactful consequences for web publishers.
Worst case scenario, most Google search traffic to websites will disappear. If AI Mode becomes the new default Google result, expect to see a collapse of clicks from search results to websites.
Focusing heavily on optimizing for visibility in AI answers will not save your traffic, as the CTR for cited sources is likely to be very low.
In my view, publishers have roughly three strategies for survival:
Google’s Discover feed may soften the blow somewhat, especially with the rollout onto desktop Chrome browsers.
Expanded presence of Discover on all devices with a Chrome browser gives more opportunities for publishers to be visible and drive traffic.
However, a reliance on Discover as a traffic source can encourage bad habits. Disregarding Discover’s inherent volatility, the unfortunate truth is that clickbait headlines and cheap churnalism do well in the Discover feed.
Reducing reliance on search in favor of Discover is not a strategy that lends itself well to quality journalism.
There’s a real risk that, in order to survive a search apocalypse, publishers will chase after Discover clicks at any cost. I doubt this will result in a victory for content quality.
Publishers need to grow traffic and income from more channels than just search. Due to Google’s enormous monopoly in search, diversified traffic acquisition has been a challenge.
Google is the gatekeeper of most of the web’s traffic, so of course we’ve been focused on maximising that channel.
With the risk of a greatly diminished traffic potential from Google search, other channels need to pick up the slack.
We already mentioned Discover and its risks, but there are more opportunities for publishing brands to drive readers and growth.
Paywalls seem inevitable for many publishers. While I’m a fan of freemium models, publishers will have to decide for themselves what kind of subscription model they want to implement.
A key consideration is whether your output is objectively worth paying for. This is a question few publishers can honestly answer, so unbiased external opinions will be required to make the right business decision.
Podcasts have become a cornerstone of many publishers’ audience strategies, and for good reason. They’re easy to produce, and you don’t need that many subscribers to make a podcast economically feasible.
Another content format that can drive meaningful growth is video, especially short-form video that has multiplatform potential (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Discover).
Email newsletters are a popular channel, and I suspect this will only grow. The way many journalists have managed to grow loyal audiences on Substack is testament to this channel’s potential.
And while social media hasn’t been a key traffic driver for many years, it can still send significant visitor numbers. Don’t sleep on those Facebook open graph headlines (also valuable for Discover).
The third strategy, and probably the most important one, is to build a strong publishing brand that is actively sought out by your audience.
No matter the features that Google or any other tech intermediary rolls out, when someone wants to visit your website, they will come to you directly. Not even Google’s AI Mode would prevent you from visiting a site you specifically ask for.
A brand search for [daily mail] in Google AI Mode provides a link to the site’s homepage at the top of the response (Image credit: Barry Adams)
Brand strength translates into audience loyalty.
A recognizable publisher will find it easier to convince its readers to install their dedicated app, subscribe to their newsletters, watch their videos, and listen to their podcasts.
A strong brand presence on the web is also, ironically, a cornerstone of AI visibility optimization.
LLMs are, after all, regurgitators of the web’s content, so if your brand is mentioned frequently on the web (i.e., in LLMs’ training data), you are more likely to be cited as a source in LLM-generated answers.
Exactly how to build a strong online publishing brand is the real question. Without going into specifics, I’ll repeat what I’ve said many times before: You need to have something that people are willing to actively seek out.
If you’re just another publisher writing the same news that others are also writing, without anything that makes you unique and worthwhile, you’re going to have a very bad time. The worst thing you can be as a publisher is forgettable.
There is a risk here, too. In an effort to cater to a specific target segment, a publisher could fall victim to “audience capture“: Feeding your audience what they want to hear rather than what’s true. We already see many examples of this, to the detriment of factual journalism.
It’s a dangerous pitfall that even the biggest news brands find difficult to navigate.
In my previous article, I wrote a bit about how to optimize for AI Overviews.
I’ll expand on this in future articles with more tips, both technical and editorial, for optimizing for AI visibility.
More Resources:
This post was originally published on SEO For Google News.
Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock
Digiday covers the latest from marketing and media at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. More from the series →
As thousands of agency folk grab their passports, sunblock and antacids to head to Cannes next week for the annual Lions fest, Omnicom has quietly hammered out its strategy and message it’s taking to the Croisette. That message is, it’s time to capture the myriad opportunities for live — be it live-streaming, sponsorship of live sports, live shopping, etc.
Digiday has learned of a number of partnerships Omnicom and its various units (Omnicom Media Group, influencer arm Creo, commerce arm Flywheel) will be announcing next week with major platforms and retail media networks, all with an eye toward better understanding, harnessing and exploiting live opportunities for clients. Several Omnicom executives who spoke with Digiday talked of “the power of live content, conversation and commerce to drive brand growth.”
It’s all based on research Omnicom Media Group conducted that shows live can deliver more for clients thanks to evolving consumer habits and likes. Joanna O’Connell, Omnicom Media Group North America’s chief intelligence officer, spearheaded the research after OMG’s chief product officer Megan Pagliuca ID’ed the topic as one on which to focus. Nearly 1,500 U.S. consumers matched against U.S. Census data were surveyed the last week of April to generate the Rethinking Live study.
“There is truly this kind of rebound toward shared experiences,” said O’Connell. “Even as we’ve moved in a direction of so much personalization and so much … time spent alone on screens, people crave togetherness, they crave community, they crave connection. So, ‘live’ in that sense, is even more important than ever, because it’s kind of creating moments that bring people together, and they’re drawn to that.”
“At Philips, we recognize the opportunity that livestreaming and creator-led content unlock for deeper customer engagement,” said Faith Lim, ASEASN digital and media lead for Omnicom client Philips.
Some stats support Pagliuca’s hunch and O’Connell’s research as expressed in the report — which takes the concept of live far beyond live events like the Oscars or the Super Bowl, and into live-streaming, live shopping on a number of platforms (such as Amazon), second-screen experiences (such as conversations on X) while watching something live. For one, the study revealed that 75% of Gen Z watch social media live-streams while only 57% watch live TV content. In total, the live-stream e-commerce marketplace is estimated to hit almost $20 billion this year.
“When we asked people what they associate with live, more people (all U.S. consumers, not a specific age group) now say ‘live streaming on social platforms’ than they will live TV. And that’s bananas,” said O’Connell.
“Those are just massive numbers,” added Kevin Blazaitis, U.S. president of Creo, Omnicom’s influencer arm.
Three general findings came out of the research, said O’Connell. First, live-streams are the new prime time for younger people. One-third of younger respondents said they watch live-streamed content weekly, and they said it creates shared memories. What Omnicom will announce next week are a series of partnerships with a variety of platforms to harness this for clients, primarily through the influencers and creators who are live-streaming.
Secondly, co-viewing is more of a thing than ever before, particularly in the esports world. But other examples such as YouTube’s “watch with” feature adds a creator commentary layer to live sports streaming, while Thursday Night Football on Amazon also offers creator-led commentary.
Finally, private channels can’t be overlooked, since they also factor heavily into the shared experience — be it private chats, or membership in clubs. It’s a way for people to communicate with each other one-on-one as they digest shared experiences. Fans watching a Knicks game live on their TV at home might be texting each other with comments.
“This is more about questioning traditional notions than it is saying don’t do it anymore,” said O’Connell. “Because a live strategy needs to be a lot more expansive and sophisticated. You’ve got to be much more prepared to make real-time decisions. Your budgeting has to be more flexible. You need to be paying attention to social listening so you can get involved in conversation if it’s happening. There’s so much more depth and breadth to it.”
https://digiday.com/?p=580790
