As expected, professional sports inventory is selling rapidly in this year’s upfront marketplace, notably the NFL, which as one media buyer said has become “mainstream,” and no longer the place to reach just sports fans.
The rest of the upfront marketplace, historically dominated by selling entertainment content rather than sports, is slow to build any momentum, making it feel like it’s going to be another buyer’s market. But this week should see some of the stronger content players — NBC Universal, Disney and major streamers including Netflix and Amazon, along with YouTube — sell some of that inventory before many CMOs and top media agency executives head off to Cannes Lions.
In the end, the upfront marketplace, which has now grown to include major sports content like the NFL, NBA, March Madness college basketball and even college football, won’t wrap for several more weeks.
“The partners that have a lot of sports and also have entertainment, they’re going to force the entertainment conversation as well. They’re using sports to their leverage,” said one holding company investment exec, who like all buyers reached for this story spoke on condition of anonymity. “For some of the networks where there is no sports, or there’s minimal amount of sports, those conversations are happening a little bit slower, which is not surprising. You start with the priority, which, in a lot of places is sports, and then you see the way the rest of the things fall out.”
A second buyer at another holding company said that the NFL is the hottest selling content in the upfront this year, followed by the NBA, which is being sold for the first time in decades by NBC Universal, as well as for the first time by Amazon. “I’ve told clients, if you want to add NFL, you’re not going to get it. It’s just not there,” said that buyer. “I paid a little more than I expected to pay, but I also saw it was a little bit of a runaway train.”
This buyer said even Netflix, which will carry two NFL games on Christmas Day this year, has been aggressive with its limited inventory. The buyer said they would hold off investing in NFL if pricing accommodations weren’t made in entertainment inventory, and the buyer said Netflix didn’t blink. That sounds very much like a seller’s market — at least when it comes to pro football.
NBCU has rights to the 2026 Super Bowl, and has largely reached sellout — or at least paused selling what’s left to evaluate the inventory remaining. Several buyers also noted that NBCU tied sales of Super Bowl inventory to purchasing avails in the Winter Olympics in 2026, which it also is selling in this upfront.
“There was an ask for an equal or around the same level of spending that they were getting within the game to be also made around the Winter Olympics,” said a third buyer, who said they declined the offer.
Still, the major sports events are hotter than ever. “Tentpoles have moved quicker than we’ve ever seen before,” said the third buyer. “Whether you’re talking about World Cup or you’re talking about Super Bowl or even the Olympics, all these properties are moving faster and selling out faster than they ever had before.”
The challenge for the NBA, said the third buyer, is that the abundance of games being carried means that content almost never reaches sellout, which makes it more of a buyers’ play.
World Cup is another tentpole whose inventory was selling aggressively even in the lead-up to the upfront marketplace. There’s been so much demand that its main sellers Fox (for English language coverage) and NBCU (Telemundo has Spanish-language rights) are no longer offering it to buyers, in order to maintain some amount of scatter inventory. “If you’re talking to Telemundo today for World Cup, you’re late to the game,” said the third buyer.
Women’s sports has retained the heat it’s developed over the last years since Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese made women’s March Madness ratings go through the roof. “The WNBA, March Madness, even the NWSL [National Women’s Soccer League] are all continuing to be in demand,” noted the third buyer.
What’s far less in demand is the entertainment side of the upfront offerings sellers are bringing to the marketplace. A fourth holding company buyer found it interesting that for the second year, sellers are pushing prime-time inventory as some sort of premium, which this buyer found almost comical.
And the push for flexibility means the sellers with mostly entertainment content (read, not sports) will have to offer even more flexibility to stay even with digital video alternatives. “If you think about the digital landscape, everything’s flexible — the IAB terms are, what, 14 day rolling options, right?” explained the fourth buyer. “Clients are starting to get used to that, and that’s the way of the future of how our business needs to operate. Of course, it’s unnerving to the linear sellers, those traditional partners, but that just means they’ve got to change their model too.”
Of all the major sellers — Disney, NBCU, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery — all the buyers agreed that Warner Bros. Discovery is in the least favorable position because it doesn’t have major sports of some sort to tie its entertainment offerings to, which are down in ratings for the most part anyway. The buyers did cite HBO Max (as it’s known this week and possibly from here on in) as the lone bright spot in that seller’s portfolio.
Finally, client budgets remain a confused mixed bag at this point, even as billions of dollars are being placed into sports and high-profile content. While one buyer said clients keep changing their upfront budgets day to day, another buyer said another major CPG client is opting to limit its upfront budgets from 10 media brands to six, as a means of keeping budget aside to either return to the bottom line or spend in scatter.
Economic uncertainty caused by the on-again off-again tariffs drama is already hitting the B2B market more seriously than the broader consumer landscape, according to research from Madison Logic, an account-based marketing platform. A survey of 300 marketers with Harris Poll revealed that nearly all respondents (96%) plan to change their marketing strategy due to the impact of tariffs. Other highlights:
“Even though all the talk is about the media side, I think the action and the stories are going to be around the creative side of the business. Because they will undoubtedly merge a lot of the creative brands, which will create a ton of conflicts and just a ton of uncertainty for clients.”
— Steve Boehler, founder of consultancy Mercer Island Group, talking about the endgame of Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG.
Adrian Hanft is an experimental artist who uses non-traditional equipment: junk, old televisions, cassette tapes, coffee stirrers, graffiti, bugs, Raspberry Pi and Lego. He also has “no secrets”. His Instagram has shot up to over 20,000 followers through the popularity of his animations created on receipt papers and shipping labels, all of which contain his name and address. “The subject matter I choose is simple, ordinary moments that are easy to ignore,” says Adrian. “Showing through the video is every mundane purchase I’ve ever made: junk food, deodorant, postage stamps, diapers, and blue jeans – every penny accounted for in explicit detail.”
It’s hard to ignore just how much rubbish accumulates in everyday life but Adrian creates an eccentric tribute to it with beautiful scenes, such as the flap of a bird’s wing, a dive into a pool, gymnastic flips and boxing matches. “When these moments loop they start to feel profound because they have no beginning or end. That runner is never gonna get a break. That woman will never be finished taking out the trash. The ballerina will be eternally spinning,” he explains. The Marxhausen idea of ‘beauty hides in plain sight’ crops up in these unpristine, crumpled canvases, connecting life and motion with the paper in the viewer’s pocket. Better yet, Adrian doubles as a virtual art teacher, showing the behind-the-scenes of nearly every work he publishes. His work prompts viewers to give the transformation of neglected materials a try, he shares: “I feel honoured when someone is inspired to try my odd activities.” When it comes to what is useful in the act of making, it should be no secret that nothing is out of bounds.
The WordPress Performance Team has released an experimental plugin that increases the perceived loading speed of web pages without the performance issues and accessibility tradeoffs associated with Single Page Applications (SPAs). The announcement was made by Felix Arntz, a member of the WordPress Performance Team and a Google software engineer.
Plugins released by the WordPress Performance Team are released so that users can play around and test with a new performance enhancement before the new feature is considered for inclusion into the WordPress core. Using these plugins provides a way to receive advanced performance improvements before a decision is made as to whether to integrate the improvements into WordPress itself.
The View Transitions plugin brings smooth, native browser-powered animations to WordPress page loads, mimicking the feel of Single Page Applications (SPAs) without requiring a full rebuild or custom JavaScript. Once the WordPress plugin is activated, it replaces the default hard reload between pages with a fluid animated transition effect, like a fade or slide, depending on how you configure it. This improves the visual flow of navigation across the site and increases the perceived loading speed for site visitors.
The plugin works out of the box with most themes, and users can customize the behavior through the admin user interface under Settings > Reading. Animations can be set using selectors and presets, with support for things like headers, post titles, and featured images to persist or animate across views.
According to the announcement:
“You can customize the default animation, and the selectors for the default view transition names for both global and post-specific elements. While this means the customization options are limited via the UI, it still allows you to play around with different configurations via UI, and likely for the majority of sites these are the most relevant parameters to customize anyways.
Keep in mind that this UI is only supplemental, and it only exists for easy exploration in the plugin. The recommended way to customize is via add_theme_support in your site’s WordPress theme.
…For the default-animation, a few animations are available by default. Additionally, the plugin provides an API to register additional animations, each of which encompasses a unique identifier, some configuration values, a CSS stylesheet, and optional aliases.”
The new WordPress plugin is optimized for block themes but designed to work broadly across all WordPress sites.
The page transitions are supported by all modern browsers, however it will degrade gracefully in older unsupported browsers by falling back to standard navigation without breaking anything.
The main point is that the plugin makes WordPress sites feel more modern and app-like—without the complexity or downsides of SPAs.
Read the announcement on Felix Arntz’s blog:
Introducing the View Transitions Plugin for WordPress
Download the experimental WordPress Performance Team plugin here:
View Transitions WordPress Plugin
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com
Top of the Ticker: ESPN is joining Good Morning America and ABC News’ other programming at Disney’s 7 Hudson Square HQ in Manhattan. The Disney-owned sports network is moving its New York-based shows from their perch at Seaport Studios, where they’ve been since 2018. Get Up will be the first show to air out of the new space on June 9, followed by First Take on June 23, alongside ESPN Radio’s signature morning show UnSportsmanLike.
ESPN’s signature morning shows, Get Up & First Take, & ESPN Radio’s UnSportsmanLike are moving to their new NYC home this month
Details: bit.ly/3ZTqWGl | @espn.com
— ESPN PR (@espnpr.bsky.social) June 6, 2025 at 10:40 AM
New Promo: Meanwhile, GMA has debuted a new promo campaign that marks the start of its 50th anniversary celebrations. Titled “Coming Home,” the promo features co-anchors Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos, and Michael Strahan—as well as the show’s extended family—visiting their respective hometowns. The promo could also be viewed as an indirect nod to the show’s move from Times Square to its new home at 7 Hudson Square sometime this summer.
Pride Celebrations: Speaking of ABC News, the network has announced programming initiatives to celebrate Pride Month. Airing across all dayparts and properties, coverage will feature reporting, interviews, and features highlighting people, stories, and issues important to the LGBTQ+ community.
C-Span: C-SPAN debuted a refreshed on-air graphics look across its networks this week. “Our new look was designed in-house with internal feedback as well as a review of comments from viewers over the years,” executive producer Paul Brown said in a statement provided to TVNewser. “One of our primary goals was to enhance brand consistency by creating a unified look that eventually will run across all our platforms.” Brown also noted that C-SPAN’s last major graphics occurred back in 2018.
C-SPAN debuts new on-air graphics; modern and built with viewers in mind.
New look. Same C-SPAN. pic.twitter.com/WGeZrahNI2
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 2, 2025
Increased tech coverage: Bloomberg is launching two new monthly tech programs, broadening its global coverage with region-specific offerings. Bloomberg Tech: Europe, anchored by Tom Mackenzie, debuts on June 13 at 1:30 a.m. ET; and Bloomberg Tech: Asia, co-anchored by Shery Ahn and Annabelle Droulers, premieres on June 27 at 8:30 p.m. ET. These programs complement the existing Bloomberg Tech, which airs at 11 a.m. ET, and recently unveiled a refreshed format with new branding and graphics.
I’ve recently levelled up my 3D printing game, and entered Bambu Lab territory. This company manufactures some of the most premium 3D printers you can buy, and its material quality is just as luxurious. I’ve been using one of the best 3D printers on the market, the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon, and honestly, I’m never going back. Even the spools are fancy (and reusable, too).
If you’re someone who goes through a lot of filament for your 3D printer (don’t we all), then I’m delighted to tell you that Bambu Lab has just launched its Summer Sale – with bulk discounts on materials and accessories, including maintenance parts and hotends. There are some great deals on 3D printers too, which I’ve rounded up below.
Google Marketing Live 2025 was a whirlwind of announcements, with over 30 new product updates and features unveiled, most of them powered by AI.
The event highlighted Google’s commitment to transforming advertising through AI across four key pillars: Search, Creativity, Measurement, and Agentic Capabilities.
Here’s a breakdown of the major announcements and how marketers can take advantage of these updates in 2025.
Most of the Search updates were centered around numerous AI capabilities, which isn’t surprising.
Updates to Search included:
These updates signal that traditional keyword-first search strategies won’t cut it anymore.
If you’re not feeding the right creative and conversion signals into your campaigns, you’ll be left out of this AI-first discovery layer.
There were some very welcome updates announced for the Performance Max campaign type that are worth noting for advertisers.
To meet the growing demand for dynamic and engaging content, Google introduced tools that simplify and scale creative asset production.
Updates were announced across Display, Video, and Demand Gen inventory.
The bulk of the updates from Google Marketing Live were surrounded by creative updates, which indicates where Google is putting its best foot forward in terms of differentiating its ad platform from others.
Google’s new measurement tools offer more granular insights and facilitate data-driven decision-making.
Google is introducing agentic tools that act on behalf of advertisers, automating routine tasks and providing strategic recommendations.
These updates are aimed at providing more streamlined support to Google advertisers, as they’ve gotten feedback about a lack of Google-supplied support over the past few years.
With so many updates announced, jumping in without a plan is a good way to burn budget. Here’s how you can strategically get ahead of the rollout:
Not every tool will be immediately available, or available in all markets.
Start with what you can control: Asset Studio, Merchant Center profile updates, Google Analytics 4 attribution enhancements, etc.
If you’re not ready to go all-in on new features, set up campaign experiments or geo splits when testing new Smart Bidding Exploration or incrementality tools.
Watch how performance shifts before scaling further or adding new features to test.
Make sure your images, headlines, and videos meet Google’s quality guidelines. That foundation matters before layering AI enhancements.
Remember, your AI-powered creative will only be as good as the inputs you’re giving the system!
This is a must for all advertisers. Whether testing creative variations or letting the agentic assistant make tweaks, log what was modified. It’s the only way to evaluate impact.
Help your designers, analysts, and media managers understand what’s changing. Many of these updates will shift how each department works.
While Google Marketing Live introduced a huge set of new features, certain updates stand out for their potential to significantly benefit smaller advertisers.
In my opinion, these updates are the ones worth paying attention to, especially for SMBs.
Smart Bidding Exploration is a significant enhancement to Google’s automated bidding strategies.
This feature allows campaigns to tap into a broader range of search queries by using machine learning to analyze various signals and predict conversion likelihoods.
It adjusts bids in real-time, enabling advertisers to reach users during their research and consideration phases, even before they enter the traditional sales funnel.
For smaller advertisers with limited budgets, Smart Bidding Exploration offers a way to discover untapped traffic sources without overhauling existing keyword strategies.
By leveraging AI to identify high-performing queries, businesses can expand their reach and drive more conversions efficiently.
Google has reduced the minimum spend requirement for incrementality testing from $100,000 to just $5,000.
This change democratizes access to advanced measurement tools, allowing smaller advertisers to assess the true impact of their campaigns on brand perception and customer behavior.
Previously, only large advertisers could afford to run incrementality tests. Now, smaller businesses can gain valuable insights into how their advertising efforts influence customer actions, enabling more informed decision-making and optimized marketing strategies.
Google’s new video asset tools, including the Asset Studio and AI-powered features like image-to-video transformation and outpainting, simplify the creation of engaging video content.
These tools allow advertisers to generate high-quality videos from existing images and expand visuals beyond their original frames, making it easier to produce content suitable for various platforms.
Video content is increasingly important in digital marketing, but producing it can be resource-intensive. These new tools lower the barrier to entry, enabling smaller advertisers to create compelling videos without the need for extensive resources or expertise.
Google has introduced A/B testing capabilities within Merchant Center, allowing advertisers to test different product titles, images, and descriptions directly in the platform.
This feature enables businesses to identify the most effective content variations to enhance engagement and conversion rates.
For ecommerce businesses, especially smaller ones, optimizing product listings can significantly impact performance.
This new testing feature provides a straightforward way to experiment and refine listings based on real user data, leading to better outcomes with minimal effort.
Google Marketing Live 2025 wasn’t just about showcasing new features. It was a signal that the way we plan, build, and measure campaigns is shifting yet again.
Marketers who test early, stay curious, and apply these tools with intention will be in the best position to benefit.
That doesn’t mean blindly adopting every new update. It means understanding where automation can help, where oversight is still critical, and where your strategy needs to evolve.
The biggest gains won’t come from the tools themselves, but from how you choose to use them.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Brooke Osmundson/Search Engine Journal
Building an AI-first buying journey is now a strategic imperative for CMOs and lean GTM teams. Today’s buyers are self-directed, signals-led and heavily influenced by AI-powered personalization and expert-driven thought leadership. Many of my clients are in the early stages of building AI into their revenue motions. My role is often to help them define the roadmap and build the strategy and motions to make it real.
But making this shift isn’t about layering in new tools. It requires both a strategy to revamp your new buyer journey and building real AI proficiency inside your marketing org — a skillset that’s becoming a career-defining edge in B2B marketing roles. What does AI-powered marketing actually look like in practice?
The shift toward AI-native marketing requires two foundational changes:
Today’s AI’s changes in the B2B buyer journey are mainly across four core areas. Each of these serves a different purpose — but together, they define how AI is scaling both efficiency and impact across revenue marketing.
In recent months, I’ve been testing how Custom GPTs perform inside real B2B GTM workflows across campaign planning, ABM orchestration and content production. Here’s what worked — and where there’s room to grow.
Over the past quarter, I’ve been experimenting with a small set of custom-built GPTs across different stages of the GTM motion — from ABM activation to content production. Each tool offered something valuable, but none delivered results on its own.
They worked best when treated like junior team members: capable, but needing strategy, direction and oversight. Here’s what I’ve learned from putting them to work — and why they need more than just a prompt to succeed.
(Built using Zapier + Clay integrations)
One of the most useful GPT-assisted experiments I’ve run is a real-time ABM workflow. It connects external buying signals (like job changes or social surging intent from targeted accounts’ executives) to first-party engagement data, then surfaces qualified activity to sales via Slack and updates in CRM.
What worked: The GPT layer accelerated automation mapping and surfaced some helpful strategy advice and logic, reducing my initial build time.
What didn’t: It couldn’t manage the nuances across tools. I still had to orchestrate integrations, troubleshoot failure logic and layer unique GTM context to make it usable.
An example of the GPT workflow diagram with Clay + Slack integration:
Example for illustration only.
(Built by Canva)
This GPT supported rapid production of creative drafts, helping turn high-level positioning into on-brand banners, carousels and mockups.
What worked: It was especially good at eliminating the “blank page” phase and surfacing related templates with tailored copies quickly.
What didn’t: The design layer still required my input. Layouts, creative customization and CTA positioning needed human touch and branding judgment.
In the example below, the GPT helped speed things up, but it was only as good as the prompts, product context and messaging I brought to it.
Example prompt output — anonymized for illustration only
(Using VEED’s Video GPT)
I’ve used this to rapidly prototype short-form video assets for early-stage SaaS clients that value speed and ROI. It pulls in GTM inputs and outputs a first draft with basic edits and voiceover.
What worked: Huge speed boost! Great for getting a v1 great quality video out the door.
What didn’t: I’d love to see its ability to adapt tone and narrative structure more dynamically based on advanced personas or complex messaging layers. I still had to rewrite portions to align tone and structure with our messaging framework.
(Example prompt output — anonymized for illustration only)
(Using HubSpot’s Landing Page Creator GPT)
This GPT helped me create structured, conversion-ready copy for launches and campaigns, based on prompt guidance and key inputs.
What worked: A good first step in generating stunning designs quickly with a guided onboarding process based on my prompts and guidance, saving time from copy to publish. It can be further edited on HubSpot.
What didn’t: While the GPT offers strong strategic copy and structural guidance, it can’t yet customize visual layouts or directly insert tailored creative assets that align with the copy. Forms, workflows or CMS modules are not supported as of the moment I write this article.
An anonymized output of a GPT-generated landing page layout.
Will AI replace your marketing team? Not likely. But marketing leaders who can direct and deploy AI effectively will have a major strategy and execution edge.
These AI tools are like junior teammates — they extend my capabilities, but still rely on my judgment, inputs and direction.
They gave me leverage at a fraction of hiring cost in some cases, but based on my experience, they are not plug-and-play solutions. Like any team member, they perform best with strong leadership and guidance.
The organizations that thrive won’t be those chasing the latest tools, but those with leaders who:
Your AI agents need those leaders as their managers. Because in the end, the tech stack alone doesn’t win. Strategy, process and human judgment do. Stay tuned for AI-powered B2B marketing strategies and workflows in more depth.
Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.
“We created Crany-Frame and Crany-Hairline,” Daniel says, “these fonts then serve as our base scaffolding, never seen in design, but instead we apply decoration to them to produce new typefaces for each content strand.” This act is one that allows the identity to breath, grow and flow, and is developed upon a custom, node-based system that transforms the typeface it into a type generation tool in its own right. “We used this tool to design the variants for different content strands,” he continues, building a toolset rather than specific letterforms that could evolve within the context or content in which it’s sitting. “That became a big part of the process: designing systems that designers could actually use, not just look at,” he adds, “again it was a wider conversation/concept around the future and how designers and machines can work together.”
Following this progressive approach to design, each supporting element of the identity, be it the typeface or custom colour palette generator, is designed with what Daniel describes as a “chaos element”; an intentional glitch that conceptually embodies the brand’s concept. “It’s a microstatement about the nature of the future, that it can be anticipated, but never fully known,” Daniel says. In essence, this gives life to the creative system – providing the space necessary to create an unexpected tone of contrasts, digital and human, systematic and spontaneous.
The binary nature was necessary not only to reflect the platform’s interrogation of present and future but also to create a distinctive vibe. “The demands on the typeface are pretty simple – it needed to set an atmosphere,” Daniel says. “The typefaces you see on the website and social essentially only exist in the moment,” he details, “as a string of parameters to create a general style that we use to create live animating versions of the font generated on the fly.”
This ability equally offered the flexibility required to evolve alongside the creative scene, and indeed, the brand itself. “The whole idea was to make something open enough to keep building on,” Daniel says,. “We’ve already got tools in place to generate new weights, shapes and animated variants and the tool itself still has a ton of unused functionality,” growing as new demands emerge. “It’s less about version numbers and more about ongoing movement,” Daniel ends, “the system’s alive – that’s the point.”
One thing that rarely gets enough attention in SEO is how user behavior, trends, and sentiment toward a brand shape performance.
It doesn’t just apply to traffic from new queries. It also affects how many people choose to click on your brand in search results.
When something shifts outside of SEO, like a wave of negative press, seasonal change, or a shift in consumer preferences, it can lead to more or fewer branded searches.
It can also bring new associations with your brand, such as a rise in negative reviews or more online mentions that carry a clear tone. These can be early signs that something is changing. Often, the change hasn’t shown up anywhere else yet.
This is why SEO can act like a canary in the coal mine. It can surface early warning signs before customer satisfaction scores drop or sales start to slide.
Organic search data can reveal early cracks in brand trust, preference, or product satisfaction.
Search is one of the few places where people show exactly what they are thinking. They do it without filters, without needing to contact anyone, and without revealing who they are.
This makes it very different from leaving a review or speaking to a customer service team.
Search gives users a way to explore concerns, check claims, or validate ideas in private. That makes SEO data more private and potentially more honest than surveys or social media.
When people begin to doubt your brand, consider alternatives, or worry about price or quality, those feelings often show up in search before they show up anywhere else.
If people are asking whether your brand is legitimate or if your deliveries arrive on time, these are not throwaway questions. They are signs that something might be going wrong. These moments often come before complaints appear in reviews or support tickets.
Search behavior is usually the first place to spot a shift in public opinion. SEO data updates all the time, which means you get a live read on how your brand is landing with users. You can spot changes even if your rankings or revenue haven’t moved yet.
This is even more important now that people use AI and LLM tools more often. These models can show outdated or negative content that still lingers online. This affects how your brand appears across a wider landscape than just Google Search.
SEO has often been judged on traffic and rankings, but not all signals are about performance. Some are predictive. They show up in how users frame queries, stack questions, and explore comparisons.
These behaviors reflect how they move through the search journey to find what they need.
Here are a few signs that can point to growing brand problems:
If fewer people are searching for your brand name over time, it might mean you’re losing relevance or being overtaken by competitors.
Sometimes, it’s just seasonal. Sometimes, it’s the result of a big push from a rival. Either way, it’s worth a closer look and worth talking about across teams.
Search engines have long been aware of sentiment. You can see this in how Google highlights review terms like “refund,” “problem,” or “delivery issue.”
If more users are typing these words alongside your brand, it can suggest rising frustration. Often, this happens before customer service sees a spike or before review scores drop.
Users asking whether your brand is trustworthy or if it’s a scam are not always doing so out of curiosity. Sometimes, they are actively trying to avoid making a mistake.
These moments are decision points, and they can cause people to switch to a competitor who has fewer trust issues in search.
If your branded listings are getting fewer clicks and you haven’t changed your paid strategy, something might be off.
It could be that negative news, poor reviews, or competitor ads are winning attention. It could also mean users know your brand but are now choosing to avoid it.
Google’s “People Also Ask” feature reacts to the wider search landscape. If questions like “Is this brand legit?” or “Does this product work?” start appearing next to your listings, it’s a reflection of growing uncertainty.
These shifts often point to new concerns that haven’t yet reached your team.
Most brands use a familiar mix of tools to track performance. These usually include sales numbers, social mentions, customer service logs, and net promoter scores. These are helpful, but they only show what’s already happened.
SEO data is different. It captures what users are wondering right now. It reflects unfiltered curiosity or concern. People don’t always leave feedback, but they often search when something feels wrong. That’s what makes search such a powerful signal.
Even the best social listening tools only rely on what users are willing to share in public. Search data shows what users are trying to understand privately. This gives you an early edge.
If you treat SEO as only a rankings or traffic tool, you miss a wider opportunity. That approach is becoming less useful in modern search, especially with the rise of AI. Search is evolving, and so is how users engage with it.
Organic search can show the small cracks in perception long before those cracks grow into bigger problems.
This layer is often ignored because it doesn’t sit neatly in a performance dashboard, but it can be one of the most valuable tools for protecting a brand’s reputation.
Spotting the signals is only the first step. To get real value, you need a way to feed this information back to the right teams.
In most companies, SEO insights stay with the marketing or content teams, but PR should be looped in so they can act fast or use the data to shape their response.
Customer support should know what users are searching for so they can update scripts or prepare for new types of complaints.
Product teams can look at whether confusing searches are tied to real product issues. Brand and customer experience teams can adjust messaging on high-impact pages.
SEO isn’t just about growth. It’s a lens into what your audience is thinking and feeling. When used properly, it can surface early signs of trouble before they appear in sales, reviews, or tickets.
Brands that treat SEO as a signal, not just a channel, can spot problems early, act faster, and protect what matters most.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Natalya Kosarevich/Shutterstock
If there’s one thing keeping Zola’s new CMO up at night, it’s search — or rather the messy reinvention of it.
Barely two weeks into the role, Briana Severson is already navigating a marketing minefield, where the old playbook is fading fast and the new one is still being written.
“Were someone to ask me to sum up what’s on my mind as a marketer these days, it would be search,” said Severson.
AI is uprooting the original search bargain — slowly but surely shifting it away from the familiar model where search engines crawled publisher content, served up snippets and rewarded publishers with traffic they could monetize. Now, the exchange is starting to fray. AI-powered search still feeds on publisher content but it keeps users on its ecosystem, cutting off the referral traffic that once made the whole thing worthwhile.
Naturally, that has big implications for a brand like Zola. Wedding planning almost always starts with search — for venues, for sites, for budgets. It’s a foundation moment, and it’s a long been where Zola shines. The brand showed up early in the journey — whether through organic results or paid placements — and had a good shot at turning those queries into customers.
But that visibility, and the predictability it brought, is fading — especially among Gen Z couples now entering the wedding planning stage. As Severson explained: “Gen Z is searching in a very different way compared to how millennials search. A lot of that arguably stems from an increased reliance on human perspectives and an increased distrust of brands being brands.”
Rather than overhaul Zola’s search strategy in response, Severson is investing in creators. Younger couples aren’t sifting through Google searches; they’re scrolling TikToks, watching Instagram testimonials and curating Pinterest boards.
“We are very invested in showing up on those platforms where that new search is happening, and we’re working with influencers of all sizes in particular to tell the story of their wedding in those places,” said Severson.
Case in point: the recent wedding of creator Jaz Smith and her fiancé Kevin Callari. Over the course of the day, Smith posted more than 20 TikTok videos, flooding feeds with moments from the celebration. Zola was woven into that story as the partner for the couple’s wedding paper.
More partnerships like this are already in the pipeline, and they’ll form the foundation of what Severson called Zola’s “creative creator program”. Details are still light, as she’s only just settling into the role but the goal is clear: build a trusted roster of creators who can speak to the brand’s role in the lead-up to one of life’s biggest moments.
Some creators will have massive followings, others will be more niche. What matters is that Zola shows up throughout the full wedding journey, from planning and paper to parties and honeymoons.
“Finding more of those types of partnerships, both organically and in an influencer partnership context, is really central to our strategy,” said Severson.
Marketers have been mulling this shift for a while — that search doesn’t start with a query box anymore. It just took AI to make the move. Suddenly, anyone could produce articles, images and videos, flooding the web with content. While that unlocked scale, it also triggered a crisis of trust. People started tuning out over-optimized, lifeless content. In this new era of search, creators have emerged as the signal in the noise, offering one thing algorithms can’t fake: authenticity.
“For all these reasons, it’s becoming increasingly important to have a good product that people talk about and are loyal to,” said Severson. “That means marketing will become a lot less reliant on the brands themselves doing the heavy lifting from a marketing perspective.”
It’s why creators are permeating into more facets of marketing, from affiliate to outdoor advertising, the upfront negotiations to programmatic.
“It’s no surprise that the “socialverse” is spilling beyond social. The lines between online and offline are blurred,” said Steph Ross, vp of social and influencer at Born Social. “Formerly ‘social-only’ creators are now becoming major players across the advertising landscape. If we’re watching TV while scrolling our phones, seeing those same creators on both screens just makes sense; it brings cultural moments full circle and meets audiences where they are.”
