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Who Won, Who Cut and What Comes Next in Advertising

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The GRADIENT

Who Won, Who Cut and What Comes Next in Advertising

Why Generative AI Isn’t Killing SEO – It’s Creating New Opportunities

You’ve heard the predictions: AI will replace SEO, generative search will eliminate organic traffic, and marketers should start updating their resumes. With 73% of marketing teams using generative AI, it’s easy to assume we’re witnessing SEO’s funeral. Here’s what’s actually happening: AI isn’t replacing SEO. It’s expanding SEO into new territories with bigger opportunities. While

Creative misalignment is the silent killer of marketing ROI

Marketing budgets may be flat, but pressure on CMOs to deliver results continues to climb — and so does investment in martech. The market is growing, led by large enterprises embracing AI-driven tools for content, personalization and automation, alongside first-party data solutions to meet rising privacy expectations. Yet despite this momentum, many organizations struggle to

How Gilberto Gil united the best in Brazilian design

Our São Paulo correspondent speaks to the creative team behind the legend’s innovative final tour, about visualising his daring yet emotive music and messages.

Google’s Top 5 SEO Tools

I’ve spent years working with Google’s SEO tools, and while there are countless paid options out there, Google’s free toolkit remains the foundation of my optimization workflow. These tools show you exactly what Google considers important, and that offers invaluable insights you can’t get anywhere else. Let me walk you through the five Google tools

Brands are discovering their sales associates are among their most valuable influencers

On Aerie’s TikTok, where it has 292,000 followers, content filmed in-store is posted regularly. It’s part of a series called “Associate Picks,” through which the retailer features its associates’ latest favorite products. “We pretty much give them the mic and ask them to tell us about the new arrivals,” said Stacey McCormick, Aerie’s CMO. “She’ll

How we made made Castlevania: Nocturne a rare video game adaptation with a touch of elegance

The Castlevania franchise is breaking the curse of video game adaptations, with the second season of Castlevania: Nocturne winning a positive reception on Netflix. Animated by Powerhouse Animation Studios, the series passes the Belmont family demon-killing business on to the next generation, set during the time of the French Revolution where vampires attempt to lead

ChatGPT Appears To Use Google Search As A Fallback

Aleyda Solís conducted an experiment to test how fast ChatGPT indexes a web page and unexpectedly discovered that ChatGPT appears to use Google’s search results as a fallback for web pages that it cannot access or that are not yet indexed on Bing. According to Aleyda: I’ve run a simple but straightforward to follow test

The Big Weekend Show Wins the Night

The 7 p.m. ET edition of Fox News’ The Big Weekend Show was the night’s most-watched program in total viewers. The 5 p.m. ET hour was the peak hour over at CNN and MSNBC as CNN Newsroom with Jessica Dean and PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton led the way for their respective networks in total viewers.

Luca Bjørnsten revels in the sugariness of pop culture in these luminous paintings

Luca Bjørnsten makes art that looks like it completely fits with his Instagram username: Nugget Brain. You’d find it hard to believe Luca was born, raised and currently based in Copenhagen given his large output of fluorescent and gleefully childish paintings depict vaporwaved Florida beachscapes. But Luca’s paintings stretch further than mere geography, and become

Content That Enables & Adds Value In The Modern Search World

Too often in our content and messaging, we default to listing features in a succession of brief, disconnected claims rather than showing readers how those features will make a genuine difference in their lives. As a result, they are left to fill in the gaps themselves, often choosing to skim and move on rather than

Making AI deep research work for strategic marketing tasks

Recently, I put some of the newer, more powerful deep research tools through their paces to see if AI could handle the kind of deep, strategic research marketers have to do but rarely have time for. What I found surprised me. It wasn’t about automating work. It was about surfacing research, case studies and trends

Best Buy has a back-to-school tech sale happening right now – these are my 3 picks for creative laptops, all under $700

Calling all students: whether you’re back to school or off to college – I’ve found 3 pretty sweet deals on creative laptops that I’d definitely buy if I were still a photography student (I graduated almost 4 years ago, yikes). I know how tough it can be to find tech on a budget, so all

5 Ways To Prove The Real Value Of SEO In The AI Era

As SEO evolves with AI optimization, generative engine optimization, and answer engine optimization, brands and marketers must rethink their SEO strategies to stay competitive. Instead of focusing solely on traditional SEO strategies and tactics, you need to be visible in AI-powered search and answer engines. Showing the value of SEO in this new world means

With sports driving the marketplace, David Levy and Chris Weil hope to clean up with HS&E

As evidenced all over the upfront marketplace, which is wrapping up in entirety either this week or next, sports was the main attraction for any network lucky enough to have it to sell, and a strong driver of advertiser dollars from media agencies looking to place their clients in content that delivers audiences. Any seller

Yasuhiko Iida’s new photobook humanises London

At its launch at The Photographer’s Gallery, Yasuhiko Iida’s new photobook Thousand Fold sold out thanks to its audience of passionate skaters, artists and fellow photographers – in what looked like more of a bloc party than a book launch. But in the pages of Thousand Fold, you can see exactly how this community came

Why Is SureRank WordPress SEO Plugin So Popular?

A new SEO plugin called SureRank, by Brainstorm Force, makers of the popular Astra theme, is rapidly growing in popularity. In beta for a few months, it was announced in July and has amassed over twenty thousand installations. That’s a pretty good start for an SEO plugin that has only been out of beta for

Live Aid Docuseries Helps CNN Capture 2nd

CNN’s airing of the Live Aid: When Rock ’n’ Roll Took On the World docuseries propelled the network to a second-place finish in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 demo. As usual, Fox News was the leader of the evening, with the 7 p.m. ET edition of The Big Weekend Show taking the top spot

What 330 Metallica gigs taught me about creativity

As music continues to dominate headlines, from Oasis’ much-anticipated reunion tour to the BBC’s choices around which Glastonbury sets to show, and Ozzy Osbourne saying his final farewell at what media dubbed “heavy metal’s Live Aid”, it’s made me realise just how deeply music has shaped my creative instincts – and the way I see

Why A Site Deindexed By Google For Programmatic SEO Bounced Back

A company founder shared their experience with programmatic SEO, which they credited for initial success until it was deindexed by Google, calling it a big mistake they won’t repeat. The post, shared on LinkedIn, received scores of supportive comments. The website didn’t receive a manual action, Google deindexed the web pages due to poor content

The profile of RevOps is rising in many organizations

MarTechCharts regularly highlights data of interest to marketers and marketing operations professionals. Revenue Operations (RevOps) is undergoing a rapid transformation, according to a study by Wakefild Rsearch and Salesloft. Traditionally, many organizations viewed RevOps as a sales support and reporting role. The study, “The Rise of RevOps to the C-Suite,” found RevOps is taking on

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