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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

‘Only brands with soul thrive in the slop-era’: why AI ads fail and what we can learn

Whether we like it or not, AI is permeating almost every aspect of our lives, including the world of advertising. While some audiences remain sceptical about the technology, AI ads are becoming increasingly popular, with huge global brands like McDonald’s and Samsung receiving criticism for their artificially augmented campaigns. But is this shift a sign

Google’s Asset Guidance & Ad Scheduling Updates, Microsoft Negatives – PPC Pulse

Welcome to PPC Pulse weekly news review. This week’s focus includes asset guidance, budget pacing, and search controls across Google and Microsoft Ads. Google reinforced the importance of asset variety as Search experiences evolve. It also confirmed updates to how budget pacing works for certain campaigns using ad scheduling. Meanwhile, Microsoft launched self-serve negative keyword

What gets B2B brands cited in genAI answers

One of the biggest priorities for marketing teams is managing the transition from conventional search to customers and prospects using AI for research. Although SEO remains essential, it’s critical that your brand appears in AI search summaries and chatbot answers. Marketers are being bombarded with advice and recommendations on how to run generative engine optimization

Discover Core Update Data, Sitemap Tips & AI Risks – SEO Pulse

Welcome to the week’s SEO Pulse for the best of this week’s news: updates cover what early data reveals about the February Discover core update, why Google may ignore a valid sitemap, and how businesses are trying to game AI assistant memory. Here’s what matters for you and your work. Discover Core Update: Early Data

Future of Marketing Briefing: The case for and against an agency subscription remuneration model

The idea of agencies selling subscriptions instead of billable hours has kicked up significant debate over the past week. It started when S4 Capital’s Monks told me it expects roughly a quarter of its revenue to come from subscriptions by year end. Cue the hot takes that are nearly unanimous in one verdict: subscriptions aren’t

Kelly Anna shows why a successful creative career relies on risk and blind faith

Artist and designer Kelly Anna’s work spans product design, sculpture, activations and collaborations – she even has her own paint colour with Lefranc Bourgeois, and it was an honour to have her return to the stage in London at December’s Nicer Tuesdays. From painting football pitches for Nike to getting “illegal” Women’s World Cup T-shirts

Bing Adds GEO To Official Guidelines, Expands AI Abuse Definitions

Microsoft has rewritten the Bing Webmaster Guidelines to cover how content appears in both traditional search results and Copilot’s AI-generated answers. The previous version focused on how Bing indexes and ranks websites. The rewrite extends that to Copilot and grounding API results, treating “grounding results and citations” as additional eligibility outcomes. New Meta Directive Guidance

CNN’s First of All Celebrates 100 Episodes, CNBC Layoffs

Top of the Ticker: CNN’s Saturday morning program First of All with Victor Blackwell celebrated its 100th episode this past weekend. To mark the occasion, the staffers of the weekly show, which is also available via podcast, treated themselves to a celebratory cake. Launched in 2024, First of All covers national headlines affecting communities of

Cricut celebrates its 20th anniversary with the launch of 2 new cutting machines

Can you believe that Cricut has been around for 20 years? To celebrate this special Anniversary and mark the occasion, the company has launched not one, but two brand-new cutting machines – the Cricut Joy 2 ($139.99 / £129.99) and the Cricut Explore 5 ($249 / £249.99) – available to buy right now from Cricut

Google’s Discover Core Update Finishes Rolling Out

Google’s February 2026 Discover core update has finished rolling out, per an update posted to the Search Status Dashboard at 2:02 AM PT on February 27. The rollout took roughly 22 days, starting February 5. That’s about 8 days longer than Google’s original estimate of up to two weeks. Google announced the update on the

AI is moving faster than customer trust

For marketing teams, AI is acceleration. For many customers, it’s a ride to someone else’s destination. Braze’s “Global Customer Engagement Review 2026” paints a picture that should make marketing leaders pause. On the one hand, adoption within marketing teams is nearly universal. On the other hand, consumers remain skeptical about how — and why —

Not because they have to :: Behance

Not because they have toLena Sanver THE wild mallards returned to the village a few weeks ago. They are always on guard towards people, not at all like the domestic mallards that often are seen in parks and ponds. Even though the mallard is one of Europe’s most common duck there are apparently not enough

Google Explains Why Its Crawler Ignores Your Resource Hints

Google’s Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt used an episode of the Search Off the Record podcast to walk through how Google’s crawler handles HTML. The conversation revealed differences between how browsers and Googlebot process the same page. The discussion covered resource hints, metadata placement, and HTML validation. Several of Illyes’ explanations challenge assumptions about which

WPP; We want to get paid when clients grow

For decades, the agency business has run on a simple, if imperfect logic: clients pay for time and the people who fill it. Hours logged, heads counted, invoices sent. Nobody particularly loved it but it was predictable enough that nobody moved to change it. That may finally be shifting. At the presentation for its new

BBH’s rebrand, typeface and “zag” glyphs convey its ethos through design

Design director Adam Buckland says that Studio Drama was a massive part of bringing to life the entire project. By sharing references, thoughts, rough sketches and half-baked ideas, BBH and Studio Drama agreed to never play it safe. When something goes well, Adam calls it “zagging”. Chris Nott, co-founder and type director at Studio Drama

Joost de Valk Exits Federated WordPress Repository Project

Joost De Valk, founder of Yoast SEO, announced that he is stepping away from FAIR, a Linux Foundation project for creating an independent repository of themes and plugins. Fair Project The FAIR project was launched in mid-2025 in response to the Matt Mullenweg replaced WP Engine’s Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin in the official repository

Netflix Declines to Up Offer After WBD Chooses Paramount Bid [UPDATED]

UPDATE—6 p.m. ET: Netflix is out. Following Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to call Paramount’s new merger bid “superior” to Netflix’s deal, the streamer has announced it’s not going to up its offer. In a statement, Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said that “the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining

The best 2-in-1 laptops for creatives

The best 2-in-1 laptops, aka hybrid laptops, combines the flexibility of a tablet with the power of a full laptop. And the latest generation of hybrid devices makes that balance feel genuinely seamless. Whether you want to sketch, edit photos, manage video projects, or simply move between desk and sofa without missing a beat, today’s

The Year I Helped Build a Certification System That Actually Works

If learning feels overwhelming, the PESO Model® certification is different. Shelly Verkamp shows how it makes strategy actually stick. The post The Year I Helped Build a Certification System That Actually Works first appeared on Spin Sucks.

We’re Bringing The SEJ Newsroom To You, Live [Free Event]

We’re bringing the SEJ newsroom to a screen near you. On March 11 from 12–3pm ET, we’ve gathered our own search experts, alongside some very special guests, to help you master AI search visibility this year. This is SEJ Live, a new series we’ve been building behind the scenes, and I couldn’t be more excited

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