🐹 Hamsterdam part four. (10/13 to 10/19, 2024)

A weekly marketing and AI content recap.

Welcome to the fourth week of the renewed Hamsterdam! 🐹

The focus here is on finds from my Google Discover feed 🤳 🌏, with attention paid to stories you might not see in your ordinary travels through SEO or marketing circles.

That said, I’m slowly making my way back to social media — I’ve been off for health reasons — so I’ll include some choice social posts at the end in coming weeks.

Before we dig in, here’s a quick introduction …

With some thoughts about the future of search.

As a reminder, I still offer SEO consulting, so I haven’t disavowed it (pun intended).

I see people making jokes that SEO is dead again, but I don’t know. This time feels differently.

That doesn’t mean SEO doesn’t have value. It clearly does, because top-performing content will always enjoy visibility.

But in the age of AI-influenced user journeys, the traditional idea of optimizing content for rankings is what feels dead to me.

This week, we not only got a look at SearchGPT in testing (and now it appears live for me if you enter a “/” in the prompt bar) …

We also heard that Mistral AI may be integrating the Brave search engine …

You can read more about those below, but it feels like 2025 will be the year of new user journeys for searchers.

What I keep seeing from content creators as far as SEO advice tends to be to create great content that satisfies search intent, use structured data, incorporate relevant entities, and hope for the best.

That’s not so much a new plan as a reframing of the existing approach.

That’s why I’ve emphasized focusing on business metrics to assess SEO content success. It’s also why I’ve broadened my consulting business to focus on holistic marketing and brand storytelling.

As an example of storytelling, see my latest post about my old shoes. 👈

Just as with SEO itself, the future of marketing is in the fundamentals.

Now, on to the show! 🎤

Let’s review this week’s choice of stories from Google Discover.

Excerpts go to the authors. Bolding is mine.

🧨 My pick of the week is 4 about Google Shopping’s new AI features and results page — a glance at the future of Search, in general, maybe.

🧨 Although, 11 about color complexity and social media posts is pretty interesting, too.

🧨 Update: just learned how to access SearchGPT thanks to 17.

1. ChatGPT rolls out SearchGPT in the US, offering live web search – Alexey Shabanov, Testing Catalog

Excerpt:

“ChatGPT seems to be rolling out the integration of SearchGPT into the core ChatGPT app for iOS. The new search icon appeared in the text input, highlighting that the search functionality is now available. At first, I thought it was related to the existing search index through Bing, but after testing, I realized it’s more likely the full SearchGPT implementation. …

This marks the first time this feature is being rolled out publicly. …

Although it appeared to me without any modifications, it seems the rollout is US-specific for now. …

Additionally, one of the new features allows you to rewrite any query to either remove the search function or enable it when needed, further improving flexibility in how users interact with the platform.”

2. Mistral AI tests Brave-powered search and image generation – Alexey Shabanov, Testing Catalog

Excerpt:

“Mistral AI is currently working on a number of new features, including web search through Brave and possibly image generation. These features have all been discovered through reverse engineering, are not publicly available yet, and are likely part of ongoing internal testing. …

Another feature, Web Search with Brave, adds more detail to the web search functionality previously discovered through reverse engineering. Brave’s search index is distinct from Google’s and Microsoft’s Bing, making it one of the only serious competitors in this space. Mistral’s decision to use Brave instead of Google or Bing is a potentially smart move, particularly for appealing to the open-source community and privacy-conscious users, as Brave brands itself as a privacy-focused company.”

3. Storytelling For Marketing: 15 Excellent Ways To Tell Stories in Your Content – Susanna Gebauer

Excerpt:

“There are multiple ways tell stories in your business content. Some of them are full-blown stories that take you through the complete narrative. But there are also much simpler types of storytelling that range from a couple of sentences to elaborate tales. …

Storytelling for marketing uses narrative to build a connection with your audience, entertain and keep the attention of your audience high. Personal stories make your content stand out and make it more memorable.

Where pure facts make content valuable for your audience, storytelling for marketing content makes the content unique and people will remember stories better than mere facts. Storytelling makes your content more entertaining and helps to keep your audience interested. Stories can increase conversion rates and build trust. …

Stories are the perfect content format to trigger emotions and emotions are perfect triggers for actions. That makes storytelling for marketing very powerful because marketing usually has a goal to get people to take some action which can be triggered through emotions. …

Personal Anecdotes … It is a short, personal story shared to illustrate a point, convey a lesson, or engage an audience. It often includes real-life events, experiences or situations that are relevant to the topic being discussed.

Case Studies … Provide detailed stories of how individuals or companies solved problems or achieved success. Case studies are detailed and in-depth accounts of how someone faced a particular challenge or opportunity, the actions they took, and the outcomes they achieved.

Customer Stories … You can ask your customers to tell their stories and how they achieved success by using your products. This type of user-generated content, for instance testimonials and success stories can be used to build trust and authenticity.

Behind-the-Scenes Stories … These offer a glimpse into the making of a product, company, event, or project to engage readers with insider details. This type of content is often engaging on social media and helps to build community around a brand.

Historical Narratives … Fictional Scenarios … Day-in-the-Life … Interviews …

Problem-Solution Stories … Frame your blog around a problem and describe a step-by-step journey to the solution. This type of content is very common on product landing pages or sales pages. The story usually builds a connection with the audience by narrating that the author faced the same problem they are facing and how they conquered the problem achieving awesome results.

User-Generated Content … User-generated content is a lot more than testimonials. You can inspire your audience to tell stories how they use your products or create images of your products in action with contests or hashtags.

Event Recaps … Metaphors and Analogies …

Visual Storytelling … Utilize images, videos, and infographics to tell a story visually, appealing to those who prefer visual content. … Character-Driven Stories.”

4. Google Shopping’s getting a big transformation – Sean Scott, Google

Excerpt:

“We’ve paired the 45 billion product listings in Google’s Shopping Graph with Gemini models to transform the online shopping experience with a new, personalized shopping home, which is rolling out in the U.S. over the coming weeks, starting today. …

The new Google Shopping experience uses AI to intelligently show the most relevant products, helping to speed up and simplify your research. You’ll now get an AI-generated brief with top things to consider for your search, plus products that meet your needs. …

In addition, your results will include dynamic filters that let you zero in on your preferences — like if you need a certain size or want something available near you, now. This new experience also incorporates our virtual try-on feature, powered by generative AI and AR shopping tools to help you shop more confidently. …

Shopping is personal — that’s why the new Google Shopping home page has a personalized feed to inspire you with shoppable products and videos based on your preferences. And because most of us will research purchases over several days or weeks, Google Shopping lets you pick up right where you left off last time. …

We know shoppers always want low prices, and the new Google Shopping not only includes deal-finding tools like price comparison, price insights and price tracking throughout, but also a new dedicated and personalized deals page where you can browse deals for you – just click the “Deals” link at the top of your page to explore. …

As you use the new Google Shopping, you’ll see an “experimental” label on the AI-generated briefs — that’s because this new, experimental feature may not always get it right — so we encourage shoppers to provide feedback through the three dot menu on the brief to help us improve.”

5. How To Find the Right Influencer for Your Brand? – Frosina Stojchevska, DesignRush

Excerpt:

“An influencer is someone who holds a level of authority, knowledge, or trust within a particular niche or audience. They have the ability to sway the opinions, behaviors, and purchasing decisions of their followers. …

Mega-influencers: The superstars of the social media world and the Instagram marketing game, mega-influencers are typically household names — celebrities, athletes, or major personalities with one million or more followers. They have massive reach but are also the most expensive, and their audience may be so broad that it dilutes niche targeting.

Macro-influencers: With follower counts ranging from 500,000 to one million, macro influencers are often well-known in their specific industries. They have a more focused audience than mega-influencers, making them great for promoting specific products or services while still reaching a large crowd.

Micro-influencers: These influencers have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers and tend to focus on a particular niche. Their smaller audience often means they are highly engaged, which can lead to better interaction rates and more authentic connections with their followers.

Nano-influencers: Though they have fewer than 10,000 followers, nano-influencers often have the most engaged audiences. If your brand is looking for grassroots growth and personal connections, this type could be a perfect fit. …

How do you actually find the right influencer for your brand? … Define your goals … Identify your target audience … Research relevant influencers … Vet their content … Check engagement rates … Examine their previous collaborations … Establish clear goals and compensation. …

Manually searching social media platforms is a good place to start. Use hashtags and keywords relevant to your industry to find influencers who are already talking about similar products or topics. Look at trending content and pay attention to who’s generating engagement. …

Finding the right influencer for your brand isn’t about going with the one who has the biggest following or the flashiest feed. It’s about finding someone who authentically connects with their audience in a way that aligns with your brand’s message.”

6. Standing out in the age of content abundance – Tammy Pienknagura, Fast Company

Excerpt:

“Within content creation, marketing and creative executives are universally excited about how gen AI can drive agility and efficiency in their operations. At the same time, they also state concerns about how gen AI can lead to content that may be generic and irrelevant for customers, or worse, damage a brand’s reputation. …

How organizations implement gen AI for content can lead to one of two scenarios: On one hand, we see the potential to boost creative impact and productivity while delivering on the promise of personalization at scale. On the other hand, we see that AI-driven content production, when not executed thoughtfully, can lead to experiences that are undifferentiated, do not perform, or—worse—can misrepresent your brand and erode customer trust.

Our research identified five strategies to help organizations prepare for the age of content abundance: … Evolve the role of creative teams … Avoid brand dilution and foster differentiation … Make sure human ingenuity and creativity are in the driver’s seat … Prioritize consumer trust to drive engagement and loyalty … Redefine ROI beyond productivity …

While gen AI can boost creative productivity, speed and scale alone should not be the only measures of success. Mauro Porcini, chief design officer at PepsiCo, said it best: “What do we do with the extra time gen AI gives us? We reinvest it to produce higher-quality content and grow the brand.” We encourage marketing and creative leaders to look beyond productivity as benefits of gen AI in content creation. Driving higher levels of personalization, engagement, and global reach have in many cases yielded even higher value for our customers.“

7. Why multicultural marketing should be the new normal for brands and consumers – Joshua Weinstein, Ad Age

Excerpt:

“But the last few years have been a period of accelerated transformation in every corner of the world. Our individual relationships with everything from work to pop culture to sports to social media have fundamentally changed on a worldwide scale.

A large part of this manifests in a new multicultural reality, where diversity of language, perspective and culture is not only commonplace but the new normal as demographics shift in the United States. …

For years now, data has consistently shown that Latinos are the fastest-growing cultural demographic in the U.S. From 2010 to 2020, Latinos accounted for about half of the U.S. population growth, and by 2060, more than 1 in 4 Americans will be Latino. …

This groundswell of diversity is a good thing—but it presents a new challenge for companies and brands trying to reach their audiences. Outdated tactics and messages once meant to reach the average consumer won’t resonate the same in this new landscape as demographics change

When marketing to a general audience now, you’re really marketing to a diverse audience, whether you plan to or not. This introduces nuance to how brands move. …

For example, according to a McKinsey report, Black consumers tend to be younger, more plugged into digital culture, and more brand-aware than other groups. … Meanwhile, Latino consumers tend to be more price-conscious than the general U.S. population and would connect with an ad that prioritizes cost efficiency. …

The multicultural market is the new general market, and companies have yet to fully realize that. …

If you want your business to survive the next decades as we become a new multicultural economy, don’t consider time and money reaching multicultural audiences as a separate expense.”

8. Why Marketers Are Spending Less on Social Media – Christine Moorman and Koen Pauwels, HBR

Excerpt:

“The recent adoption of new marketing technology (Martech) to automate processes and the use of AI to generate content have driven digitization further into business models.

Despite the growth of spending across digital channels, social media investments now are flagging. According to the Spring 2024 edition of the CMO Survey, which surveyed 292 U.S. marketing leaders, social media investments declined from 17% in spring 2023 to 11% in spring 2024, their lowest level in seven years. …

Why Spending is Down …

Social media is a cluttered landscape … may be driving advertisers away from social media as brands seek more effective ways to connect with their target audiences and achieve meaningful engagement …

Consumers are overwhelmed by content … limited attention is spread thin over numerous sites, with the average U.S. consumer regularly flipping between around seven platforms …

Social media hasn’t delivered desired gains … leaders rating social media’s contributions to company performance at around a 3.5 out of 7 for the last six years …

Determining social media’s attribution to product sales is difficult … These challenges multiply in the world of social media, where much of the focus is on finding new customers and brand building. Multi-channel environments further challenge companies’ ability to accurately track the customer journey through to purchase. … some mentioning that they have a “good qualitative sense of the impact, but not a quantitative impact.” …

Social media may be misaligned with marketing strategies … Social media has sometimes been criticized for focusing on creative approaches and not on brand messaging. This can leave the company’s overall marketing strategy for the brand stretched in ways that may not be fully clear to current or potential customers. …

Retail media is competing with social sites for eyeballs … Retail media (brand advertising at online retail sites) is emerging as powerhouse tool for marketers. Brands use retail media to promote their offerings directly to customers who are shopping online. Pioneered by Amazon, retail media is rapidly growing at other retailers … expected to overtake TV advertising by 2028 …

Social media spending projections don’t meet reality … When we compared predicted spending rates to actual rates over the last decade, we find that the predicted rate was met (or exceeded) only once. This practice of over-estimating projected increases points to a cycle of expecting too much or delivering too little with regard to social media’s role and may be contributing to marketers’ disenchantment …

How to Innovate with Social Media and Drive More ROI … Utilize LLMs to generate social content … Integrate across channels … Use social media for growth … Benchmark against the winners …

Given social media clutter and consumer fatigue, marketers must put on their creative hats to get their social media campaigns to stand out and deliver results. …

Research shows that improvised social media is most effective when it is timely (to the event unfolding), unexpected (a surprise), and humorous (witty). We think building skills and processes to be ready for, notice, and quickly respond to these opportunities should improve social media’s ROI. …

First, research shows that using influencers with a higher follower count does not have a positive linear relationship with engagement with the firm’s sponsored content. The reason is that a higher follower count implies a broader reach and a weaker relationship with followers, reducing the likelihood of strong engagement. …

However, social media still represents one of the best ways to interact with consumers due to their daily usage of multiple platforms, their willingness to engage with new influencers and content, and the channel’s immediacy and ability to reach wide audiences.”

9. Perplexity lets you search your internal enterprise files and the web – Emilia David, Venture Beat

Excerpt:

“Enterprises can use their Perplexity dashboards to search for internal information and combine it with knowledge from the internet, but this will only be limited to specific files they deem important.

Peplexity’s new Internal Knowledge Search lets Perplexity Pro and Enterprise Pro users search for information across the web or their internal databases. Customers can access both knowledge bases in one consolidated platform. …

However, internal knowledge bases will be limited to the files Perplexity users upload to the platform. …

Customers can also upload files directly from folders in all the popular document formats like Excel sheets, word documents or PDFs. …

During the early access testing, the company said customers used the Internal Search feature to do due diligence by combining internal research notes and news from the web, combine older sales materials with more current insights for proposal requests, help employees find benefit information and get product roadmap feedback based on best practices from the internet.

Perplexity will also label data sources if the information was from a website or uploaded files so that the user can dive deeper later. …

Perplexity’s version of RAG still searches a database, except that database is one built on Perplexity’s platform by users who uploaded their documents to it.”

10. Want more engagement on your social media post? Look at the color complexity – Fast Company

Excerpt:

“More than half of content marketers say images are crucial for achieving their social media goals, and a staggering 70% of users prefer image-based posts over text, surveys have found. …

Color complexity is similar to colorfulness, but it’s not quite the same: It’s measured as color variation across pixels in an image, and our brains process it subliminally. The more the brain has to decipher color variations across neighboring pixels, the harder it has to work. …

We conducted four studies, looking at both real-world Facebook posts from two firms and experimental data using biometric eye-tracking. On the whole, we found that more complex images in social media posts tended to capture greater attention. …

posts made later in the day and those with images that took up more screen space tended to benefit more from color complexity. This suggests that the timing and visual prominence of posts play a role in maximizing engagement. …

We also found that pairing images with complex texts can actually strengthen the link between color complexity and user engagement. This surprising finding suggests that more intricate language might encourage people to pay more attention to the images. …

For marketers and content creators, the implications are clear: Investing in the careful curation of social media images, especially those with high color complexity, can lead to better user engagement. Just be mindful of the timing and context, too.”

11. Generative AI, the American worker, and the future of work – Brookings Institute

Excerpt:

“Many U.S. workers are worried: According to a Pew Research Center poll, most Americans believe that generative AI will have a major impact on jobs—mainly negative—in the next two decades. …

In this report, we frame generative AI’s stakes for work and workers and outline our concerns about the ways we are, collectively, underprepared to meet this moment. …

So far, the U.S. and other nations lack the urgency, mental models, worker power, policy solutions, and business practices needed for workers to benefit from AI and avoid its harms. …

It is impossible to predict the future trajectory of technological advancements. Indeed, the range of possible AI futures is exceedingly broad, from a near-term plateau in useful capabilities to exponential improvements resulting in capabilities at the level of long-hypothesized artificial general intelligence (AGI), with sweeping economic and social consequences. …

Even on its current trajectory, without any dramatic acceleration of capability gains, generative AI technology is poised to impact a broad range of workers in fields as diverse as law, marketing, finance, health care, computer programming, customer service, the creative arts, administrative support work, education, and media. For some industries and occupations, the first waves of that disruption are only months away, or are even quietly underway right now. Interacting with an AI-powered customer service agent or bot—something that is already commonplace—is just the tip of this iceberg. …

On one hand, generative AI has the potential to complement millions of workers’ skills, enabling them to be more productive, creative, informed, efficient, and accurate. On the other hand, employers may choose to automate some, or even all, of their employees’ work, leading to possible job losses and weakened demand for previously sought-after skills. …

Generative AI tools are, in some key respects, novel among information technologies because of their ability to create entirely new content from the data the AI models were trained on. That’s what makes them “generative.” As a type of machine learning, generative AI works as an algorithm that can produce a wide range of new content, including images, music, text, audio, video, and code. The technology is enabled by large language models (LLMs) that train on vast data sets, detecting statistical patterns and structures that the model then uses to generate new content.

Especially critical is generative AI’s ability to predict and generate new “natural language” content useful to a user’s momentary intent and need, not unlike an auto-prompt feature on a smartphone—whether it be to write correspondence, answer questions, produce computer code, develop business plans, or scrape the internet and then generate ideas for action. …

Technologies such as ChatGPT upend this paradigm. In fact, generative AI is not likely to disrupt physical, routine, blue collar work much at all, barring technological breakthroughs in robotics. Instead, generative AI excels at mimicking the kinds of non-routine skills and interactive traits that just a few years ago experts considered impossible for computers to perform, including programming, prediction, writing, creativity, projecting empathy, communication and persuasion, and analysis. Most of the industries that face the greatest exposure to generative AI today are those that just a few years ago were ranked at the bottom of automation risk.

We find that more than 30% of all workers could see at least 50% of their occupation’s tasks disrupted by generative AI, while some 85% of workers could see at least 10% of their work tasks impacted.

We don’t know the extent to which generative AI will affect overall demand for human labor (types and numbers of jobs) or, when it comes to the content of work, how much AI will in fact augment (enhance capabilities and/or improve efficiency, productivity, and performance) versus automate jobs—and how soon these changes will unfold. …

Whether generative AI lives up to its potential to unlock new possibilities for workers and spread shared prosperity or realizes fears of exacerbating inequality and harm depends on the choices that employers, policymakers, technologists, and civil society make.”

12. How to build a custom text classifier without days of human labeling – Community Article, Hugging Face

Excerpt:

“For text classification, the ArgillaLabeller task uses an LLM to label datasets hosted on Argilla, a modern, open-source, data-centric tool to improve AI datasets. This integration combines the best of both worlds: the automatic labeling capabilities of LLMs and the high-quality annotations from human experts.

This post explains how to build a text classification model combining LLMs and human feedback, drastically reducing the time to deploy a supervised model for a specialized use case. …

The first step is to configure your Argilla dataset. This means you need to define the fields that will contain the data to be annotated, the labels, and the guidelines. …

Next, you can create the dataset with the defined settings and add the data for annotation. …

In the next step, distilabel will use this dataset and its configuration to auto-label it using an LLM. This means that, under the hood, distilabel will retrieve Argilla’s data and format it into a prompt template to guide the LLM in understanding the labeling task.

This approach simplifies the labeling process, allowing you to automatically label data in real-time while refining it with human feedback. This method is powerful and versatile, providing good performance right out of the box, especially for straightforward workflows. By automating much of the process, you can save time and effort, avoiding the need for days and days of manual labeling. However, at the same time, it ensures that humans are still in the loop, making it an efficient way to build high-quality datasets for your project.”

13. Google partners with HBCU to advance AI sports reporting – HBCU Gameday

Excerpt:

“Thanks to a $100,000 contribution from Google, Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism and Communication (SGJC) has partnered with JRSportBrief Productions to advance sports coverage and news reporting through the use of artificial intelligence (AI). This innovative research and development effort will explore how AI can streamline and bring greater efficiencies to traditional sports journalism by creating automated post-game content such as box scores and video news reports. …

HBCU Students from the Center and CEAMLS are leveraging JRSportBrief Production’s SportBrief AI Solutions to generate comprehensive pre- and postgame wrap-ups in audio and video formats and test their work.”

14. 5 Levels of AI Marketing Mastery: How to Level-Up Your Use of AI – Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner

Excerpt:

“By following this 5-step framework, marketers can progressively integrate AI into their workflows, from basic task assistance to advanced applications like personalized content creation at scale. …

Use AI as a Personal Assistant … This involves using AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Google Gemini to help with various administrative and creative tasks. … Feed a podcast transcript or blog post into the AI and ask it to transform it into different formats, such as social media posts or an email newsletter. … Generating Ideas for Social Media Posts: Give the AI your brand guidelines and target audience information, then ask for content ideas.

Employ AI for Process Automation … This involves creating workflows incorporating AI to handle multiple steps or functions without constant human intervention. … Look for repetitive tasks in your marketing workflow that can be automated using AI tools. If you’re a beginner, consider Zapier, Make, and ChatGPT. For more advanced, custom integrations, consider N8N or OpenAI’s API. Automating these routine tasks will free up time to focus on higher-level strategy and creative work that genuinely requires human insight and expertise. …

Leverage AI as a Coach or Consultant … You can use AI to enhance your decision-making process and gain new perspectives on marketing challenges … To use AI as a marketing coach or consultant, clearly define the challenge or decision you’re facing. Once you’ve articulated your problem, provide the AI with relevant background information about your business, industry, and target audience. This context is crucial for generating meaningful insights. … By leveraging AI in this way, you can expand your thinking, discover new approaches, and develop a more comprehensive strategy to address the challenge at hand. …

Utilize AI for Market Forecasting and Customer Trend Prediction … By incorporating AI forecasting into your marketing strategy, you can stay ahead of trends, anticipate market changes, and make more informed decisions about resource allocation and campaign timing. … Tools such as Grok (for X/Twitter trends), Meta AI (for Facebook and Instagram insights), Google Trends with AI integration, Crayon (for competitive intelligence), and Marketmuse (for content strategy predictions) can help you implement a similar system. … select an AI forecasting tool that can handle your data volume and type. After choosing your tool, feed your historical data into the AI system, ensuring you provide any relevant contextual information that might influence the predictions. …

Explore AI for Original Value Creation … Remember, the goal is to create something truly novel that enhances the customer experience in ways that weren’t previously feasible. This is where AI can help marketers push the boundaries of creativity and personalization. … To explore AI for original value creation, identify unique opportunities where personalization or scale could significantly benefit your audience. Once you’ve pinpointed these areas, conceptualize your idea by developing a clear vision of what you want to create.”

15. 3 critical steps for creating content that converts – Moni Oloyede, MarTech

Excerpt:

“All too often, content is created solely to get clicks, views and likes. … While these numbers might look great on a stat sheet, they don’t always translate into actual conversions. Here’s the thing: Clicks aren’t valuable. A real conversion is when someone replies to your email, sends you a message on social media or engages with your brand meaningfully — not just mindlessly clicking a button because you’ve nudged them to.

If you want to create content that converts, stop fixating on easy-to-track engagement. Focus on the best way to get your audience to engage without all the friction. Here’s how.

Make your offer frictionless and part of their everyday activity … Instead of linking to a landing page and asking users to fill out a form, ask them to simply hit “reply” to an email if they’re interested. You remove the friction of clicking through and filling out more information.

Make the ask doable and manageable … This doesn’t mean you can’t have in-depth, long-form content — it just means you need to offer bite-sized options that lower the barrier for your audience. … Give your audience a choice. For example, with your hour-long webinar, offer a 5-minute highlight video summarizing the key takeaways. Or, if you’re promoting a whitepaper, offer an executive summary that’s easier to skim for key insights.

Make the trade-off worth it … Your audience is trading their time, attention or personal information in exchange for something from you — so make sure that something is valuable enough to justify the effort. … Instead of offering just one whitepaper, bundle several resources into a single, high-value offer. For example, alongside your whitepaper, include an infographic, checklist and video that covers related content. …

If you want real conversions, stop focusing on clicks. Start creating experiences that feel natural, frictionless and valuable for your audience. Most marketing content today is built around what businesses want: stats, forms, clicks and trackable metrics. But to truly engage your audience, you must play to their desires, not the business’s.”

16. Are we ready for an internet with no Google search? – David Swan, The Sydney Morning Herald

Excerpt:

“Google didn’t grow into a dominant force entirely organically. At the heart of the Justice Department’s case is that Google paid billions of dollars to other tech companies, like Apple and Samsung, to be the default engine on their smartphones. It’s those actions that violate antitrust laws, the department says. …

Are we ready for a world where Googling something is no longer the default option? And are we ready for how the internet will look without Google as we know it today?

The internet is already edging towards something that resembles a post-search era.

The rise of AI chatbot interfaces such as ChatGPT is scrambling the search market and making it increasingly likely that the next Google will be an AI start-up or a new company entirely.

Many of these companies are small, nimble and able to invent and commercialise their innovations far faster than Google can. And Google seems to agree. …

Nine-year-old me now would definitely be interested in TikTok, Snapchat and, sure, YouTube, which is owned by Google. I’m less convinced nine-year-old me now would rely on Google search in the same way I did to connect with the online world 25 years ago. …

Whatever the case, I – and I think much of the internet-using public – feel ready for whatever a post-Google internet looks like. Tools like ChatGPT are flawed but feel magical in a way that makes Google search feel like something from a bygone era.

Ask an AI chatbot a question now, and you’ll probably get a better, more thoughtful answer than whatever Google spits out. There are plenty of issues to be ironed out – data scraping, hallucinations, competition – but there’s no putting the generative AI genie back in the bottle.”

17. OpenAI Takes on Google and Perplexity with New “Search GPT” Feature on ChatGPT – Jim Clyde Monge, Generative AI Publication

Excerpt:

“Have you noticed the resemblance of this new layout to Google and Perplexity AI? ChatGPT now looks like a search engine. …

Now when you hit the ‘/’ key on your keyboard, you can toggle a new “Search” feature that lets ChatGPT access the web.”

18. I’ve mostly dumped Google Search for the smarter Perplexity and ChatGPT – Karandeep Singh, Android Police

Excerpt:

“But lately, you must have noticed that your Search experience has become too erratic, particularly since the arrival of generative AI. …

I have now turned to Google Search’s AI-first alternatives for my internet needs, and I don’t feel like turning back. …

When you send Perplexity your query, it looks up a bunch of search results for you and serves a quick summary. It is particularly helpful, say, when you need a step-by-step guide to something or a palatable gist about a complex subject. …

My work as a technology reporter often requires me to refer to a lot of resources for my stories and scan lengthy documents to find a single piece of relevant information. It has helped cut down the time required for such in-depth research by a lot. …

I use Perplexity to get straightforward answers to my queries, while ChatGPT works as more of my creative bouncing board. I’d have a chat with it to cook up amusing names for my friends’ WhatsApp group and sometimes brainstorm and nail down the central theme of a personal essay I’m writing. …

I can tell it what I want to convey and the jumble of words that’s in my mind, and it will provide the exact phrase I’ve been looking for within seconds. Try that with Google Search, and you’ll end up scouring forums, dictionaries, and thesauruses just to find what’s been on the tip of your tongue. …

Instead of putting together a specific string of keywords appended with source identifiers like ‘Reddit’ to get the correct results, I could just ask my question the same way I’m talking here. Sure, it takes more space than a short Google Search query, but this way, I can elaborate on exactly what’s on my mind. And with AI, the more context you provide, the better the results. …

I continue to rely on Google Search for any factual information that is still neatly laid out in the knowledge graph, like finding the name of a movie’s director. …

However, my dependence on Google Search has come down quite a bit, with ChatGPT and Perplexity now handling the bulk of my web queries.”

19. Branding has changed. You now need a sonic identity too – Sacha Stoffers, Creative Bloq

Excerpt:

“In a world dominated by visuals, it’s time for brands to reconsider their marketing strategies by implementing sound-first design, creating more memorable and immersive experiences that profoundly connect with consumers. …

Historically, audio has typically played second fiddle to visuals in brand identity, mainly because early media was dominated by print ads … But as media evolves and we move into a more audio-centric era, driven by platforms like TikTok and the rise of audio-focused industries like podcasts and voice tech, it’s clear that sound is now a key player. …

Embracing a sound-first approach – considering audio from the start and integrating it alongside visual elements – opens up new creative opportunities and helps futureproof your brand in an increasingly audio-driven landscape. …

Enter legendary composer Hans Zimmer. Tasked with designing every sound from ignition, to acceleration, to braking, Zimmer crafted a futuristic audio identity that brought these otherwise silent sports cars to life. … It underscores a crucial point: sound isn’t just an add-on but a core component that can elevate both the emotional connection with consumers and practical aspects like safety. Prioritising sound can transform a brand experience, proving that sometimes the most powerful element is heard, not seen. …

But when sound is just an afterthought, treated only as a complement to visuals, marketers miss an opportunity to create a truly immersive experience.”

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