MarketingFOMO's Digital Marketing News 🔭 [December 22, 2025]

Let’s go through the latest in digital marketing news, resources, tools, and jobs…

👍 Social

Threads adds new communities, tests badges for highly engaged members
Ivan Mehta
Threads is expanding the number of topics available through its newer communities feature. This expansion might encourage people to use communities less on Reddit and X. The company is also testing flairs within the community, which is a feature commonly found on Reddit.

8 steps to a successful social media video marketing strategy
Jamia Kenan
Jamia goes through eight practical steps to building a social media video marketing strategy to support your goals and perform across platforms.

Instagram Adds Custom Effects for New Year’s Celebrations
Andrew Hutchinson
Instagram has added some new effects options for New Year’s celebrations, and with New Year's being traditionally IG’s biggest usage day of the year, you can bet that you’re going to see a lot of these in action over the next couple of weeks.

Social Listening: A Complete Guide for Marketers
Carlos Silva
Use social listening to analyze online conversations and get valuable insights to improve your strategy. Caralos goes through it.

📣 Ads

Google Ads Exact Match Can Not Show Ads In AI Overviews
Barry Schwartz
Google can not show ads in AI Overviews with the exact match type. This is a change from back in May, when Google said otherwise. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison, wrote on X, "We have since updated this".

Budgeting for Paid Media in 2026: A Practical Guide for CMOs
Maddie Lightening
Maddie goes through how CMOs should approach paid media budgeting in 2026, balancing performance, brand investment, AI costs, and channel complexity to drive sustainable growth.

LinkedIn opens up top-of-feed Reserved Ads to all managed advertisers
Anu Adegbola
LinkedIn Reserved Ads let you lock in top-of-feed placement, boosting visibility, engagement, and predictable reach for B2B campaigns.

Content Targeting Now Available for Microsoft Audience Ads
Hana Kobzová
Microsoft Advertising has rolled out Content Targeting for Audience ads across all markets. Advertisers can now fine-tune placements by selecting specific content environments, improving ad relevancy and campaign efficiency.

📝 Content Marketing

Why You Struggle To Prove Content ROI – and How To Settle Up (or Down)
Ann Gynn
“What is the ROI of content?” is a simple question from executives that prompts silence or confusing replies from marketers. Ann goes through how to answer it with a shared understanding, an attribution model, and maybe a strategy update.

Content Amplification Channels + Strategies for Ecommerce
Shopify
Learn what content amplification means, why it matters, and how to amplify your content so it contributes to real business growth.

How to build an effective content strategy for 2026
Adam Tanguay
Adapt your content strategy for traditional search and emerging AI experiences through audience insight, originality, and structured content.

The User Journey Isn’t Linear Anymore: It’s Always On
Dan Taylor
Decision-making is no longer linear, and AI has exposed how fluid the customer journey really is. Dan goes through it. 

😎 Creators & Influencers

YouTube Looks To Streamline Sponsored Content Partnerships
Andrew Hutchinson
YouTube’s trying to make it easier for creators to partner with brands on content promotions, with some new updates to its branded content partnership process that will enable brands to gain direct access to sponsored video performance insights.

What are KOLs, and how to get results from working with them
Christina Newberry, Eileen Kwok
Christina and Eileen go through what KOLs are, how they differ from influencers, and how to build KOL marketing partnerships that drive trust and real results.

A Facebook test makes link-sharing a paid feature for creators
Karissa Bell
Facebook is testing a new scheme that effectively puts link-sharing behind a paywall for creators on Facebook. Under the test, a Meta Verified subscription will determine how many links a creator can share with another profile per month.

Become a Social Media Creator in 2026: Your 9-Step Plan
Kirsti Lang
Whether you're dreaming of becoming the next big TikTok star or building a meaningful community on LinkedIn, this plan will get you started.

🤖 AI in Marketing

​​Google is taking legal action against SerpApi’s “unlawful” scraping
Halimah DeLaine Prado
Google has filed a lawsuit against SerpAPI: “to stop SerpApi’s bots and their malicious scraping, which violates the choices of websites and rightsholders about who should have access to their content”.

​​Google’s Gemini 3 Flash is rolling out globally in Google Search
Robby Stein
Google is rolling out Gemini 3 Flash globally as the default model for AI Mode: "It's better at understanding your needs, so you can ask more nuanced questions and it will consider each of your constraints to provide a thoughtful, well-formatted response."

​Browser extensions with 8 million users collect extended AI conversations
Dan Goodin
Security firm Koi discovered eight browser extensions with more than 8 million installs harvesting users’ complete AI conversations and selling them for marketing purposes, which as of late Tuesday night remained available in both Google’s and Microsoft’s extension stores. Learn which are them and more here.