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

Marketing silos: What they are and how to fix them
Erin Rodrigue
Erin shares what marketing silos are, how they form, and how to fix them: Create shared goals and metrics across teams, build bridge roles with real accountability, bring approvals into one workflow, and more. 

LinkedIn adds new tools to fight fake profiles and bogus work histories
Sarah Perez
LinkedIn is rolling out new verification tools that let members vouch for colleagues’ work experience and give companies more control over accounts that falsely claim to employ them.

Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2026: Data from 9.6 Million Posts
Kirsti Lang
Kirsti’s analysis of 9.6 million Instagram posts sent through Buffer highlights that the best times to post on Instagram in 2026 are Thursday at 9 a.m., Wednesday at 12 p.m., and Wednesday at 6 p.m. Wednesday is the best day overall, while Friday and Saturday are the weakest.

X now tells users when local laws have reduced their posts' visibility
Anna Washenko
X announced that its Under the Hood menu will now show whether it has limited an account's posts for compliance with local laws. This addition will list the country that requested access restrictions and the posts that drew scrutiny.

Google Merchant Center Auto Enables Native Checkout: Buy On AI Mode & Gemini
Barry Schwartz
Google is notifying Google Merchant Center users whose e-commerce platforms support the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) that their products are automatically eligible for native checkout. Eligible products listed on a merchant's Shopify storefront and published in Merchant Center require no additional setup.

How much of your Google Ads conversions come from AI Max?
Armen Sargsyan
Armen explains how you can combine AI Max expanded matches and landing page matches to measure conversion contribution and identify campaigns worth investigating.

Customer Lifecycle Goals: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Jyll Saskin Gales
Jyll shares how to decide whether Google Ads Customer Lifecycle Goals fit your business, and how to spot targeting mistakes and value adjustments that inflate reported ROAS.

Google Ads for BFCM 2026: What 4,200+ Accounts Reveal
Lakshmi Padmanaban
Lakshmi explains how to calculate your true breakeven Target ROAS and shares 5 essential BFCM campaign setup and feed hygiene tips: Write mid-sale budget rules in advance, push promotional pricing straight into the product feed, segment your catalog by real margin and stock data, and more. 

Algorithms Don’t Just Happen to Us — We Train Them
Amanda Natividad, Wil Reynolds
Amanda and Wil discuss using AI without losing your voice, why accountability may matter more than “taste,” and how AI search is making it harder for brands to simply optimize their way into credibility. 

​The Always-On News Monitoring PR Report: Staying informed shouldn't require you to be chronically online​
Finchling
Finchling surveyed 119 PR professionals and analyzed publishing across 20 major UK and US news organizations. While 89% of respondents check the news before 9 a.m. and 56% feel overwhelmed by monitoring it, 64% say they find an actionable story for a client or brand about once a week or less.

3 Steps To Win B2B Brand Consideration, Day Zero Decides The Shortlist
Alexander Kesler
Alexander shares three steps to build brand consideration during Day Zero, before formal research begins: build brand authority through buyer-led content, establish trust across the full buying group, and make the brand legible to AI systems.

Visual content and SEO: How to use images and videos in 2027
Benu Aggarwal
Benu explains how to make your images easier for AI to interpret, connect to the right entities, and use in search with these five optimization essentials.

YouTube adds new creator tools like video A/B testing, dynamic thumbnails, and live dubbing
Amanda Silberling
YouTube unveiled a slew of new tools, many of which use AI to test different tactics on videos and find what performs best. These tools include Ask Studio, dynamic thumbnails, A/B testing of three video cuts for Shorts from 2027, and more.

Creator content preferred in AI recommendations: Here’s what the numbers say
Sara Karlovitch
A study from IAB found that 65% of Gen Z and millennials prefer it when AI chatbots cite creator content in recommendations: “...Consumers are looking for authenticity and trust, and that is coming from creators”, said Jack Koch.

From brand deals to equity deals: creators want a stake, not just a fee
Alyssa Mercante
Alyssa shares how the creator economy is moving into a new phase: creators getting in at the ground floor through sweat equity or angel investing: “Creators are no longer just creators; they’re businesses. And if you look at any business, you know, whether it’s a marketing agency or a media agency or whatever it may be, all of them are looking at how to get predictable revenue,” Ross Yellowlees said.

It’s about social media discoverability, not followers
Benedict Nicholson
Benedict argues that follower counts are out; social media discoverability is in, and shares how recommendation algorithms and niche content drive social media ROI.

​​Updated: The AI Search Optimization Framework & Checklist – With Worksheet​
Aleyda Solis
I’ve updated my 12-step checklist and worksheet to take you from selecting meaningful prompts and measuring AI search presence through diagnosing technical, content, and third-party gaps, prioritizing fixes, and checking business impact. Each step sets out the question to answer, the action to take, and the outcome to assess.

AI Search Optimization Spam, Myths & Risky Tactics to Avoid [Video]​
Aleyda Solis, Gerry White, Dawn Anderson, and Eli Schwartz 
In the ninth episode of the AI Search Roadmap series, I cover AI search optimization spam, myths, and risky tactics to avoid with guest specialists Gerry White, Dawn Anderson, and Eli Schwartz.

The Perfectly Optimized Page For AEO​
Chris Long
Inspired by the classic “perfectly optimized page” graphic, Chris proposes six elements for an AI search-oriented page: crawler access, clear takeaways, structured sections, current information, questions buyers actually ask, and coverage of related subqueries.