Social media advertising crossed a symbolic threshold in 2025, overtaking search to claim the largest share of the digital advertising market, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau’s annual assessment of the industry. The shift reflects a sustained reallocation of marketing budgets that has been building for several years and is now reshaping the competitive order among the platforms that have long defined the sector.

Social media ad spending rose 32.6% year over year to $117.7 billion in 2025, giving the channel a 40% share of the total digital market — the first time it has held the top position. Search, which built Google into the dominant force in digital advertising, generated $114.2 billion, but its growth rate declined by nearly 5 percentage points in 2024 as AI-powered tools alter how users find information and how that activity can be monetized.

The downstream consequences for Google are significant. Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, is projected to surpass Google in both US and global advertising revenue for the first time in 2026, according to a recent eMarketer forecast — a milestone that would have seemed unlikely as recently as three years ago.

The IAB’s report also marks a formal reclassification of creator content. What was once treated as an experimental add-on to campaign budgets is now described by the trade group as a “core media channel.” Creator economy spending reached $37 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach $44 billion in 2026, driven by a shift from one-off brand partnerships toward always-on strategies that combine micro-influencers, affiliate programs, and performance-focused creators.

“Brands are embedding creators into the foundations of their media strategies, operational workflows and even product development,” the IAB said in the report.

Part of what is driving creator value beyond raw follower counts is commerce. More creators are linking brand awareness activity directly to transactions, capitalizing on the growth of commerce media, which rose 18% last year to $63.4 billion — though its rate of growth also slowed by five percentage points from 2024. The human quality of creator content is also becoming a competitive advantage as algorithmic feeds fill with low-quality AI-generated material, a phenomenon the industry has dubbed “slop.”

AI is creating other complications. The IAB estimates that more than 50% of global web traffic now originates from automated bots — a figure the trade group cited in calling for stronger industry measurement and interoperability standards. The bureau’s recently launched Project Eidos initiative is its formal response to that challenge.

Elsewhere in the report, video advertising — spanning connected TV, social video and online video — grew 25.4% to $78 billion in 2025, accelerating from the prior year. Video game and esports advertising rose 22%, driven by more sophisticated in-game ad formats, stronger demand and improved measurement.

Despite the shifting dynamics, the overall structure of digital advertising is consolidating rather than fragmenting. After brands diversified some spending toward mid-sized platforms in 2024, the pendulum has swung back. The top ten global media platforms increased their collective share of digital ad revenue by 3.4 percentage points in 2025, capturing 84.1% of the total market, leaving less room for smaller players than at any point in recent years.

The post Social Overtakes Search as Digital Ad Spending Shifts appeared first on MartechView.

For nearly two decades, SEO was the digital marketer’s most reliable tool. Entire strategies and teams were built around a stable premise: rank well on Google, get seen. Visibility followed ranking, and traffic followed visibility. The system relied on Google’s shifting algorithms, but at least it was comprehensible.

The past two years have broken that logic entirely.

Rankings are holding — sometimes improving. But website traffic is declining. Dashboards look healthy. First-page positions remain. The clicks, however, are not there. In 2025, 60 percent of Google searches ended without a single click to any website.

The cause is not a mystery. AI-powered search engines now answer queries directly, absorbing the clicks that websites used to capture. We have entered a zero-click world, where AI synthesizes information and delivers it to users without ever requiring them to visit the source.

For marketers, the implication is significant: the goalposts have not just moved — they have been replaced entirely.

Ranking No Longer Leads to Reach

The old model of search rewarded technical precision. Keywords, backlinks, site architecture, and page speed sent signals that helped search engines determine relevance and authority. In today’s AI-mediated environment, relevance is no longer discovered — it is constructed.

AI chatbots do not surface results. They synthesize them. They draw from multiple sources, weigh credibility signals, and generate responses that may never require a user to visit the referenced content. Ranking highly on a search results page does not mean your brand will appear in an AI-generated answer. And if it does not appear in that answer, visibility effectively disappears — regardless of where the blue link sits.

The new definition of visibility is not where you rank. It is whether you are recognized as a source worth citing.

The End of Silos

Because AI changes how visibility is earned, it dissolves the boundaries that once separated public relations, SEO, and paid content. Historically, these functions operated independently because they influenced different outcomes. SEO drove rankings. PR generated coverage. Paid content drove traffic. Each was measured within its own channel.

Today, all of it is evaluated together — by the AI model deciding whose voice to include in an answer.

AI systems do not draw from a single source. They scan and combine articles, websites, forums, comments, and sponsored content across the entire web to construct a response. The implicit question these systems are asking is: Does this brand appear consistently, clearly, and credibly across multiple sources?

A PR placement is no longer just visibility in one publication — it becomes part of the dataset AI systems are trained on and referenced going forward. SEO content is no longer just about ranking — it is a structured repository of information for AI to extract. Paid placements do not just drive clicks — they shape how frequently and favorably a brand appears across the web.

The problem is consistency. A company might describe itself one way on its website, another way in media coverage, and appear differently still in paid placements. To a human reader, that is messy but navigable. To an AI model, it is noise, and noise weakens the signal. A brand that is difficult for AI to categorize is a brand more likely to be left out of the answer entirely.

Redefining Strategy for the AI Era

If the goal is no longer to rank but to be referenced, the question becomes: how do you build a presence that AI systems will not ignore?

In 2026, an effective search strategy rests on three foundations.

The first is audience-driven visibility. AI systems weigh what real people say and think — customer reviews, forum discussions, and community conversations — more heavily than brand-produced marketing copy. The frequency with which AI Overviews and ChatGPT reference Reddit is not coincidental. If people are discussing your brand in credible, relevant spaces, those discussions become signals AI systems recognize and draw from. Marketers should actively encourage user-generated content and participate in the communities — forums, social channels, industry platforms — where their customers already gather. The goal is contribution, not promotion.

The second is strategic amplification. Search engines have long deprioritized paid content, but AI systems often make no distinction between organic and sponsored material. When placed thoughtfully on high-authority platforms, sponsored content can reinforce a brand’s presence in exactly the sources AI is most likely to reference. Paid and organic content are increasingly parts of the same ecosystem — and should be planned as such.

The third is clarity. AI models prioritize specificity. Users querying AI tools provide far more detail than they would in a traditional search — use cases, specifications, context. For content to be referenced, it must match that level of detail. Brands need to be explicit about what they do, how their products work, and what differentiates them — even when those details feel self-evident. If it is not clearly stated, it is less likely to be surfaced.

The New Definition of Success

The language of SEO has not yet caught up to the shift it is navigating. Rankings, keywords, and traffic remain the default metrics for measuring reach and success. But those metrics are growing increasingly detached from actual visibility in an AI-first environment.

The questions that matter now are different: Are you being cited? Are you being synthesized into answers? Are you present in the conversations and sources that shape those answers?

If the answer is no, it does not matter where you rank.

SEO, as it was understood for two decades, is less useful than it once was. But search is not disappearing — it is being redefined. The brands that understand that distinction and build for it deliberately will not simply adapt to the zero-click era. They will set the terms.

The post SEO Is Not Dead. But It No Longer Works Alone. appeared first on MartechView.

Years and even decades of results-based research and training have conditioned marketers to hunt SEO, optimizing for keywords, propagating backlinks, and competing for placement within the familiar “10 blue links”. But the rules have been rewritten, seemingly almost overnight. SERPs are undergoing a fundamental shift, prioritizing direct answers and AI-generated summaries while pushing traditional organic results further down the page. 

Simultaneously, AI-first search experiences on interfaces like ChatGPT are becoming mainstream ways people discover and evaluate information, forcing marketers to source alternative methods to establish visibility, authority, and engagement.

Additionally, as higher volumes of AI-driven content are added to an already crowded consumer ecosystem, marketers are challenged to find more and better ways to reach their target audience—and to capture their attention at just the right time. This all comes at a time when consumers’ focus is flickering, and their attention spans are shrinking. Marketers need to continue making the most of contemporary, proven channels, but they also need to consider options that best fit the current climate and technological undercurrents. 

Additionally, as privacy regulations tighten and consumers grow increasingly wary of invasive tracking, opt-in channels are becoming more valuable than ever. Digital calendars offer marketers a permission-based way to stay visible and engage audiences without relying on cookies, paid reach, or constant retargeting, building trust while maintaining consistent, high-intent engagement.

While calendar marketing tactics may be somewhat less familiar than others, this strategy couldn’t be easier, or more cost-conscious, to implement.

The Benefits of Digital Calendars in a Modern Marketing Environment

As consumer audiences are increasingly bombarded with messaging and visuals across countless channels such as social media, internet ads, television, streaming audio, and all sorts of legacy marketing outputs, brands are in competition with one another in a battle for attention that grows more grueling by the day. The value of direct, timely marketing communication is now at a premium, but because today’s sophisticated consumer is more protective of their time, space, and data, these channels have become more difficult to establish.

That’s what makes the digital calendar one of the most useful tactics in a marketer’s toolbox today. As traditional channels become oversaturated and marketing professionals seek to improve engagement and reach among their audiences, calendars are becoming an essential component of marketing tech stacks. A direct, timely channel that integrates into a consumer’s existing tech platforms and daily routine, the digital calendar can bypass SMS and email limitations and capture audience attention when it is most relevant to a brand.

Digital Calendars: Creating a Simple, Powerful Connection with Consumers

With marketers trying to figure out the new math of internet and social media algorithms and racking their brains over how to crack AI-powered search engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews, the digital calendar remains a formidable tactic that is still underutilized in some spaces.

When combined with other channels, a brand website, email campaigns, and social media blasts, for instance, a simple “Add to Calendar” button or subscription to a calendar

can have a powerful effect for marketers. It’s an enduring but dynamic and direct connection with consumers who grant permission to access their calendar platforms, positioning a brand alongside their birthdays, doctor’s appointments, errands, and other everyday activities and reminders, a space those consumers likely visit multiple times daily.

Whether a marketer is advertising a brand’s new hours or important dates, a flash sale or a rewards program, digital calendars create a direct connection with a target audience on a high-value, frequently visited platform. And because calendar marketing is a non-invasive, opt-in tactic, consumers who subscribe are already invested in a brand and therefore interested in the news and promotions a brand decides to share.

Why Digital Calendars Are the Right Channels for the Right Moment

What once paid dividends for marketers may now amount to clutter, wasted efforts, or even false signals. Divining which legacy tactics still have value and which don’t will be part of the calculus for all brands at this critical inflection point. As Duolingo CMO Manu Orssaud recently told Marketing Brew, “The hardest part will be focus. Culture is speeding up, and the volume of ‘reactable moments’ keeps multiplying. But chasing everything is a trap.”

The subtext is this: Marketers must be selective in choosing the best channels for reaching target audiences with shorter attention spans, more messaging to process, and less trust in corporations than perhaps ever before. No single marketing channel will get it done, but certain outreach efforts will provide brands with more bang for their buck. Digital calendars, simple, direct, and dynamic, deeply immersive yet noninvasive, provide marketers with the right tool at the right time to connect their brand with interested target audiences, optimizing engagement without breaking a marketing budget.

The post CMOs Should Turn Calendars Into a Marketing Channel appeared first on MartechView.

For decades, marketers treated direct references to competitors as a red line. Side-by-side comparisons were left to analysts, journalists, or bloggers. Brands stuck to their own talking points, wary of lending attention—or credibility—to rival offerings.

That instinct is understandable. It is also outdated.

Generative AI and chat-based discovery have changed how consumers find information. Instead of scrolling through linear search results, users now ask AI assistants questions like “What’s the best product in this category?” and receive instant summaries that place brands side by side. In this environment, silence is no longer a safe strategy. If brands do not provide content that enables comparison, they risk being excluded from the conversation altogether—or worse, having the comparison defined for them by someone else.

Consumers Are Already Choosing AI Answers

The shift is no longer theoretical. Roughly 80 percent of search users now rely on AI-generated summaries at least 40 percent of the time. More striking still, about 60 percent of searches end without a click to a traditional website. The familiar “ten blue links” model—where SEO led users directly to brand-owned destinations—is giving way to a zero-click reality.

Today, the answers consumers see and trust are shaped upstream by large language models. Those models draw from content that is clear, structured, and comparable. Discovery no longer happens only on brand websites. It happens inside AI-generated answers. Visibility now depends on whether a brand’s content is included in those summaries.

From SEO to GEO

This shift has given rise to a new discipline: generative engine optimization, or GEO. Where SEO focused on making content legible to search crawlers, GEO is about making it intelligible, indexable, and citable by AI systems.

That begins with answer-first writing, precise metadata, and distribution through credible editorial environments. AI agents prioritize clarity, authority, and structure. Content published in trusted contexts—and written to anticipate real consumer questions—is far more likely to surface in generative responses.

Just as SEO once forced marketers to think differently about keywords, architecture, and intent, GEO demands a comparable mindset shift. The question is no longer simply, “How do we rank in search?” but, “How do we appear in AI-generated answers?”

Why Comparative Content Now Matters

AI systems are not looking for slogans. They are looking for distinctions—benchmarks, trade-offs, and context. The most useful content in this new discovery landscape often requires acknowledging competitors directly.

This does not mean attacking rivals. It means offering clear, fact-based information that helps consumers make informed choices while still highlighting a brand’s strengths. Effective formats include:

• Feature-by-feature comparisons that clarify differences across a category
• “Best for” guides that map products to specific use cases
• Educational explainers that define terminology and market structure
• Buyer checklists that outline decision criteria
• Trend-driven analysis that shows where a category is headed and how players differ

This approach delivers two benefits. It increases the likelihood that a brand’s content is cited in AI summaries. And it positions the brand as a credible authority—even when it is not the only name mentioned.

Getting Comfortable With Discomfort

For many organizations, this shift feels risky. Mentioning competitors in branded content can feel counterintuitive, even threatening. But the rules of discovery have changed. Comparisons are happening whether brands participate or not.

The more effective strategy is to shape the narrative rather than avoid it.

Brands that adapt—by structuring content for generative engines and embracing comparative formats—stand to gain visibility and trust where decisions are increasingly made. Those who cling to old assumptions risk fading from view.

The conclusion is straightforward: in the era of AI summaries, relevance depends on participation. The brands that show up in the conversation will be seen as helpful, credible, and worth choosing. The rest may not be seen at all.

The post When Silence Hurts Brands in the Age of AI appeared first on MartechView.

Ranketta, a Czech-based AI visibility platform, has announced it has raised €1 million in pre-seed funding. The financing round was led by Lighthouse Ventures, with participation from Gi21 Capital. The company is addressing a rapidly emerging challenge for marketers: ensuring brand visibility within AI search and AI shopping results.

The investment comes as consumer habits shift dramatically. Recent data suggests that approximately 50% of consumers already use AI-powered search to inform purchasing decisions, with 44% relying on it more than traditional Google search. Spending influenced by AI search is projected to reach $750 billion by 2028.

Despite this monumental shift, fewer than 40% of marketers prioritize Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and a mere 16% of brands actively track their AI search performance. This creates a dangerous visibility gap where brands may maintain a strong presence on traditional search but disappear within large language model (LLM) responses.

Also Read: GenAI Search Is Rewriting the Shopper’s Playbook

Measuring and Improving AI Prominence

Ranketta addresses this by providing a platform for D2C, e-commerce, and B2B brands to measure and improve their prominence in AI-generated answers. The platform tracks the frequency at which products and brands appear across tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overview.

The system provides detailed insights into which products LLMs recommend most, the reasoning behind the placement, and data-driven suggestions for adjusting content to influence rankings. Beyond product insights, Ranketta tracks overall brand presence, sentiment, relative ranking, and identifies the exact articles and sources the AI models cite.

An integrated AI Copilot enhances this offering by reviewing the data and providing tailored recommendations on content creation and which external citations are likely to have the greatest impact on AI search visibility.

Also Read: Edition 3: Sharp Minds Decoding Tech’s Next Wave

Founded on Research

Vojtěch Oravec, the 21-year-old CEO and founder of Ranketta, stated that his research confirmed companies’ limited visibility into AI’s influence on purchasing decisions. He emphasized that traditional SEO and analytics no longer capture the full customer journey, necessitating tools that can operate across both conventional and AI-driven channels.

“Ranketta turns AI shopping into a real acquisition channel that companies can monitor, improve, and grow,” Oravec said. “Our mission is to ensure every brand can compete fairly in the AI-driven discovery landscape.”

Oravec, a Czech engineer and AI researcher, developed the technology as a solo prototype in 2025. Before founding Ranketta, he conducted research at the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics and worked as a product manager at Henry Schein.

In the two months since its launch, Ranketta has already secured more than 20 European brands, including Brainmarket and Purple Technology. The new funding will be used to accelerate European expansion, support entry into the U.S. market, expand engineering, product, and sales teams, and advance integrations with key e-commerce platforms, including Shopify.

The post Ranketta Raises €1M to Decode the AI Search Shelf appeared first on MartechView.

Adobe, the creative software giant, agreed on Wednesday to acquire the digital marketing platform Semrush for approximately $1.9 billion in cash, a strategic move designed to help companies navigate the chaotic shift from traditional search engines to artificial intelligence.

The deal, valued at $12.00 per share, represents a significant bet by Adobe that the era of typing keywords into a search bar is fading, replaced by consumers asking complex questions of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

The Rise of ‘GEO’

For over a decade, Semrush has been a primary tool for marketers attempting to master Search Engine Optimization (SEO)—the art of ranking high on Google. However, the acquisition is centered less on the past decade of search and more on a nascent field known as Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

As AI chatbots increasingly become the primary interface between brands and consumers, companies are scrambling to ensure their products are recommended by these algorithms.

“Brand visibility is being reshaped by generative AI, and brands that don’t embrace this new opportunity risk losing relevance and revenue,” Anil Chakravarthy, the president of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business, said in a statement.

Mr. Chakravarthy noted that the acquisition is intended to unlock GEO as a “new growth channel,” allowing marketers to manage how their brands appear not just on websites, but inside the “black box” of AI models.

A Shift in Consumer Habits

The acquisition comes amid data suggesting a rapid change in user behavior. According to new figures from Adobe Analytics, traffic from generative AI sources to U.S. retail sites surged by 1,200 percent year-over-year in October.

This explosion in AI-driven traffic has created a pain point for Adobe’s corporate clients—including Coca-Cola and General Motors—who use Adobe’s software to manage their content supply chains but often lack visibility into how their brand is perceived by AI agents.

By integrating Semrush’s data engine with its own Experience Cloud, Adobe aims to provide a “comprehensive solution” that tracks brand visibility across owned channels, traditional search, and the wider web of LLMs.

Bill Wagner, the chief executive of Semrush, stated that the combination will help brands understand “where and how their customers are engaging in these new channels” as the digital landscape evolves.

Deal Details

The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies. Adobe has already secured voting commitments from Semrush’s founders and major stockholders representing over 75 percent of the voting power, all but ensuring the deal’s approval.

The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is serving as legal advisor to Adobe, while Centerview Partners and Davis Polk & Wardwell are advising Semrush.

The post Adobe Buys Semrush to Dominate GEO and Brand Visibility appeared first on MartechView.

In a marketing landscape reshaped by artificial intelligence and composable content platforms, Elizabeth Maxson, Chief Marketing Officer at Contentful, offers a compelling vision for the future of enterprise marketing. As companies pivot away from traditional monolithic systems, Contentful is helping brands harness agility, scale, and personalization through its innovative approach to content orchestration. 

In this exclusive interview, Maxson explores how marketers can strategically leverage AI to close the personalization gap, rethink customer experience in an age of zero-click search, and balance data-driven insights with creative risk-taking. With real-world examples from leading enterprises, she reveals how composable CMS and AI are not just tools but essential drivers of marketing innovation and operational resilience in 2025.

Full interview; 

What’s the biggest advantage for marketers embracing composability and AI-driven personalization in 2025?

The biggest strategic advantage is agility without compromise. Composable platforms allow marketers to orchestrate content across multiple channels and geographies, while AI tools help deliver personalization at scale. We just released a new research report based on surveys and interviews with hundreds of senior marketing leaders, and we found that while 89% of marketing teams are using AI, only 25% are applying it to audience segmentation and personalization. 

Contentful blends composability and AI so that marketers can close that gap. Our platform helps marketers adapt quickly, reuse modular content, and consistently and confidently deliver personalized experiences at enterprise scale. 

How should marketing teams adapt customer experience strategies to stay visible in the era of zero-click search and AI discovery?

Even in the era of AI-powered discovery and zero-click search, marketing fundamentals haven’t changed: we’re still in the business of telling stories that resonate and build trust. What has changed is how customers discover and engage with those stories. Search engines and LLMs now surface answers directly, which means our content needs to be more structured, conversational, and optimized for generative engine discovery. The good news is that strong SEO fundamentals — clear structure, relevant keywords, and consistent updates — already give brands a strong foundation. From there, it’s about adapting for AI discovery by using our customers’ language and leaning into the insights only our brand can provide.

At the same time, we need to evolve how we define success. Traditional traffic metrics will decline, but the customers who arrive are more qualified because they’ve already done their research in AI results — and they’re converting at higher rates. That means the KPIs that matter most are conversion, pipeline impact, and share of voice within AI and search results. Tracking branded searches and direct traffic also helps us understand whether our efforts are creating demand across channels.

So the strategy is threefold: first, ensure solid SEO fundamentals; second, keep leaning into what only our brand can uniquely provide — insights, perspectives, and storytelling; and third, measure success through impact and visibility rather than raw traffic. That’s how we stay discoverable, trusted, and differentiated in the age of AI discovery.

How do you balance data-driven decisions with fostering creative risk-taking in marketing teams?

We call this evidence-based creativity, and it’s a must-have skill set for modern marketers.  Our findings show that data analysis and interpretation are now the top-ranked skills for marketers. This tells us that marketers are expected to be both creative and analytical. For me, it’s about giving data and creativity equal weight. I encourage my teams to use data as a compass, not as a constraint. Data allows us to see what’s resonating, but creativity sparks ideas people remember. I want my teams to take creative risks while validating ideas through testing frameworks, such as A/B testing, and customer feedback loops. This balance ensures campaigns are imaginative and anchored in measurable outcomes. 

How does Contentful’s AI integration ensure scalable, accurate personalization in multi-language and regulated industries?

AI-powered personalization is only as effective as the guardrails around it.  Our regional data found that 58% of EMEA marketers test AI selectively with a defined plan, and nearly a third emphasize governance skills like brand voice, compliance, and quality standards. At Contentful, we’ve built composability and native AI into the platform so teams can scale personalization across languages and markets while ensuring consistency, compliance, and brand integrity. For example, Biogen, a leading biotechnology company, uses our platform to unify its content strategy and has dramatically streamlined translation workflows to support roughly 1500 pages published per year, across 30 languages. Tools like Contentful are critical in regulated industries where accuracy isn’t optional, and teams need to publish faster, more consistently, and at scale.

How do headless CMS and composable architectures help enterprises deliver omnichannel experiences with AR, video, and conversational AI?

Headless and composable systems are the foundation for meeting audiences across new formats. By separating content from the front end, marketers can create once and deploy everywhere. For example, a marketer can design a single piece of content and deploy it across different channels such as AR and video (and whatever else comes next!) without reinventing the wheel every time. This approach helps brands adopt new platforms faster without worrying about creating inconsistencies in the customer experience.  

How does Contentful ensure quality and trust in AI-generated content, and what guardrails should marketers use?

AI is valuable not just because of speed but because it gives marketers the freedom to focus on tasks only humans can do. Our research shows that 42% of marketers define campaign success by content quality and consistency, which tells us that trust and creativity can’t be outsourced to machines. We recommend giving AI clear guardrails while keeping humans at the center of judgment and reviews.   Marketers are already tackling the issue, with 45% of organizations offering AI training. At Contentful, we encourage teams to use AI as a creative accelerator for drafting, generating options, or testing variations, while keeping humans in the loop to make the final judgment on quality, compliance, and brand voice.

With privacy regulations tightening globally, how is Contentful evolving its data governance and transparency features to give marketers actionable insights while ensuring compliance and ethical personalization?

At Contentful, we see data governance and transparency as core to building customer trust and enabling marketers to work responsibly with AI and personalization. That’s why we’ve built our platform to meet the highest standards, including SOC 2 Type 2 compliance and features like EU data residency that help our customers store their user data in the EU, while staying aligned with global regulations like GDPR.

Another way we do this is through our Privacy Plugin, which gives brands the flexibility to decide what data is collected and how it’s used with clear consent options for customers. This means marketers can personalize experiences responsibly, tailoring them to regional requirements without being boxed in by one-size-fits-all limits.

Ultimately, we’re helping marketers derive actionable insights from compliant data, so they can personalize experiences to respect user boundaries, maintain brand integrity, and strengthen long-term customer relationships.

The post Agile Marketers Win: Elizabeth Maxson on AI, Composability and Creativity appeared first on MartechView.

Zeta Global, the AI Marketing Cloud, announced its Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) solution, a new capability built into the Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP) to help brands stay visible, accurate, and competitive as consumers shift from traditional search to AI-generated answers. The new tool enables marketers to monitor how their brands appear across leading AI systems, including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude and to optimize for those answers with targeted, actionable recommendations. Zeta’s GEO solution will be available in the Zeta Marketing Platform in the coming weeks. 

As consumers increasingly turn to generative AI for search and discovery, traditional search behaviors are rapidly declining. According to Gartner, query volume on traditional search engines will fall by 25% next year as users shift to AI systems for synthesized answers. Meanwhile, Bain & Company reports that 80% of consumers use generative AI for 40% of their searches, underscoring the urgent need for brands to ensure accuracy and visibility within AI-driven results. 

Zeta’s GEO solution equips marketers with the intelligence and recommendations needed to address these challenges by enabling brands to: 

• Track brand visibility and sentiment across leading AI platforms with the AI Visibility Leaderboard 

• Identify and correct citation gaps, hallucinations, or off-brand answers 

• Leverage Zeta Data for brands to inform GEO optimization strategy 

• Optimize content to be LLM-ready (Q&A, summaries, metadata) 

• Benchmark competitors, monitor AI share of voice, and measure impact 

• Align PR, SEO, and content into a unified AI-facing strategy 

“Generative engines are becoming the new front door of digital discovery. If you’re not present and accurate in the answer box, you’re invisible,” said David A. Steinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zeta Global. “Zeta’s GEO solution puts brands in control. It shows marketers exactly how AI describes their business, flags inaccuracies and delivers the optimizations to fix them, all directly within the Zeta Marketing Platform. The payoff is big: predictable, profitable demand from the channels consumers are moving to next.” 

Also Read: Marketers, Are You Ready for the Search-First Consumer?

“For the past 20 years, marketers optimized for search engines. The next 20 years will be about optimizing for generative engines that generate high quality visitors,” said Neej Gore, Chief Data Officer at Zeta Global. “With Zeta’s GEO solution, brands can align with how consumers now discover in their buying journey. Our platform delivers actionable recommendations that teams can deploy quickly to improve discoverability, engagement, and conversion.” 

The post Zeta Unveils GEO: The Brand Survival Kit for AI’s Post-Search Era appeared first on MartechView.

AI is rewriting the rules of digital discovery. In the span of just a year, we’ve seen a flood of new acronyms, including AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Each captures how search is changing, but the common thread is simple: People turn to AI-powered summaries and answer engines instead of clicking through endless links.

Research from Bain & Company shows that 80% of people now rely on AI-generated summaries for at least 40% of their searches. That’s a staggering behavioral shift. It also means that when users arrive on your website, they do so with new expectations. They’re in a zero-click mindset. They don’t want to browse; they want answers. And they expect those answers to be fast, accurate and trustworthy — practical AI tuned to your content, not generic results.

Imagine this: A prospective student types “best nursing programs near me” into Google or SearchGPT, only to be greeted with an AI overview synthesizing program highlights, graduation rates, and tuition estimates. Curious, they click through to a university’s site. At that moment, they expect the same level of clarity and immediacy. If the school’s search bar can’t surface details on admissions, scholarships or course requirements just as quickly, the experience falls flat. Expectations shaped by external AI now define how people judge an institution’s website and can even impact brand reputation.

The New Marketing Challenge

Marketers have long obsessed over how to get people to the site. Search engine optimization, paid media, social campaigns, and now AIO, AEO and GEO are all focused on visibility. But what happens after someone arrives?

If your website search experience fails, the investment you made to get that visitor in the door is wasted. They’ll leave quickly and may not return. The marketer’s challenge is no longer just about awareness or acquisition — it’s about what happens in those crucial moments when the visitor asks their first question on your site.

Onsite Search as a Conversion Channel

Too often, website search is dismissed as a functional feature. In reality, it’s one of the most powerful conversion channels available. Each search box interaction reveals intent. Someone typing a query is telling you exactly what they want, in their own words. That’s a marketer’s dream signal, full of invaluable first-party data.

A strong search experience can take that moment of intent and turn it into engagement, while a weak experience can send the visitor away. That searches a critical lever for driving conversion rates, nurturing interest, and increasing satisfaction.

Content Implications of Onsite Search Data

Search queries are more than actions; they’re insights. They highlight gaps in your content library. They reveal where your messaging doesn’t match the language customers use. They expose the questions people are asking that your site isn’t prepared to answer.

Marketers should treat search data as part of the content life cycle. It should guide content creation by helping identify what’s missing, what needs a refresh, and how to structure information more effectively. By doing so, you align your strategy with what your audience is actively seeking, not just what you assume they need.

The First-Party Data Advantage

With third-party cookies on the way out, first-party data is becoming the backbone of digital strategy. On-site search provides a direct line to behavioral data that’s both privacy-safe and highly valuable. It shows what individuals are interested in, how they phrase their needs, and where they encounter friction.

This is insight no campaign dashboard can provide. For marketers navigating a world of stricter privacy and fragmented channels, onsite search data is a rare and powerful asset to tune personalization.

The Marketer’s Opportunity With Search

AIO, AEO and GEO may dominate headlines, but they’re only part of the story. The real opportunity for marketers lies in turning onsite search into a strategic engine that delivers answers to customers and insights to teams.

Brands that embrace this mindset will stand out. They’ll not only bring people in through the front door but also create seamless, answer-driven experiences once they arrive. In doing so, they will build trust, loyalty, and long-term engagement.

The post Marketers, Are You Ready for the Search-First Consumer? appeared first on MartechView.

Europe’s festive retail calendar is long and varied: shoppers kick off with Singles’ Day in November, hunt bargains on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, prepare for Christmas, and then buy through Boxing Day and January sales. Digital commerce is central to that cycle — and retailers who stitch together search, streaming and AI-powered ad strategies stand the best chance of capturing seasonal demand.

Global online retail is forecast to grow rapidly: industry estimates put worldwide retail e-commerce in the trillions by 2025. At the same time, cross-border shopping within Europe remains a sizeable and rising market share: recent industry research places intra-EU cross-border transactions in the hundreds of billions of euros.

Simply put, Europe is digital, cross-border, and diverse — creating both opportunity and complexity for brands.

How European shoppers behave — the “4S” framework

1. Searching
   Research drives buying. A large majority of European shoppers consult search and online sources before buying in stores or online. Search trends show fast-rising interest in eco-friendly and local products, underlining a growing appetite for values-driven purchases. Marketers must therefore win discoverability in local languages and surface results for specific, timely queries.
   
2. Streaming
   Video is a dominant source of product discovery. YouTube remains a primary destination for research and inspiration across markets, and a significant share of Europeans report that content on the platform shapes their purchase decisions. That influence matters most in categories driven by demonstration and review — beauty, electronics and unboxing culture.
   
3. Scrolling
   Short-form video is exploding globally. Platforms such as YouTube Shorts are where Gen Z and younger millennials discover new brands and products. In markets with widespread skepticism about traditional ads, creators — micro-influencers and review channels — increasingly serve as trusted curators. Partnering with the right creators is no longer optional; it’s strategic.
   
4. Shopping
   Younger shoppers use multimodal search behaviors — combining image, text and video — to find gifts and compare prices. Retailers that integrate visual search, product tagging in video, and seamless paths from inspiration to transaction win higher conversion rates.

How Google, YouTube and AI change the playbook

Search and recommendation layers are no longer passive plumbing but active selling surfaces. Several capabilities are worth calling out:

• AI-driven search summaries and context. Google’s new search features that surface richer AI summaries and context for queries help shoppers refine choices without endless clicks. These “AI overviews” turn long, scattered searches into a single moment of decision.
  
• Automated creative and campaign optimization. Google’s AI-first ad products automatically tailor creative and bidding to regional and seasonal patterns — a key advantage for brands running pan-European campaigns that must still feel local.
  
• Shoppable video and CTV integration. Shoppable units in long-form and connected TV (CTV) environments bring catalog browsing to screens in the living room. This extends the discovery funnel from mobile scrolling to leisurely, intent-rich viewing.

What this means for retailers

1. Be discoverable for regionally specific intent. Winning seasonal queries means combining strong SEO for local languages with AI-aware ad campaigns that answer culturally specific searches (e.g., “sustainable stocking fillers in Germany”).
   
2. Use creators to build trust at scale. Authentic creator content converts by shortening the distance between inspiration and purchase. When budgets are tight, a creator-led shorts strategy often outperforms broad, generic TV buys.
   
3. Let AI drive personalized experiences — but control for brand safety. Automation boosts ROI by tailoring offers and timing, but advertisers must pair automation with strict verification and human review to avoid mismatched messaging or inventory with weak viewability.
   
4. Plan for cross-border friction. Many Europeans buy from outside their home country; brands should make checkout, delivery and returns predictable across borders to capture that demand. Cross-border opportunities are real, but so are the logistics and compliance headaches.

Key takeaways

• Europe’s holiday market is fragmented, multicultural and highly nonlinear: shoppers move between search, streaming, creators and AI-powered recommendations.
• To win, retailers must be discoverable in local search, inspire through short-form and creator content, and convert with AI-powered, privacy-safe campaigns that streamline the shopping journey.

The post Winning the Holiday Shopping Season in Europe with Google, YouTube, and AI appeared first on MartechView.