Recent Trends

• Google's AI Mode now lets users combine images and natural language in a single conversation. For SEO and e-commerce teams, high-quality product and lifestyle images are more important than ever to boost visibility and engagement.
  (source: Search Engine Journal)
• LinkedIn launched its Company Intelligence API, providing aggregated company-level engagement data. Beta testers reported a 287% increase in companies reached, 75% more MQLs, 96% more SQLs, and a 43% lower cost per acquisition, giving B2B marketers actionable insights.
  (source: Social Media Today)
• OpenAI is hinting to turn ChatGPT into an ad platform, hiring engineers for campaign management, real-time attribution, and integration tools. With 700M weekly users, businesses may soon need to consider ChatGPT in their PPC strategies.
  (source: MarTech)
• Aldi’s social media strategy shows the power of shifting focus: moving from price-driven posts to culturally relevant content. Highlighting timely cultural moments, like its early ban on synthetic colors, helps Aldi strengthen customer affinity.
  (source: Marketing Dive)
• Microsoft's Ads for Social Impact program offers free ad credits across Bing, MSN, Outlook, and more. Although currently waitlisted, this highlights the value of the program for 501(c)(3) organizations looking to extend reach and engage audiences.
  (source: Search Engine Land)

• A recent report found that AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity make up 5.6% of desktop browser searches, more than doubling from a year earlier – emphasizing the need for optimized SEO for searchability.
  (source: Search Engine Journal)
• Meta has expanded its “Value Rules” ad targeting option, allowing users to increase bid limits for certain audience subsets – better utilizing campaign spend for maximized reach.
  (source: Social Media Today)
• Google announced that it is bringing ads into the conversational AI search experience, saying ads will be targeted based not just on a user’s query, but on the entire context of the AI conversation – marking a shift in traditional keyword-based targeting.
  (source: Search Engine Land)
• Interest in Reddit advertising is growing for marketers: the number of daily unique visitors on Reddit rose 21% to 110.4 million last quarter, with the biggest jump coming from users who weren’t logged in (up 51%), many of whom land on Reddit through Google searches.
  (source: Marketing Tech)
• Instagram rolled out several updated metrics within its “Insights” tab, giving more guidance as to what content is resonating with audiences – for example, with new carousel post insights, marketers can see which image within a carousel a user was looking at when they tapped “Like.”
  (source: Social Media Today)

• DuckDuckGo, a privacy web browser, has added a filter to hide AI-generated images from search results – highlighting the growing user demand for control over AI exposure.
  (source: Search Engine Journal)
• Reddit has recently expanded its automated ad bidding options, adding both Brand Awareness and Reach focused ads – giving marketers more options to optimize ad spend and maximize campaign impressions.
  (source: Social Media Today)
• Continuing the conversation of consumer preference of search engines vs. AI: 57% of consumers still prefer search engines over AI platforms, and while 68% of consumers use AI for local product or service research, only 19% trust AI results (versus 45% for search engines).
  (source: Search Engine Land)
• Industry experts recommend varying content formats when sharing blog articles – rotating in LinkedIn Carousel ads, short videos, and digital newsletters via email. These methods help marketers diversify content and direct traffic back to website landing pages.
  (source: Entrepreneur)
• After banning emojis and hashtags in paid promotions earlier this year, X has introduced new in-stream ad formats designed to be more responsive and deliver better results, aiming to boost ad performance.
  (source: Social Media Today)

• A study of 75,550 AI Overview results found only 20.85% referenced news sources. This highlights how AI Overviews prioritize authority and content quality over traditional rankings — a key takeaway for marketers focused on visibility.
  (source: Search Engine Journal)
• Video is thriving on LinkedIn in 2025 — with average view times up 36% since 2024, and video posts now generating 1.4x more engagement than other formats – this is a strong signal for brands to invest in video content.
  (source: Social Media Today)
• 97% of marketers include at least one interactive element in emails, with CTAs buttons ranked most effective (35%). As email personalization remains a challenge for 2025 marketers, interactivity is a smart way to boost engagement.
  (source: MarTech)
• In 2025, marketers' top concerns with AI are privacy breaches (70%) and misinformation (68%), underscoring the critical need for human oversight as AI continues to dominate the digital marketing world.
  (source: Search Engine Land)
• Meta is looking to enable fully automated ads by 2026, which will see advertisers activate a campaign by inputting their business information and letting Meta’s AI creative and targeting systems handle text creation, demographic research, and analytics reporting.
  (source: Marketing Dive)

• A recent study shows that 43% of Google AI answers contain links redirecting users to Google’s search results – this aligns with recent data indicating that Google users make 10 clicks before visiting other websites. These patterns suggest that Google is working to keep users within its ecosystem for longer periods, and it’s important for digital marketers to recognize this shift and maintain reach and engagement by diversifying beyond traditional SEO methods.
  (source: Search Engine Journal)
• Reddit has begun tightening its account information requests to weed out AI agents. According to CEO Steve Huffman, the platform will soon introduce new qualifiers to verify that users are indeed human — part of a broader effort to preserve authenticity and trust as generative AI tools become more prevalent online.
  (source: Social Media Today)
• In the ongoing debate about AI’s effectiveness in digital marketing, recent statistics reveal compelling support: 85% of B2B marketers are now using generative AI, with 76% reporting satisfaction or high satisfaction with the results. Additionally, 69.1% have integrated AI into their broader marketing operations, and 36% have embedded AI into their daily workflows, signaling a shift from experimentation to operational reliance.
  (source: MarTech)
• Google Ads has recently rolled out device targeting options for Performance Max campaigns. This feature enables marketers to create device-specific strategies (like excluding TV screens from B2B campaigns or focusing on mobile devices when targeting on-the-go consumers), potentially improving ROI and campaign performance.
  (source: Search Engine Land)
• A glimpse into the future of digital ads: Amazon has announced new ad formats for its streaming service Prime Video, coming in June 2025. Among the new updates are a new pause ad format, which uses artificial intelligence to generate contextually relevant ads that pair dynamically created messaging with on-screen imagery.
  (source: Marketing Dive)

• LinkedIn has launched a new “Create on LinkedIn” hub that helps marketers create better content, understand analytics, and use different post types. The new hub is organized into three main sections: Create, Optimize, and Grow, and includes a Creator Tools section with specific advice for each post format.
  (source: Search Engine Journal)
• Canva’s recent app redesign now includes new LinkedIn video templates, where marketers can choose from a selection of templates or design their own. These updates could support more streamlined content creation and potentially reduce budget requirements for future video ad efforts.
  (source: Social Media Today)
• Recent insights from the digital marketing industry reveal that 60% of marketers worry AI content could harm brands through biases, plagiarism, and value misalignment – highlighting the need for human oversight in navigating AI use and the relevancy of this topic in content/blog material.
  (source: MarTech)
• In early April, Google officially rolled out the addition of links within its AI Overviews. This update allows users to explore more topics and webpages within a single search, creating a more efficient and seamless experience by reducing the need for users to enter multiple separate queries.
  (source: Search Engine Land)
• Despite recent announcements that it would phase out cookies in favor of more data privacy, Google has officially abandoned its “Privacy Sandbox” plans – as a result, brands can continue using cookie tracking in Chrome for visitor data and ad targeting.
  (source: Social Media Today)

• This month, Google launched a new feature for Business Profiles, introducing a customizable QR code to simplify the process of directing clients to a business' review page. This QR code can be easily added to company websites or sent via email, making it easier to manage and enhance public reputation.
  (source: Search Engine Journal)
• Meta is facing a lawsuit for using copyright-protected materials to train its AI language models, which the company is hoping will rival Open AI’s ChatGPT in data and consumer usage. This legal battle proves the importance of ethical AI practices and responsible data sourcing, especially as companies strive to lead in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
  (source: Social Media Today)
• A recent industry study reveals that around 50% of consumers block a brand’s ads due to irrelevance or intrusiveness. However, when brands deliver fewer, more targeted ads, the same audience responds positively, emphasizing the critical role of personalization in digital advertising.
  (source: Business)
• Open AI has recently given Plus members access to Deep Research, a feature that was previously available only for Pro+ members. Deep Research provides real-time insights from external sources, rather than from ChatGPT internal knowledge, and is more powerful for research-heavy SEO optimization.
  (source: Search Engine Land)
• In efforts to compete in the AI landscape, Google announced its own complex search process, “AI Mode,” in early March, which will enable users to pose multi-part questions that will be answered by the latest Gemini models within the same search stream.
  (source: Social Media Today)

• Email readers spent an average of 8.97 seconds reading an email, meaning subject lines and email copy must be engaging and have easy readability. Marketers suggest leveraging strategies like curiosity, anchoring, loss aversion, and social proof within subject lines to captivate audience attention.
  (source: MarTech)
• Google is enhancing its Responsive Search ads using the power of AI, including dynamically serving headlines, descriptions, and assets to improve performance and omitting certain content forms, like descriptions, if doing so leads to better engagement.
  (source: Search Engine Land)
• Over the past few months, Meta has introduced new transparency measures for generated images on its platform, including an "AI Info" label to identify machine-created images in ads. This update is essential as social media marketers continue to combat misinformation and address biases online.
  (source: Social Media Today)
• A recent study shows that 85% of luxury brands are turning to LinkedIn as a social networking platform. Since 67% of luxury purchases are driven by career promotions or job changes, tapping into LinkedIn’s professional audience provides strategic targeting measures.
  (source: Fast Company)
• Google has updated their ad guidelines, stating brands must officially document their business names and logos by March 2025 or face automated changes to ad campaigns. This move represents Google’s latest effort to standardize brand presentation across its advertising platforms.
  (source: Search Engine Land)

• A recent industry study shows that implementing generational marketing is crucial for maximizing PPC efforts: while 75% of millennial and Gen Z consumers report more positive feelings toward brands after receiving personalized ads from retargeting efforts, 47% of baby boomers felt negatively when placed in the same situation.
  (source: MarTech)
• Marketers save on average up to three hours during blog creation by using generative AI to draft content and provide inspiration. However, 60% of marketers worry that AI-generated content may harm brand reputation due to biases, highlighting the need for human review and revision.
  (source: HubSpot)
• Video content is proven to generate 1,200% more shares than text and images combined on LinkedIn, and 73% of consumers say an organization’s posts on thought leadership is the most trustworthy element of their social strategy.
  (source: Social Media Today)
• Google may soon launch 'Search Max' in Google Ads, a feature aimed at improving ad performance in the evolving AI-driven search landscape. While Google has not commented on this update, a “Search Max” option has appeared in the match type report for some advertisers, indicating a future rollout.
  (source: Search Engine Land)
• LinkedIn has updated its ad tracking system to give a more accurate picture of how people respond to ads, moving away from making assumptions off limited sampling. This change will improve how user interactions are measured, making it easier to track performance with more reliable analytics and track real-time results.
  (source: Social Media Today)

At Peeeple, we keep a close eye on what’s shaping the industry each month. If your organization is ready to stay ahead, we’re here to help.