Category Marketing

37% of consumers start searches with AI instead of Google: Study

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Marketing Tag ,

Written by Danny Goodwin Traditional search frustrations are pushing users toward AI first, forcing brands to stay visible and credible in both places. Consumers are increasingly using AI tools — not Google — as their first source of information. This is driven by frustration with traditional search and rising expectations that AI will play a much larger role this year, according to a new report from Eight Oh Two, an SEO and PPC marketing agency. Why we care. AI isn’t replacing search, but it’s reshaping where search begins, how people discover brands, and which options they consider. A hybrid journey is…

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The Marketing God Complex: How to Use Narrative Responsibly in B2B Marketing

By in Marketing

by Pragati Sharma In October 2025, American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers remarked in an interview, "I can't believe that anything in our advertising marketing world is still commanding this amount of attention 10 weeks later." He was talking about a jeans campaign that received backlash for its perceived meaning. The remark shocked me. Of course the campaign commanded attention. Because as marketers, our words and campaigns are not simply published taglines or images—we're laying down stories that compete for mindshare and shape how people see themselves. Our marketing world does command attention. And that's not a bad thing. Exercising narrative agency, the…

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Your ads are dying: How to spot and stop creative fatigue before it tanks performance

By in Marketing

Written by Ann Robison Falling CTRs, rising CPCs, and shrinking reach signal creative fatigue. Learn how to spot it early and use data to extend your ads’ lifespan. The death of an ad, like the end of the world, doesn’t happen with a bang but with a whimper.  If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the warning signs: click-through rate (CTR) slips, engagement falls, and cost-per-click (CPC) creeps up.  If you’re not, one day your former top performer is suddenly costing you money. Creative fatigue – the decline in ad performance caused by overexposure or audience saturation – is often the culprit.  It’s…

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Where Marketers Can Find Shelter From Distorted Email Metrics and AI Algorithm Interference

By in Email Marketing

by Mike Donoghue AI powered inbox filtering from Google and Apple impact more than 70% of emails received. Although AI in our everyday vernacular is a relatively recent phenomenon, that level of inbox infiltration didn't happen overnight. Dragged into the spotlight with recent antitrust and monopoly lawsuits, these tech giants have been testing various forms of inbox puppetry for over a decade. Gmail's tabbed inbox was introduced in 2013 as an optional feature that automatically sorts emails into categories, such as Primary, Social, and Promotions. That was swiftly followed with suggested responses from Smart Reply in 2014, which has morphed into what…

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Forecasting in Demand Generation

By in Marketing Tag ,

by KAMIL REXTIN AND  ALEJANDRA CÉSPEDES The Forecast That Looked Perfect Every B2B marketer has seen it. The neat little spreadsheet where every dollar of paid media scales in a straight line: Thanks for reading Slash by 42Agency! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Subscribe 💰 $100K in → 📈 $800K pipeline out. So $200K in → $1.6M pipeline. Easy. I’ve been in those meetings. The models look airtight. Finance loves them. The board nods along. And then the campaign runs. Spend doubles. Pipeline doesn’t. By month three, the curve flatlines completely. Not because the media team…

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The tactical shift that led to 35,000% higher visibility on LinkedIn

By in Marketing Tag

Written by: Curt del Principe Sam Meller is the Head of Social for The Hustle, but we briefly got to borrow her for Masters in Marketing, because she makes everything she touches better. That’s how I got a chance to hear about a tactical content shift that led to a startling 35,000% increase in visibility on LinkedIn. When I heard this story, y’all, I threw an Asana card on our editorial calendar so fast I nearly broke my clickin’ finger. In short, it’s the cautionary tale of how even good content may not be the right content for your audience. And how, even in this data-soaked paradigm,…

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What are the Latest Trends in Drip Email Campaigns for 2025?

By in Email Marketing

By Lauren Basiura Email is still one of the most consistent and effective ways to build connections and drive results. Even as platforms shift and new channels pop up, email has held its place because it delivers messages directly to people who want them. But in 2025, drip email campaigns are not the same as they were (even a few years ago). Marketing automation has reshaped how businesses deliver information, and trends are moving fast. To stand out, drip campaigns now need to be smarter, more personalized, and more tightly connected with the customer journey. Marketing automation tools give teams the…

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How CMOs Are Using AI for Their Jobs

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Marketing

by Ayaz Nanji Most CMOs say they are now using AI tools at least weekly for a range of job-related tasks, including to generate copy, find useful information, and challenge their thinking, according to recent research from Dentsu Creative. The report was based on data from a survey conducted in April 2025 among 1,950 senior marketing decision-makers from around the world. More than 80% of respondents say they are using AI tools at least weekly to draft copy, challenge their thinking, identify trends, generate images, and find useful reports and summarize findings. Some 89% of respondents agree that agentic AI will have a significant impact…

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Are We Still Marketing to Humans?

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Marketing

By Ajith Babu You Google a question your buyer asks all the time. Instead of ten blue links, you get an AI Overview with a tidy paragraph and a few citations. You try the same query in ChatGPT or Perplexity and watch another neat summary appear. If your brand is lucky enough to be mentioned, it’s usually one line, stripped of style. But even then, the story isn’t yours anymore. The headline your managing editor spent hours crafting has been rewritten, all nuance flattened. Your once-differentiated point of view now reads like it came from a committee. This is the new…

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How to Turn Your Internal Experts Into Search Entities

By in Content Marketing Tag

By Stephanie Walden arketers have a new buzzword to either salivate or lose sleep over: entities. Not KPIs, not personas—entities. We know it sounds vaguely like the plot of a sci-fi film about sentient databases. But entities are real, and if AI models don’t recognize you (or your brand) as one, you may as well not exist to the millions of users currently asking AI tools for answers instead of typing searches into Google. Somewhere between “thought leader” and “structured data,” entities are how AI search engines recognize and categorize information sources. That means your brand needs to show up as an entity…

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