Local advertising reached more than $150 billion last year, according to Borrell Associates’ recent annual report, with digital display and social media advertising further separating itself from the long-reigning Search as “the largest single slice of the local advertising pie.” 

US Publishers Tell Common Crawl To Stop Scraping And Delete Archive

Digital news publishers in the US have raised “significant legal concerns” over the scraping of their content by Common Crawl Foundation. Trade body Digital Content Next (DCN), which represents many major US publishers, has sent a cease and desist letter via its lawyer to the web archive creator. They called on Common Crawl to immediately stop “scraping, retaining, or sharing copyrighted, paywalled, subscriber-only, or otherwise protected content from DCN member companies in its datasets.”

Data Detours: Personalization Is Hurt By Quality Issues, Tech Limitations 

Marketers are hampered by data quality issues and lack of automation, problems that drill right down into email. AI might provide some relief, judging by a new study titled “The 2026 AI and Marketing Performance Index,” from GrowthLoop, working with Ascend2.  

The Hidden B2B Journey 

Search engines are still the most common starting point for early B2B research. They’re fast, familiar, and make it easy for buyers to quickly scan pricing, features, and technical details across vendors. But search is rarely the destination — it is a navigation layer.

AI may continue tightening its grip on search — with AI tools a part of a growing share of desktop events, according to recent Datos and SparkToro research — but even as AI-generated results are seemingly harder for searchers to avoid, how they ultimately interact with those results seems to be trending in ways publishers shouldn’t ignore.

… Looking at Google clicks since the beginning of 2025, zero-click searches fell from a high of 28.1% in April 2025 to a low of 22.4% in March 2026. Along with organic click-through numbers bouncing back, it’s clear engagement in general is improving as those who are searching are demanding more meaningful results.

What Is AI Reading?

When consumers ask what is happening in an industry, AI reaches for news coverage. … When they ask how to do something, AI leans on reference content and brand-owned material instead.

Ad Workflow Woes Stalling AI Adoption 

Despite everything advertisers hear about the benefits of performance using agentic and generative AI in ad campaigns, marketers face challenges finding the budgets, implementing the technology, and understanding exactly how it works. … Fifty-four percent of marketers surveyed say the major barrier to broader adoption of agentic AI in campaign management is in the difficulty of integrating these solutions into existing technology and workflows.  

Google’s New AI Search Guide Calls AEO And GEO ‘Still SEO’

Google published a new documentation page to help websites optimize for generative AI features in Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. … Two sections are specifically worth highlighting. Google directly names popular optimization tactics it says aren’t necessary, and it redefines the AEO/GEO conversation as part of standard SEO.

After analyzing a year of traffic to sites built on its platform, Duda has found AI is no longer just a “future consideration” for growth, but an “active, measurable source of traffic.”

“Between March 2025 and February 2026, human website traffic to analyzed websites from Al sources has increased 73%,” says the 2026 Al Visibility for SMB Websites report, “with ChatGPT driving the majority (57%) of that traffic.”

AI crawlers were also responsible for performance gains, proving to be a “reliable way to measure how ‘visible’ a website is to an LLM.” Of the sites analyzed by Duda, AI crawlers helped with 3.2 times more human traffic and 2.7 times more form submissions.

Trust Issues: How AI Is Shaping Decisions In The Path To Purchase

AI tools won’t just help shoppers find products faster, they could sway shoppers to make different buying decisions, new research from Publicis Commerce and EMARKETER has found. … For a growing share, AI doesn’t just inform the journey; it accelerates it and possibly redirects it.

Handing Shopping Over To AI: How Far Will Shoppers Actually Go?

In the past six months, 63% of Americans say they’ve used generative AI for shopping-related tasks. … Most shoppers use AI for practical tasks: researching and comparing products (47%), finding deals (41%), or summarizing reviews (39%). Others use it to brainstorm gift ideas (31%) or build shopping lists (29%). 

State of Marketing

High performers use AI agents to reclaim eight hours a week and boost ROI by 20%. … High-performing marketers are nearly twice as likely as underperformers to use AI agents. In fact, 82% of marketers who use or plan to use agents expect major or moderate improvements to marketing ROI.

AI’s apparent takeover of search has been swift, widespread, and all-consuming for users, but if the results of a recent poll are any indication, that use “hasn’t translated into trust.”

Only 15% of those recently surveyed by Yelp trust the information provided by AI-powered search tools “a lot,” with nearly two-thirds (63%) double-checking results with other sources.

Top 50 US News Websites: Half Of Sites See Traffic Fall 20% Or More In A Year

Almost half of the 50 biggest news sites in the US saw traffic drop by 20% or more year on year in April, according to the latest Similarweb data. Some 24 sites lost a fifth or more visits in April compared to the same month last year. The biggest traffic decline year on year was recorded by Newsweek, which saw traffic fall by 69% to 28.5 million visits.

Stanford’s AI Index: 53% Adoption, 31% Trust

Stanford HAI released its 2026 AI Index, showing … public trust in AI sitting at record lows and entry-level workers already losing jobs. … The expert-public divide is a timely stat, given the current anti-AI climate playing out in scary ways. AI insiders see a productivity boom, but regular people aren’t buying it, and just 31% [of] Americans trust the government to manage the changes.

Email Absorbs AI: Most Senders Are Using It, But At Different Levels 

One thing is for sure: AI is speeding up email creation. … They are using AI not only for the flashy stuff, but for more mundane tasks like image resizing and link-checking. Overall, 76% of marketers now produce and send marketing emails within three days.

Publishers banking on local ad revenue have good news as we settle into Q2, with revised 2026 projections showing 8.1% YoY growth to a total of $184.5 billion.

“The increase over the prior estimate of $181.7 billion is driven by stronger-than-expected performance in mobile (particularly social), video, and streaming, political ad spend, and advertising technology,” says last month’s BIA Advisory Services press release.

Times ‘Fewer, Better Stories’ Strategy Leads To Run Of Audience Growth

The Times says a strategy of publishing “fewer, better stories” has led to three consecutive months of record-breaking global audience growth. The Times news desk has reduced the number of stories it publishes by 20% since the mindset change while the sports desk cut its output by 30%. But deputy head of digital Anna Sbuttoni said “they didn’t lose any audience. In fact, they gained it.”

Visible AI in Marketing Is Four Times More Likely To Cost Brands Trust Than Build It

When consumers notice AI-generated content in brand marketing, they’re four times more likely to trust the brand less than more, 31% versus just 7%, according to a December 2025 survey from Klaviyo and Datalily. 

Text Reflex: Gen Z, Millennials Opt In For Messages, But Want Limits 

Texting is increasingly popular among consumers, at least those in the lower age brackets, judging by a study from SimpleTexting. Of 1,400 Gen Z and millennial consumers surveyed, 69% have opted in to brand texts in the past year. But they are placing limits on it—90% want to receive messages once a week or less.

I previously wrote about advertising in AI search when the conversation was regarding whether AI ads were worth prices that neared premium NFL cost-levels.

Around the same time, Claude was making headlines of its own for its ChatGPT-taunting Super Bowl ads, envisioning a world in which the chatbots interjected in evermore creepy ways.

While the ROI worthiness of AI search ads remains yet to be fully determined, what’s absolutely worth considering now is how users regard such commercial breaks.

AI Tools For Journalists, And How To Avoid ‘Brain Death’

Many journalists use AI a huge amount in their daily job, with some harnessing exotic AI tools for their reporting, British journalists told Press Gazette. Research by the Thomson Reuters foundation shows that 53.4% of journalists express fears about AI and its impact on ethics and journalism — but at the same time, 81% use it daily.

2026 LinkedIn Ads B2B Benchmarks Report

LinkedIn Ads continue to generate the strongest ROAS among the major ad networks. Since last year, LinkedIn ROAS has increased from 113% to 121%. This change reinforces what we already knew. LinkedIn is still the only platform to deliver a positive return for B2B marketers. 

Small Businesses See Social Media As Their Clearest Path To Growth In 2026

68% of small-business owners in select countries say social media posting and paid ads will drive the most value for their business in 2026, more than any other channel, according to a survey from Constant Contact.

It’s pretty rare to see positive numbers associated with traditional SEO these days. 

Yet actual recent projections from Branch have web traffic from traditional SEO up 8 percentage points (45% last year to 53% for 2026). Alongside it, traffic from AI search is expected to grow from 35% to 50%. 

State Of Journalism 2026

AI usage continues to grow. Just 18% of journalists say they use none of the listed tools, down from 23% last year, meaning adoption has risen from 77% to 82%. 

Text Tide: Consumers Prefer SMS Over Email For Mobile Interactions

Email has slipped — at least slightly — in the mobile media mix, according to one measure in the 9th Mobile Consumer Insights Report from Vibes. Of the consumers polled, “41% say they’re more likely to redeem digital wallet offers sent to them via text message than sent through email or made available to them in a brand’s mobile app,” the study says. 

CMO Navigator: Rethinking Marketing In The Age Of AI

Almost half of CMOs lack confidence in their organization’s ability to implement some of the strategies they deem most important. CMOs report being more confident when it comes to AI adoption as a measure to enhance effectiveness and generate savings, but they seem less confident when it comes to generating net new value out of AI capabilities.

I recently wrote about a study pitting human- and AI-generated ads against one another to see which had the highest click-through rates. (The winner? AI ads, so long as they didn’t look like AI ads.)

Consumer behavior and perception, particularly as it contrasts with that of advertisers, is at the center of a separate IAB study with Sonata Insights, which found that their “perceptions are increasingly out of sync.”

Where Do Americans Turn First For Information About Breaking News?

When Americans look to learn more about a breaking news event, they turn to a variety of sources. This mirrors the fragmented way that people get news and information more broadly these days.

Love To Hate Email: Consumers Like It, But Find It Annoying

Consumers are of two minds regarding email marketing. Email is their preferred digital marketing channel. But it is also the one that irritates them the most, judging by a new study from Optimove.

Retail Executives Say Gen AI Will Weaken Brand Loyalty

44% of retail executives worldwide expect gen AI to weaken brand loyalty by shifting consumer choice toward value and fit over brand recognition by 2026, according to a report from Deloitte.

Last July, Ahrefs studied the search results from both traditional and AI models, finding that more than three-quarters (76%) of the citations in nearly 2 million AI Overviews were pulled from pages that ranked in the top 10, showing a “major crossover” between search rankings and citations.

Less than a year later, now with 4 million Overviews and more than 863,000 keyword SERPs as part of Ahrefs’ research, that percentage has fallen to 38%, indicating that Google “is selecting far fewer pages straight from the original SERP.”

The 2026 Industry Pulse Report

61% of experts are excited about the rise of generative AI in digital media and the opportunities it unlocks for new, scalable ad environments. Yet 53% say adjacency to AI-generated content will be a top challenge in the coming year.

The AI Strategy Shift Is Here — And Your Brand Can’t Afford To Wait.

Differences between executives and day-to-day practitioners threaten progress in AI deployment. Both groups agree on broad priorities for AI investments — personalization, customer satisfaction, and workflow automation — but their views on readiness, impact, and performance diverge in consistent ways.

Sales And Marketing By Design: The Two Sides Are Mostly Aligned At SMBs

Email marketers and other professionals serving go-to-market teams at SMBs are doing better than you might think. … Companies tolerate ineffective tech stacks because they fear disrupting current systems, while 34% cite data migration challenges. And 35% blame their leadership for being hesitant to execute a change in tooling. 

Nowadays, the news is hard to avoid.

But when we’re actually seeking news, the variety of sources only continues to expand, with even AI now becoming part of Google’s headline-generating process.

Those who use management software such as Magazine Manager know the ease of sending email-newsletter campaigns, and with the recent results of a Pew Research Center survey showing 30% of American adults get news at least sometimes from such newsletters, the beneficial value of these newsletters is harder to deny.

Do AI Ad Creatives Actually Convert?

Across the full dataset, AI-generated ads performed comparably to human-made ads in terms of click-through rate. … When ad performance was segmented by perceived artificiality, a clear trend emerged: AI-generated ads perceived as human-made achieved the highest CTR of all groups.

The Content Gauntlet: Budgets Are Rising, But Hurdles Remain

Email teams that are also tasked with content creation will soon be getting busier, judging by The State Of Content Creation, 2026 Edition, research from Canto … and conducted by Ascend2. Of the brands polled, 81% expect their content budgets to increase this year, 29% significantly and 52% moderately. 

2026 State of Loyalty & Retention

Subscriber retention is the next unlock, and it’ll help you turn new customers into regulars. The main reason shoppers stay subscribed to marketing messages is to be notified of sales or promotions, but it’s not the only reason.