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The GRADIENT: Why Taste Is the New Moat

AI Search Barely Cites Syndicated News Or Press Releases

A BuzzStream report analyzing 4 million AI citations found that press releases distributed through syndication channels barely appear in AI-generated answers. Background Press release distribution services have been marketing AI visibility as a selling point. For example, ACCESS Newswire offers an “AI Visibility Checklist” for press releases. eReleases published a guide positioning press releases as

Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Warns AI Could Harm Workers—Even If It Doesn’t Entirely Replace Them

Artificial intelligence may not eliminate work altogether, but it could still cause deep disruption to workers, according to Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. At a panel on AI and the future of work alongside economist Simon Johnson, entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, and AI researcher Rumman Chowdhury, Hughes said he expects AI to have

From Jaguar to HBO: should brands commit to a failed rebrand?

Over the past few years, there’s been an increasing number of failed rebrands as big companies move towards minimalist branding and corporate clean design. I say ‘failed’ with a pinch of salt, as some are not necessarily bad, but attract a vocal crowd of critics rearing to hop on the hate train. In the internet

You’re Not Scaling Content. You’re Scaling Disappointment

Every few years, the SEO industry discovers a new way to mass-produce content and convinces itself that this time it’ll work. That the sheer volume of pages will overwhelm Google’s ability to assess quality. That if you just publish enough, the numbers will carry you. It never works. It has never worked. And the people

Why connected customer experiences keep failing

Your customers keep telling you they already told you something. They filled out the form. They explained the issue to your support team. They gave you their preferences. Then they have to start over when they reach the next department. You know this is broken, so does everyone else. But the question most organizations get

MIXED MEDIA :: Behance

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Google Answers Questions About Search Console’s Branded Queries Filter

Google Search Central announced that Search Console’s branded queries filter is now available to all eligible sites, causing many SEOs to ask questions about it and Google’s John Mueller stepped in to answer them. Google’s branded queries filter is a way to analyze branded search queries that are driving traffic from the search listings. Branded

Ulta Beauty is going to be on TikTok Shop

Ulta Beauty will soon launch on TikTok Shop. “We are pleased to announce today an expanded strategic integration with TikTok,” Ulta Beauty CEO Kecia Steelman said during Thursday’s earnings call last week. “Next week, we will launch Ulta Beauty on TikTok Shop, where guests can purchase immediately as they engage with content from Ulta Beauty

Lydia Chodosh probes design rules through archiving and cataloguing

“For me, design is about interrogating the process by which knowledge is acquired and transmitted across time,” says the designer Lydia Chodosh. Exploring our use of language, her work is all about uncovering how we accumulate information, a point of interest the designer has developed over her varied interdisciplinary career. Lydia began her journey studying

How AI Automation Turns Static Travel Pages Into Living Content & Experiences

For most of the past 20 years, growing travel marketing meant producing more and more output. This happened because success depended on building additional landing pages for new destinations, publishing steady streams of blog posts to capture long-tail searches, translating and localizing content to enter international markets, and manually refining campaigns to squeeze small gains

Disney Cruise Line Ad Delivers a Powerfully Quiet Moment During Oscars

A lifelong, healthy parent-child bond is one of life’s magical pleasures, and Disney Cruise Line is tapping into that feeling with its latest ad campaign. “Midnight Magic,” which debuted during tonight’s 98th Annual Academy Awards telecast on ABC, is inspired by the experiences of real Disney Cruise guests. It depicts a father and son sharing

Check out the concept art for stunning Unreal Engine 5 horror game Ritual Tides

Unreal Engine 5 is allowing indie developers to achieve AAA-level graphical fidelity on much smaller budgets, and that can mean some chillingly realistic-looking horror (also see our pick of the best game development software). Vertpaint has just released the first gameplay trailer for its upcoming first-person horror Ritual Tides, and it’s also shared concept art

The Shortcut Behind Some AI Optimization Tools

On March 3, 2026, OpenAI pushed GPT-5.3 Instant to all ChatGPT users, free and paid, with no fanfare about what else might have changed beneath the surface. Within days, SEO and AI search practitioners began documenting something unexpected: The internal metadata that had allowed third-party tools to observe ChatGPT’s query fan-out behavior (the sub-queries the

When AI decisions create customer friction

I was traveling for work and used my credit card in two different states within 24 hours. That wasn’t typical for me, but it made sense given the route I was driving. Apparently, the combination of multiple states and an unusual purchase pattern was enough to trigger my credit card to be declined at the

Scenes from Greenland :: Behance

Google Says Hundreds Of Their Crawlers Are Not Documented

Google’s Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt published a podcast about Googlebot, explaining that it’s not just one standalone thing but hundreds of crawlers across different products and services, most of which are not publicly documented. What Googlebot Is Gary clarifies that the name “Googlebot” is a historical name originating from the early days when Google

Ritual Labs builds AI model for earlier creative development

The traditional campaign production model is becoming obsolete as the incessant need for short-form content grows and as companies look to generative AI to fill the gaps. Marketers have latched onto promises that AI technology will cut down on production time, cut costs and help scale operations. Every agency, production company and holdco has an

Bráulio Amado on why there is unlimited inspiration in the world, if only we become “crazy enough to look for it”

In this hilarious, long form lecture from Bráulio Amado at Nicer Tuesdays New York (performed for the very last time and recorded for the first), the designer and illustrator takes us through his career to date. Braulio gives the crowd an incredible insight into a decade’s worth of poster designs for Good Room, revealing how

Merchant Center Expands, Google Clarifies Smart Bidding, State Of PPC Report – PPC Pulse

Welcome to this week’s PPC Pulse. Updates focus on Merchant Center access for agencies, bidding strategy, and how PPC marketers are adapting to industry changes. Google expanded access to Merchant Center for Agencies, moving the product from pilot into general availability in the United States and Canada. At the same time, a recent Ads Decoded

OpenAI is Testing An Ads Manager, As Its New Ads Business Fights Growing Pains

OpenAI’s ChatGPT ads program is starting to take shape. The company has begun testing an Ads Manager with a small group of partners and is gathering feedback, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to ADWEEK. The Ads Manager is a dashboard that lets marketers run, monitor, and optimize campaigns in real time. The spokesperson also confirmed that

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