Will Reddit Own its Fate in the AI Era?
AI Search

Google Doubles Down on Reddit’s AI-Search Authority

Google has announced that it’s reformatting some of its AI Overview results to accentuate experts and the wisdom of the crowds. This notably puts Reddit front and center in terms of an authoritative source of knowledge for granular natural language queries, which are the active ingredient in AI search. 

Anthropic Targets SMBs in Claude for Small Business Rollout
Anthropic

Anthropic Targets SMBs in Claude’s Latest Rollout

One of the giants of the AI world has drawn a direct line between its platform and small businesses. Anthropic, the new king of enterprise AI, announced that it will roll out an SMB-centric variant of its flagship AI engine. Known as Claude for Small Business, it’s a suite for typical SMB needs. 

Closing the SMB CTV Gap Between Main Street and Prime Time
CTV

Closing the Gap Between Main Street and Prime Time

Within the broader trend towards democratization of tech and media for SMBs, the barriers for TV and video ads have dropped dramatically. SMBs have always wanted their own TV ads, but it’s been out of their reach. So what has changed?

Pro Features

Building a Super App: Book Your Next Hotel on TikTok

TikTok announced yesterday that there’s a new use case on the viral video app: booking your next vacation. The thought is that you can learn about new places and activities organically on TikTok – as is the normal course of things – then turn that inspiration into action with transactional functionality. 

Yelp's Q1 Earnings Driven by Non-Advertising Revenue
AI

Yelp’s Q1 Earnings Driven by Non-Advertising Revenue

Yelp’s Q1 earnings showed flat revenue growth and other marginal gains, but it beat estimates given a challenged SMB macroeconomic environment. Its earnings also tell a compelling story about non-advertising revenues and – like several others we’ve been watching – revenue diversification. 

Google AI Mode Can Now Find Local Products in Stock
Agentic AI

Google AI Mode Can Now Find Local Products in Stock

Google continues to add functionality to AI Mode. The latest enticing offer is the ability for users to ask the AI engine about availability of nearby products, including what’s currently in stock. This brings a longstanding functional aspiration for Google together with its latest AI-focused and buzzy products.

The Eternal Question: Where Does SEO End and AIO Begin?
AI Search

The Eternal Question: Where Does SEO End and AIO Begin?

With the rise of AI engines comes the need to learn the still-opaque and quickly-developing art of AI optimization (AIO), also known as generative engine optimization (GEO). Just when you mastered SEO, this comes along. 

Doordash Simplifies & Streamlines SMB Onboarding
AI

Doordash Simplifies & Streamlines SMB Onboarding

Doordash has announced a new suite of tools designed to onboard SMBs to its platform in streamlined and automated ways. Highlighting things like pre-populating their business details, menus, and other relevant info, the endgame is to attract more SMBs to the platform by lowering friction. 

AI Search

Are OpenAI’s Ad-Revenue Growing Pains Slowing?

The biggest bombshell to recently hit the advertising world – a world already facing increased competition and fragmentation – is the entrance OpenAI. Its ad infusions in ChatGPT are slowly rolling out, and the headline has been the program’s growing pains. But are those pains being alleviated?

Snap Shows Us How Revenue Diversification is Done
Pro Features

Snap Shows Us How Revenue Diversification is Done

Snap has been on a clear revenue diversification path over the past few years. Branching out from its core business in ad revenue, it has launched subscription products such as Snapchat+. And with a subscription revenue run rate of $1 billion, that plan appears to be working, and gaining Wall Street favor.

InMarket Spotlights Best Practices in Local Marketing
inmarket

InMarket Spotlights Best Practices in Local Marketing

InMarket recently published a sort of public-service announcement that spotlights best practices in marketing physical brick & mortar locations. And in doing so, it drew out a few common tactics that represent a new playbook in location marketing.

Vendasta's AI Workforce is Deployed to 100,000+ New SMBs
Agentic AI

Vendasta’s AI Workforce is Deployed to 100,000+ New SMBs

Vendasta’s AI workforce, consisting of several role-based agents, has been selected by Italian digital marketing powerhouse Italiaonline to power its 100,000+ SMB customers. The centerpiece of this integration is an AI agent known as MARiO, which fields inbound calls and turns them into new business.

Yelp Drops 35+ Features, Puts AI Assistant at Core of Local Search
AI

Yelp Drops 35+ Features, Puts AI Assistant at Core of Local Search

Yelp this week announced its Spring product release. This comes every year with a treasure trove of updates across Yelp’s products and functions. This year’s theme is unsurprisingly AI – including user-facing features to find local businesses, and SMB-facing features for automated task completion. 

An SMB AI Killer App Emerges: Responding to Reviews
Pro Features

An SMB AI Killer App Emerges: Responding to Reviews

One of the places AI is being integrated in local business marketing is responding to reviews. This was an example cited several times at Localogy’s L26. What’s the opportunity to do this? What are pitfalls? And who’s doing it right?

The New Online-Visibility Playbook Takes Center Stage
Pro Features

The New Online-Visibility Playbook Takes Center Stage

One of the biggest questions looming over the digital media sphere is the degree to which traditional SEO carries into the emerging art of AI SEO, or GEO. Though this is a moving target given the pace of AI market shifts, the answer appears to be that some, but not all, SEO primes the pump for AI SEO.

Yelp Quantifies AI's Trust Gap
AI

Yelp Quantifies AI’s Trust Gap

Amidst all the AI excitement, one reality check we continue to raise is how the technology is held back by trust issues. Yes, AI is effective and impressive… but that doesn’t mean much if users don’t trust it en masse. These AI trust issues were quantified this week by a new study from Yelp.

HubSpot

TikTok Expands Footprint with HubSpot Integration

TikTok’s footprint just got bigger. The company has formed a partnership with marketing automation and CRM platform HubSpot, which puts TikTok marketing tools directly in front of marketers. This should help TikTok as a customer acquisition channel, while helping HubSpot expand its functionality.

CTV for SMBs: A Conversation with Magnite
Pro Features

CTV for SMBs: A Conversation with Magnite

As a sell-side advertising company, Magnite is in prime position to facilitate TV advertising. Then, last fall, it closed the loop on end-to-end video production and campaign activation by acquiring Streamer.ai.