Hello Marketers!! It’s Monday :( And we’re starting the week with shifting consumer behavior, a new AI tool reshaping how marketers work, and a Black Friday 2025 that delivered big numbers on the surface but even bigger warning signs underneath, plus fresh insights on social media fragmentation, Google’s stance on rewriting AI content, TikTok’s 4× cheaper conversions, and more. Let’s dive in…

Search is no longer a Google-only moment: YouTube (24%), TikTok (16.7%), and Instagram (20.9%) now make up more than 60% of search behavior, and a buying journey can take 2 days to 10 weeks with up to 97 touchpoints. Last-click attribution wildly overcredits Google while creators, communities, and discovery platforms actually drive the demand. AI and zero-click SERPs are shrinking both SEO and PPC clicks, making acquisition more expensive and forcing brands to rely more on creators, owned channels like email, and content that people actually trust. Why it matters (POV):  AI doesn’t ruin search; it just exposes the mess. Brands that cling to paid-only strategies or last-click reporting are going to get left behind. The winners will be those who understand real human behavior, including multi-platform discovery, creator-led influence, and stronger owned channels.

The cost per conversion was cut nearly 4× by doing the unsexy work most brands skip: deep audience analysis, building localized creatives, testing dozens of seasonal video variations, aggressively killing underperformers, and scaling the most effective ad groups. They started at $5 per conversion, dropped to $1.68 after refining segments and formats, and hit $1.29 once the best-performing groups were scaled. Why it matters (POV): Everyone talks about “magic creatives,” but results like this come from deep audience research and analysis to understand customer behavior, systematic testing, localization (which is often overlooked), and pushing winners hard.

A site full of low-quality AI content won’t magically recover just because you “rewrite it manually.” Rewriting doesn’t fix the core issue: the site lacks purpose and provides no real value, which is why it’s not getting indexed. If someone wants to replace all content, they should treat it as starting over, rethink the site’s intent, rebuild the content from scratch, and accept that a domain with a bad history may take longer to recover than launching a new one. Authenticity and usefulness matter far more than whether content is AI or human-written. Why it matters (POV): This destroys the fantasy that a lot of niche-site bros still believe that you can clean up spammy AI sites with a quick rewrite and magically fix indexing or rankings. Google evaluates the purpose and value of a site, not the human-vs-AI label on your paragraphs.

19.6% of emails in active databases are unsafe, including 7.9% risky (disposable + spamtraps) and 11.7% invalid, with even signup forms capturing 7.6% invalid emails right at the source. The study shows that list contamination begins before the first campaign is sent and stresses the need for real-time verification APIs and regular bulk cleaning to protect sender reputation and maintain inbox placement. Why it matters (POV): Marketers obsess over subject lines and segmentation, but most are quietly bleeding performance because their email lists are rotting from the inside. Nearly 1 in 5 contacts can cripple deliverability, meaning your “bad open rates” and “weak conversions” might not be a content problem. If brands don’t treat data quality as a core part of their email strategy, they’ll pay for traffic only to have campaigns land in spam. 

U.S. e-commerce hit $11.8B–$18B, with growth driven more by price inflation than true volume (online order volume down 1% and units per transaction down 2%). Discounts barely improved from 2024, making it feel like “the same deals all year” dressed up as BF. AI was the biggest winner: AI-driven retail traffic surged 805%, shoppers coming from AI tools were 38% more likely to convert, and agentic service conversations jumped 42%. Why it matters (POV): BF isn’t a one-day “rush” anymore; it’s a long, drawn-out discount season where consumers chase value, retailers chase margin, and neither side is getting what they want. Winning 2025 retail isn’t about slashing prices; it’s about differentiation, perks, in-store experience, and understanding that consumers are more rational, fatigued, and value-driven than ever.

Americans’ social media habits are splintering across platforms. YouTube (84%), Facebook (71%), and Instagram (50%) still dominate usage, but younger users are shifting fast toward TikTok (63% of under-30s), Snapchat (58%), and a growing Reddit base (26%, up from 18% four years ago). Meanwhile, platforms like Threads (15%), Bluesky (6%), and Truth Social (1%) barely register with younger audiences. WhatsApp is quietly rising too, especially among Asian and Hispanic users. And in a major shift, LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini are being shaped by social platforms themselves. Gemini leans heavily on YouTube content, while ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews increasingly cite Reddit. Why it matters (POV): If your strategy still leans on one or two platforms, assumes Meta + Google can carry the whole funnel, you may be behind. Brands need to distribute across multiple platforms.

YouTube posted a tweet, “it’s okay to press pause”, but the internet instantly hijacked it, interpreting it as a nod to YouTube’s pause-screen ads that show when a video is paused for ~10 seconds. The backlash was strong, with users insisting YouTube was quietly endorsing an ad feature they already hate. The outrage completely spiraled into another anti-ad meltdown, even though YouTube Premium remains ad-free and costs less than 40 cents a day. Why it matters (POV): This is a good case study in how fragile brand communication has become in 2025. Platforms like X are primed for misinterpretation, negativity spreads faster than context, and even the harmless brand messaging can get ratioed if it taps into an existing frustration cycle.

(1) Building customer personas from unstructured feedback: Claude analyzes real behavior, pulls quotes, and generates a fully interactive persona map you can share across teams. (2) Analyzing paid campaigns: Upload raw data, and it produces interactive dashboards that break down ROI, LTV:CAC, and budget recommendations. And (3) remixing content: Claude can turn a single blog post into a LinkedIn carousel, Twitter thread, nurture emails, podcast talking points, and an infographic hub in one artifact. Why it matters (POV): Opus 4.5 shows where this is really heading: dynamic analysis, structured thinking, and multi-format production that normally requires an entire content + analytics team. However… you still need to edit for taste, nuance, and brand voice.

— Sam C.