Digital Digest
Marketing Intelligence Weekly
Weekly updates on the digital marketing news you need to know, including data reform, AI, cookie deprecation and platform updates.
AI in digital
Platforms
Microsoft Clarity Reveals AI’s Referral Payback
- Microsoft Clarity has launched an AI Scrape-to-Referral Ratio, comparing how often an AI platform scrapes a site with how much referral traffic it sends back.
- The metric gives marketers and site owners a clearer way to assess whether AI crawlers are delivering value or primarily extracting content. One example shows 6,000 scrapes for every referral, with just 41 visits generated.
- Bot Analytics also breaks performance down by AI operator, helping teams identify which platforms generate meaningful referral traffic versus those with high scraping activity and limited return.
- Marketers can jump directly from referral insights into filtered session recordings to assess whether AI-referred visitors actually engage, convert, sign up or make purchases.
- The bigger opportunity is making AI crawler access a more measurable decision. Rather than treating all AI visibility equally, brands can compare scrape volume, referral return and visitor quality when deciding which crawlers are worth allowing.
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AI in digital
Platforms
ChatGPT Ads Surge Across Australian Responses
- ChatGPT ads are rapidly becoming visible in Australia, with data stream analysis finding sponsored placements in roughly half of monitored responses, signalling that AI advertising is moving beyond experimentation and into meaningful scale.
- Telco, energy and travel brands are among the early movers, suggesting advertisers in high-consideration categories see conversational AI as a new channel for reaching consumers closer to decision-making moments.
- US analysis points to an emerging income divide in ChatGPT advertising exposure, raising questions for marketers about who AI ads actually reach and how representative that audience will be.
- For marketers, the early surge makes AI ad visibility, placement and competitive monitoring increasingly important as ChatGPT develops into a new paid media environment alongside traditional search and digital channels.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Claude Will Now Watermark AI-Generated Content
- Anthropic is rolling out machine-readable marking for Claude-generated content as part of its commitments under the EU AI Act. Claude models launched on or after 2 August 2026 will support marking from launch, with older models being updated over time.
- For text, Claude will embed an invisible watermark that doesn’t affect readability and can travel with copy when it’s pasted elsewhere. For supported files such as PNGs, JPGs and SVGs, Claude will also attach signed provenance metadata.
- Importantly for marketers, the watermark may survive some editing, but not necessarily substantial rewriting. Heavy editing, paraphrasing, translation or combining AI copy with other writing can make the mark undetectable.
- Detection isn’t definitive either. A Claude mark only indicates content may have been processed by Claude, while the absence of a mark doesn’t prove something wasn’t AI-generated.
- Our recommendation hasn’t changed: AI is a useful tool for creating copy, but marketers should still have human oversight and editors reviewing AI-generated content before it goes live. Watermarking adds transparency, not a substitute for editorial judgement.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google brings agentic AI deeper into Ads and Analytics
- Google is expanding Ask Advisor, its Gemini-powered AI agent across Google Ads and Google Analytics, with new capabilities designed to move marketers from performance insights to action faster.
- Google Analytics is adding AI Overviews to its homepage, automatically summarising important changes such as sales peaks and traffic shifts since your last visit. Marketers can click an insight to investigate it further with Ask Advisor, or receive summaries via phone and email notifications.
- Google Ads is getting personalised AI insight cards, plus a prompt box that lets marketers ask questions about areas such as competitor impact on impression share or trends that could improve campaign performance.
- AI-powered Dashboards turn text prompts into visual reports, with automatically generated real-time summaries explaining the reasons behind performance. The feature is available in Google Ads and is coming soon to Google Analytics.
- New benchmarking in Google Analytics lets marketers compare campaign performance against anonymised averages from similar businesses, giving teams additional context for identifying opportunities and refining strategy. The new Ask Advisor capabilities are currently in beta for English-language accounts.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
Platforms
ChatGPT Ads Reach One in Four Commercial Queries
- ChatGPT showed ads on 25.94% of commercial prompts in SE Ranking’s study of 50,006 US queries, putting its ad frequency close to Google AI Mode’s 29.45%. Each ChatGPT answer currently featured just one sponsored placement below the response.
- Ad relevance still has some serious gaps, with 14.35% of placements effectively unrelated to the prompt. The mismatch rate climbed above 50% for Relationships and News & Politics, highlighting the challenges of ChatGPT’s context-based targeting rather than traditional keyword targeting.
- Paid and organic ChatGPT visibility are largely separate games. Advertisers appeared among the answer’s cited sources in just 3.63% of placements, meaning marketers shouldn’t expect ad spend to improve their organic AI visibility.
- Audience fit could be a major limitation, particularly for B2B. SE Ranking generated 97,000+ impressions and 1,263 clicks at a 1.30% average CTR, but very few sign-ups, with the company pointing to ads only reaching Free and Go users as a likely factor.
- The early ad market is highly concentrated, with BestMoney accounting for at least 13.56% of all ads observed and individual brands taking more than half the placements in several niches. For marketers, the takeaway is to test budgets and context targeting carefully before scaling.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Expands AI Performance Reporting in Search Console
- Google’s generative AI performance report has expanded to significantly more Search Console profiles, giving marketers greater visibility into how their sites appear across Google’s AI-powered Search features.
- The report tracks impressions, pages, countries, devices and performance over time, helping marketers understand which content is gaining visibility within generative AI experiences.
- There’s still a major measurement gap: click and search query data aren’t included, limiting marketers’ ability to connect AI visibility with traffic and specific search intent.
- Despite the wider rollout, the report isn’t available for every site yet. Google’s John Mueller confirmed it only appears when a domain has sufficient generative AI data to display.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Search Console Reveals Hidden AI Mode Queries
- Google Search Console’s main Performance report includes query data generated through AI Mode and AI Overviews, even though its dedicated generative AI reports don’t show individual queries.
- Marketers may be able to identify AI Mode activity by spotting unusual conversational queries such as “yes”, “yes go on” and “yes, pricing”, alongside longer, more conversational searches.
- Google’s John Mueller confirmed that Search Console includes AI Mode and AI Overview activity in the general Performance report, rather than separating it into its own query dataset.
- Importantly, every follow-up question someone asks within AI Mode is treated as a new query, with its own impressions, position and click data. That gives SEOs another potential signal for understanding how users interact with brands and content through AI-powered search.
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Help desk
Platforms
Google Ads bidding changes land August 17
- From 17 August 2026, Google Ads will change how budget-limited campaigns using Target CPA and Target ROAS optimise, aiming to deliver more consistently towards the targets advertisers actually set.
- Campaigns currently outperforming their targets could see efficiency decline. For example, a campaign with a $10 Target CPA currently achieving $5 CPA may begin delivering closer to $10 unless its target is updated.
- Marketers should review affected “Limited by budget” campaigns before 17 August, particularly those outperforming their targets. Google will not automatically adjust targets or budgets on advertisers’ behalf.
- Google’s Bid Target Adjustment Tool is available from 6 July, allowing advertisers to compare targets against recent performance and quickly adjust them to maintain current efficiency or align with business goals.
- The upside is more predictable scaling. After the change, Google says advertisers should be able to increase budgets on affected campaigns while maintaining performance closer to their stated CPA or ROAS targets.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Cloudflare gives marketers AEO visibility dashboard
- Cloudflare has launched its AEO Visibility Dashboard, giving brands visibility into whether AI assistants are recommending, mentioning or citing them.
- The dashboard uses Cloudflare’s network-level data, including real AI crawl activity and referral signals across millions of sites, alongside testing AI responses. Cloudflare argues this provides deeper insight than tools that rely primarily on sending sample prompts to AI assistants.
- Marketers get four key AEO metrics: Citation Rate shows which AI platforms use the brand as a source, Mention Rate tracks whether the brand appears without being cited, Prominence measures how strongly and where it features in answers, and Share of Voice benchmarks visibility against competitors.
- The metrics could help marketers diagnose why their AI visibility is weak before investing in content. For example, Cloudflare says, “A brand that gets mentioned but not cited has an authority problem, not an awareness problem”, potentially pointing marketers towards a very different optimisation strategy.
- Cloudflare sees AI recommendations as the new battleground for discoverability. As Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen puts it, “Being discoverable used to mean ranking on a page. That’s not enough anymore.” The dashboard is available in early access, alongside Cloudflare’s Agent Readiness tool, which checks whether AI systems can access and understand a brand’s site.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Microsoft Clarity Sharpens AI Visibility With Brand Query Insights
- Microsoft Clarity now separates branded and non-branded queries across its AI Citations dashboard and AI reports, helping marketers see whether AI systems are finding their content through direct brand searches or broader topic discovery.
- Share of Authority can now be analysed by query type, giving marketers a clearer picture of where their brand has authority compared with more generic, category-level queries.
- New filters make AI visibility easier to diagnose, allowing teams to compare performance for branded versus non-branded queries and identify where discovery and consideration opportunities exist.
- The update makes citation analysis more actionable, helping marketers distinguish existing brand strength from organic AI discovery and interpret changes in AI citation performance with greater confidence.
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AI in digital
Platforms
ChatGPT 5.6 Is Getting Smarter About Sources
- ChatGPT 5.6 is using domain-specific searches far more aggressively. The site: operator appeared in around 43% of analysed query fan-outs, compared with just 0.004% in ChatGPT 5.5, suggesting a major shift towards deliberately selecting sources.
- First-party brand websites are the big winners. 84% of domains targeted with the site: operator were branded domains, indicating ChatGPT often goes directly to the company or product website when looking for relevant information.
- Reddit dominates when ChatGPT wants external perspectives. Of the non-branded domains targeted, 71% were Reddit, rising to 93% within the Social & Forums category. Trustpilot similarly captured 54% of Review & Comparison mentions.
- ChatGPT appears to match its search depth to user intent. Root-domain searches most commonly appear alongside terms like “review”, “official”, “service” and “comparison”, while searches targeting specific URL paths are more strongly associated with product-specific queries and pricing information.
- For marketers, owned content and third-party reputation both matter. The findings suggest AI visibility increasingly depends on having authoritative first-party information alongside credible external validation from sources such as communities and review platforms.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
AI Is Reshaping the B2B Buying Journey
- AI is already a major B2B research channel. 66% of AI-using professionals regularly use it to research vendors and solutions, while 92% say AI has shaped their vendor shortlist.
- AI visibility can directly influence pipeline and revenue. 97% say AI has helped them discover new vendors, while 83% say it has influenced their final vendor decision.
- Use-case relevance beats brand recognition. 53% notice vendors that closely match their specific needs, while just 7% say brand recognition makes a vendor stand out in AI responses, creating an opportunity for smaller brands.
- AI recommendations still need validation. While 75% trust AI vendor recommendations, buyers typically follow up through vendor websites, Google, competitor comparisons and review platforms, meaning strong AI and traditional search visibility need to work together.
- Marketers should expect AI's influence to keep growing. 89% expect to rely more on AI for work-related decisions, making visibility across tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini an increasingly important part of B2B marketing strategy.
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AI in digital
Platforms
State of Search Q2 2026: AI Grows, Search Holds Strong
- Traditional search continues to dominate. Despite steady AI adoption throughout Q2, desktop search remained resilient across the US, EU and UK, showing AI is complementing rather than replacing traditional search.
- The AI race is heating up. ChatGPT maintained its lead, while Gemini and Claude continued gaining ground. Google AI Mode also expanded, with adoption accelerating in the EU and UK and stabilising in the US.
- Search behaviour is becoming more sophisticated. Users are making more informational and commercial searches, fewer navigational queries, and increasingly using longer, more detailed prompts.
- Digital ecosystems are becoming more interconnected. Google kept more users within its own ecosystem after search, while AI assistants increasingly referred users between platforms. User journeys across search, AI, e-commerce and content continue to diversify without significantly disrupting market leaders.
- Engagement is becoming just as important as reach. Growth across leading platforms was driven not only by attracting more users but also by deeper engagement from existing audiences, highlighting the need to measure both audience size and user behaviour.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
AI Search Visitors Are More Likely to Buy
- HubSpot analysed nearly 300,000 businesses and found organic website traffic is declining as buyers increasingly use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to research products before visiting websites.
- A survey of more than 3,000 CRM purchase decision-makers found AI search was the strongest predictor of purchase intent. Buyers who used AI search during evaluation were 36% more likely to purchase than those who didn't.
- HubSpot says businesses actively investing in Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) are seeing stronger results, including 20% more AI-referred traffic, 170% more marketing qualified leads and 82% more deals than comparable businesses not optimising for AI search.
- The article argues AEO goes beyond traditional SEO because AI platforms draw on social media, reviews, third-party websites and owned content when deciding which brands to recommend. Marketers need to understand where they're being cited and where they're missing visibility.
- The key takeaway is that buyer behaviour has already shifted. Brands that adapt their marketing for AI discovery now are more likely to be surfaced during the research phase, while those that don't risk becoming less visible as AI search adoption grows.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
Platforms
1,500 ChatGPT Prompts Reveal SEO Patterns
- A study analysing 1,500 ChatGPT prompts found the model is more selective with web searches than many assume, averaging 4.29 search queries when search is triggered rather than exploring a huge search tree.
- Brand-owned websites and retailer pages dominated citations, making up 59.3% of cited sources. Around 76.7% of searches reportedly used the site: operator to retrieve information directly from brand websites, reinforcing the value of accurate, comprehensive owned content.
- ChatGPT responses averaged 433 words (3,161 characters), suggesting the model consistently expands beyond direct answers by adding context, caveats and supporting information.
- Citations were heavily concentrated across a relatively small group of domains. The top 10 domains accounted for 30.5% of all citation appearances, while the top 50 represented 52.5%, indicating AI recommendations tend to converge on a limited set of trusted sources rather than constantly discovering new ones.
- The findings suggest brands looking to improve visibility in ChatGPT should prioritise strong, authoritative content on their own websites and track which prompts are most likely to surface their content, rather than focusing solely on traditional search rankings.
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AI in digital
Google Topical Authority Doesn’t Guarantee AI Visibility
- Organic Labs analysed 134 B2B software categories and found that Google topical authority only carried across to AI search in 35.1% of cases. In 35.8% of categories, AI models either ranked the topical authority brand much lower than Google or didn't mention it at all.
- The correlation between Google rankings and AI rankings was weak and not statistically significant. On average, AI ranked Google's topical authority leaders 3.65 positions lower, suggesting AI values overall brand familiarity more than content depth alone.
- Perplexity was the AI model most closely aligned with Google's rankings, while Gemini diverged the most. ChatGPT and Gemini showed almost no correlation with Google's topical authority signals, reinforcing that each AI platform behaves differently.
- Well-known brands like Adobe, Zoom, HubSpot and LastPass consistently outperformed their Google rankings in AI results, while niche SaaS brands with strong SEO but limited brand recognition were often overlooked. The study suggests AI rewards brands with broad web presence, reviews, press coverage and industry mentions.
- The key takeaway for marketers is that content-led SEO remains valuable but isn't enough for AI search. Building brand awareness through PR, third-party reviews, community engagement and broader online visibility is becoming just as important as owning a topic in Google.
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Platforms
Google Ads Adds Product and Non-Product Click Metrics
- Google Ads has introduced two new reporting metrics, Product clicks and Non-product clicks, giving advertisers a clearer view of how users interact with Shopping and Performance Max ads. Product clicks track clicks on individual products, while non-product clicks capture clicks on elements like headlines, store names and CTA buttons.
- The update helps advertisers distinguish between shoppers with direct product intent and users who are engaging with the brand more broadly. This makes it easier to understand whether products are driving immediate purchase interest or supporting upper-funnel discovery.
- One important nuance is that a non-product click is attributed to every product shown in the ad, meaning these numbers can appear higher than expected when multiple products are displayed together. Advertisers should interpret this metric carefully.
- The new metrics build on Google's expanded product reporting, which now includes Performance Max across all networks, plus Video, App and Demand Gen campaigns. Retailers can use the richer reporting to better evaluate product-level performance and optimise campaign strategy.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Boosts OKF With AI Trust Signals
- Google has released Open Knowledge Format (OKF) v0.2, an open standard for packaging structured business knowledge so AI agents can reliably understand and use it, adding optional trust signals that help AI agents judge whether knowledge is reliable before using it. The update focuses on five areas: provenance, trust, freshness, lifecycle and attestation.
- New metadata fields let developers record where information came from, who generated it, who verified it, and whether it's still current, making it easier for AI systems to prioritise trusted, human-reviewed knowledge over unverified content.
- A new Attested Computation concept allows AI-generated metrics to be checked against approved calculations. This helps ensure reported figures are produced using sanctioned methods rather than AI-generated SQL or improvised logic.
- Google has also updated its reference tools and sample bundles to support the new trust features, while keeping OKF v0.2 backwards compatible so existing v0.1 bundles continue to work unchanged.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
Platforms
The AI Mention Effect: AI Visibility Drives Real Website Traffic
- AI brand mentions lead to more website visits. Profound's analysis of more than 2 million AI conversations found that when an AI assistant introduces a brand, users are 1.5 to 2.5 times more likely to visit that brand's website over the following seven days compared with their expected baseline behaviour.
- Not all AI platforms deliver the same impact. Gemini generated the strongest relative uplift, Google AI Overviews drove the largest overall traffic volume, while ChatGPT produced the most consistent uplift across industries. The effect also varied by sector, suggesting marketers should prioritise platforms based on where their category performs best.
- Most AI influence happens after the initial interaction. While 20.5% of visits occurred within an hour and 42% within 24 hours, most brand visits happened after the first day. This suggests AI acts more like a brand awareness channel than a direct click driver.
- Traditional attribution misses almost all AI-driven traffic. Even after ChatGPT introduced more clickable links in May 2026, only around 2.5% of downstream visits contained trackable AI referral parameters. The research argues that relying on click-through data alone significantly underestimates AI's influence on website traffic.
- The takeaway for marketers is to measure AI visibility, not just referrals. As AI increasingly shapes brand discovery, the authors recommend tracking brand mentions across AI platforms alongside website behaviour, rather than relying solely on conventional attribution models.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Yelp Reviews Come to ChatGPT Local Search
- OpenAI has partnered with Yelp to bring Yelp reviews, ratings, photos and business information directly into ChatGPT responses for local search queries. Users will also see Yelp branding and links alongside this content.
- The deal reflects a broader shift in consumer behaviour, with AI chatbots increasingly becoming the starting point for local discovery instead of traditional search engines. For marketers, this makes third-party review platforms even more important for AI visibility.
- Yelp's "Request a Quote" feature will soon be integrated into ChatGPT, allowing users to contact local service providers without leaving the chat. This could create a new lead generation channel for businesses that rely on local enquiries.
- Yelp sees the partnership as a way to extend the reach of its trusted local content, while OpenAI gains access to a large source of human-generated reviews and business data. The agreement is non-exclusive, leaving Yelp free to license its content to other AI platforms in future.
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Platforms
Google Clarifies Crawl Budget For Large Sites
- Google has refreshed its crawl budget documentation with clearer guidance, stressing that it only matters for very large sites with millions of pages or sites with tens of thousands of rapidly changing pages. For most websites, keeping XML sitemaps up to date and monitoring indexing in Search Console is enough.
- One of the biggest updates is that every site starts with the same conservative crawl capacity limit. Google automatically increases that limit over time if it sees demand to crawl more pages and the site remains healthy.
- Google also clarified that crawl capacity is shared across all of its crawlers, not just Google Search. That means crawling for products, images and other Google services all draw from the same overall limit.
- The updated guidance recommends improving crawl efficiency through practical measures like supporting HTTP 304 responses, maintaining server reliability and removing unnecessary crawling barriers, rather than trying to manipulate crawl budget directly.
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AI in digital
Platforms
ChatGPT Still Leads, But the AI Race Is Tightening
- ChatGPT remains the world's leading AI assistant and became the fastest mobile app to reach one billion monthly active users in May 2026. However, its share of unique AI assistant users fell below 50% for the first time in March, signalling growing competition from rivals.
- Google's Gemini is gaining ground thanks to deep Android integration, while Anthropic's Claude has emerged as one of the fastest-growing AI assistants across key global markets. The AI landscape is becoming increasingly multi-platform rather than dominated by a single player.
- AI is becoming a bigger part of online shopping. Retailers integrating AI assistants, including Walmart and Target, are seeing stronger GenAI referral traffic, while AI-powered shopping tools are helping improve product discovery and driving higher conversion rates.
- AI assistants are also emerging as a new advertising channel. ChatGPT began testing ads in early 2026, with ad impressions increasing sevenfold by May, while more than 200,000 apps now reference AI in their descriptions and AI-related advertising generated over US$1.3 billion in global spend during Q1 2026.
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Marketing by numbers
APAC’s Commerce Playbook Is Going Global
- APAC continues to set the pace for retail innovation, with live shopping, social commerce and quick commerce now mainstream across the region. Brands treating these formats as experimental risk falling behind as they become standard consumer behaviours.
- Social commerce is already deeply embedded in APAC, with 59% of consumers purchasing through social platforms. This compares with around two-thirds of consumers in North America and Europe who have never shopped via social media, highlighting APAC's lead in commerce innovation.
- China remains the benchmark, with its live commerce market reaching an estimated US$900 billion in 2025, approaching the scale of the entire US e-commerce market. APAC now accounts for nearly 55% of global e-commerce revenue, reinforcing the region's influence on where retail is heading.
- “What's happening in Asia isn't a threat to Western retail, it's a preview," said Emilie Darolles, president Western Europe, NIQ. "Live shopping, social commerce and instant delivery aren't 'emerging' channels; in Asia they're simply how people shop, and European consumers are already moving the same way. The brands that lead the next decade will read the East as a roadmap and act on it now, while the opportunity is still wide open."
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Unveils Faster, Cheaper Gemini Models
- Google has launched three new Gemini models focused on helping developers build AI agents more efficiently: Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, and Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber. The update is centred on reducing latency, improving token efficiency and lowering operating costs at scale.
- Gemini 3.6 Flash is Google's new workhorse model, delivering stronger coding, knowledge work and multimodal performance while using 17% fewer output tokens than Gemini 3.5 Flash. Google says some coding benchmarks show up to 65% fewer output tokens, reducing both inference costs and unnecessary verbosity.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is positioned as Google's fastest and most affordable 3.5-class model, designed for high-volume tasks such as agentic search and document processing. It delivers significantly better quality than previous Flash-Lite models while prioritising throughput and low latency.
- Google also introduced Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, a specialised cybersecurity model integrated with its CodeMender security agent. It's designed to rapidly find, validate and patch software vulnerabilities, giving security teams a lower cost option for large-scale automated code defence. Initial access is limited to trusted partners.
- Looking ahead, Google confirmed Gemini 3.5 Pro remains in partner testing ahead of a broader release, while development is already underway on Gemini 4, which the company says has entered its largest pre-training run to date.
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Platforms
EU Forces Google to Open Search and Android AI
- The European Commission has finalised legally binding Digital Markets Act (DMA) measures requiring Google to open Android to rival AI assistants and share Google Search data with competing search engines and AI services.
- On Android, competing AI assistants will eventually receive the same core system access as Gemini, including voice activation, app automation and access to on-screen content, giving users more freedom to choose their preferred AI assistant.
- Google Search will also be required to share anonymised search data and performance metrics with eligible competitors, including AI chatbots treated as search services under the new rules. The EU believes this will help reduce Google's dominance in search.
- Google has strongly opposed the measures, arguing they could weaken privacy, security and protections around proprietary data. The European Commission says the requirements include safeguards and can be refined if privacy risks emerge.
- The rollout will happen in stages, with Google required to begin sharing Search data by January 2027 and deliver deeper Android AI interoperability by July 2027.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Google Merchant Center Reveals AI Shopping Visibility
- Google is rolling out a new AI Performance Insights report in Merchant Center, giving retailers visibility into how their products perform across AI Mode and AI Overviews. It's currently in pilot with selected US accounts and will expand to Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand in the coming months.
- The report introduces new metrics including share of voice, competitor benchmarks, query frequency and query types, helping brands understand how often they appear in AI-powered shopping experiences compared to competitors.
- Insights are focused on conversational shopping searches only, making it easier to identify which product terms, shopping journey stages and search behaviours are driving AI visibility.
- Data can be filtered by product category, time period, country and traffic source, although the report currently only includes organic AI traffic from AI experiences. Paid Ads data is not included.
- One notable omission is click data. The report focuses on impressions and visibility metrics, with no click reporting mentioned in the current pilot documentation.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Microsoft Clarity’s New Tool Reveals AI Content Gaps
- Microsoft has launched Topic Insights in Clarity, a free feature that helps marketers understand how their content influences AI-generated answers, moving beyond simple citation tracking to actionable recommendations.
- The tool analyses topic-level performance, showing your AI visibility, share of authority, influence on AI responses, competitor citations, and prioritised content opportunities to improve your presence in AI search.
- Rather than focusing only on keywords, Topic Insights highlights where competitors are winning AI citations and uncovers content gaps, helping marketers create content around emerging AI-driven demand.
- Reports are generated using user-defined prompts that reflect real AI queries, measuring which domains are cited, how much each source contributes to answers, and patterns across an entire topic. The feature is currently in beta and is intended for directional insights rather than definitive measurement.
- Topic Insights is available free within Microsoft Clarity's AI Visibility dashboard for eligible websites, continuing Microsoft's push to make AI visibility analytics more accessible than many paid alternatives.
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AI in digital
Marketing by numbers
Study Reveals Where AI Agents Break Down
- Researchers tested AI agents across 100 B2B software websites, completing three buyer tasks, finding pricing/features, integrations, and security/compliance, with each task run five times to measure consistency. The study measured whether agents could answer using the vendor's own website, not third-party sources.
- Pricing was by far the weakest point. Agents answered from first-party websites only 79% of the time for pricing, compared with 93% for integrations and 92% for security. Pricing also accounted for 77% of all third-party citations, showing agents frequently leave vendor sites when looking for commercial information.
- Publishing prices isn't enough. Even when vendors displayed public pricing, AI agents still cited third-party sources in 18% of runs. When pricing wasn't disclosed, 45% of runs included at least one third-party citation, highlighting that machine readability matters as much as transparency.
- The study identified three causes of failure: pricing opacity, poor machine readability (such as JavaScript, calculators, PDFs and complex tables), and access friction. While access errors occurred in just 7% of runs, they dramatically increased third-party fallback from 17% to 77%.
- Sites that created friction also made AI agents work much harder. The most difficult websites required 4.4x higher processing cost, 4.7x more tokens and 2x longer completion times than the easiest sites, increasing the likelihood that agents would source answers elsewhere.
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Platforms
Apple Maps Ads Get Closer to Launch
- Apple has published official advertising guidelines for Apple Maps, signalling the platform's ad rollout is getting closer, even though the service has not officially launched yet. The initial rollout is expected in the US and Canada.
- Unlike Google Maps, Apple is restricting ads to businesses with a physical location. Entire categories such as home services, including plumbers, electricians, locksmiths, HVAC, pest control and roofers, will not be eligible to advertise.
- Apple has also banned several other categories from Maps ads, including alcohol, dating services, gambling, cryptocurrency ATMs, medical services, religion, bail bonds, and contests or sweepstakes.
- Advertisers will be able to target campaigns by factors such as location, time and day, with ads appearing during business searches in Apple Maps. Brands can start or stop campaigns at any time without a long-term commitment.
- For marketers, Apple Maps is shaping up as a more tightly controlled local advertising channel than Google Maps, favouring bricks-and-mortar businesses and stricter brand safety policies over broader local services advertising.
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AI in digital
Platforms
Can ChatGPT Ads Really Hit $100 Billion?
- OpenAI's ambition to generate $100 billion in ChatGPT ad revenue by 2030 looks increasingly optimistic, with Emarketer forecasting the entire US standalone chatbot ad market will reach just $5.41 billion by then.
- OpenAI reportedly expects ChatGPT ads to generate $2.5 billion this year, but Emarketer estimates the full US chatbot ad market will be worth less than $1 billion in 2026, highlighting a significant gap between internal targets and external forecasts.
- Emarketer's forecast includes platforms such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and Amazon Alexa for Shopping, suggesting OpenAI's revenue goal exceeds the projected size of the entire market it competes in.
- The report suggests OpenAI's projections rely on several big assumptions, including capturing a large share of search advertising budgets, dominating the chatbot ad market and outperforming previous digital ad formats at an unprecedented scale.
- For marketers, the takeaway is that AI chatbot advertising is growing but remains an emerging channel, with the long-term commercial opportunity still far from proven despite the industry's enthusiasm.
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