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Over the weekend, thousands of alleged Google Search API documents were leaked. The highly technical documents purport to cover Google鈥檚 over 14,000 ranking factors, how link value and click behavior are evaluated, and how Google classifies smaller sites. But for the average marketer focused on building a brand, the news may be more exciting than actionable.

November ad spend shows the pandemic boom is over: The typically lucrative period declined 8% year over year as the market finally stabilized after the pandemic.

Though platforms like Perplexity, Arc Browser, and Bing have advanced generated search results, Google鈥檚 announcement last week that it鈥檚 rolling out 鈥淎I Overviews鈥� to searchers will likely make AI-written search results the norm. But some marketers say the feature is not quite ready for widespread use.

Retail media ad spend will make up over one-fifth of total US ad spending by 2027, per our forecast.

With OpenAI鈥檚 new GPT Store, an Apple App Store-like interface that opened earlier this month, SEO professionals can share their own custom versions of ChatGPT with premium subscribers. But these collaborative innovations aren鈥檛 without their challenges. Generative AI can鈥檛 do everything, and it can be hard to vet new tools in the store.

With the rise of digital ad channels like connected TV and retail media, there鈥檚 a lot of emphasis on making every ad and consumer touchpoint shoppable. Ad formats with direct calls to action help drive conversions and increase ROI. But brand equity can get left out of the conversation when we focus on performance marketing in isolation. Every ad should perform and provide some sort of measurable impact, but each ad is also vital for telling a brand鈥檚 story, even at the bottom of the funnel where marketers are more focused on driving conversions.

Earlier this month, a story in The Verge set fire to the SEO world, describing the stereotypes of SEO professionals as 鈥渢hat of a hustler: a content goblin willing to eschew rules, morals, and good taste in exchange for eyeballs and mountains of cash. A nihilist in it for the thrills, a prankster gleeful about getting away with something.鈥�

Key stat: 92% of local marketing and SEO professionals worldwide experimented most with ChatGPT in their work in July 2023, according to an August survey by SurveyMonkey.

Key stat: 28.0% of Gen Z consumers have discovered grocery products via search engines, compared with 16.7% that have discovered products while browsing store shelves, per our forecast.

Google continues to lose ground to Amazon: Amazon is holding steady as shoppers鈥� search engine of choice for products, even as TikTok and other social platforms attract Gen Z consumers.

As the so-called AI arms race heats up, US site visit data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb reflects early changes in consumer behavior.

As marketing budgets bend under the pressure of economic uncertainty, SEO is increasingly important for its low costs and compounding returns. Some 58% of marketers plan to use AI for content and SEO by the end of this year, compared to 10% who currently do, according to BrightEdge data.

Reddit finally sees the value in being a search engine: Improvements to its in-app search are crucial if it wants to capture more user attention.

AI is 鈥渇or sure the hottest topic in the SEO space,鈥� said Lily Ray, senior director of SEO and head of organic research at Amsive Digital. 鈥淏ut people are still being a little bit careful because we don't know exactly how Google is going to treat this type of content.鈥� Here鈥檚 what marketers need to know.

Government resistance against TikTok intensifies: The list of states banning TikTok on government devices keeps growing. Could intensifying scrutiny lead to an all-out US TikTok ban?

But when we're talking about onsite search ads like our retail media 1.0 as called it before, it's really easy to measure that conversion when you are talking about another party coming in and advertising their own products. How can you measure that? The ads are a success? Sarah Marzano (12:09):. I think it's really important to consider the goal of the sort of advertisement.

And then we could have a whole episode on what's going on in the search ad market. But suffice it to say that Google is still the most important player in search, and I expect Google to announce a plan for bringing its search generative experience to a broader user base, so we should stay tuned for more on that front in 2024. And also lastly, we have two major antitrust trials happening in 2024.

And again, there it's mostly search advertising. CitrusAd has recently debuted a couple of new ad products.

It's set up in such a way that if it were to enter any market and advertising, streaming, search, ad tech, it would almost immediately become a force to be reckoned with. And we do see it going that way. But it's also a giant red flag for antitrust enforcers. That the momentum behind Apple's ads business is so directly attributable to app tracking transparency. Marcus Johnson:. Story two.

Retail media just got even bigger. We recently updated our US retail media ad spend forecast to show higher growth than previously estimated, culminating in $109.40 billion in spend in 2027.