Be in The Know
🔍 Google enables full placement reporting for Search Partner Network.
❤️🔥 The marketer’s guide to Taylor Swift’s Life of a Showgirl era.
🎓 TikTok targets college life with new Campus Connection feature.
🎬 Watch: YouTube launches Effects Maker for Shorts.
💭 Opinion: The golden age of social media is over, and smart brands are already moving on.
🎾 Brands volley for attention at the U.S. Open.
Lower Traffic Might Be… Better?
More clicks don’t necessarily translate into more customers.
Often, the chase for vanity metrics can distract us from what actually drives growth: the right audience.
High traffic might look good on a slide deck, but if the majority of those visitors bounce or never intend to buy, the value is close to zero. What matters more is intent. When you attract people who genuinely align with your product or service, you’re far more likely to see meaningful results.
Here are a few ways to shift your strategy:
- Segment your audience. Obviously. Tailor content to specific personas and their needs.
- Align content with the funnel. Create resources for awareness, consideration, and decision stages.
- Invest in first-party data. Nurture audiences who have already shown interest
- Optimize for intent, not keywords. Focus on solving problems, not just ranking.
- Measure engagement, not just visits. Track dwell time, scroll depth, and conversion pathways.
Smash or Pass 👍/👎
Cracker Barrel rolls out a new logo (right).

ChatGPT vs Google
Ahrefs just launched a monthly tracker comparing referral traffic from Google Search and ChatGPT. Hallelujah.
The dashboard pulls data from over 44,000 websites connected to Ahrefs’ free Web Analytics tool and updates each month.
The early numbers show Google still dominates, driving 41.9% of total traffic in July, compared to ChatGPT’s 0.19%.
But growth trends are worth noting: while Google traffic rose just 1.4%, ChatGPT referrals climbed 5.3%. That means, while small in absolute terms, ChatGPT is currently growing 3.8x faster than Google.
Prompt to Pop Culture Pipeline

Fiverr is back with another AI-positive campaign.
At the center is Garry, an AI character placed in ridiculously meme-able situations, like falling off a tower of cans in high heels (a nod to the Nicki Minaj heel challenge).
The videos were created in just one weekend using Fiverr’s Go AI platform, paired with freelancer prompts, in an effort to prove that creative doesn’t have to slow down your reaction time to viral moments anymore.
Ads from the Past

M&M’s, 1995

