Business Growth and Digital Marketing News & Tips 08-02-26

The tools, tips, news and advice you need to grow your business.

Reminder: Privacy-Related Lawsuits

Over the past few months, we’ve seen a number of businesses receive legal notices related to website tracking and privacy laws — specifically the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA). If you’ve received one of these letters, the first thing we want you to know is: don’t panic, but don’t ignore it either.

CIPA is being increasingly applied to common website tools — things like chat widgets, session recording software, and third-party tracking pixels — and a small number of plaintiff attorneys have been sending these notices broadly across many industries.

Here’s our honest take: before making any changes to your website, talk to a qualified attorney first. Why? Because any remediation typically means implementing stricter consent requirements around tracking — which creates a real trade-off in the marketing data we use to help guide your business decisions. There’s no reason to limit that data unnecessarily if you’re not required to.

If you do need to move toward compliance, we have solutions to help minimize the impact on your reporting and results. And in the meantime, we’re happy to audit what’s currently running on your site so you have something concrete to bring to your legal team.

Questions? Reach out — we’re happy to talk through it.

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What you need to know:

AI Mode Ads Hit Critical Mass
Google’s AI Mode is now showing text ads on a meaningful share of commercial queries, signaling that conversational search is becoming a real paid channel. Marketers should start testing how ad copy, feed quality, and landing pages perform when the click comes from an AI-generated answer flow. Read More

Google Adds AI Ad Labels
Google rolled out a “How this ad was made” panel for ads created or edited with generative AI across Search, YouTube, and Discover. You now need cleaner governance and review processes because transparency is becoming part of the ad experience. Read More

Google Tweaks Target-Based Bidding
Google is changing how budget-limited campaigns using target-based bid strategies behave starting in August, aiming for more predictable results. Review any “limited by budget” campaigns now, because target CPA and target ROAS performance may shift once the update lands. Read More

LinkedIn Pushes AI Ad Creation
LinkedIn launched new AI-powered promotional tools, including brand kit support, copy generation, and ad variations. That could speed up campaign production, but it also raises the bar for having clear brand rules before you automate creative. Read More

AI Visibility Needs Earned Media
A strong argument is emerging that AI search visibility depends on far more than rankings and bids. If you want to surface in AI answers you need consistent proof across PR, reviews, social, and owned content—not just a search campaign. Read More

AI Is Scaling the Wrong GTM
Many teams are using AI to speed up low-value output instead of fixing the real go-to-market bottlenecks. The win is not more content volume—it’s using AI where it improves handoffs, qualification, and conversion. Read More

HubSpot Expands Revenue Automation
HubSpot’s June updates give AI agents more access and connect more signal data into Revenue Hub. That makes it easier for smaller teams to automate follow-up, re-engage dormant leads, and tighten the loop between marketing activity and sales action. Read More

Lost AI Search Clicks Aren’t Worse
A new study found the clicks lost to Google AI Overviews were not lower-quality visits after all. That undercuts the idea that traffic declines are harmless and strengthens the case for marketers to treat AI search as a real distribution threat. Read More

TikTok Opens Agentic Ad Workflows
TikTok introduced Agentic Hub, a marketplace for AI-powered ad workflow tools connected to its ad platform. For marketers, this points to a near future where campaign setup, optimization, and reporting become more automated inside the media platform itself. Read More

AI Search Becomes an Ecommerce Channel
Shopify says traffic and orders from AI search are rising fast, pushing AI assistants closer to becoming a real acquisition source. Start treating product data, schema, and answer-ready content as growth levers, not just SEO hygiene. Read More

Facebook Turns Discovery More AI-Native
Meta rolled out new AI features in Facebook, including AI Mode in search and new content creation tools. As social discovery keeps shifting from feeds to answers and recommendations, brands need content that can be found, summarized, and reused by AI systems. Read More

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SEO

Persona-Based Content

When we talk about personas, we’re not talking about who you channel in the mirror when you get dressed in the morning.

We’re talking about buyer personas: the people who make up your ideal audience. The same company can offer the same services, solve the same problems, and deliver the same outcomes, yet different audiences often need to hear the story in completely different ways. Read More

SOCIAL MEDIA

Integrated Social Marketing

Many companies still think, “If we just grow our social presence, the business will follow.” But the brands winning today aren’t the ones posting the most or jumping on every latest trend – they’re the ones with a connected strategy where every channel works together. Read More

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