|
📉 Just one in four shoppers bought via social, DoubleVerify finds
LINK
|
- A DoubleVerify report released today found that one in four consumers bought something through a social platform in the past year, down from 30% in its 2025 edition, and influencer impact on purchases slipped too.
- The report, "Scroll, Stop and Shop: Walled Garden Trends," drew on a survey of 22,000 consumers in 21 countries and about 2,000 marketers in 25, with influencer-driven purchase decisions falling to 48% from 54% a year earlier.
- Even as those figures dropped, DoubleVerify says consumers are "warming up to ads," with 8% more calling social platforms suitable for advertising than in 2025, and projects $408 billion in global social media ad spend for 2026.
|
🎙️ Fans trust creators as much as friends, Wondery finds
LINK
|
- A study Wondery commissioned from SmithGeiger found that more than four in five fans trust their favorite creator as much as or more than a close real-life friend, and 85% see that creator as a friend.
- The survey polled 3,000 U.S. adults who regularly follow creator shows, and found that most trust creators more than social media influencers, a gap Wondery ties to deep connection over reach.
- Fans demand long-term authenticity: half warned that a one-off brand mention never revisited signals the creator didn't like the product, and seven in ten need consistent, multi-episode brand presence before seeing an endorsement as genuine.
|
🛒 Google's new Universal Cart puts your products in one AI checkout
LINK
|
- Google has turned on its Universal Cart in Search and Gemini across the United States, letting shoppers combine products from several retailers into one cart and pay through a single checkout.
- Built on the Universal Commerce Protocol, the cart tracks price changes based on shopping history, adds available promo codes at checkout, and takes payment through Google Pay.
- The cart works with merchants including Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair, and many Shopify stores, and arrived just before the holiday shopping season.
|
💰 You can now cap your Display ad spend in Google Ads
LINK
|
- Google Ads now lets advertisers cap how much of their budget goes to the Display Network and Search partners by setting a percentage, announced on October 14 by Tal Akabas, director of product management for Google Ads.
- Two optional controls do the work: channel prioritization sorts inventory into high and low tiers and funds high ones first, while budget allocation sets a daily cap, so a 5% allocation on a $1,000 budget aims to limit that channel's spend accordingly.
- The controls cover Search, Shopping and Performance Max and begin rolling out from today, but a help page warns the cap works "on a best-effort basis," and from February 2027 Search campaigns using Display migrate to the new system.
|
📊 Your AI visibility score may be hiding a problem
LINK
|
- A single AI visibility score can mask two separate problems, according to Semrush's "2026 AI Visibility Index", which covered 22 categories and four AI platforms and found that fewer than half of the top-mentioned brands also made the matching citation lists.
- The report splits visibility into two metrics: a mention means the brand appears in the answer, while a citation means a domain appears as a source, and Ford shows the gap by sitting in all four top-100 mention lists yet ranking past 700th for citations on every platform.
- When cited sources are mostly publishers, retailers, or reference sites rather than a brand's own domain, the fix may belong to content, engineering, or communications rather than SEO, so marketers need to find which platform and category holds the gap before spending to close it.
|
|
