This Week in Digital Marketing: AI Breakthroughs, Ad Spend Surging, and Social Platform Shifts

While you were doing your last doomscrolls on TikTok, here is what else was happening this week in digital marketing.

AI

• Google?is?partnering?with the Associated Press to feed real-time news into its Gemini AI assistant, marking the tech giant’s first AI deal with a news publisher.
• The rise of AI Agents is coming. OpenAI is?rolling out?Tasks, a new ChatGPT beta feature that allows users to schedule reminders and recurring actions, marking the company's first step into agentic AI capabilities.

Ads

• Facebook's Advantage+ creative offers a generative AI feature to create diverse ad variations by generating new backgrounds or full-image variations.
• Global advertising spending is projected to surpass $1 trillion in 2024, a year earlier than previously anticipated, according to GroupM. This growth is driven by major ad sellers like Google, Meta Platforms, ByteDance, and Amazon, as well as a shift in budget allocation by packaged-goods companies from trade marketing to digital ads on retail media networks.

Content

• A focus on long-form content is also expected as?70% of marketers plan to increase their production in this area?over the next year, according to research from Billion Dollar Boy.

Social

• A?study by Group RFZ?found that YouTube is most likely the next stop for regular TikTok users. In the face of a ban, 46% said they would use YouTube more—39% said Instagram, 38% said YouTube Shorts, 30% said Facebook, and 23% said X. YouTube seems to best encapsulate the TikTok features that people like because its?algorithmic?discovery learns interest and makes recommendations based on content interactions.?
• Facebook's shift to an interest-based algorithm has increased the visibility of content from accounts users don't follow, enhancing organic reach. To capitalize on this, marketers should focus on authentic, human-centered content, including short-form videos (Reels) up to 90 seconds, single-image posts with a 4:5 aspect ratio, and text-based posts with colorful backgrounds.
• Instagram will focus on enhancing creativity and connection by improving its creative tools, leveraging AI technologies, and emphasizing original content. The platform also plans to strengthen messaging features, acknowledging that direct messages have become the primary method of sharing among users.
• Seemingly out of nowhere, LinkedIn has become one of the?hottest new video platforms?for influencers.