This month’s Ask the PPC question about AI ad placements is near and dear to my heart. We’ve seen ads begin showing up on AI surfaces since 2024, and yet, they still have an air of mystery about them: “Ads are starting to show up in AI chat experiences. How should advertisers think about these new…
Google is rolling out five updates to how links appear in its generative AI Search experiences, including AI Mode and AI Overviews. The changes add subscription labels and inline links within responses, among other features. Here’s an example of how the changes will appear: Image Credit: Google Hema Budaraju, VP of Product Management, wrote about…
Vine is back. Sort of. Which is a strange sentence to say in 2026. Almost a decade after the popular short-form video app had its doors shuttered by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, it has been relaunched as Divine, funded by the very same man who killed it. Divine serves as both a new host…
It seems like every week another app or digital platform shuts down unexpectedly, and this time social media app Threads may be experiencing an outage. On the morning of May 5, multiple Mashable editors were unable to access the Threads app. DownDetector showed a spike in user error reports for Threads beginning around 8:30 a.m.…
Boost your skills with Growth Memo’s weekly expert insights. Subscribe for free! Am I still an advisor? Or a builder? I’m having an existential moment. My work has forever changed in a way I’m still trying to understand. Six months ago, agentic vibe coding crossed a threshold. Since then, I have used AI to raise…
Amid the second phase of a high-profile child safety trial in New Mexico, Meta is announcing new measures designed to ensure teens on its platforms are subject to age-related protections. Meta announced in a blog post Tuesday that parents in the U.S. on two of its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, will receive a…
Google Ads has gone through a steady wave of changes over the past year. Advancements in outputs like Demand Gen and AI Max, and shifts in how users interact with search have all changed how performance shows up in the data. A new Q1 2026 benchmark report from Optmyzr, based on more than 21,000 accounts,…
Google updated its Search Central documentation to reflect that the Preferred Sources feature is now available in all languages supported by Google Search. The change clarifies global availability and introduces updated guidance for publishers looking to grow their audience through Top Stories. Preferred Sources Google’s Preferred Sources feature gives users a way to choose specific…
Do you remember Friendster? The early-2000s social networking platform has now returned roughly 24 years later with a whole new gimmick: Users can only connect with real-life friends. The founder of the new Friendster, Mike Carson, is promoting the relaunched social media platform as being free of any ads and algorithms. But, that’s not all…
Google has officially expanded AI Max to Shopping and Travel campaigns as it hits one year in market. The announcement comes on the heels of its upcoming annual Google Marketing Live event on May 20th. Google noted that AI Max has become the fastest-growing AI-powered Search ads product. Both AI Max for Shopping and Travel…