⌛ No deadlines?

TikTok scraps seller deadlines, Reddit explains which trends are the most effective, and offers an insight into how sport chat is booming

As Katy Perry once said, TikTok changes its mind like a girl changes clothes.

Another flip-flop: TikTok Shop just reversed its seller shipping mandate, telling merchants the previously announced deadlines are no longer going into effect.

The original policy would have forced most US sellers to route orders through TikTok-controlled logistics, raising fulfillment costs and squeezing the steep discounts TikTok shoppers expect.

Good news: You’ve got some breathing room. Bad news: TikTok Shop is still wildly unpredictable, so it might be time to audit your reliance before the next plot twist.

If it’s all too much, and you want to expand elsewhere: Reddit has identified four brand trends that are driving engagement:

Nostalgia-driven storytelling, UGC social proof, niche-inspired campaigns, and campaigns that unfold over time.

Reddit’s audience is famously allergic to ads, which makes these insights way more useful than your average platform guide.

And now that Reddit is the most-cited source on AI platforms, showing up there authentically pays off long after your ad budget does.

In another corner of Reddit, the FIFA World Cup is already generating over 77M views, and conversation has more than tripled year-over-year.

Reddit is framing it as a cross-category planning moment. Fans are branching into travel, finance, tech, and entertainment discussions, not just soccer.

Even if you’re not a sports brand, this is your window to map a strategy before the June competition gets fierce.

Traffic is more certain from chatbots, and both Google and Microsoft give Performance Max a boost with tools and courses

How can you tell that someone feels confident?

They search in chatbots, not Google: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says that traffic from AI chatbots converts at a higher rate than traffic from Google.

Users arriving through ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude are further along in their decision-making than someone typing a broad query into search.

That means your brand’s presence in AI answers is a conversion opportunity you can’t ignore anymore.

The Performance Max black box just cracked open: Google Ads now populates the Where ads showed report with real placement data, including search partners, display, and more.

Previously, that report was essentially empty. Now you can see exactly which networks are pulling weight, and which ones are draining your budget.

More images, more intent: Microsoft Advertising is rolling out multi-image Shopping ads on Bing, letting you display up to 10 product images in a single ad.

Shoppers can take a peek at every angle, color, and variation before clicking, meaning your product pages are getting visitors who are already halfway sold.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner: Microsoft rolled out a structured Performance Max learning path with three courses: Setup, optimization, and advanced strategy.

Complete the final course, and you’ll earn a Credly-verified badge you can share on LinkedIn. Useful if you want to prove your chops to clients.

Or if you just want to feel smug.

This “boring” channel still converts 58% of users and hasn’t stopped growing

We spent the last few weeks analyzing email marketing trends and data. And the verdict is in: Email is still one of the most profitable channels out there.

It generated $7.5B in 2020 alone. In 2027, email is projected to hit $17.9B.

And you don’t need to invest much effort to profit from it.

For example, data shows that welcome emails convert 58.26% of clickers into customers.

This is just one of the many email marketing insights you’ll find inside our latest The Big Email Marketing Report.

Get the data here—$349/year for 10 team members.

The new reality of GEO/AIO: what works and what doesn’t?

SEO fundamentals still work. Content, backlinks, and authority aren’t going anywhere.

But there’s a shift in the infrastructure determining what actually surfaces.

With AIOs appearing on 21% of searches and Gemini prioritizing Reddit threads over official sites, we are officially in the era AEO/GEO era.

And Tarek Reslan explores how the rules of the game are changing:

1) Your site is no longer the only source of truth: Traditional SEO is linear. You get a backlink, you get trust. But GEO flips this.

To AI, repetition signals credibility in more than one authoritative domain.

You need to stop obsessing over just your own URLs and manage your brand presence across the entire web like it’s a ranking signal. Put yourself in many places.

2) The #1 spot on Google is losing its crown: If you think ranking first guarantees AI citations, think again. AI runs multiple variations of a search to find a consensus.

A niche site with a perfectly structured table can now leapfrog a corporate giant with 10k backlinks because the AI is optimizing for the best answer extraction, not the oldest domain.

3) Informational traffic is being swallowed by zero-clicks: Your how-to guides are in danger. Google’s AIOs are increasingly answering queries in-line, meaning the user gets the info, and you get zero traffic.

To survive, you have to optimize for citations within the AI response itself and shift your focus to content that AI can’t easily replicate. Unique stuff. Internal data. Expert takes.

4) Structure is the new word count: Long-form narrative buried under fluff is an AI’s worst enemy. If we want to be cited, you need to lead with direct answers in the first 100 words.

You aren’t writing for humans who like storytelling anymore; you’re writing for models that are hungry for data extraction. If it’s easy to parse, it’s easy to cite.

5) Don’t burn the old playbook just yet: Despite the buzzwords, we shouldn’t abandon traditional SEO. GEO is a layer on top of the fundamentals, not a replacement.

If your site structure is broken or your content is thin, no amount of AI optimization will save you. Audit your top informational posts to see how ChatGPT and Gemini treat them.

If you rank #3 on Google but aren’t being cited by the AI, your structure, not your authority, is the problem.

SEO didn’t die, it just grew a few more heads. You need to play the game as it exists today, not how it worked five years ago.

The marketer who replaces you won’t be smarter than you…

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In some situations, users still prefer traditional search to AI

Don’t count Google out just yet.

For certain types of high-stakes or visual information, users still want to see the original source with their own two eyes.

There are trust territories where traditional search remains dominant:

• Reviews & Pricing: 47% prefer traditional search for product reviews and prices, likely due to the need for visual proof and real-time accuracy.
• Hyper-Local & News: Local info (45%) and news/recent events (44%) stay traditional, as AI often lags on “up-to-the-minute” updates.
• Visual Discovery: Images and videos (44%) are still best served by traditional grids rather than a chat interface.

Traditional search is there for confirmation. Users might start a search with AI to get ideas, but they go to Google to check the price tag and see the reviews before hitting buy.

For transactional and local keywords, stick to traditional SEO. For broad informational and “awareness” queries, start shifting your focus toward AI-friendly, structured data.

But all this tells us that AI is restructuring search faster than most marketers can keep up.

Pro subscribers stay ahead with weekly intelligence on what’s changing and exactly what to do about it. $349/year covers your whole team (up to 10 people).

AI EDUCATION: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Midjourney… So many names, but what’s actually useful for you in your work? There’s a newsletter called The Deep View that exists to sift through all the noise and get you up to speed on what’s actionable with AI products, and it’s free. Join 512,000+ subscribers with one click and let AI empower you.*

AI ADVERTISING: After testing sponsored placements in 2024, Perplexity is pulling the plug on ads entirely. Even labeled ones. Executives believe once ads appear, users start second-guessing answers. With 780M monthly queries, your brand now has zero paid visibility inside their platform. Organic citations only.

META: messenger.com is shutting down in April 2026, and the desktop app is already gone. Your web-based messages will redirect to facebook.com/messages instead. Has Meta quietly abandoned its plan to unify Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram Direct into one integrated messaging back-end? Hm…

SEO: A new study analyzing 11 sites hit by an unconfirmed January 2026 algorithm update found that every subfolder losing organic visibility also saw AI citation drops averaging -22.5%. Surprisingly, ChatGPT’s decline outpaced even Google’s own Gemini, suggesting your Google rankings directly control your AI search presence too.

SOCIAL MEDIA: Paid partnership disclosures on X are getting an upgrade. The platform is actively building better tools to help you flag sponsored content clearly. This means cleaner compliance, more transparent audiences, and hopefully fewer awkward “is this an ad?” comments.

SEO: Search Console’s AI-powered configuration tool is now live for everyone. Instead of manually setting filters, just describe the analysis you want in plain language, and it configures the Performance report for you. Heads up, though, it only works for Search results, not Discover or News reports.

AI ADVERTISING: Gemini can now turn your text prompts, photos, or videos into 30-second custom tracks powered by DeepMind’s Lyria 3 model. You don’t need to be a master mixer, just describe a vibe and get lyrics, instrumentals, and cover art. It’s live in beta for users 18+ across multiple languages, rolling out on desktop first.

*This is a sponsored post.

“With pointed fangs it sits in wait,

with piercing force it doles out fate,

over bloodless victims proclaiming its might,

eternally joining in a single bite.

What is it?”

You can find the answer here.

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