🤖 Shake-ups.

The great AI monetization land grab is officially on

Prepare your wallets. The robots are learning to take your money in multiple ways.

Google’s AI is writing ad copy now, sort of: Google is testing AI-generated summaries beneath Search ads.

That means Google’s AI, not you, could soon shape how your paid messaging reads. It even carries a disclaimer that responses “can make mistakes.” Great.

Speaking of AI shakeups: Anthropic has restored Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 after US export controls were lifted and it’s allowing you to use it for free… until July 7th.

Fable 5 is rolling back out globally, now with beefed-up cybersecurity safeguards. Business as usual, more or less. But worth another ride before you decide if you’d pay for it.

ChatGPT is still trying to build an ad empire: OpenAI is hiring engineers for image, video, and conversational ad formats.

That might be a signal that ads are about to take up more screen space in ChatGPT, which raises the stakes for the organic mentions your brand relies on.

And Meta’s putting AI features behind a paywall: Meta will charge $19.99/mo for advanced AI via its Meta One Premium plan.

A signal that its massive AI spend needs to start paying back. A sign of things to come?

Ads in search, ads in chatbots, paywalls on features. Every major platform is racing to monetize AI. Which often means access to it will become more and more expensive too. Let’s see…

New engagement plays across Meta, YouTube, X, and Instagram

The platforms are throwing everything at the wall this week and some of it might stick to your content strategy.

Meta’s building a whole app out of vibes: Its new social feed Pocket is entirely made of “gizmos” which are promptable, vibe-coded mini-games that respond to touch and tilt.

As traditional feeds go stale, interactive content is shaping up to be a fresh engagement lever. One to watch.

YouTube wants your photos, not just your footage: Image posts and carousels can now appear in the Shorts feed, paired with up to 15 seconds of music.

It’s a lighter-weight way to reach audiences without producing full video. Just note: only Shorts-feed views count toward your numbers.

X is going live, for a price: Its new desktop livestream studio adds streamlined setup and audience insights, plus $1M in creator funding to spark adoption.

The catch? It’s behind X Premium. Worth it only if that’s where your audience is.

Instagram Edits speaks your audience’s language: Literally. New bilingual captions auto-translate into 14+ languages, alongside richer templates, clip locking, and seasonal sound effects.

Everyone’s chasing engagement with lower-lift formats. Never gets boring in this social media game, does it?

Being early is kind of your thing

You already stay ahead on marketing. But the best marketers we know? They also understand what’s happening in the broader business world — because that’s where the shifts start before they hit your campaigns.

The Daily Upside covers business and money in a way that actually clicks: what’s happening, why it matters, and what smart people are doing about it. All in about five minutes.

It’s produced by former investment bankers but written for people who don’t speak Wall Street. Sharp, clear, and genuinely fun to read.

Some call it the closest thing to a free MBA. We call it the reason you’ll sound like the most informed person in your next meeting.

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A good organic CTR is lower than you think. AI overviews are making it even worse

Quick gut check: What do you think a “good” organic CTR looks like?

If you said anywhere near 10%, we need to talk. Ahrefs just crunched Google Search Console data from over 400,000 sites, and the real number is going to sting a little.

The reality? A good whole-site organic CTR sits between 1% and 2%.

Those bigger numbers you’ve seen floating around are position-1 CTR for a single keyword, a completely different metric from your whole-site average.

But don’t blame your content. Adult sites lead the pack at 7.53% CTR, more than double the next category. Why? Google rarely shows an AI Overview for those queries.

Meanwhile, Pets & Animals (0.80%) and Health (1.12%) sit at the bottom, because AI Overviews answer the question before anyone needs to click.

Domain Rating is a popularity contest, and popularity pays. CTR climbs steadily with DR, from 0.43% at the bottom tier to 2.56% at the top. That’s a 6x jump.

But don’t chase backlinks purely to pump your DR score. Nobody clicks a result because of its referring-domain count. DR just reflects the brand recognition searchers already have.

AI Overviews are making things worse. Clicks to the top organic result now drop roughly 58% when an AIO shows up, a sharp jump from the ~34.5% drop Ahrefs first measured.

Our take: This isn’t a problem you fix once and move on from. Rewrite title tags to match intent, win the SERP features you can, and target commercial queries that dodge AI Overviews more often.

But also start playing a different game entirely. Getting cited inside AI answers matters as much as the click itself now.

And more importantly, CTR varies by industry, so read the full report here to get the details that apply to you.

How 30k+ social media managers and marketers catch the trends before they’re trending

Have you ever noticed how the social media teams at Netflix, Apple, and Disney seem to stay ahead of social media trends?

It’s not because they have a crystal ball of what’s going to trend or not.

It’s because they’re all hooked on the Geekout newsletter. It reveals the latest social media news, expert insights, and hit videos and memes.

So if you want to join 30k+ other marketers and be “in the know” before things go viral…

Subscribe to the Geekout today for free.

Why do shoppers abandon carts?

For you, the most dangerous part of the journey is the “proceed to checkout” button.

A surprise fee, a slow delivery date, or another wrong move can tarnish that carefully curated cart in no time:

• 36% of shoppers bail because delivery is too slow.
• 35% leave if their preferred payment method isn’t available.
• Unexpected customs charges (33%) and having to pay for delivery (32%) remain massive conversion killers.

Cart abandonment is rarely about the product and more about the fine print.

That’s why every conversion rate expert will tell you that surprises belong in birthday parties and not at checkout.

Transparency of costs and speed is the best way to protect your margins.

Display delivery date estimates and all shipping costs early in the funnel, even at the product page.

If you eliminate this surprise factor at checkout, you should immediately lower abandonment rates.

AI MARKETING: This daily newsletter condenses the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. They read the noise, pull out the signal, and explain what actually matters for work, strategy, and the tools your team is already using. Trusted by 700k+ readers. Subscribe right here.*

GOOGLE: Feels like one of those “another day, another sanction” types of news with the South Korean FTC launching formal proceedings against Google over allegations of improper use of a rebate scheme to maintain Android app dominance. Potential punishment? Over $500M. Yikes.

LINKEDIN: The professional side of social media also has a slew of AI-powered features coming, including a brand kit option, copy generation tools, ad personalization, and ad variants. Useful, but remember that everlasting disclaimer that “AI can make mistakes”, yeah?

GOOGLE: NotebookLM gets TikTok-style video overviews with it turning your uploaded sources into 60-second vertical videos. Sounds weird at first glance. But there are so many use cases for this that it might be worth giving it a shot. Do you agree?

REDDIT: Finally, split testing. In “better-late-than-never” fashion, Reddit is rolling out its split testing option to all marketers, after it was a closed test with just some ad partners for the past few months.

GOOGLE ADS: If you ever wanted to role-play marketing Dr House, you should know Google is testing a new Channel Diagnostics feature for Performance Max campaigns. It’s not live for all marketers yet, but you can check if you have it within Channel Performance, under Insights & Reports.

*This is a sponsored post.

I am a word of six; my first three letters refer to an automobile; my last three letters refer to a household animal; my first four letters is a fish; my whole is found in your room. What am I?

You can find the answer here.

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