Link attribution is changing, your Reels toolkit is expanding, and you best leave Meta’s shopping assistant alone for now

What do a ball you’ve just thrown in the air and your click numbers have in common?

They’re both about to drop: Meta is overhauling its link click attribution to only count actual link clicks, not likes, saves, or shares.

And with 46% of Reels purchase conversions landing in the first 2 seconds, a 10-second view window may always have been an overkill. Meta’s trimming it to 5.

Expect some awkward conversations with clients and stakeholders when click numbers drop.

Also, you can explain the change in time and use it as a way to reframe success around quality engagement rather than raw click volume. You’re a marketer, you can hustle your way out.

Meanwhile, Edits is getting a fresh coat of paint: The app now has colored outlines, a visual Ideas tab, and highlighted captions.

This means more ways to make your Reels look deliberate, without the production overhead. Test it on your next batch and see what sticks.

The platform is improving fast, so it’s a good thing to have in your toolkit if you’re working with video content.

However, Meta’s AI shopping assistant is a mess: It’s drawing in serious criticism: wrong prices, phantom products, broken links.

Meta’s commerce infrastructure might not still be robust enough and the hallucinations show it. If you ask us, don’t build a strategy around the AI shopping assistant yet. It’s not ready.

For now, stick with Advantage+ and proven ad formats. Let Meta iron out the kinks before you bet budget on the new stuff.

Non-skip ads for YouTube’s CTV audience, an increase in Demand Gen minimum spend, and why avoiding AI placements altogether might be foolish

CTV ads just got a little harder to ignore… literally.

Skip the skip: Google has rolled out Video Reach Campaign Non-Skip ads for CTV audiences on YouTube, available globally across Google Ads and Display & Video 360.

Google AI dynamically manages the format mix across 6-second bumpers, 15-second spots, and 30-second CTV-only placements, so you’re not manually splitting budgets by format.

YouTube has led US streaming for three years running, so if you’re not running CTV ads there, you’re waving at an audience you’re not paying to reach.

Why we care: Non-skippable delivery means watchers will see your full message, while AI handles the formatting. Be careful, though. A bad, non-skip ad can do more harm than good.

Google is raising the floor: The platform will enforce a $5 daily minimum budget for all Demand Gen campaigns via the Google Ads API from April 1, 2026

Current campaigns below that threshold will keep serving, but any future edits to budgets or scheduling will require you to comply with the new floor.

If you manage campaigns programmatically, update your validation logic before April 1. Non-compliant changes will trigger errors, and April 1 is not the day you want to find that out.

Stop running from AI content: A new study from OM Media Trials and Zefr shows that ads next to AI satire or artistic content made brands look innovative. And simply labeling content as AI-generated improved brand perception for 41% of respondents.

Blanket avoidance of AI content might not be the way to go. You’ve just got to be smarter about it.

With 90% of internet content estimated to be AI-generated by 2030, figuring out your adjacency approach now is worth the effort.

How have websites recovered from the latest big core update?

Last year ended with something that might’ve turned SEOs Christmas sour: a core update.

With many websites’ best posts tanking in rankings, Mary Haynes suggests that it might be more about the reputation than about keywords.

And she shared some data and tips that might help if your website was hit.

1) Trust matters immensely. The data from this update shows that Google’s AI systems are obsessed with trust.

One medical eCommerce site saw a massive recovery, not just because of metadata, but because they fixed their shipping and logistical nightmares.

If your brand has a history of frustrated customers or serious concerns flagged by AI models, no amount of backlinking will save you from suppression.

2) Original content takes a lot of work: If your content looks like it was written by a chatbot, you’re in trouble.

The sites that survived this update offered something unique, like personal experience or proprietary data.

If an AIO can summarize your entire page without losing any value, Google has no reason to rank you. You need to provide the extra that AI can’t.

3) Work to improve user experience: Successful sites in this update restructured their content to be skimmable for actual humans, not just crawlable for bots.

Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines mention main content constantly for a reason. When users have to wade through fluff, ads, or long intros to find the answer, it’s a bad signal.

4) First hand experience can really help: One affiliate site turned things around by proving they actually touched the products they reviewed.

They swapped stock photos for original photography and added videos of the team in action.

Share your experience. Mentioning which restaurant dishes you actually ate and how they compared to the competition provides a level of depth that an algorithm cannot replicate.

What about websites that didn’t do so well? Recovery won’t happen overnight. Multiple core updates are likely needed to see it.

But you’ll be stuck in the mud if you have repeated customer issues or generic content.

Today, SEO means being a good business with a digital paper trail. If you aren’t building a brand people actually trust, you’re going to keep popping up on page four.

Marketplaces are search engines too, just for products

The search begins before the credit card comes out.

But where do people actually start? Well, the Googles of the world have some very stiff competition in the form of massive digital bazaars.

• 37% of shoppers start their journey on online marketplaces like Amazon, making them the top starting point.
• Search engines follow at 23%, showing that while intent starts with a query, it often skips the general web for a direct product shelf.
• Social & Brand: Brand websites (11%) and social media (9%) lag behind, showing that these are better for discovery than for direct, high-intent searches.

Marketplaces are like search engines for products. Consumers crave the convenience of reviews, shipping, and variety in one place.

Focus on marketplace optimization besides Google so you don’t miss the front door.

Better said, prioritize marketplace SEO. Ensure your product titles and descriptions on sites like Amazon are optimized for the specific way users search within those ecosystems.

If 37% of shoppers bypass Google entirely, your strategy needs to adapt. Pro subscribers get weekly intelligence on marketplace trends and SEO tactics that work.

$349/year covers your whole team (up to 10 people).