INSIGHTS FROM EXPERTS ON LINKEDIN
Anna Kuulmann highlights new McKinsey research showing that brand distinctiveness and a clear value proposition are now the top marketing priorities for 2026, while generative AI ranks only 17th out of 20. With 72% of marketing leaders planning to increase brand budgets, she sees this as a shift away from short-term performance marketing toward stronger brand building, broad reach and full-funnel thinking.
Mats Georgson argues that marketers shouldn’t treat positioning, customer needs or business strategy as problems outside of marketing just because they can’t be solved with advertising. Good marketing means understanding the market, finding where to compete and helping the business create value profitably. Instead of saying “that’s not a marketing problem,” marketers should go upstream, bring the right people together and help solve the underlying business issue.
Dale W. Harrison explains that reaching more of an audience inevitably means showing ads repeatedly to people who have already seen them, because ad distribution is inherently random. Using a deck-of-cards analogy, he shows why the last few people in an audience are increasingly expensive to reach, with comprehensive reach requiring roughly 10x frequency for 10,000 people and around 19x for 100 million.
Jack Hepp shares results from three low-volume, budget-limited campaigns that switched from Manual CPC to tCPA, seeing a 53% drop in cost per conversion and a 48% increase in conversion rate. Interestingly, CTR barely changed, suggesting the improvement came from Google getting better at identifying high-intent users rather than simply generating more clicks. Smart bidding can still work below Google’s usual conversion thresholds when the algorithm has enough signals to distinguish buyers from people just researching.
Ashley Lewin argues that demand generation can’t be reduced to clean spreadsheets and channel-level CPL targets because B2B buying depends on timing, trust and repeated exposure. She focuses on getting the right message in front of the right people consistently, so the brand is already familiar when a buyer is ready – an approach that helped one client increase qualified pipeline by 59% year over year. The early results may be harder to measure, but forcing people to convert before they’re ready doesn’t reflect how buying actually happens.
Emir Atli shares how B2B influencer marketing went from $200 sponsored posts generating millions in revenue to $10K posts producing almost no engagement as more companies entered the space. With creator rates rising and LinkedIn reach declining, he now recommends leaning more on employee content, founder and executive voices, paid amplification and ongoing content series rather than one-off influencer posts. The channel is harder and more expensive now, but the reduced competition could create new opportunities for brands that stick with it.
Esteban H. argues that marketers often frame budget allocation around the wrong questions, such as which channel to scale, instead of looking at the return from the next dollar invested. His approach is to account for all budget constraints and keep reallocating until the marginal return is roughly equal across channels. He also highlights that LTV models can be misleading when the churn rate feeding into them is wrong.
Stefan Ribeiro M. Jensen highlights an experiment where two new sites published around 1,000 AI-generated articles each in a single day, only to see Google remove them from search within days. Microsoft Copilot still cited the sites, but ChatGPT barely did and Google’s own AI answers didn’t reference them at all, showing that mass-producing AI content isn’t a shortcut to visibility. The better approach is to start with ideas worth sharing and repurpose them across formats and channels rather than simply publishing more.
Elena Jasper highlights System1 research showing that 48% of viewers feel nothing when watching ads, with around half of ads reportedly producing less emotional response than footage of cows grazing. The research points to storytelling, drama, music, humour and memorable creative elements as ways to make ads more engaging, while longer formats give brands more room to build emotion. The bigger point is that buying more media won’t fix boring creative, it just gives more people a chance to ignore it.
WHAT'S NEW IN THE INDUSTRY
LinkedIn’s new research finds that B2B marketers don’t necessarily have a reach problem -they have a credibility problem, with 40% of deals reportedly lost to indecision rather than competitors. The research highlights creators as a way to build trust faster by combining their expertise and authenticity with a brand’s point of view, employees’ voices and customer validation. It also outlines a framework for choosing the right creators, formats and ways to connect them to the brand.
New research challenges the idea that PR has simply “won” the AI era, with studies showing that AI citations come from a much wider mix of sources, including Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, owned media and third-party sites. Original research, proprietary data and frequently updated content tend to perform better than generic blog posts, while broad coverage across multiple relevant sources can matter more than landing one prestigious media feature. For marketers, the focus is shifting from producing more content to becoming consistently findable and accurately represented across the places AI systems rely on.
Google has published new guidance on text disclaimer assets, which let advertisers add required legal terms directly to Search ads. The feature is available globally, supports AI Max campaigns and allows disclaimers of up to 90 characters, but advertisers should note that disclaimers can override a pinned Description Line 1 and may be truncated in some cases.
Google has expanded the Data Manager API with easier audience list management, better error handling and more options for sending address data to Google Analytics. Developers can now clear or refresh audience lists more easily, while invalid fields generate warnings instead of causing entire data requests to fail. The updates should make first-party data workflows easier to manage across Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and Google Analytics.
Google is testing a new Search ad format where selected words or phrases in descriptions become clickable links leading to the same landing page as the main ad. The highlighted text may be selected based on search intent, although Google hasn’t confirmed how the test works or whether it will expand. If rolled out, the extra clickable elements could create new opportunities to improve engagement and CTR, while giving advertisers less control over how their copy appears.
Microsoft Advertising is rolling out Excluded content terms, allowing advertisers to prevent Audience Ads from appearing next to page titles containing specific words or phrases. Advertisers can add up to 1,000 terms at the account or campaign level, giving them more precise control than broader website or sensitive-content exclusions. The feature is rolling out gradually and adds another layer of brand safety for Microsoft advertisers.
Google will automatically upgrade eligible Search campaigns using Automatically Created Assets or campaign-level broad match to AI Max starting September 1. Depending on the campaign setup, search term matching and text customization will be enabled by default, while existing settings will be carried over where possible. Advertisers should review their campaigns after the upgrade to see how the new AI features affect targeting, ad copy and performance.
YouTube is testing static image ads that appear over landscape videos on mobile without pausing the content. Early reports suggest they can appear roughly every three minutes, giving advertisers another way to reach viewers without needing video creative. The format could create more ad inventory for YouTube, but the higher frequency may also affect the viewing experience.
OpenAI is expanding ChatGPT Ads with beta conversion-optimized CPC campaigns, stronger measurement integrations, improved Pixel diagnostics and Automatic Advanced Matching. The platform is also testing product carousels for ecommerce ads and expanding to Brazil and Mexico, giving advertisers more ways to optimize and scale campaigns.
That’s the scoop for this week! If you found this valuable and any useful insights caught your eye, feel free to share them with your network.
Until next week!
