Notice Me Senpai — Marketing News & Analysis
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Colin Rocker Took Equity in Favikon Because 80% of Creator Deals Pay Under $300
Colin Rocker, a 420,000-follower career creator whose income runs 85 to 90 percent brand sponsorships (Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Ally Bank), took his first equity stake in May 2026 with creator-marketing platform Favikon. The trigger is structural. About 80 percent of US influencer deals close under $300, and total US
Google Open-Sourced Meridian GeoX. The Holdout Now Lives in Google's Stack.
Google announced three measurement tools at Google Marketing Live on May 5, 2026: Meridian GeoX (open-source geographic incrementality), Meridian Studio (a Google Cloud MMM platform), and a Data Manager map view that visualizes data flow across BigQuery, HubSpot, Shopify, and Drive. GeoX testing begins later this year. Studio runs on
OpenAI Switched ChatGPT Ads to CPC Because the Average CTR Hid the Variance
OpenAI launched ChatGPT ads on February 9, 2026 at a $60 CPM with a $200,000 minimum spend. By late April the CPM had collapsed to roughly $25, and OpenAI quietly switched the platform to a $3 to $5 cost-per-click model with a $50,000 minimum. The CPC switch is
Ulta Credits AI for 95% of Sales. That Number's Been 95% Since 2023.
Ulta Beauty told Adweek on May 5 that AI personalization is supercharging the loyalty program that drives 95% of its sales. PYMNTS reported the same 95% loyalty share in 2023, two full years before Ulta rolled out the Virtual Beauty Advisor AI inside its mobile app. The number AI is
Google Put GA4's Conversion Performance Report on the Data API in Alpha
Google added cross-channel conversion reporting to the Google Analytics Data API on May 4, 2026. The new conversionSpec field in RunReportRequest accepts conversion action IDs and one of two attribution models, DATA_DRIVEN or LAST_CLICK. That means data that previously lived only inside the GA4 Advertising > Conversion performance
Google's GBP Suspensions Now Cascade Through User Accounts, Not Just Listings
Google Business Profile suspensions are spiking in Q1 2026, and the trigger is no longer the listing itself. Google's policy now cascades user account restrictions across every Business Profile attached to that account, even when the listing has zero violations. The 30-minute audit is figuring out which staff
paid-ads
AI Media Buyers Undercut Humans by 12% on CPM, Not the Reverse
DataBeat's June 2026 programmatic report found that AI buying agents cleared media at a $6.13 CPM against $6.95 for conventional human-run programmatic, which the report framed as a 13.4% premium. Read that number again: the premium belongs to the humans, who paid more, not the
Your Target CPA Is About to Become Your Actual CPA
Starting August 17, 2026, Google Ads will make budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS deliver at their stated targets instead of beating them. A campaign set to a $10 CPA that has been converting at $5 will drift toward the full $10. The Bid Target Adjustment Tool, live
Google Folded Enhanced Conversions Into One Toggle (Watch the June 15 Cutoff)
Google Ads is collapsing enhanced conversions into a single on/off toggle in June 2026, removing the old choice between the Google tag, Google Tag Manager, and the Ads API. The catch sits underneath the simplification: starting June 15, 2026, the legacy Google Ads API stops accepting offline conversion imports
California's Loud-Ad Ban Lands on Advertisers, Not Just Netflix
California's SB 576 makes it illegal on July 1, 2026 for any streaming service operating in the state to run ad audio louder than the program it interrupts. The headlines pinned this on Netflix and Hulu, but the compliance work runs upstream into the creative itself: a spot
Google Ads Finally Lets You See Where PMax Sends Your Money
Google released Ads API v24.2 on June 24, 2026. It adds an ad_network_type segment to Performance Max placement reporting, so advertisers can finally see whether PMax spend landed on Search, Display, or partner networks instead of one blended number. The same release ships new fields that label
Meta Auto-Enrolled REI Into AI Ads and Shipped a Two-Handlebar Bike
REI ran a Meta ad for about a week in June 2026 showing a Van Rysel bike with two sets of handlebars, a doubled chain, and melted frame lettering. REI says Meta auto-enrolled it into an AI personalization tool that altered a vendor's product photo without approval. Since
Google's Conversion API Cutoff Reads Six Months of Your Token Logs
Google's Ads Developer Blog confirmed on May 15 that the Google Ads API will block new offline conversion imports starting June 15, 2026. The cutoff applies to any developer token that did not call ConversionUploadService.UploadClickConversions between December 2025 and May 2026. Tokens outside that six-month usage window
seo
ChatGPT Has Four Hidden Search Pipelines. Your GEO Tool Sees One.
ChatGPT does not pull from one search index. Independent analyses by Chris Green and Suganthan Mohanadasan found it routes queries through four hidden retrieval pipelines, labeled Labrador, Bright, Oxylabs, and SERP, and the sources it cites shift when traffic moves between them. Across Green's 9,946 completed runs,
ChatGPT's Thinking Mode Replaces 75% of the Sources It Cites
Semrush and Kevin Indig ran 100 identical prompts through ChatGPT twice, once in Instant mode and once in Thinking mode, and only 25.6% of the cited domains showed up in both. Reddit's citation share fell from 15% to 7% the moment reasoning switched on, while government and
AI Overviews Cut Clicks 39.8% in the First Randomized Test (Paid Untouched)
A randomized field experiment of 1,065 US desktop users found that Google AI Overviews cut organic clicks by 39.8% and pushed zero-click searches up 34.5% when a summary appeared. Sponsored clicks barely moved. It is the first causal test of AI Overviews rather than another before-and-after correlation,
Google's Search Chief Blames Your Paywall for the Traffic AI Took
Liz Reid, Google's head of Search, told the AI Inside podcast in late June 2026 that paywalls, not AI, cause most of the traffic drops publishers keep complaining about. Her exact response to sites that add a paywall and then watch clicks fall: "yes, that is what
Google's Spam Update Now Treats AI-Answer Gaming Like Link Spam
Google finished rolling out the June 2026 spam update on June 26, two days after it started on June 24 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific, applied globally and across every language. What makes this one different is scope: it is the first spam update that runs while Google'
Victorious AI Search Study Puts Domain Authority Correlation at r=0.017
Victorious tested 177 brands across eight AI search engines in Q1 2026 and recorded 107,011 responses. Only 18 of those brands registered any AI mentions, meaning 89.8% drew zero. The correlation between Authority Score and citation rate was r=0.017, statistically indistinguishable from random. Domain authority is
TechCrunch Called Google Search Over. Three Query Types Didn't Get the Memo.
TechCrunch's May 19 piece declared the ten blue links dead and Google Search "over." The headline obscures three query types where Google's AI rollout has the smallest impact on click-throughs: branded searches, high-involvement transactional searches, and YouTube SERPs. A Search Engine Land UX study
Google Ads
Your Target CPA Is About to Become Your Actual CPA
Starting August 17, 2026, Google Ads will make budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS deliver at their stated targets instead of beating them. A campaign set to a $10 CPA that has been converting at $5 will drift toward the full $10. The Bid Target Adjustment Tool, live
Google Folded Enhanced Conversions Into One Toggle (Watch the June 15 Cutoff)
Google Ads is collapsing enhanced conversions into a single on/off toggle in June 2026, removing the old choice between the Google tag, Google Tag Manager, and the Ads API. The catch sits underneath the simplification: starting June 15, 2026, the legacy Google Ads API stops accepting offline conversion imports
Google's Conversion API Cutoff Reads Six Months of Your Token Logs
Google's Ads Developer Blog confirmed on May 15 that the Google Ads API will block new offline conversion imports starting June 15, 2026. The cutoff applies to any developer token that did not call ConversionUploadService.UploadClickConversions between December 2025 and May 2026. Tokens outside that six-month usage window
Google Conceded the Search Query Report Is Now Just an Approximation
On May 13, 2026, Google updated a Google Ads help page to say Search Query Reports may show the “closest approximation” of user queries, not the literal searches. The change, spotted by AdSquire founder Anthony Higman and surfaced by Search Engine Land, retroactively turns years of negative-keyword and match-type audits
AdSense Fell 4% While Google, Meta, and Amazon Split $150B in Q1 Ads
Google, Meta, and Amazon reported a combined $150+ billion in Q1 2026 ad revenue, with Google Search and Other at $60.4 billion (+19% YoY), Meta advertising at $55 billion (+33% YoY), and Amazon Ads at $17.2 billion (+24% YoY). In the same quarter, Google Network, the line that
Google's Data Manager API v1.6 Folded In Store Sales. The Ads API Path Looks Next.
Google shipped Data Manager API v1.6 on May 7, 2026, adding direct store sales ingestion for retailers, restaurants, and automotive OEMs through a single IngestEventsRequest instead of the older multi-job offline workflow. The release also widens Google Analytics ingestion from purchase-only on web streams to any event carrying a
Google's June 10 YouTube Auto-Link Is the Cleanest Ads Admin Audit You'll Get
Starting June 10, 2026, Google will automatically connect Google Ads accounts to associated YouTube channels when its systems detect a high-confidence ownership match. A 30-day email notification goes out first, and a single opt-out from any admin on either side cancels the link. The detection signals are shared login credentials,