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Jasmine Sheena

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MKBR-GenAI in SEO audio embed

Google is all in on AI in its search results. For marketers who have long leaned on SEO best practices to show up in front of internet users, the old rules no longer apply.

“The guidelines that people were publishing even a year ago may not be relevant that much longer,” Simon Poulton, EVP of innovation and growth at the agency Tinuiti, told Marketing Brew.

Google users who are served AI-generated overviews at the top of their search results clicked on search-result links significantly less often than users who did not encounter AI summaries, according to a Pew Research Center 

 released in July. This shift, in which Google has essentially cut off search traffic to third-party sites, has been 

 “Google Zero” and is upending search and creating some major challenges for brands that have used SEO as a way to drive traffic and maintain engagement.

As a result, SEO marketers find themselves looking to engineer new ways to keep users engaged and revisit what metrics are best in a new era of search.

“The entire industry is going through a relearning process right now,” Poulton said.

Google’s AI Overviews, powered by its GenAI model Gemini, first rolled out widely in the US in May 2024, providing AI-generated summaries pulled from news articles or other sources on the web. While AI Overviews appeared on only 6.49% of Google searches in January, by May they showed up on nearly one-fifth of them, according to data compiled by the marketing platform Semrush.

That has had a considerable effect on web traffic for all kinds of sites, including publishers. At Business Insider, traffic dropped 55% from April 2022 to April 2025, according to Similarweb 

 cited by the Wall Street Journal; the “extreme traffic drops,” according to CEO Barbara Peng, were the impetus behind a significant staff cut in May, when the company laid off around 20% of its workforce. At the time, Peng also said the publication was committed to going “all-in on AI.” (Business Insider’s parent company, Insider Inc., is a subsidiary of Axel Springer, the same company that owns Morning Brew.)

Those traffic drops are also affecting brands that rely on search traffic to help drive their businesses. At agency Mediassociates, clients in verticals like healthcare and financial have seen drops in their organic traffic anywhere from 20% to 50% since May 2024, Tim Lathrop, VP, platform digital, said. For now, he said, the agency is advising clients to lean on paid search to complement organic search results.

Poulton echoed this sentiment, noting that there could be a convergence of paid media and organic media, which were once seen as separate.

“Organic is going to be influencing the future of paid and the quality of those experiences, because ultimately, Google’s going to try and drive what gets revenue, and it’s going to be the most related ad to the answer, not the query.”

For marketers looking to improve their SEO results amid the shift to AI Overviews, there are a few strategies that experts recommend. It may be helpful for brands to refresh the content on their website more often—Lathrop suggested at least once a month—and adjust content based on the information people are currently looking for, encouraging users to click through to their sites.

Lathrop also recommended that brands continue building or strengthening their structured data, which Google Search uses to understand the content of a page and can lead to improved search results. If a web page has a recipe listed on it, for example, providing more detailed information, like ingredients and cooking time, can make it more likely that users will click on the link while also making it easier for Google to understand the content on the page.

These existing SEO best practices can be useful for sites seeking good positioning in Google Search results, but also in its AI features, according to a Google Search Central post.

The AI Overview presents the real estate that may be the new frontier for SEO marketers to lay claim to, as brands look to appear in those overviews and provide guidance to users on specific products or services. Poulton predicts that future SEO marketing will focus more on driving overall awareness of a brand or product (what he called “influence and sentiment”) rather than “clicks and rankings.”

“That’s what the future of SEO is. It’s not ‘black hat’ or ‘white hat,’” he said. “It’s purely ‘How do we influence opinion with multiple types of information,’ be it reviews, be it content we’ve created, be it what other folks have said.”

As SEO marketers look to master AI Overviews, there are still yet other challenges Google’s AI may present. For example, the content Google generates in an AI Overview may not always be suitable for a brand—especially if it suggests information that could lead consumers to develop a negative opinion of a brand, Poulton said.

Another challenge is measurement. Some users prefer to read the AI Overview instead of directly clicking on a search result, and measurement platforms are still evolving to gauge web performance with fewer users directly clicking through, Lathrop said.

“In the past, you’d be able to look at clicks to your website and [use]…analytics to understand the engagement of content,” he said. “Now we’re in this era of basically zero-click advertising and just zero-click in general, where people are just reading [the AI overview]...versus clicking and engaging.”

A search bar with colorful digital squares filling it up with AI stars surrounding it

How GenAI is changing the SEO marketing playbook, one AI Overview at a time

We spoke with experts to hear strategies for improving SEO results and the challenges that lie ahead.

Like it or not, GenAI is coming to digital video ad creation.

Almost 9 in 10 digital video buyers are using or plan to use gen AI to aid in the creation of digital video ads, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). According to the report, which is based on a survey of 368 advertisers fielded between February 17 and March 7, around 30% of digital video ads will be made with or enhanced by GenAI tools this year, up eight percentage points from 2024; that number is expected to grow to 39% next year.

Small- and mid-tier brands are expected to adapt the tech quicker than larger companies, according to the IAB: “Small spenders,” which the report defines as companies spending less than $10 million annually, expect 45% of their ads to be created with GenAI by 2026, while 36% of “large spenders” (those who spend $50+ million annually) said the same.

Of the respondents who said they were using or planned to use GenAI to create multiple versions of ads, the largest share (42%) said they were doing so to create “versions for different audiences,” while a slightly smaller percentage (38%) said they were using the tech to make “visual and style changes.”

The responses “suggest that the other GenAI capabilities become more valuable when buyers have already solved for reaching the right audience first,” the report read.

The effects on digital video could be considerable. Overall, digital video (defined in the report as CTV, social video, and online video) is expected to make up 58% of total TV and video ad spend in 2025, according to the report. In 2025, digital video spend is expected to grow 14% to $72 billion, while CTV spend is expected to grow 13% to $26.6 billion.

 As advertisers continue to spend on digital video, content quality (43%) and targeting capabilities (39%) ranked as the top two most important criteria when deciding where exactly to put that spend. Targeting capabilities were important to 56% of small spenders, while only 39% of mid-tier and 35% of large brands said the same.

Advertisers of all kinds are looking for more options in the CTV video space, the IAB found, and more than half of buyers reported seeking out more capabilities and options when advertising against live programming on streaming compared to on linear TV, according to the report.

“Although streaming is still an emerging channel for live content...buyers are holding their streaming partners to a higher standard than linear TV,” the report read.

Brand safety and incremental audiences polled highest in terms of expectations buyers have when looking to spend on live content on both streaming platforms and linear TV.

Excluding insertion order transactions, 75% of CTV buys were done programmatically in 2024. This year, that number is projected to grow to 85%.

 When it comes to reasons to buy digital video ads, buyers surveyed were most interested in achieving bottom-funnel outcomes such as store visits (both online and off) and sales (both clocked in at 44%). In terms of measurement preference, 55% said campaign and placement-level KPIs were most important, while 47% said “basic data regarding the adjacent content” was crucial.

But measurement continues to pose some challenges, especially among small spenders: 38% said that “measurement complexity” presents a challenge to activating in digital video programmatically, while “standardization issues” and “leveraging cross-channel data” both were a concern for 36% of small spenders.

A robot arm reaching out and touching a screen displaying a web browser

GenAI is officially coming for digital video ad creation

Nearly 90% of digital video buyers are using or plan to use generative AI for ads, according to a new report from the IAB.

If you’re on the internet these days, you’d be hard-pressed to 

The term, which refers to low-quality AI-generated content that is beginning to 

 on social media platforms like Instagram and video platforms like YouTube, are often bizarre and are sometimes even funny. But for some brands concerned about brand safety and suitability, having ads run against such content might be no laughing matter.

On YouTube though, ads for brands are sometimes appearing next to such AI-slop content. A look at several YouTube pages that post AI slop revealed some major brands’ advertisements showing up against those pages’ content, which ranges from simply strange to AI-generated misinformation.

One channel, called Pan-African Dreams, has shared misinformation and recently 

 for posting a lengthy deepfake video that falsely depicts Pope Leo XIV delivering a speech praising Ibrahim Traoré, the military leader of Burkina Faso, prompting a 

 from the Vatican. In mid-May, the video had 

Marketing Brew observed brands including HBO Max, Amazon Hub Delivery, theater ticket seller TodayTix, and the tourism site Visit Florida appearing against content on the channel.

Another AI slop channel, Banana Adventure, posts bizarre videos mostly centered on Minions, the characters from the Despicable Me

franchise, as well as other characters like the Joker. Marketing Brew observed ads for Amazon Hub Delivery, Android, and Tia Health next to that channel’s content.

And on a third AI slop channel with the name Mikey, which seems to post mostly what appear to be AI-generated cartoon stills with AI-generated voice-overs, including images of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Marketing Brew saw ads for Adobe and Samsung Home Appliances.

In an email, Google spokesperson Nate Funkhouser told Marketing Brew that YouTube does not currently offer advertisers the ability to opt out of appearing next to AI-generated content. “We offer controls for advertisers to decide where their ads run based on the content of a video, not how it was produced,” Funkhouser said in the statement.

Emails requesting comment sent to Android, HBO Max, Samsung, TodayTix, and Visit Florida went unreturned. Representatives for Adobe, Amazon Hub Delivery, and Tia Health did not provide comment.

After viewing the ads on Banana Adventure and Pan-African Dreams and requesting comment from YouTube, both channels were removed from the platform. The Mikey channel, meanwhile, was not found to violate YouTube’s policies, according to Google.

For some brands, monitoring exactly where their ads are showing up on YouTube has already seemed like a game of Whac-A-Mole. In recent years, major brands’ advertisements have been spotted running against 

, even, at times, those that were using brand-safety tools.

In the case of AI slop on YouTube, though, some of those existing challenges for brand safety and suitability stand to be multiplied. Brands should be mindful about appearing next to AI-generated content, said Anirudh Dhebar, a marketing professor at Babson College, as advertising next to AI slop could contain reputational risk for brands. 

And while a brand may not necessarily take issue with being associated with AI-generated content in itself, issues could arise if that AI-generated slop overlaps with other potentially damaging content. Both Disney and Universal are 

 the generative AI company Midjourney, alleging that users can easily create images based on protected intellectual property, representing a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.”

Tyler Folkman, GM at TubeBuddy, which offers a suite of tools for YouTubers, said that he doesn’t expect many AI slop channels to flourish for too long on YouTube due to likely low levels of engagement on their videos, but he acknowledged that it can be difficult to get problematic AI slop videos taken down from YouTube due to the platform’s vast size.

As of March 2024, YouTube has put in place some restrictions on uploading AI-generated content that requires creators to disclose if AI tools were used to create a video. More broadly, YouTube has policies 

, and other types of content on the platform.

Dhebar told Marketing Brew that the proliferation of AI slop in its various forms can present additional challenges for advertisers.

“If I'm an advertiser, I need to be very mindful, and I’m in a precarious point,” he explained. “On one hand, I want the biggest bang for my dollar, that's in the short term; [in] the longer term, there might be significant reputational risk. How do I balance those two?”

AI slop is proliferating on YouTube—and major brands are advertising against it 

Brands like HBO Max, Amazon Hub Delivery, and Samsung Home Appliances had their ads appear next to low-quality AI-generated videos.

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How AI Helps Small Teams and Agencies Deliver Fortune 500 Results

Morning Brew Creative Studio

Creative quality isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s actually a major money-maker—so major, in fact, that quality is the 

And where does top-notch creative shine the brightest? With creators, of course, in the big, big sky of social media. Which means that the biggest, most important tasks you need to master include picking the right partners to tell the right story to connect with the right audience.

. It can crunch data lightning fast, dish out supersmart insights, and help make your creative 

 stand out. Kantar hosted a panel at Cannes Lions 2025 (moderated by our very own Kristine Wyatt, VP, audience and ad operations at Morning Brew Inc.) to talk all about the future of creator marketing and how AI can enhance creative impact.

We’re here to bring you the deets of their recent convo. Let’s get into it.

The biggest reason creator content performs so well? Kantar’s panelists dug into this exact question and came up with one main answer—because creators have been able to achieve something that brands have been chasing for decades: personalization at scale.

And this personalization comes to you at a much lower lift (and cost) than most brands normally would have to pay for an entire production crew to create the same kind of content. Especially because creators just need a little bit of messaging from brands to do their magic.

 bit, we mean it. Creator content performs much better when the brief they’re given isn’t too prescriptive or specific. Instead, when creators are given a few guidelines and some creative freedom, they’re able to create great content that resonates with their audience.

Kerry Benson, SVP, creative strategy at Kantar, emphasized during the panel: 

“Creators are really authentic, and they expect the audience to trust them because they've worked hard to build that trust. What's the best way to build brand equity? It's getting brand trust.”

Creators are also a top-notch way to build a brand. As Renaldo A. Chapman, VP, brand and creative at DoorDash, discusses at Kantar’s recent panel, a brand’s power users can be instrumental in speaking to your brand authentically to unlock creativity.

Chapman spoke about how power users can create incredible content without even needing a brief because they know the brand 

 well. So well, in fact, their content can be published without even needing changes or notes most of the time.

One caveat we don’t want to forget is that B2B creator content will often require more credibility and expertise because of the nature of the industry. So your B2B creators might have slightly smaller followings, but they’ll have more trust with their audience because there’s so much more at stake.

That’s how the Kantar panel describes AI:

 efficient and effective. AI can measure high volumes of content to uncover best practices and offer guidance for marketing content. Want to move at the speed of culture? AI can help with that.

As Gazmend Alushi, president, measurement and analytics at Whalar, highlights, AI can measure everything at scale, at speed, to get you the results you’re looking for—stat. The cherry on top? Alushi mentions that the AI analytics they’ve received have been 100% accurate, in comparison to other studies.

, AI is also more friend than foe. AI helps creators research faster to get testing faster and bring ideas to market faster. It also helps lean teams (or teams of one, like influencers) get a helping hand by managing little tasks like small conversations, vendor agreements, and more.

Following Kantar’s panel on AI in creator marketing at Cannes, one thing is pretty clear. It isn’t about whether creator marketing can be enhanced by AI; it’s about how quickly brands can adapt to the usage of 

to help you out. From brand and creative to customer experience, Kantar uses AI to help brands analyze data at scale and draw insights from that data to create better content.

Get ready to connect with your consumers faster than ever, with a li’l help from AI and your fave creators.

Kantar

Kantar Branded Article Q2 2025 Native Ad

 AI-powered creator content drives real results

Recapping Kantar’s Cannes Lions 2025 panel on all things creator marketing and AI.

Can AI help creators?

Bonjour from Cannes 👋. The panels are packed, and one conversation is rising above the noise: AI.

But unlike years past—when the talk centered on a whole lotta hype, headlines, and hypotheticals—this year’s buzz feels more grounded. Agencies aren’t asking 

 AI will change the game. They’re talking about 

 they’re utilizing it today to make their businesses more competitive.

And for independent agencies, the opportunity is real.

AI isn’t just for holding companies anymore

Independent agencies have long been experts at doing more with less. Now, AI is helping them go even further by cutting through complexity, shrinking manual tasks, and giving leaner teams the power to act like scaled operations. When leveraging the right tools, AI enables indie agencies to get back to what has always set them apart from the larger holdcos: more attention and human touch for their clients.

 that would take hours to manually piece together.

In other words, AI helps indie agencies cut down on manual tasks so they can provide better service and offer more creativity—without adding headcount or overhead.

What’s working now: The MiQ Sigma approach

A great example of this shift is the newly launched 

, an AI-powered advertising technology built by global programmatic media partner MiQ to address the day-to-day fragmentation that agencies face.

Rather than layering AI on top of existing tools, Sigma was built with AI at the core, bringing together hundreds of data sources and trillions of consumer data signals + and embedding intelligent agents that make actual campaign decisions, not just dashboards.

GenAI personas that give marketers deep audience insights…instantly

an AI trading agent that doesn’t just suggest improvements but can also execute them immediately

lightning-fast activation across the world’s leading DSPs

MiQ Sigma is technology that turns independent agency teams into power players by taking complexity off their plate and putting creativity and strategic insight back on it.

Why independent agencies should pay attention

The advantage of being independent is agility. And now, with tools like Sigma and others hitting the market, the infrastructure once reserved for giants is finally within reach.

AI isn’t a future investment. It’s a present advantage—and agencies that adopt it early will be able to offer clients more intelligence, more performance, and more value.

MiQ Q2 2025 Branded Article Native Ad 

AI is leveling the playing field for independent agencies

How AI is fueling independent agencies’ competitive edge

Marketing’s new operating system

Amazon Ads rolled out a beta version of its AI-powered video generator in September. Now, ahead of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity next week, the company is rolling out a more advanced version of the tool.

This updated video generator is designed to create high-motion, realistic video, as opposed to the low-motion clips it could previously spit out; it can also, according to a blog post, generate pets and humans.

There are additional features in the works, including a function where users will also be able to incorporate brand guidelines and other guardrails. That functionality is set to be available later this year, although the exact timing has yet to be determined.

The tool is one of several from tech platforms that are aimed at putting generative AI tools in the hands of advertisers, especially those without the budgets typically required to make large swaths of creative assets the old-fashioned way. By the end of next year, Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, plans to allow advertisers to create and target ad campaigns entirely using AI tools, the Wall Street Journal 

Amazon Ads is building out its video generator with a particular focus on attracting small business advertisers, Jay Richman, VP of product and tech at Amazon Ads, told Marketing Brew, with the aim of “democratizing access to rich media.”

 Amazon Ads’s video generator is trained on open-source data, Amazon proprietary data, and data licensed from Amazon partners, Richman said. After an advertiser selects a product that they would like to create an ad for, the generator analyzes information about it, like product details and customer reviews, before spitting out six videos for the advertiser to choose from.

The advertiser can take a clip and further edit it—like, for example, adjusting the copy the generator auto-created for that clip.

“We’re giving basic, almost consumer-grade controls for these small advertisers to get the video just the way that they like,” Richman said.

 The video generator is designed to help small businesses brand-build, as opposed to simply running product ads that they may “typically default to” on Amazon’s platforms, Richman said.

Over 50% of the products advertisers promoted using the video generator since it debuted in November hadn’t been advertised before. Video ads can be a big selling point for brands: Sponsored brand campaigns with video saw, on average, a 30% higher clickthrough rate than those that didn’t have video, Richman said.

At Cannes Lions next week, Amazon execs will be on the ground speaking to clients about the tool and showcasing it at Amazon Port, the company’s Cannes activation.

 Amazon isn’t the only company looking to build out ad capabilities designed for small businesses. Comcast’s 

 platform enables small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to not only buy ads, but also use AI to create TV ads. In September of last year, Roku rolled out its Ads Manager product, a self-serve ad buying platform, which is also aimed at SMBs.

A robot moving around video clips in a stylized illustration

AI