The news that moves growth.
A daily digest of what's happening in search, social, AI and advertising — curated headlines linking to the original sources, refreshed every morning.
Curated from the sources we actually read.
Last updated: 19 August 2026, 04:30 IST
Search & Digital Marketing
X Live-Tweets Its Fight Against Chatbot Spam In Real-Time
X publicly documented its anti-chatbot campaign over 24 hours, showing how quickly AI-generated spam evolves and how X responds.
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Charging AI Bots Decides Which Agents Can Still Cite You
AI bot paywalls are framed as new income. The real question is which AI answers you're willing to disappear from.
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Google Data Compares Gemini & AI Mode Use Against Daily Life
Google's new AI & Economy report compares Gemini and AI Mode conversations against how Americans spend their days.
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Google’s Q2: Precise Revenue Figures, Click Claims You Can’t Check
Alphabet detailed Search revenue to the decimal. Google described web traffic in three kinds of unverifiable claims. Q2 widened the gap.
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Google Says Why It May Ignore Robots.txt And Negatively Impact SEO
Google's John Mueller explains a robots.txt quirk that can cause Googlebot to ignore robots.txt rules.
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ChatGPT Ads adds conversion bidding, geo exclusions and bulk campaign tools
ChatGPT Ads is rolling out a slate of new advertiser tools focused on smarter bidding, improved measurement, budget pacing, and campaign management as it continues…
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Emergency Brand Audit: What AI Says About Your Locations
GatherUp's Annie Jackson and Jason Wertham show how to audit what ChatGPT and AI Overviews say about your locations, and which inputs change the answer.
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Google Ads Editor 2.13 brings AI Max support to Shopping campaigns
Google Ads Editor 2.13 is rolling out with support for AI Max in Shopping campaigns, new Performance Max retention goals, expanded Demand Gen features, and several…
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The AI Overviews YouTube Gap: The Platform Your Team Skipped For 20 Years
Stop measuring creator partnerships by view counts. The value shows up downstream, in traffic, AI citations, and conversions your dashboard isn't tracking.
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Household income exclusions spotted in Performance Max campaigns
Google appears to be rolling out household income exclusions for Performance Max campaigns, giving advertisers a level of audience control that hasn’t previously been…
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Media Buying Briefing: Why Omnicom merged Mediahub and Hearts & Science
Omnicom wasn’t ready to announce the move yet, but word leaked out last week that the holding company’s media agency group is folding Hearts & Science and Mediahub…
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How AI costs are quietly reshaping principal media deals
The ad industry doesn’t have a price for AI yet. That doesn’t mean nobody’s paying for it. One CMO found that out mid-negotiation. Deep into a holdco renewal on a media…
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Google’s ads biz gets boost from World Cup hype, Gemini improvements
Search and other revenues were up 17% in Q2, but investor skepticism over soaring AI costs cast a shadow over the earnings.
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Meta still has widest social media reach
Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp each have more than 3 billion users, giving the platforms’ owner a clear lead in the digital community landscape.
Read on our site5 tips for building an effective brand presence on LinkedIn
A look at some of the best ways for marketers to maximize their presence on the professional social network, which has had a resurgence of late.
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Are brain waves the next unlock for physical AI?
Forget YouTube videos — frontier physical AI models need multiple camera angles, dense annotation, and, soon, brain wave readings.
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Making sense of the panic over Chinese AI
On the latest episode of Equity, we discussed why Moonshot AI's Kimi seemed to panic Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
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Hugging Face CEO calls for ‘radical transparency’ after ‘unprecedented’ OpenAI hack
"The first autonomous agent cyberattack is an unprecedented event. It deserves an unprecedented response!"
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Monday.com is the latest tech company to blame AI for layoffs — here are 20 others
A running look — in reverse chronological order — at the bigger tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year with AI as a stated factor.
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Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech
At libraries around the country, "Avoiding AI" workshops have elicited unprecedented demand.
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One fallen power line exposed a growing AI data center problem — here’s how to fix it
A close call in Northern Virginia revealed just how poorly data centers respond to grid disruptions. Here's how to fix the problem.
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I tried out OpenAI’s new AI keypad — which will be fun for some coders and slightly mystifying to everyone else
OpenAI's fancy new AI keypad will be a lot of fun for some, while many others are probably not going to touch it.
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Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M
The neolab is betting that automating routine computer tasks will soon outpace coding as AI's biggest use case.
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Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Marc Pincus in talks to raise $100M
The neolab is betting that automating routine computer tasks will soon outpace coding as AI's biggest use case.
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