The news that moves growth.

Cloudflare: Machine Traffic Could Hit 1,000x Human Traffic In 5 Years

One company measures the bot problem, frames it, and sells the fix. Cloudflare now owns both the meter and the valve. Check your own logs.

Google sets AI Max migration timeline for Search campaigns

Google outlined when some legacy campaign features will be automatically migrated to AI Max, giving advertisers and developers a clearer timeline for retiring older…

LLM traffic converts differently — here’s what to do about it

Paid search has long been the workhorse of performance marketing because you can connect a click to a conversion. But AI-driven search is creating a different kind of…

Demand Gen shows why PPC can no longer hide behind intent

Demand Gen is pushing PPC beyond its traditional role of capturing existing demand. To succeed, you increasingly need to understand how interest is created before…

ChatGPT Already Knows Who’s In The Running Before It Searches

ChatGPT names brands in its own search queries before it fetches anything. Being in that query is worth 33 times more.

The missing step in vibe coding: Verify what actually shipped

AI can build a working prototype in minutes. That doesn’t mean it built what you asked for. The same problem that has long affected software development is showing up in…

Google Ads Is Retiring Language Targeting In Search Campaigns

Google Ads is changing language targeting for Search and Performance Max in September 2026. Learn what’s changing and what advertisers need to know.

Google Ads is removing language targeting from Search campaigns

Google is removing campaign-level language targeting from Search and AI Max for Search campaigns starting in late September, shifting responsibility for language…

The GEO Trust Gap: SEOs Want The Data, But Not The Platforms Selling It

Practitioners value AI visibility data highly and won't fund the platforms selling it. New survey data on what's actually blocking the category.

Search Engine LandAug 13, 2026

Shopify: AI referrals up 197%, but organic search still leads traffic

AI-referred sessions to merchant storefronts grew 197% year over year in the second quarter, Shopify said. Organic search traffic also increased 12%, according to new…

Search Engine LandAug 13, 2026

Microsoft Clarity AI Scrape-to-Referral insights report

Microsoft Clarity has added another new AI metric, this one is called AI Scrape-to-Referral insights. It puts a single metric on the AI scrape activity against referral…

Search Engine JournalAug 13, 2026

The PPC Clean-Up: How to Audit and Fix ‘Value Inflation’ in Google Ads

PPC managers inheriting an account: verify the conversion value before touching the bid strategy. Five checks that separate real revenue from phantom value.

Social & Advertising

An anatomy of the creator brand trip’s midlife crisis

The uproar over OpenAI’s luxury creator trip to New York — in which around 30 creators stayed at a high-end farm resort, ate farm-to-table meals and learned beekeeping —…

Future of Marketing Briefing: The public ad tech era is over

The ad tech public era is over. Not literally, of course. A handful of scaled, still-growing platforms remain public. There just aren’t many of them, and the…

European publishers are getting hit harder by AI bot scraping, report finds

European publishers are getting hit harder than North American sites by AI bot scraping – and no one really knows why. A recent report from TollBit found that European…

The consumer journey is CPG marketing’s ‘North Star’ — and why brands can’t discount promotion strategies

Economic uncertainty and changing shopping behaviors are pushing brands to rethink how different channels work together. With the exponential growth of AI and the media…

AI & Automation

Hyperscalers might regret embracing natural gas if new forecast proves correct

Natural gas prices could triple in some parts of the U.S., which could saddle hyperscalers with massive bills to power their AI data centers.

Meta’s ‘open’ AI, and a $250M deal gone very wrong

Meta released Glimmer this week, an open-weight AI model anyone can download and run on their own hardware — a contrast to Muse Spark, the company’s more powerful model…

Writer introduces new AI model and upgraded harness to contain token costs

Built as a post-training variation on Z.ai's open source model GLM-5.2, Writer says the new system should provide deployment-ready capabilities at a much lower price.

Databricks wanted to raise $1B, investors wanted $15B. It settled on $5B at a $190B valuation.

AI is expensive, Ali Ghodsi tells TechCrunch. With so many investors wanting into his latest round, he said yes to more than planned.

OpenAI introduces ‘Ultrafast,’ a new mode that makes GPT-5.6 Sol work at 14x the speed

OpenAI is launching a preview of a sped up version of its latest, most powerful model, in an effort to court enterprise users.

IBM partners with OpenAI to bolster enterprise AI push

IBM plans to train and certify tens of thousands of consultants on OpenAI's technologies as part of this deal.

TechCrunch AIAug 13, 2026

Anthropic set AI agents loose on the same task. They started a turf war.

Anthropic researchers found AI agents can clash, collude, and coordinate in unexpected ways, raising new questions about whether today’s safety tests capture the risks…

TechCrunch AIAug 13, 2026

OpenAI hires new CRO as executive shake-up continues

OpenAI has replaced chief revenue officer Denise Dresser after just nine months on the job, tapping Wiz president and chief operating officer Dali Rajic to take on…