Personalization: AI for Retail Marketing Magic – Bain & Company

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Brief
Leading retailers are adopting AI-powered personalized marketing to better resonate with and win over shoppers.
By Beth Myers, Mikey Vu, Aaron Cheris, Stephanie Koszyk, and Darrell Rigby
Brief
Today’s consumers are bombarded with ads and messages across every channel, making it harder than ever for brands to cut through the noise. As ad loads climb and attention spans shrink, retailers face a high-stakes conundrum: How can they stand out to shoppers with relevant marketing, improve the customer experience, and still make every dollar count?
The solution: Personalization. Tailored, timely outreach and engagement can give retailers an edge by demonstrating an understanding of shoppers’ needs. In a recent Bain survey, over half of shoppers said that generative AI-powered personalized recommendations will be valuable when shopping online.
In an omnichannel world, effective personalization creates a seamless, tailored experience across channels and at every stage of the customer journey, from sparking the first moment of inspiration to perfecting service to building loyalty. It’s about engaging customers where they are, with the right experience, at the right time, and through the right channel—whether it be through personalized search, mobile push notifications, targeted emails, or in-store suggestions. Imagine if retailers could not only deliver millions of unique marketing ads but also use them to deepen their understanding of each shopper’s underlying needs, motivations, and preferences to make each subsequent interaction more tailored than the last (see below).
That once lofty vision is now within reach, thanks to generative AI. Leading retailers such as Walmart and Amazon are rolling out AI-powered personalization features, including customer-specific, unique homepages and shopping assistant tools, to name a few. By creating standout customer experiences and reflecting their unique brand proposition at every touchpoint, leading retailers are deepening customer relationships, boosting conversions, and reducing acquisition costs in a competitive market.
A recent Bain survey revealed that around 45% of shoppers don’t mind sponsored ads if they are relevant. In fact, around 40% say these ads can be helpful when shopping.
But let’s be real: “Personalization” and “one-to-one” have been marketing buzzwords for years, and many retailers are still missing the mark. In the same survey, about 40% of consumers say the ads they see today just don’t resonate. You’ve probably been there: seeing endless ads for dining room tables for weeks after buying one, or having to re-filter for your size every time you search for a clothing item, despite being logged in on the retailer’s site. Missteps like these don’t just burn through marketing budgets, they dilute the brand, annoy customers, and lower conversion rates.
When done right, personalization represents the retailer’s best self. It fosters connections that feel authentic and valuable. As such, winning retailers know that AI-powered personalization isn’t just another plug-and-play technology. It empowers a strategic shift—the ability to align every message and interaction with the retailer’s identity, voice, and unique value proposition.
The right approach to personalization varies by the retailer’s strategy and differentiators. For example, a luxury store might use AI to enhance high-touch in-store services, while a discount retailer could use the technology to highlight unbeatable promotions. The best messages resonate with customers’ needs, whether it’s the thrill of exclusive style or the satisfaction of smart value. When retailers get this right, they make shoppers feel seen, valued, and engaged, which builds loyalty and sets a new bar for customer experience.
Bain’s research identifies five design principles for deploying generative AI in the customer journey.
Today’s leaders in personalization are combining traditional AI with generative AI, which not only recognizes patterns in unstructured data but also analyzes complex data in real time to create content, such as text, images, and recommendations. It’s a dynamic alternative to traditional A/B testing, enabling scalable, adaptable personalization that gets smarter with each interaction.
With AI, retailers can create more granular (and accurate) customer segments with comprehensive data inputs, generate vast amounts of content quickly, test multiple hypotheses simultaneously, and use the responses to determine customer preferences on a one-to-one basis, informing future ways to engage. The benefits are real: Retailers experimenting with AI-powered targeted campaigns are seeing a 10% to 25% increase in return on ad spend.
AI is transforming personalization in three game-changing ways:
1. On-demand creative generation, at scale. Generative AI is empowering marketing teams to develop variations of emails, graphics, and ads at unprecedented scale and speed. In our experience, generative AI can slash content-creation time from weeks to hours. AI tools like Adobe Firefly, OpenAI’s DALL-E, and generative AI-enabled platforms like Figma and Canva, among others, are making this capability more accessible than ever. In training these tools on their guidelines, marketing teams can produce on-brand content with far less effort. This helps them meet the growing demand for personalized assets while also freeing up time to focus on strategy.  
2. A 360-degree view of the customer. Generative AI is revolutionizing data synthesis, scaling the breadth, speed, and quality of processes like metadata tagging. L’Oréal, for example, saved 120,000 hours of manual work and boosted search engine optimization (SEO) by using SiteCore’s generative AI to automate tagging for 200,000 titles across 36 brands and more than 500 websites.
Generative AI can also enrich customer profiles by uncovering preferences and intent from real-time behaviors such as browsing, purchase history, and social media activity. And, unlike traditional automation, which tags structured data, generative AI unlocks unstructured data—analyzing images or detecting sentiment in customer call transcripts. It can recognize feelings and behaviors such as “frustrated by assembly process” based on a buyer’s customer service call or “preference for sustainable products” based on engagement with an Instagram ad.
3. Real-time decision engines. Generative AI doesn’t just analyze data; it makes it actionable. With reinforcement learning-based decision engines, retailers can test ad variations to identify the most engaging combinations of creative, messages, offers, as well as contextual parameters such as frequency, day of week, time of day, for each customer.
Take that frustrated customer, for example. Armed with real-time data, the model can learn the most appealing offer—perhaps one for complimentary white-glove service for their next purchase—and turn an aggravating experience into one in which they feel heard.
Reinforcement learning enables large-scale experimentation at the one-to-one level, assigning “rewards” based on performance metrics—such as incremental profit or conversions—for each customer. With this real-time feedback, the model continuously refines its strategy to optimize toward true one-to-one personalization. In some cases, retailers’ customer engagement platforms can automatically deliver the agent’s next recommended ad, or even journey, to the customer without human intervention. The result? Retailers deliver increasingly effective, personalized ads and experiences while boosting customer satisfaction and margins.
The transition from traditional A/B testing to AI-powered, reinforcement learning-based personalization is paying off. We partnered with OfferFit, an AI Decisioning Engine, and found that across retail sectors, personalization campaigns can yield sizable increases in revenue and transactions per customer, in line with our shared client results (see Figure 1).
It’s easy for marketing teams to get swept up in the AI buzz. Many fixate on setting up the right marketing technology (martech) stack before deciding what they want to achieve. And when teams start building, they often default to low-impact use cases, such as making existing tasks more efficient, instead of seizing the opportunity to transform customer experiences in novel ways.
In contrast, successful companies not only start with strategy but also realize that unlocking the true power of AI comes from their people. These leaders foster the right mindset, culture, and ways of working organization-wide.
The first step is pinpointing high-potential use cases and embracing a “learn fast, scale faster” mindset. This approach encourages early experimentation, with calculated risks and real-time strategy refinement. It also necessitates cross-functional Agile teams with marketers fluent in tech and data scientists attuned to customer needs. Early trials help these teams quickly uncover what resonates with customers in an effort to develop seamless, personalized solutions across the customer journey. With close collaboration, they can adjust as needed, proactively responding to evolving customer needs and maximizing the value of every interaction.
With this foundation, marketers can move beyond incremental improvements to reimagine the customer experience. This transformation demands a culture that democratizes AI, giving everyone—not just engineers and data scientists—access to AI tools and insights. Senior leaders play a crucial role, championing a ground-up and top-down shift. This paradigm empowers marketers to spend less time creating and monitoring campaigns and more time interpreting AI-generated campaign insights to shape bold, targeted strategies for the future.
As with most big changes, it will take time and energy to cascade the cultural shift throughout the organization. But this people-first approach instills adaptability and innovation, allowing leaders to scale AI meaningfully and purposefully.
In parallel, leading retailers also invest in the data and technical foundations necessary to scale AI. The journey isn’t easy: Solutions can be expensive and infrastructure-intensive, requiring accurate, up-to-date data to avoid mistimed messaging and ensure privacy compliance. Top-performing retailers are already building modern tech stacks that synchronize zero-, first-, and third-party data to create the holistic, real-time customer views that power personalization at scale.
Retail chief marketing officers (CMOs)—no strangers to innovation—face the challenge of integrating AI thoughtfully. To ensure personalization strategies are customer-centric and set up for success, marketing teams can reflect on a few questions:
Using AI to create relevant, personalized marketing is no longer a competitive edge but table stakes—and it will be critical to building loyalty and market leadership that lasts.
Prioritizing families of use cases can accelerate both savings and revenue gains.
OfferFit’s AI Decisioning Engine autonomously experiments and empirically discovers the optimal actions one-to-one for each customer. OfferFit’s AI Decisioning agents use reinforcement learning to personalize communication to identified customers and to maximize any business key performance indicator (KPI). OfferFit works with top brands in telecom, energy, retail, travel, streaming video, and financial services, among others.
Sensor Tower is a leading source of mobile app, retail media, audience, and digital advertising (formerly Pathmatics) insights for brands and app publishers globally. With visibility into usage, engagement, and paid acquisition strategies across web, social, and mobile, its award-winning platform empowers organizations to stay ahead of changing market dynamics, understand competitors, and make informed strategic decisions.
The authors would like to acknowledge Sasha Foo, Maddy Crisera, and Diya Chadha for their contributions.
We work with ambitious leaders who want to define the future, not hide from it. Together, we achieve extraordinary outcomes.
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31 best digital marketing tools for every budget in 2024 – Hootsuite

The right tool for the job makes everything easier. These are the 31 best digital marketing tools for teams and budgets of all sizes.
What a time to be alive for digital marketers. This is it: The Future. We may not have flying cars yet, but we do have the most advanced digital marketing tools ever created at our fingertips that anyone can use to work smarter, not harder.
There’s something for everyone and every budget on this list of the very best digital marketing tools in existence in 2024.
You don’t need to use tools or apps to manage your social media but it makes it way faster and easier. Besides scheduling content, the best social media marketing tools also help support strategic planning with insightful analytics and ways to find and engage your audience.
Okay, we’ve gotta include ourselves on this list because over 22 million people in 175+ countries trust Hootsuite to manage their social media, from individuals and small businesses all the way up to the biggest enterprise corporate teams.
Hootsuite manages your Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X (Twitter), YouTube, and Threads profiles all in one place. Like other social media marketing tools, Hootsuite can help you plan, schedule, and publish content across multiple platforms… but it also does way, way more. See analytics and performance across all your channels together, answer and manage DMs and comments, and optimize your posts for the highest possible reach.
Hootsuite has many more advanced features to really set your social media apart from the pack.
Standout Feature #1: Social listening to protect and enhance your brand
Hootsuite Listening can help you identify opportunities for collaboration, protect your reputation, and get real-time customer feedback straight from the source.
Track mentions of your company or other keywords across social media to find out what people are saying about you and your products. Respectfully tackle negative comments and reply to positive ones to further enhance your brand image.
All of this, plus the ability to reply to posts and comments right from your Hootsuite dashboard.
Standout Feature #2: Built-in social media advertising
Does it often feel like your paid and organic social media campaigns exist on different planets? How can you know the real ROI of your social media marketing efforts if you can’t see all the data together, in context? Or, do you simply wish you could publish and manage organic and paid campaigns alongside each other?
Hootsuite’s built-in social advertising allows you to:
Standout Feature #3: AI tools to save you time
Hootsuite makes everything you do on social media easier and faster.
It’s got some AI tricks up its sleeve to supercharge your workflow, such as:
OwlyWriter AI for post ideas and captions
Get content ideas, view trending topics, and generate post variations or captions from scratch with OwlyWriter AI.
Since OwlyWriter AI is designed to save you time, it’s faster to watch everything it can do in just 60 seconds:
A unified Inbox to manage comments and DMs across platforms
Reply to comments and DMs across multiple platforms right from Hootsuite. Assign conversations to team members and easily see what’s been dealt with and what needs to be addressed quickly. Plus, saved replies make answering common questions super speedy.
The best time to post based on your goals
Hootsuite analyzes your audience to recommend the best times to post on social media to meet your engagement or brand awareness goals. This is customized to your actual audience; not industry benchmarks.
Price: Plans start at $99/month for up to 5 profiles. Try Hootsuite with an unlimited 30-day free trial.
Who it’s best for: There’s a plan to suit everyone and make your social media life easier, from solo creators to enterprise teams.
Source: Later
Later is another all-in-one social media scheduling tool. It supports multiple platforms, though it began as an Instagram-only solution and still leans more toward features for that platform vs. others.
Handy Later features include cross-platform scheduling, a brandable Link in Bio page, and AI caption writing.
Wondering how Later compares to Hootsuite? Check out our detailed comparison.
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $25/month for only 1 of each social profile and limited analytics.
Who it’s best for: Instagram-focused creators.
Source: Buffer
Buffer is a social media scheduling and publishing tool that works with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X (Twitter), Pinterest, and LinkedIn — though lacks support for YouTube and Threads scheduling.
Check out a breakdown of how Hootsuite compares to Buffer.
Standout features:
Price: $6 per profile/month for individuals or $12 per profile/month for teams
Who it’s best for: Individuals; those who want simple social media scheduling without more advanced analytics or time-saving AI tools.
Source: Sprout Social
Sprout Social is another top contender in the battle of social media analytics tools, and it may be worth your consideration. Offering scheduling and analytics for all the major social media platforms, Sprout can help you plan and execute your social media strategy.
Sprout Social offers many of the same features as Hootsuite — cross-platform scheduling, advanced analytics, link tracking, team collaboration, and social listening — but it’s double the price, at $199/month for 5 social profiles compared to Hootsuite’s $99/month for up to 10 profiles.
See how Sprout Social compares to Hootsuite in detail..
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $199 per user per month for up to 5 profiles.
Who it’s best for: Enterprise and large organizations.
Source: Loomly
Loomly features post scheduling and publishing across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Google Business Profile, as well as simple analytics and collaboration tools.
While Loomly offers a visual, calendar-based scheduling interface, it’s separated per social profile.
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $42/month for up to 10 social profiles, without advanced analytics or workflows.
Who it’s best for: Individuals and freelancers, creators, small teams.
Source: Sprinklr
Sprinklr is a powerful social media management tool complete with advanced analytics, time-saving AI features, social listening and monitoring, and brand compliance tools — but it comes with a hefty price tag.
Sprinklr might make sense for you if you’re also using their customer service management platform. Though using both Sprinklr Service and Sprinklr Social will set you back $549/month per user, for only 7 social profiles.
See how Sprinklr compares to Hootsuite.
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $299/month per user for 7 social profiles and basic features only.
Who it’s best for: Large teams with a strong focus on customer service.
Use our free AI social media tools to generate captions, pick the perfect new username, optimize your TikTok SEO, find the right hashtags, calculate your social media ROI, and more. Check ‘em out!
AI digital marketing tools hardly need an introduction with new ones popping up all the time. These are the very best AI tools for digital marketing and content creation.
Source: ChatGPT
Hail to the King, as ChatGPT was the AI catalyst that set off the race to create the world’s next greatest technological advancement (for marketers, anyway — it’s no wearable solar panel shirt). While it’s important to fact check and edit its output, ChatGPT is a valuable content production tool for marketers of all kinds.
Standout features:
Price: GPT 3.5, the earlier model, is free to use, or pay $20/month for the more advanced GPT-4 and DALL-E image generation. Team plans are $25/month/user.
Who it’s best for: Everyone! From students to content creators to marketing teams, ChatGPT offers a lot of value.
OwlyWriter AI, built into Hootsuite, saves you hours on social media content. It’s not the same as typing prompts into ChatGPT. OwlyWriter AI has all that awesome language processing power combined with over 14 years of proprietary social media expertise.
The result? Draft new content quickly, repurpose existing content optimized for reach on each network, or brainstorm content ideas — instantly.
Standout features:
Price: Included with Hootsuite! Grab a free trial.
Who it’s best for: People who like getting more done, faster.
Source: Vidyo.ai
If video makes up a lot of your content, you know reformatting it for 16:9 YouTube and 9:16 Reels and TikToks takes a lot of time. Or worse, you don’t do it at all so you’re leaving massive social media growth on the table.
Either way: yikes.
Vidyo takes your longform video and cuts it up — intelligently — into short clips for Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and other channels.
Standout features:
Price: Free up to 75 minutes of video/month, or starting at $35/month for 300 minutes/month and additional features.
Who it’s best for: All types of video, but especially for creating Reels and Shorts from longer YouTube videos.
Source: Jasper
Jasper is similar to ChatGPT as it’s primarily a text-based generative content AI tool for digital marketers. But it offers a lot of sophistication for brands, including the ability to add your style guide to match content to your brand voice.
More than style, Jasper also features a “central database” to keep company information — positioning statements, competitor analysis, product info, policies, etc — so that generated content truly reflects your business.
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $49/month.
Who it’s best for: Marketing teams, content creators, and freelancers.
Source: Murf
Murf is a text-to-speech AI voice generator to create human-sounding voiceovers for videos, podcasts, presentations, and other content. Paste in your script, choose the type and style of voice you’d like — gender, formal or informal, speed, etc — and Murf outputs a real-sounding voice.
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $29/month for 2 hours of voice content per month.
Who it’s best for: Marketing teams looking to scale up video content, as well as global brands who want to dub/translate video content for diverse markets.
These are the SEO tools for digital marketing that keep you up to date on algorithms, find new search trends, and optimize your visibility online.
Source: Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most well-known SEO and keyword research tools. Site Explorer helps analyze competitors and find new opportunities. Keyword Explorer identifies top keywords for you. Finally, Site Audit regularly monitors your website for SEO issues and makes improvement suggestions.
Standout features:
Price: Free for basic webmaster tools, or starts at $99/month for premium plans.
Who it’s best for: Anyone who wants to grow their organic search traffic, from creators to mid-level marketing teams to enterprise corporations.
Source: Semrush
Semrush started out mostly as a keyword research tool, which it’s still great at, but has evolved to include more competitive research, PPC campaign tracking, and website SEO audit features.
For SEO, Semrush uncovers your competitors keywords so you can optimize your own strategy as well as track keyword performance with daily ranking reports.
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $129/month for individuals up to 500 keywords, with higher tier plans available.
Who it’s best for: Marketers and teams who want to track both organic keywords and PPC campaigns together.
Source: Google
Google’s own Keyword Planner is a great place to start looking for keyword ideas for either organic or paid campaigns. It’s free and gives you the basic info about a keyword’s popularity, competition level, and performance forecasts.
Standout features:
Price: Free
Who it’s best for: Freelancers and creators getting started with content marketing, or those without a budget for advanced tools.
Source: SurferSEO
The other SEO digital marketing software mentioned above focus on your overall keyword strategy, but SurferSEO ties that into individual content pieces. Run articles through SurferSEO to get performance predictions for on-page SEO, including keyword performance. Plus, get suggestions to improve your SEO without making your content sound robotic (or fake).
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $89/month for freelancers, or $129/month for up to 5 team members.
Who it’s best for: Content marketers, freelancers, marketing teams.
Visual content is de facto required nowadays, whether it’s for social media or web content. Creating on-brand, attractive, professional, and engaging content is easier when using the right graphic design and video marketing tools.
Source: Canva
Canva is a do-it-all visual content editor to help you make aesthetically pleasing presentations, graphics, videos, social media posts including Stories and Reels, and much more.
Besides a super easy-to-use interface and great templates, Canva includes thousands of illustrations, graphics, stock photos or videos, and other media you can incorporate into your designs. It’s a digital marketing tool to create as simple, or as complex, materials as you want.
Standout features:
Price: Free plan available. Pro plans start at $14.99/month.
Who it’s best for: Literally everyone.
Source: Adobe
It should be no surprise that a graphic design tool from the Adobe brand is awesome. Express is Adobe’s solution for digital marketers, allowing you to create professional graphics and documents for social media or work, including TikTok videos, flyers, presentations, and more.
What sets Adobe Express apart from other graphic and video editing tools is the powerful AI design tools included within. Do simple things in less than a second like removing the background of a photo, or complex things like generating templates or changing parts of your image with realistic, AI-generated results.
Standout features:
Price: Free plan available. Premium plans start at $9.99/month for individuals, or included with a full Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
Who it’s best for: Content creators, marketing teams.
Source: CapCut
CapCut is one of the most robust free video digital marketing tools available. It’s perfect for creating Reels, Stories, TikToks, YouTube videos, or any other type of video content.
The free plan offers everything most creators and small businesses need, including templates, automatic captions, filters, stickers, and more. For business teams or those looking to really stand out, CapCut Pro offers advanced AI video editing tools like 1-click clips-to-video creation, repurposing videos, and even making video ads from product page links.
Standout features:
Price: Free plan available. CapCut Pro is $13.49/month.
Who it’s best for: Creators, marketing teams, freelancers.
How do you know your marketing strategy is working without tracking performance? Digital marketing reporting tools are vital to see what’s working, what’s not, and what to try next.
We’re biased, but it’s also true that Hootsuite Analytics tracks the performance of all your social channels in one place to save a ton of time. Plus, you can track the ROI of organic and paid campaigns together to get the full picture of how your social media directly impacts your business.
Create and share custom reports that highlight progress toward your social media and business goals and easily communicate those to your boss. Besides being able to see all your social media performance together, you can still dive deep into metrics for an individual channel too, all from your Hootsuite dashboard.
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $99/month.
Who it’s best for: Creators, small businesses, enterprise companies, and everyone in between.
Source: Google
The O.G. of digital marketing analytics tools is mos def Google Analytics, which can tell you anything you want to know about web traffic. Find out where people found your content, track audience growth over time, and use custom UTM parameters to track specific campaign performance.
Standout features:
Price: Free
Who it’s best for: Everyone should use Google Analytics! Larger companies or those with specific growth goals should invest in additional analytics tools to use alongside Google Analytics.
Source: Talkwalker
Talkwalker is a social listening and media monitoring platform with a data library that includes more than 150 million sources (including emerging platforms, like Bluesky). With more than 50 advanced filters, you can segment your social data and identify the right target audience to monitor.
This powerful social listening tool allows you to understand the full impact of your online conversations by measuring engagement volume, reach, sentiment, and more. It incorporates Blue Silk GPT for AI analysis.
When you integrate Talkwalker into Hootsuite, you can tag, assign, and respond to Talkwalker-identified mentions up to two years old directly within the Hootsuite dashboard.
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $800/month (but soon to be included in Hootsuite plans!)
Who it’s best for: Larger organizations and curious teams looking to turn consumer insights into successful marketing strategies.
Dance craze this and new social platform that. Even in an ever-changing social media landscape, email marketing remains a constant performer, driving 2X the ROI, on average.
While there are many niche email marketing tools, these are the best for most companies.
Source: HubSpot
HubSpot’s free email template builder allows you to create and reuse email templates with a simple drag and drop interface, and share those templates with your team.
You can add design elements to align with your brand, but this email template builder is mainly focused on the email content, and is best used for sales emails, following up with clients, or content-rich messages.
It integrates, of course, with HubSpot CRM, but the template builder is free to use and you can send emails using the templates from Gmail, Outlook, or Office 365.
Standout features:
Price: Free
Who it’s best for: Sales professionals, marketing and/or sales teams, freelancers, and small businesses.
Source: Mailchimp
A familiar brand name after so long on the market, MailChimp is a staple for all sizes of businesses. From creators and freelancers testing out their free plan to enterprise clients driving mega returns with advanced email campaigns, MailChimp offers something for everyone.
Standout features:
Price: Free, or premium plans start at $13/month.
Who it’s best for: Small businesses getting into email marketing tools for the first time, as well as large and enterprise clients.
Source: Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a powerful email, SMS, and mobile push notification marketing platform with a strong emphasis on personalization. Did you know up to 81% of consumers are likely to stop using a brand if they don’t receive a personalized experience?
Besides increasing revenue up to 138%, Klaviyo’s personalized email marketing automations save time and result in more product reviews, and more importantly, happier customers.
Standout features:
Price: Free, or premium plans start at $45/month.
Who it’s best for: Brands managing multiple touchpoints, especially e-commerce sellers.
Need to land more leads? It’s all about landing pages n’ lead generation, bossbud. Landing pages are a (usually) short webpage designed to do one thing: convert. Whether it’s simple contact information or a purchase you’re after, a landing page can help deepen customer relationships, keep your pipeline full, and drive results.
Source: LeadPages
LeadPages ties in the best mix of advanced lead capture tools with easy to use templates and integrations, making it a great choice for everyone but especially landing page newbies. Their 200+ beautifully designed templates make landing page creation easy and AI-powered text and image generation speed that up even more (or, bring in all your own content).
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $49/month.
Who it’s best for: Entrepreneurs, small businesses just getting started with landing pages, as well as larger teams.
Source: Linktree
Linktree turns your social media bio link into a landing page to feature all the things you want, including web links, other social channels, products, lead capture forms, email marketing signups, and more.
Standout features:
Price: Free, or premium plans start at $5/month.
Who it’s best for: Creators, freelancers, and businesses of all sizes.
Source: Unbounce
Unbounce is a flexible landing page builder that allows you to customize as much of your template as you want, or keep things simple with pre-made templates and AI-generated content designed to convert. Beyond landing pages, you can capture more leads from your website with sticky header bars and popups to grow your email list.
Standout features:
Price: Starting at $99/month.
Who it’s best for: Established creators, and businesses of all sizes.
Time is money and not investing in digital marketing automation tools is making you lose money. Besides, freeing up time by automating parts of your business or workflows allows you to work on other, more important tasks… like coming up with great new social media content ideas.
Source: Zapier
Zapier connects everything to everything else in your business, automating things like keeping email lists and customer databases in sync, organizing files for your team, communicating updates, and so much more. Zapier integrates over 6,000 of the world’s top apps and services to make your work and business more efficient.
Standout features:
Price: Free plan available. Premium plans start at $29.99/month.
Who it’s best for: Equally useful for solo creators or business owners to businesses of all sizes.
Source: IFTTT
Another top no-code automation solution is IFTTT, short for “If This Then That.” Automate your entire life from home to work. Forget to close the garage door? Get Alexa to notify you. Stay up to date with the news by getting a daily digest of top stories from sources you choose. Automatically turn down interior lights at sunset. Get a head start on the day’s work by generating article outlines from popular AI tools before you even sit down at your desk. Yowza.
Standout features:
Price: Free plan available. Premium plans start at $3.49/month.
Who it’s best for: People with a lot of “smart” home devices.
Team communication is critical whether you all work in the same space or are distributed around the planet. Everyone on your team needs to know where to find important information and files, and how and when to get in touch with other team members.
Using an online productivity and collaboration tool is plain fun, too. Share wins as a group, discuss ideas, quickly communicate company news, and get to know your colleagues better — all from a teeny tiny screen.
Source: Slack
Slack hardly needs an introduction as one of the most popular workplace collaboration tools. Employees can join your company’s space via desktop or mobile app to participate in group discussions or PM other colleagues. Organize your space into channels by topic, or discussion purpose, such as a “News” channel for a read-only stream of important updates, a “Water Cooler” channel for casual conversation, and everything in between.
Standout features:
Price: Limited free plan. Premium plans start at $4.38/month.
Who it’s best for: Teams of all sizes (e.g. two or more 😎).
Source: Discord
Discord is another primarily text-based team collaboration tool, though there are also voice and video conferencing options. Similar to Slack, you set up groups of “channels” to organize discussions and users can also private message each other.
Standout features:
Price: Free, with optional paid extra features for individual users.
Who it’s best for: Small teams and startups
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The Expert-Reviewed Guide to Automotive SEO

I became interested in automotive SEO after buying a new car and getting some repairs done on my old one at the same time. I found the dealerships and repair shops that helped me out, as well as the car that I bought, through Google.

If they hadn’t shown up when I was looking, I never would have known they existed. That got me thinking about how crucial search visibility really is for auto businesses.

This article isn’t just my take on automotive SEO. It’s been reviewed, enriched, and inspired by six experts with hands-on experience in this niche. Their insights helped me keep this guide grounded in real-world experience.

Automotive SEO experts.

The automotive industry covers a lot of ground: dealerships, repair shops, auto parts sellers, manufacturers, and more. While I’ve focused on SEO tactics that apply universally across most automotive businesses, I’ll call out specific strategies where needed. If you’re looking for in-depth guidance tailored to your business type, I’ll point you to more focused resources along the way.

Think of automotive SEO as making sure you show up when people search for cars or auto services online. It’s different from regular SEO because car shopping is… well, it’s pretty unique.

Here’s what makes it special:

  • People search locally first. When someone needs a car or repair work, they’re usually thinking “near me” from the get-go. They want something close to home.
  • Your inventory never stops changing. Unlike a restaurant that keeps the same menu for months, you’re constantly getting new cars and selling others, and your website needs to keep up with that.
  • You’re really running multiple businesses. Sales, service, parts, financing–each department attracts different customers who search in different ways.
  • Trust is everything. Nobody impulse-buys a $30,000 car. People need to feel confident about you before they’ll even visit your lot.
  • Franchising is a double-edged sword. If you’re a franchise dealer, the manufacturer likely imposes strict rules on what you can and can’t do with your website and marketing. That can limit your ability to optimize freely. But on the flip side, being able to use an automaker’s brand in your business name, domain, and on-page content can give you a significant SEO advantage—especially for branded searches like “used toyota”.
Google Map Pack showing Toyota dealership locations.

Every page you optimize adds to your ability to attract customers. The results work for you 24/7, and build on each other over time. But that’s not all:

  • You catch people wherever they are in their journey. Some folks are just starting to research cars, while others are ready to buy tomorrow. Good SEO content lets you connect with all of them by providing helpful information that naturally showcases what you know.
  • You steal customers from competitors. It’s that simple. If you’re ranking #1 for “used cars in Dallas” and your competitor is #8, guess who’s getting that customer?
  • It pays for itself over time. SEO takes work upfront, but unlike paid ads that cost you every month, good content can keep bringing in customers for years. That’s huge in the car business, where people research for weeks before buying and need ongoing service.

Local SEO gets you into Google Maps and those local results that show up before the regular website listings. Even if searchers don’t include location names in their searches, Google might still interpret them as local search intent and prioritize the best results in the nearby area.

Google SERP for "used forester".

Give each location its own page and Google Business Profile

Google sees each of your locations as its own separate business, so each one needs to be optimized individually. That means creating a dedicated page for every location, complete with unique content, local reviews, contact details, and photos of that specific spot and team.

Take Christian Brothers Automotive, for example. They have dozens of locations, each with its own optimized landing page and Google Business Profile.

Christian Bros Automotive - Happy Valley landing page.
Each location from this repair shop chain has its own landing page. Notice the location name, address, and phone number.
Christian Bros Automotive - Gilbert landing page.
Another landing page from the same chain. The layout stays the same, just the key location information changed, but that’s enough for the users and search engines. 
Google Maps showing different car repair shops from the same brand.
Moreover, each of the location has its own Google Business Profile—that’s exactly how you do it. 

Get listed in directories and listing aggregators

Get listed in automotive directories like Edmunds and Cars.com, as well as general local directories like Yellow Pages and your Chamber of Commerce. Keep your branding and services consistent across these listings.

This has a direct and indirect benefit.

Direct benefit: referral traffic and lead generation. Many of these directories rank highly in search results themselves and are used by shoppers during the research phase. Being featured there can send highly qualified traffic your way.

Car listing aggregator with different dealerships.

Indirect benefit: stronger local SEO signals. Google and other search engines rely on data from third-party sites to validate your business’s legitimacy and location (the so-called NAP citations). When your business details are accurate and consistent across multiple reputable sources, it strengthens your local ranking signals, especially in map pack and “near me” searches.

Stay active on your Google Business profile

Regular updates to your Google Business Profile (new photos, responding to reviews, posting announcements) show Google and customers that you’re actively managing your business.

When the competition is tough, even small things, like regularly updating your Google Business Profile or responding to reviews, can be what sets you apart and helps customers choose you over others.

Example of a car repair show regularly blogging on their GBP.

Set up inventory integration in Google Business Profile

If you’re a dealership, don’t miss out on Google’s free Vehicle Listings integration. This feature lets you push your current inventory directly into Google Business Profile, making your cars eligible to show up in local map results, the Shopping tab, and even within the “Cars for Sale” section on Google Search.

It’s one of the few industry-specific perks Google offers, and it’s completely free. Here’s the official guide you need to set this up. Listing vehicle inventory on Google feature.

In the automotive world, trust is a dealbreaker. Shoppers want to know they’re dealing with a business that’s honest, responsive, and delivers on its promises. And guess what, Google always looks at online reviews to determine the best local search result (see prominence).

Prominence as a local Google ranking factor.

So here’s what you can do:

  • Ask for reviews actively. Send review links via text, ask in person, or include it on thank-you pages.
  • Respond to every single review. This shows you’re listening and builds trust.
  • Monitor everything. Use tools like Birdeye to track reviews across all major platforms.
  • Show off your good reviews. Social proof matters—highlight those stars!
  • Go beyond reviews. Mention awards, certifications, sales stats, and success stories.

Keyword targeting connects your website with people who are actively searching for what you offer. It’s how you show up for a buyer typing in “used Honda Civic near me” instead of disappearing behind a wall of irrelevant traffic.

I’m going to walk you through the types of keywords (with examples) you’ll likely need to reach potential customers at every stage of their journey—from early research to purchase and beyond. Each keyword type plays a different role in your overall strategy.

But before we dive in, I want to show you how easily you can find your own keywords.

Start by opening Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, and ask the built-in AI to suggest keywords relevant to your business.

AI in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.

Then simply use one of the intent filters in the Matching terms report.

Intents filter in Keywords Explorer.

Commercial keywords

Commercial keywords capture people who are comparing options and making decisions. Ranking here helps you position your offerings as the better choice, even if they’re not yet ready to buy.

Examples:

Examples of commercial keywords.

Transactional keywords

Transactional keywords are your conversion drivers. These are the high-intent searches from people ready to take action, whether that’s booking a test drive, scheduling a service, or calling your dealership.

Examples:

Examples of transactional keywords.

Informational keywords

Informational keywords attract early-stage searchers. They might not convert right away, but they build trust, brand awareness, and long-term visibility in your niche.

They’re also a smart way to expand your reach beyond your immediate area or build national awareness, since they usually address broader problems that apply everywhere. And because of that wide relevance, they have the potential to drive significant traffic to your site.

High-traffic informational content.

Examples:

Informational keywords example.

Local keywords

Local keywords are essential for showing up in map packs and nearby searches—especially important for dealers, service centers, and repair shops that serve specific geographic areas.

Besides using your keyword research tool, Michelle Tansey also suggested tapping into your team’s insights. Ask your staff what customers are often asking about or what tends to work well in your local area. Their firsthand experience can be a goldmine for content ideas.

Examples:

Local keywords example.

Tip

To prioritize which keywords to go after, balance these four factors:

  • Search intent: Does the keyword match what you actually offer?
  • Traffic potential: Will ranking for this keyword bring enough people to your site?
  • Keyword difficulty: Can you realistically rank for it given your site’s current authority?
  • Business potential: How likely is this keyword to drive real revenue for your business?

To win at automotive SEO, your site needs to support what customers are actually looking for, which depends on your business type. That said, most successful automotive sites tend to focus on these three functional areas:

  • E-commerce style inventory pages. Show what you offer, whether that’s vehicles for sale, parts, or services.
  • Service pages. Make it easy to book, buy, or inquire, depending on your offering.
  • Location pages. Prove you’re local and legit, so customers know you’re nearby and trustworthy.

Each requires its own SEO strategy, and depending on your business model, you’ll emphasize some more than others.

Let’s break it down.

Inventory pages (ecommerce-style for vehicles and car parts)

These are the digital equivalent of your car lot. They power transactional searches like “used Mazda CX-5 under 20k.”

Local dealership ranking for "used forester" with an inventory page.

What to focus on: 

Tip

This is the part where I got the most tips from the experts. Here are some of my favorites.

Assess your vehicle data sources before scaling. Messy data (e.g., inconsistent naming, missing details) can wreak havoc when you go live. Test first with high-volume makes like Toyota or Ford. 

Categorization helps shoppers. Group cars into themes like “family friendly,” “first car,” “under $5k,” “off-road SUVs,” or “luxury SUVs.” These kinds of curated filters make for strong landing pages and better user experience. 

Product categorization in site menu.

Edward Bate

If you’re using Google Business Profile (GBP), use the “Products and Services” section to feature brands and models you typically stock. Instead of trying to keep it updated daily, treat it like a curated highlight reel. 

Treat brand and model pages as permanent landing pages—even if you don’t have real-time inventory. Include CTAs like “Call us to check availability” or “These sell fast—get in touch now” to make them useful and evergreen. 

Despina Gavoyannis

Service pages

These bring in high-margin, high-frequency traffic—brake repair, inspections, tire rotation, etc. Most visitors come with a clear intent to act.

Below is an example of repair shops ranking with optimized location pages.

Service pages ranking for a local keyword.

What to focus on:

  • Create a dedicated page per service (e.g., “/services/brake-repair/”) and per location if relevant.
  • Optimize for “service + city” queries like oil change Austin”.
  • Add trust signals: certifications, team bios, photos of your actual work, and pricing, if possible.
  • Use FAQs, testimonials, and visual content to increase conversions.

Location pages

This is where local SEO and trust-building collide. Done right, these pages help you rank for “Toyota dealer [city]” and convert cold traffic into walk-ins or leads.

Here’s a great example by Sheen group: a landing page listing all locations and a dedicated landing page for each location.

Page listing different locations from the same network.
Page listing different locations from the same car repair chain.
Landing page of one the network's locations.
Landing page of one of the chain’s locations.

What to focus on:

  • Use localized URLs and H1s: /locations/san-diego/ + “Used Cars in San Diego | Open 7 Days a Week”.
  • Include real photos of the dealership, staff, and signage—avoid stock images.
  • Add a map, driving directions, reviews, parking info, and hours.
  • Link to the inventory and services available at that location.
  • Display social proof: embedded reviews, certifications, and local awards.

This part of SEO is about making sure your website works the way it should—fast, easy to load, and simple for both people and Google to navigate.

I always give the same advice here: use a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Audit, fix the problems it finds, and keep it running regularly.

Ahrefs gives you an overall Health Score, showing how many pages on your site have serious issues—these are called errors. If you click on the error count, you’ll see exactly what the problems are, which pages are affected, and get tips on how to fix them.

Health score metric from Ahrefs' Site Audit.

You don’t need to be a tech expert to handle most of these. Site audit tools will flag the most common issues that hurt your rankings, like:

  • Broken pages. They return errors when people click on them.
  • Slow page speed (especially on mobile).
  • Missing page titles. Help Google and searchers understand your content.
  • Duplicate pages. Google doesn’t like seeing the same content in multiple places.
  • Pages that aren’t linked to. If nothing points to a page, Google might never find it.
  • Mobile usability problems. If your site is hard to use on a phone, that’s a problem.

Once you fix what’s broken, this becomes a simple maintenance task. Site Audit performs regular checks on autopilot. Bigger sites with ecommerce inventory could benefit from an always-on audit that scans 24/7.

Always-on audit in Site Audit.

By the way, you’ll also get email alerts after each scan, so you don’t really need to remember to open the tool and check.

Email report from Ahrefs Site Audit.

People head to YouTube when they want to see how something works, what a car looks like, or whether a mechanic knows their stuff. That’s a huge opportunity.

Video builds trust faster than text. A quick walkaround of a car, a before-and-after repair job, or a mechanic explaining a common problem can do more to convince a potential customer than a thousand words ever could.

And it doesn’t have to be fancy. A simple, honest video shot on your phone can work just fine, as long as it’s useful and answers real questions your customers have.

Plus, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. If you’re not showing up there, you’re missing a ton of traffic from people actively researching, comparing, or getting ready to book.

And here’s the kicker: some people find your videos on YouTube, but many find them on Google. Google often pulls YouTube videos directly into its search results (right on the front page). That means a helpful video can give you visibility on two of the biggest search engines at once.

Google showing YouTube videos as part of the SERP.

By the way, some AI search engines and LLMS like ChatGPT and Perplexity do the same:

ChatGPT embedding videos into the "cherps".

 

So, here are some ideas for videos you can make:

  • Vehicle walkarounds. Give shoppers a closer look.
  • Customer testimonials. Build trust authentically.
  • Service & maintenance tips: Establish authority.
    Review and vs content: Compare models (e.g., Kia Sportage vs Stonic). Share first-person insights on what’s better about a 2026 model vs 2025.

We’ve got an entire YouTube SEO course right here, so don’t miss it:

Before we wrap this section up, I wanted to show you how to find the aforementioned videos showing up on both Google and YouTube.

Head out to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, paste in your seed keywords, and in the Matching terms report, turn on this SERP features filter:

Using Keywords Explorer to find SERPs with video snippets.

The results will be all keywords where Google shows videos in the SERPs, just like this one:

An example of SERP with video rich result.
Subaru dealership ranking both on YouTube and Google with a simple video.

Finally, here’s a good tip from Michelle: don’t just post to YouTube. Include videos on blog pages or make/model pages to boost engagement and time on page.

Here’s something a lot of dealerships miss: SEO and Google Ads work better together than apart. Instead of seeing them as competing strategies, think of them as complementary approaches that can amplify each other.

Use ads to test keywords before committing to SEO. SEO takes months to show results, but you can test keyword performance with ads in days. If a keyword converts well in paid search, it’s probably worth targeting with SEO content too.

Cover all your bases. Use ads for competitive keywords where you’re not ranking yet, seasonal promotions, and new inventory that needs immediate visibility.

For this, I’d recommend setting up the following filter in Keywords Explorer: bottom of funnel preset, KD from 50 and the cost per click you feel comfortable with as the maximum.

How to find good paid keywords with Ahrefs.

Track these six key metrics to understand your SEO performance:

  1. Keyword rankings. Are you moving up for your target keywords?
  2. Share of voice. What percentage of traffic are you capturing compared to competitors for your tracked keywords?
  3. Organic traffic. How many visitors are coming from unpaid search results?
  4. Conversions. Are people actually filling out contact forms or booking service appointments? Track this by channel to see which efforts are paying off.
  5. Referring domain growth. How many quality websites are linking to you, and is that number growing?
  6. Technical SEO health. Are you staying on top of broken links, duplicate content, and site speed issues?

Keep an eye on competitors, too by monitoring their keyword rankings, tracking their content output, and setting up alerts for new rankings, backlink changes, and web mentions.

You can track all of the above using Ahrefs, and this guide will show you how to set it all up: SEO Tracking For Beginners: All You Need to Know. That includes form completions, custom events, and even funnels, all in the same tool.

And if you work for an agency, you can set up a report that updates on autopilot for each of your clients using Ahrefs’ Report Builder.

Tying different metrics together in Ahrefs Report Builder.

Final thoughts

My colleague Despina made me realize that ranking on Google is still important, but it’s not the only thing that matters anymore. People want real, honest opinions—from Reddit threads to TikTok videos (don’t miss our new TikTok SEO guide), forum discussions, YouTube reviews, and even AI tools like ChatGPT.

I’ve done it myself. It’s not that Google didn’t have answers—it had too many. So, I turned to ChatGPT and Gemini to help compare car sizes, safety ratings, reliability, warranty nitty gritty details and even wait time for spare parts on imported brands before I made the final decision.

The point is: real buying decisions are happening everywhere, not just on search engines. SEO is still the base, but if you want to stand out, your brand needs to show up wherever people are searching, scrolling, and asking for advice. In other words, your next move is “search everywhere optimization”.

Got questions or comments? Let me know on LinkedIn.

 


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Channel performance and more reporting coming to Performance Max – Google Blog

Google Ads
Apr 30, 2025
We’re introducing new reporting to Performance Max to give you insights into your channel performance, Search terms, and assets.
Performance Max gives you the full power of Google’s channels and AI, all in one campaign to maximize your results. And now, it’s used by over one million advertisers! 1 We’re dedicated to constantly improving it so that you can achieve your business goals across all of Google — including Search, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, Display Network, Search partners and Maps. In 2024, for example, we launched more than 90 quality improvements in Performance Max that increased conversions and conversion value by more than 10% for advertisers. 2 These are automatically delivering stronger performance without any work needed on your part! At the same time, we’re also building new features that give you more visibility and ways to optimize your campaign.
Today, we’re excited to introduce new channel-level reporting in Performance Max — a top-requested feature. We’re also adding full search terms reporting and more detailed asset reporting that shows you all the metrics for individual assets.
The open beta for channel performance reporting will start in a few weeks. Tune in to Google Marketing Live on May 21 to get more details on how to join! Let’s dive in.
Channel performance reporting helps you understand how your Performance Max campaign is delivering results across Google’s full range of channels and inventory. On the new “Channel performance” page, you’ll find a campaign-level performance summary along with a new data visualization that makes it easier to dive into which channels you’re engaging customers on and how they’re contributing to your conversion goals.
Drill into specific channels to understand how they play a part in driving performance and to find potential areas of improvement. For example, a home and garden retailer might see that they’re performing well on YouTube and decide to invest in additional video assets to drive even more conversions. We’ll also surface other helpful reports on the Channel performance page. For instance, to further explore Display and YouTube results, you’ll find a link to placement reports.
See how your various channels deliver performance against your conversion goals. Click into a specific channel to learn more and use those insights to improve your performance.
You’ll also get key format level breakdowns across channels — especially when it comes to video and ads with product feeds. If you’re a retailer, ads using product data can include Shopping ads for Search, dynamic remarketing ads for Display, and video ads that showcase your products on YouTube. And how might advertisers take action on these insights? Going back to the home and garden business, they might find that their ads with product data aren’t showing up as much month-over-month, and decide to focus on improving the imagery in their product feed.
Use format-level breakdowns to see how video ads or ads with product feeds have performed and contributed to your goals, including a breakdown of Shopping ads using product data on Search.
Further down the page, the channel distribution table delivers a more granular view of your Performance Max results, including clicks, conversions, cost and more. And we know it’s important to be able to share and access reporting outside of the Google Ads UI, so we’ve made this table data downloadable.
Dive deeper into your channel performance with a granular view of metrics for all your channels including Search, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, Display Network, Search partners and Maps in the channel distribution table. You’ll also get key format-level breakdowns, including a breakdown of ads using product data. Download this data and share it with ease.
To find more ways to improve your performance, you’ll find diagnostics that surface potential issues on specific channels so you know where to prioritize your efforts. For example, the home and garden business might find that they’re not serving on Maps due to missing store locations, or that they’re limited on Search because their landing pages aren’t as relevant to consumer search queries as they could be. As a result, they could activate the final URL expansion feature and use Google AI to choose landing pages that are a better match for user intent.
Diagnostics will show you potential issues you can troubleshoot on different channels.
It’s key to balance looking at your overall Performance Max results with digging into specific channel performance. Performance Max focuses on your main conversion goals, constantly looking across all channels to find the most valuable conversions that maximize your total campaign return in real time.
People aren’t tied to a single channel as they search, shop, scroll and stream. And the “best” channel for a customer in one context may not be the best channel in another context. Learn more about marginal ROI optimization and why looking at the average return from one channel — especially over short timeframes — doesn’t tell the full story.
Search terms reporting is rolling out now, on top of existing search terms insights. This means you’ll get the same granularity of Search reporting you do for Search and Standard Shopping campaigns, right in Performance Max.
Use this information to create new text assets geared towards your highest-performing search terms. Or if you discover any search terms that aren’t a good fit for your business, apply campaign-level negative keywords or brand exclusions as needed, while keeping an eye on your performance to make sure you’re not limiting your reach.
Today, asset-level reporting shows you which assets are driving the most conversions for your business. We’re now adding impressions, clicks and cost so you can see a wider range of metrics, and expanding this reporting beyond Performance Max to Search and Display campaigns. Use this data to understand which asset types and themes drive the most impact so you can prioritize what to build next and maximize your variety and Ad Strength.
We’re adding new metrics to asset reporting like clicks, cost, impressions, conversion value/cost, average CPC, and more.
Thanks to your feedback, we’ve continued to improve Performance Max so that you get the visibility you need to understand and continue to drive better results. Don’t miss out on more Google Ads innovations! Register and watch Google Marketing Live on May 21 to get more news and updates.
Google Internal Data, April 2025
Google Internal Data, 2024
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Build rich, interactive web apps with an updated Gemini 2.5 Pro – Google Blog

May 06, 2025
Today we’re releasing early access to Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (I/O edition), an updated version of 2.5 Pro that has significantly improved capabilities for coding, especially building compelling interactive web apps. We were going to release this update at Google I/O in a couple weeks, but based on the overwhelming enthusiasm for this model, we wanted to get it in your hands sooner so people can start building.
This builds on the overwhelmingly positive feedback to Gemini 2.5 Pro’s coding and multimodal reasoning capabilities. Beyond UI-focused development, these improvements extend to other coding tasks such as code transformation, code editing and developing complex agentic workflows.
See the result of this prompt in the Gemini app.
With these enhanced capabilities, 2.5 Pro now leads on the WebDev Arena Leaderboard, surpassing the previous version by +147 Elo points. This leaderboard measures human preference for a model’s ability to build aesthetically pleasing and functional web apps. It also continues to build on its strong foundation in native multimodality and long context; it has state-of-the-art performance in video understanding, with a score of 84.8% on the VideoMME benchmark.
Check out the Video to Learning app on AI Studio.
Developers can start building with this updated Gemini 2.5 Pro in the Gemini API via Google AI Studio and Vertex AI. It’s also available for users in the Gemini app, powering features like Canvas, and enabling anyone to vibe code and build interactive web apps with a single prompt.
Let’s stay in touch. Get the latest news from Google in your inbox.
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Report: Climate goals at Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft have ‘lost their meaning’ – Trellis Group

Analysis by NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch asks ‘how do we improve the rules of the game?’ Read More
 
Five tech companies often cited as exemplars for emissions reductions ambition face a strategy crisis exacerbated by growth plans for artificial intelligence and outdated greenhouse gas accounting practices, finds an analysis by two European think tanks.
The companies — Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft — are closely evaluated in a chapter of the 2025 Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor, published June 26 by NewClimate Institute and Carbon Market Watch. “Tech companies’ GHG emissions targets appear to have lost their meaning and relevance,” the analysis found.
Tech companies can reclaim their leadership positions by recasting their renewable electricity investments to more closely match the hourly energy consumption of cloud computing operations; innovating to increase the lifespan of the hardware in their product lines and data centers; and boosting the amount of recycled materials and critical minerals they use, according to the report.
“Our real criticism is about the system: how do we improve the rules of the game,” said Thomas Day, a climate policy analyst with NewClimate.
Amazon, which received an advance copy of the report, said through a spokesperson that it “mischaracterizes our data and makes inaccurate assumptions throughout — its own disclaimer even acknowledges [NewClimate Institute] cannot guarantee its factual accuracy. By contrast, we have a proven, independently audited, seven-year track record of transparently delivering facts that follow global reporting standards.” 
All five companies remain resolute in commitments made at the beginning of this decade. Microsoft, which in May reported a 23.4 percent cumulative increase in its carbon footprint since 2020, is “pragmatically optimistic” about its plan.
“We remain committed to developing and supporting innovative solutions to reduce emissions from key data center and operational inputs including electricity, building materials, chips and fuels, focusing on long-term solutions over short-term stopgaps,” a company spokesperson said in response to questions about this report. “To do this, we have been adapting our strategies to leverage new sustainability technologies and address the challenges of expanding energy demand.
Google, Amazon and Meta have likewise reported increases since their baseline years. They have yet to publish their latest updates, although Google’s update is due imminently.
Apple, Google and Meta did not respond to requests for comment.
Energy demand for data centers grew 12 percent annually between 2017 and 2024, and there’s nothing to suggest a reversal. “If energy consumption continues to rise unchecked and without adequate oversight, these tech companies’ existing GHG emissions reduction targets may likely be unachievable,” the report said, “as companies may struggle to install additional renewable electricity generation fast enough to meet this increase as well as reduce existing emissions.” 
Apple has so far cut emissions by 60 percent since 2015, according to its April update, but its data center exposure is smaller than the other companies and its calculations rely heavily on avoided-emissions estimates.
Apple’s claims also lean heavily on its push to get its supply chain to transition to renewables. So far, key suppliers have brought 17.8 gigawatts of solar and wind online, which represents about 95 percent of its spending. The goal is to get them to use renewable energy for 100 percent of their production by 2030.
“Apple is the only one of these companies with a meaningful target for supply chain electricity from renewables,” said Day. “This remains a huge blindspot for this sector.”
At least one-third of the emissions footprint from tech sector companies comes from energy used to manufacture computer hardware, according to the report.
All five companies based their emissions reductions targets on current guidance from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which allows them to write down their energy footprints with renewable electricity certificates. Many are sourced through virtual power purchase agreements or deals with utilities to put more solar, wind and other renewables on the grid. 
Those methods are being revised, with huge implications for how they’ll be able to report on progress in the future. One change under consideration, for example, would require the companies to match location-based energy consumption with renewables on an hourly basis. That’s stricter than the approach they can use today. 
While Microsoft and Google have embraced the hourly approach, Amazon and Meta advocate a different method that focuses on the potential of corporate renewables investments to reduce emissions on fossil fuels-heavy grids. Apple’s position is somewhere in the middle. 
The bottom line: “The companies will likely need to update their targets in accordance with the revised accounting rules,” the report said.
The tech giants could improve the credibility of their emissions reductions targets by setting more specific targets for increasing the lifespan of the hardware — both the electronic devices sold to consumers and those used in their data centers. None of the five companies considered have set specific targets to increase the longevity of their hardware, according to the report.
“We need more benchmarks and guidance around this,” Day said. “But they need to move ahead of the rules of the community.”
The analysis also recommends more focus on increasing the share of recycled materials and critical minerals in servers, personal computers and other devices. So far, their commitments are limited. 
Meta “prioritizes” recycled content. Apple aims to use 15 priority materials including rare earths from recycled sources, but isn’t specific about a target date. Google has goals for its consumer products, although not for data centers. Microsoft started mining hard drives for rare earths in April and Amazon supports recycling and trade-in programs. Neither, though, have specific targets.
[Join Trellis Network to gain the powerful peer network you need to drive more impact across your organization.]

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9 Chrome Extensions for SEO That Will Streamline Your Workflow – Backlinko

9 Chrome Extensions for SEO That Will Streamline Your Workflow  Backlinko
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The rise of AI in marketing automation: How technology is redefining engagement – Marketing Tech News

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The rise of AI in marketing automation: How technology is redefining engagement Duncan is an award-winning technology industry analyst, specialising in cloud computing, blockchain, martech and edge computing.
With the rapidly evolving world of digital marketing, firms are constantly searching for new ways to engage consumers, personalise interactions and optimise their time and efforts. Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI). This has been an absolute game-changer for marketing automation, revolutionising the way brands communicate with audiences.
It’s no longer science fiction. From chatbots and predictive analytics to hyper-personalised mail campaigns and intelligent customer segmentation, AI solutions are turning marketing campaigns smarter, faster and more efficient.
Traditionally, marketers employed data-driven insights, segmentation by hand, and A/B testing to tweak their strategies. AI accomplishes this on a much larger scale by scanning huge volumes of consumer data in real-time, finding patterns, and delivering customised content with unparalleled precision.
Bryce Hall, associate partner at strategy and consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company, says the initial wave of excitement and novelty around generative AI is evolving into an intentional focus on how to create value from these technologies. 
“Executives are rightfully looking for a return on their AI investments,” he explains. “In many cases, they are paring back their strategies from trying to apply gen AI everywhere to prioritising the domains that have the greatest potential.
“We’re now far enough into the gen AI era to see patterns among companies that are capturing value.” 
One significant difference, he notes, is that these companies focus as much on driving adoption and scaling as they do on the up-front technology development. This is not just hand-waving. Instead, they are following specific management practices that enable them to be successful – such as developing a clear road map for scaling, establishing and tracking KPIs, and driving change management by ensuring senior leaders are actively engaged in driving gen AI adoption. 
“The fact that so many companies continue to struggle with these management practices is a testament to the fact that they’re not so simple to get right,” Hall says.
“In addition, companies that report capturing value from gen AI are ‘rewiring’ their business processes to effectively embed gen AI solutions while appropriately incorporating.”
AI enhances efficiency by reducing time spent on monotonous marketing activities, giving teams the liberty to focus on strategy and imagination. It can dramatically improve customer experience through personalisation-driven interactions, making experiences more relevant and efficient. AI can also empower marketers to make better-informed decisions, optimise campaigns and boost conversions with data-led insights. On top of all this, it makes it possible for small and large enterprises to grow their marketing activity, leveraging advanced strategies without having to use huge teams or significant resources.
Michael Chui, senior fellow at McKinsey & Company notes that things are moving fast in the field of AI. “But even as we try to keep up with the pace of technological advancements, we are also learning that AI only makes an impact in the real world when enterprises adapt to the new capabilities that these technologies enable,” he says. “That’s what we are hearing in our individual conversations with business leaders, and it is also reflected in the global data we have collected in our latest survey.”
The use of AI has continued to increase, he explains, and more companies are using AI in a growing number of business functions. They are using gen AI to reinvent aspects of their enterprises: marketing and sales, product and service development, service operations, corporate IT, and software engineering. They are also increasingly reporting top-line and cost benefits from deploying gen AI solutions. And many are now using gen AI in their daily lives. 
Chui adds: “Interestingly, it’s C-level executives who are leading in their own use, but their employees could be much more ready to use gen AI at work than their C-suite leaders expect.”
What 5 big brands are doing with AI in marketing automation
Amazon: Amazon uses AI to deliver personalised shopping experiences by analyzing customer browsing, purchasing history, and preferences. Its recommendation engine suggests products based on these insights, increasing conversion rates and average order value. The system also adapts in real-time to customer behavior, creating highly relevant recommendations that improve customer satisfaction and drive sales.
Netflix: Netflix’s AI-driven recommendation system uses data from user activity, like watched content and ratings, to suggest personalised shows and movies. This enhances user engagement by offering tailored content, leading to longer viewing sessions. Netflix’s machine learning algorithms continuously refine recommendations, keeping the platform addictive and customer-centric.
Spotify: Spotify utilises AI for personalised playlists, such as ‘Discover Weekly’ and ‘Release Radar’, which curate music based on user listening habits. AI algorithms analyse music preferences and listening patterns to recommend songs, keeping users engaged and enhancing the overall experience by introducing them to new music they are likely to enjoy.
Nike: Nike uses AI to personalise customer experiences both online and in-store. Through its Nike Training Club app, AI recommends workouts based on user preferences and fitness goals. Additionally, Nike’s website and app offer personalised product suggestions, with AI analyzing purchase history, browsing behavior, and even social media activity. This ensures customers receive relevant recommendations, improving engagement and boosting sales.
H&M: H&M uses AI to optimise email marketing by sending personalised product recommendations based on customer browsing behavior, purchase history, and style preferences. AI analyzes customer data to deliver relevant and timely promotions, increasing engagement and driving sales while enhancing the customer experience by presenting them with products they’re more likely to buy.
While AI offers immense benefits, it also presents challenges. Data privacy concerns, algorithm biases, and the risk of over-automation are key issues that businesses must address. Marketers must balance automation with human oversight to ensure ethical AI usage and maintain brand authenticity.
It’s a technology that will only become more sophisticated, integrating deeper with augmented reality, voice search and customer sentiment analysis. As technology continues to evolve, businesses that embrace AI-driven marketing automation will stay ahead in the competitive landscape.
Alexander Sukharevsky, senior partner and global co-leader of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, says: “The more we see organisations using AI, the more we recognise that it takes a top-down process to really move the needle. Effective AI implementation starts with a fully committed C-suite and, ideally, an engaged board. Many companies’ instinct is to delegate implementation to the IT or digital department, but over and over again, this turns out to be a recipe for failure.”
There are several reasons for this, he explains. The first is that getting real value out of AI requires transformation, not just new technology. It’s a question of successful change management and mobilisation, which is why C-suite leadership is essential. It’s also a potentially expensive transformation, requiring intensive use of sometimes scarce resources and talent. 
“A lot rides on how those resources are made available,” he explains. ”And that’s an executive-level call requiring nuanced decision-making that reflects the balance organisations must strike between efficient resource use and broad empowerment – a balance that must be constantly reevaluated as the technology and organisation evolve.
“As organisations become more fluent with AI, it will essentially become embedded in all functions, leaving leadership to focus on higher-level tasks like impact monitoring and talent development rather than on implementation.”
Investing in education and training is going to be essential, suggests Conor Coughlan, CMO at software firm Armis.
“But, as modern marketers, I’m confident that we can all easily bridge the gap between traditional marketing practices and AI-driven or powered strategies, ultimately making the best use of the AI tools and technologies to enhance our programs and overall decision-making.”
In theory, the array of AI tools available promises to simplify our lives, he explains. “Time will tell. But I believe the future is undoubtedly bright. Just as we previously transitioned from analogue to digital, marketers will pivot once more to adapt to this new world.”
Interested in hearing leading global brands discuss subjects like this in person? Find out more about Digital Marketing World Forum (#DMWF) Europe, London, North America, and Singapore.
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