We have numerous updates to dive into this week. Some standouts include Meta’s new tool to weed out certain terms for AI ad creation, LinkedIn’s expanding verification and YouTube’s new community metrics. Read on to see how these updates can inform your strategy.

Almost 60% of marketing spend is allocated to performance tactics, yet only 20% of companies believe they are “performance-led”, resulting in several challenges and contradictions within organisations, an international study has found.

AI Overviews don’t just disrupt paid search – they reveal new openings. Learn how to protect revenue and drive performance.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT still dominates the market with 25.4 million mobile users, but its 17.9% growth over the same period trails Copilot’s 175% surge to 8.8 million. Google’s Gemini also saw traction, with mobile usage growing 68% to 14.3 million users, due in part to its being preloaded on Pixel phones.

Apple is developing an AI-powered "answer engine" called World Knowledge Answers to enhance Siri, Safari, and Spotlight with concise, privacy-focused responses to multimodal queries. Building on Apple Intelligence, it aims to compete with rivals like ChatGPT, with a potential launch in 2026.

Ad-funded streaming now reaches 30% of UK adults each week, up from 11% in 2024 and 10% in 2023. The growth has been driven by a combination of factors including price hikes for ad-free options and Amazon Prime Video’s decision to auto-enroll existing customers into its ad tier when it launched in January 2024.

OpenAI says it’s developing an AI-powered hiring platform to connect businesses and employees, a service that would put the outfit in close competition with LinkedIn. The product is called the OpenAI Jobs Platform, and the company expects to launch the service by mid-2026, an OpenAI spokesperson told TechCrunch.

While consumers admit artificial intelligence is impacting how they search for products and services, 61% wish they could turn off AI summaries.

Eighty-five percent of consumers say they are more likely to trust brands that advertise on premium media, also driving greater purchase intent and greater association, according to new research.

Ensuring that you’re aware of the latest trends in your niche is key to maximizing your potential, and there’s a range of tools that you can use to research and analyze relevant trends and topics, to ensure that you maintain awareness of what’s happening at any given time.