TLDR Marketing 2026-02-13

Social media continues to play a growing role in AI sourcing. Reddit dominates with 3-4% of all citations, 99% of which are individual threads rather than profiles. YouTube and LinkedIn reward authority, with 65% of YouTube citations pointing to channels and 47% of LinkedIn citations to personal profiles. Instagram favors content, as reels and posts make up 65% of citations versus 30% for profiles.

A Forrester poll in the US, UK, and Canada found that 83% would accept ads in AI chatbot free tiers, while only 6% would switch to a paid tier to avoid ads. OpenAI expects ads to help cover about $1.4tr in computing costs and projects that 8.5% of users (about 220 million people) will pay for an ad-free plan, while Anthropic is avoiding ads and targeting enterprise buyers. Trust in large tech companies is falling (from 32% to 24% since 2020), and concern is growing that ads could influence chatbot answers.

US ad spend is projected to increase 9.5% in 2026, with $9 billion in incremental dollars tied to midterms, the Winter Olympics, and the FIFA World Cup. Social and CTV will lead channel expansion at 14.6% and 13.8% YoY as buyers prioritize scalable, measurable environments. Economic risk persists with a one-in-three chance of recession, and 90% of buyers are concerned about tariffs, though those cutting spend due to tariffs fell from 45% to 30% YoY as budgets shift toward performance media. Rising acquisition costs have reduced its strategic weight by 10 points, yet 54% still rank new customer growth as a top objective.

Brands overcomplicate lead scoring by combining revenue potential and likelihood to close into one number. The better approach is to keep them separate. Use revenue potential to tier leads based on size or deal value, and use conversion likelihood driven by firmographic fit and engagement signals to score them. Focus on the few factors that actually correlate with closed deals.

The guidance represents a reversal of a decade of search best practices that rewarded tight segmentation and manual optimization. Google's position is that AI models can process real-time auction dynamics and contextual data at a scale no human team can match. Early adopters reportedly see improved conversion rates after consolidation, but marketers will give up granular reporting and tighter control for algorithmic performance gains that are harder to report and explain.

12% of people click through to verify AI recommendations. Evertune shows you the publishers AI cites in your category, then helps you run programmatic ads on their sites. That means you can get seen in AI search even when your brand isn't mentioned in the answer. Try it

The Operators Growth Summit is a one-day free online event on February 18 that will feature 25+ DTC and ecommerce leaders sharing growth tactics. It includes three hands-on breakout sessions, plus a rapid-fire lightning panel of 10 experts. The event is designed for operators seeking real-world guidance, not theory.

FAQ sections help pages perform better for AI search because they pack high-similarity answers into very little text. Research that compared dense prose, FAQs, and structured content across five queries and multiple models showed that FAQ content had the highest similarity scores in almost all cases. AI systems often work under a grounding budget of about 2K words per query, so compact FAQ blocks are easier for them to process and reuse. Screaming Frog connects to the OpenAI API and can generate FAQs at scale by crawling pages and sending page text to a model, and one test produced 150%+ FAQs in about five minutes. AI-generated FAQs work best on longer pages and still need human review before publishing.

AI coding tools now let marketers build free, lightweight satellite apps that replace static lead magnets and drive growth across the full funnel. These micro-apps give instant value, require little maintenance, and connect users directly to the main product through demos, calculators, benchmarks, and interactive reports instead of gated PDFs. Tools that once took weeks or months and full engineering teams can now be built in hours or days by one person. Companies report strong results such as high traffic, new signups, and cross-activation into core products from ungated tools like AI visibility and product benchmark apps. The approach works best when the core product relies on unique data, network effects, or trust, since simple point solutions can now be easily recreated.

McDonald's launched the limited-time McNugget Caviar kit before Valentine's Day after a viral high low trend. It was inspired by a $100 nugget and caviar dish at the 2025 US Open. The free kit included Baerii sturgeon caviar, crème fraîche, a mother-of-pearl spoon, and a $25 nugget voucher. The promotion hits a sweet spot by being free and culturally valuable. It lets a $5 meal chain wink at a $100 dish while inviting fans to play along.

3 questions to ask during a discovery call include situational, gap, and future state.

Cloudflare's new feature serves AI agents your site content with fewer tokens, which saves resources and provides optimized content for both users and AI.

Tips on LinkedIn features and analytics that increase reach and content discovery.