How do influencers and social platforms affect how people consume content, research and buy products, and connect with community and brands? Learn more about how consumer social media usage and purchase behavior are impacted by influencers.

Will you be using X for your holiday promotions this year? Elon and Co. have been busy touting the platform’s improving ad offerings, now powered by its Grok AI tool, which enables advertisers to rely on Grok to find the right audience for their promotions, and optimize performance in the app.

And if your audience is active there, it could be worth considering, and this week, X has launched a new holiday marketing hub to help guide your X ads approach this coming season.

Shoppers bounce between apps, sites, and screens faster than you can say “attribution.” Expectations stay sky‑high, budgets don’t, and every quarter someone asks you to squeeze more juice from the same orange. Here’s what’s piling on the pressure:

Budgets playing limbo. CFOs keep lowering the bar, expecting more revenue from the same (or smaller) spend.

Channels multiplying overnight. Retail media networks, social platforms, video streams, connected TV – keeping up with the must-have channels can make your head spin.

Unilever’s pledge to commit half of ad spend to social is just one piece of a larger evolution for a category trying to shed its stodginess and win over Gen Z. More CPG marketers are betting on social- and influencer-first strategies to modernize. Experts say the category needs to be open to creative risk and different ways of working with agencies to succeed.

Social media has been around for ages in marketing terms, but its current era feels like it started in the pandemic haze of 2020 with a TikTok video of a man sipping Ocean Spray while gliding along on a skateboard and listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” The blissful clip, later expanded into a TV campaign by the cranberry juice maker, led Ocean Spray to fly off of store shelves — and helped place “Dreams” back on the Billboard charts — while serving as an early indicator of TikTok’s distinct power in sparking viral product sensations.

Artificial intelligence has moved from experimental to operational in marketing. Today, AI writes content, recommends products, personalizes experiences across platforms and channels, and automates workflows across the customer lifecycle. However, despite this rapid integration, the outcomes often don’t meet expectations.

A recent industry report shows that while 73% of enterprises have adopted AI technologies, only 52 % are realizing the results they had anticipated. This signals a fundamental disconnect between deployment and performance. The culprit is not model design or computing power; it’s data quality.

Retail marketers are under pressure—AI is the advantage. Marketing teams are being asked to produce more campaigns, in more formats, across more channels, with tighter timelines and limited resources. The pressure is real, and the stakes are measurable.

The AI Playbook for Retail Marketers by Typeface reveals how top retail brands are using AI to meet that pressure head-on, streamlining workflows, increasing personalization, and accelerating time to market. Built on insights from over 300 marketing leaders, this report offers a clear look at how AI is driving real impact inside retail organizations.

It may sound like hyperbole to say the world has changed, but the evidence is everywhere: CEOs are demanding their teams level up or step aside. In fact, research from McKinsey found that 74% of CEOs think marketers lack commercial acumen. As traditional marketing loses its effectiveness, your role and influence — and that of the marketing department as a whole — can diminish as well.

These changes and those initial warning signs are indications why you must also change now. With that in mind, this playbook is designed to help you navigate, lead, and influence the next chapter of marketing. By reading, you’ll learn about four significant transformations that are integral to the new way of marketing. Download it now to find out how you can:

How are eCommerce brands driving growth, loyalty, and performance in an uncertain market? Marketing strategies are being reshaped by shifting platform and macro economics, changing user behavior, and the dominance of China-based apps in a landscape influenced by trade pressures.

As the holiday season approaches, marketers face both opportunity and complexity. While moderate growth is expected, uncertainty remains high. To help marketers plan Q4 and beyond, this report analyzes $4.2 billion in ad spend to surface key trends and benchmarks from Q4 2023 through May 2025.