Weekly Marketing News Update: Google AI Ads, CRM Wars, TikTok Surge & Privacy Updates

Benjamin Ard (00:00.162)
Marketers, this is your weekly update for the news that you need to know. Martech.com confirms Google is experimenting with integrating ads into its generative AI search experience. Currently, Google's AI-generated answers don't contain ads, but this is likely to change soon.

Early feedback suggests the conversational nature of AI-generated answers can significantly reduce ad click-through rates. Keep your eyes out for these ads, something worth testing, something worth noting. Also pay attention to your current ad spend and all the different things that you're doing right now to make sure that honestly you're not tanking with the value that you're getting out of those ads. Google ads are enforcing new brand guidelines.

SeRoundtable.com reports, Google is enforcing updated brand guidelines in Google Ads starting March of 2025. So this month, advertisers must proactively update their official brand name and logo assets in Google Ads before the deadline. If you don't, Google is going to automatically select the top performing brand name and logo from past ads, potentially causing branding inconsistencies. It's a pretty simple thing.

If you're running Google Ads, log into your account, make sure everything's up to date and you won't have anything to worry about here. Both Salesforce and Microsoft unveiled new powerful AI-driven sales assistance this past week. Salesforce introduced AgentForce 2DX, an AI agent embedded deeply within its platform.

designed to handle sales tasks and respond proactively to data changes. Microsoft countered with sales copilot for Dynamics 365, which integrates across multiple CRM platforms. Each company is also offering customization tools. Salesforce has Agent Exchange, it's a marketplace and developer toolkit, and Microsoft through its copilot studio. The rise of your CRM.

Benjamin Ard (01:40.49)
automatically using AI to help you complete sales is starting to be a big deal. You need to work closely with your sales team and make sure you understand what these updates look like. See how you can feed these different AI assistance and tools and all sorts of stuff. Feed it with the right content, feed it with the right branding, the right message. Because as soon as you have systems and tools that are automatically reaching out to potential customers and prospects, you're going to want to make sure that the message is on point.

Don't let one team run off without the other. Make sure that you have really good internal alignment right now because there's gonna be a lot of AI experimentation. Make sure everyone's on the same page. Make sure that you are testing, learning, and walking into this. Don't make it a siloed effort. Really collaborate with your team to make sure you get as much value out of this change as possible. TikTok might be the next social media platform for your B2B business. About 15 % of product discoveries now begin on TikTok.

Average advertisers are seeing a $2 return for every $1 of ad spend. TikTok recently launched TikTok One, a new all-in-one creative platform replacing its previous creator marketplace, simplifying collaboration between brands and creators.

Across all of social media, short form video continues to dominate engagement, especially on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, even with B2B. Marketers are increasingly shifting influencer strategies towards micro influencers and employee advocates, prioritizing niche authenticity over broader celebrity style endorsements. You might need to try TikTok and give it a shot. Get your cameras out, turn it to vertical mode and test out TikTok. Influencer marketing.

Most people in B2B know that this is really helpful, but TikTok honestly is optimizing for this. It's not a bad idea to test your B2B brand on TikTok and some of these other platforms like YouTube Shorts as well to see if your brand fits in, that you can get some top of the funnel exposure and drive some traffic to your site. If you're looking for a new experiment.

Benjamin Ard (03:36.132)
TikTok may be the place to try in the near future. LinkedIn is cracking down on popular lead gen tools. Reports are showing that LinkedIn recently restricted popular B2B lead generation tools like Apollo and seamless.ai and they're removing their company pages and integrations from the platform as of March 6th. The restrictions appear to be related to browser extensions that scrape LinkedIn user data. Practice is clearly prohibited by LinkedIn's terms of services.

Apollo CEO confirmed they're actively in talks with LinkedIn to resolve this issue, emphasizing that their core services remain functional off platform. There is a whole slew of data scraping and lead generation and lead finder services. I'm sure you're working with a couple of these. Make sure that when you're working with one that they actually are not.

breaking the terms and services of some of their data sources. LinkedIn and all of these tools are wonderful tools, but if you're looking to automate everything on these platforms, places like LinkedIn don't want that. They want genuine, authentic interaction. It's something you should keep in mind and honestly dedicate people to it and not necessarily just automation. Wilmer Hale reports a wave of new US state privacy laws coming into effect in 2025.

Including in states like Iowa and Delaware, these laws typically allow consumers to opt out of targeted ads and mandate detailed data protection assessments for higher risk data practices. Many of these laws specifically exclude pure business contact data. Beneficial for B2B marketers, but tactics like retargeting or personalized outreach could still trigger compliance requirements. Martech experts.

highlight increased scrutiny from regulators and consumers pushing B2B brands to adopt clearer privacy notices and simpler opt out options. Take the time this month to look at your privacy policies and how you handle data and make sure that you are absolutely above board. There's going to be more more regulations about the things that B2B marketers can and cannot do. Focus on the sound tactics and strategies that you know will work that aren't manipulating people's data.

Benjamin Ard (05:33.987)
that isn't on the edge and what people would call gray hat for SEO, just kind of flirting with the line, but you're not exactly sure. Try to stay above board. If you haven't figured out methods to be productive while doing that, continue to experiment, continue to figure out ways to keep your content and your marketing, everything in check and respect people's privacy. And honestly, pay attention to the regulations because they're going to change. A lot of them are going to change, especially with AI having access to a ton of data. A lot of platforms are going to lock a lot of things down. So it's up to you to make sure that you're on

on of the new rules and regulations. We'll keep bringing you regulation updates inside of these weekly videos as well.

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