AI didn’t kill influencer marketing, it made trust the only currency that matters. As AI-generated content floods the internet, standing out amid the slop has become the central challenge. Even as AI determines which brands are visible online, trust now drives consumers’ attention, and people trust the authenticity of influencers. The brands winning the next…
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Food for Your Brain.
Latest Trends and Best Practices from our Thought Leaders and Industry Experts.
Mindgruve Named to the Inc. 5000 for the Eighth Time
Once again, Mindgruve has earned a place on the Inc. 5000, the magazine’s annual ranking of America’s fastest-growing private companies. Ranking is based on one objective measure: percentage revenue growth from 2022 to 2025. The prestigious recognition serves as independent verification of financial momentum, and it places Mindgruve among good company. This year’s list includes…
Read MoreThe 28-Word Website: Why AI Cites Your Competitor Instead of You
The short version: A competitor is being cited in your place inside AI answers, for a reason that has nothing to do with product, price, or brand strength. Most AI crawlers don’t run JavaScript, so a JavaScript-rendered site hands ChatGPT a nearly blank page and the AI quotes whichever brand it can read. Standard marketing…
Read MoreMeta Rebuilt Its Ad Structures. Time To Rethink Your Strategy.
Meta dedicated the last two years to dismantling the campaign machinery that advertisers spent over a decade perfecting. Segmented ad sets, manual audience controls, tightly gated targeting: much of the hand-setting that marketers used to do themselves is either deprecated or on its way out. The platform is betting big on AI, and it wants…
Read MoreSeparating Signal From Spectacle at Cannes Lions 2026
The brands that stood out at Cannes aren’t stocking up on AI tools. They’re connecting entire systems and keeping creativity where value compounds. Mindgruve went to Cannes to meet with: Our goal was to see the roadmaps early so our clients can build for what comes next. Five shifts stood out during those meetings. 1….
Read MoreMindgruve Named Microsoft Advertising’s Global Emerging Partner of the Year
Mindgruve has received a double honor at the Microsoft Advertising Partner Celebration: Global Emerging Partner of the Year, which recognizes agencies in the partner tier of the program for outstanding engagement, collaboration, and revenue growth, and the Product Champion Award, which honors partners that champion new features to deliver client results. “Being named Global Emerging Partner of…
Read MoreA Social Media Playbook for Retail Brands
Social media used to build awareness, chase follower counts, and push people toward a website. That job is gone. We called shoppable features a promising add-on when we published four social media best practices for retail brands in 2024. They run the whole channel now: discovery, decision, and purchase happen in the same scroll. Big…
Read MoreWhy Your Amazon Prime Day Strategy Is a Multi-Week Campaign, Not a 2-Day Sprint
Prime Day moved to June 23-26 this year, and most teams are treating that as a logistics problem to solve. The shift exposed something bigger: a strategy problem that was there all along. “Prime Day landing in June is definitely a new challenge,” I recently heard Stephen Reagan, our Chief Commerce & Media Officer, tell…
Read MoreAI Now Decides Social Media Distribution, but the Marketer Decides Direction
Meta’s Andromeda system now prioritizes creative performance over signals like audience targeting, to determine ad delivery, marking a fundamental shift in how campaigns are optimized. Audience targeting precision matters far less than it used to. That shift reaches every brand spending on the platform, and Meta isn’t alone. Platform algorithms across Reddit, LinkedIn, and every…
Read MoreMarketplaces & AI Are Rewriting Automotive Discovery
There’s a transaction happening before your customer sees your first impression. A customer needs brake pads. They’re not Googling your brand name. They’re typing “brake pads for 2019 F-150” into Amazon, or an LLM, or Google. Alexa for Shopping (formerly Rufus), Google’s AIOs, and other AI agents synthesize reviews, evaluate fitment compatibility, and present a…
Read MoreBOPIS Isn’t a Feature. It’s Now Table Stakes for Automotive Retail.
A customer can research the best burritos in their city, order one using a promo found online, track the delivery in real time, and be eating it in twenty minutes, all without leaving their couch. Replacing your car’s shocks can require entering the year, make, model, and VIN, knowing the mounting structure and ride height,…
Read MoreWe Tested ChatGPT Ads in Beta. Here’s What We Discovered.
Mindgruve secured access to ChatGPT’s closed advertising beta earlier this year. The program ran from February to April 2026. The platform is now open to any advertiser through the self-serve Ads Manager, but many of the insights we uncovered in beta still hold true. Here are specific takeaways from our experience that can help you…
Read MoreThe $70 Billion Auto Industry Disruption
The EV transition didn’t go as planned. But the stalled electrification timeline isn’t the disruption that matters most right now. Marketplaces, retail media networks, and AI have redrawn who controls discovery, pricing, and the customer relationship. That redistribution is where $70 billion is flowing, and it doesn’t care which emblem is on the hood or…
Read MoreThe Automotive Aftermarket Power Shift
Sixty percent of automotive aftermarket businesses expect demand to grow in 2026. The catalyst has nothing to do with a breakthrough product or a clever brand campaign. Sticker prices on new cars are doing the work. Today’s economy and new vehicle costs have pushed American consumers to hold onto what they already own, and that…
Read MoreWhere AI Scales — and Humans Still Matter
POSSIBLE 2026 brought together some of the brightest minds in marketing — 7,500 attendees, 300-plus exhibitors, and a packed schedule of roundtables and fireside chats set against the backdrop of Miami Beach. Unsurprisingly, AI dominated the conversation. But so did the tension around it. For all the talk of automation, optimization, and scale, a clear…
Read MoreTaming the Spaghetti Monster: Why the Marketing Funnel is Different, Not Dead
It’s a flow that’s so familiar by now that it’s almost accepted as dogma: But as more channels, and AI, have fused into the journey, consumer behavior has shifted and one question is often asked: Is the marketing funnel dead? While some argue for getting rid of linear planning, and others cling to the traditional…
Read MoreAI Is Automating Media Buying. Here’s What That Means for You.
A year ago, most media teams had a version of the same answer when clients asked about AI: “We’re still looking into our options.” That answer doesn’t hold anymore. AI has evolved from an experimental to an operational media tool — and the agencies and brands that built around its capabilities are outpacing the ones…
Read MoreThe $554 Billion Incentive Misalignment: Why Your Own Org Structures and Comp Plans Are Funding the Discount Death Spiral
Your sales team is compensated on revenue. Your marketers are measured on ROAS. Your wholesale partners are judged on sell-through. Each one is making the individually rational decision to discount — and collectively, they’re bleeding out $554 billion in annual global markdown losses due to overstock across retail, up significantly from the $300 billion in…
Read MoreIt’s Time to Rethink Standard Display and Online Video (OLV)
We’re entering a new era of media consumption and advertisers need to adapt. For years, standard display and OLV have served as the workhorses of digital advertising, providing scale, flexibility, and measurable results across countless websites and apps. Yet as media consumption continues to evolve, advertisers are shifting their investment toward higher-attention environments like digital…
Read MoreThe Future Is Now: AI, Search, and the Next Marketing Frontier [On Demand]
Mindgruve recently hosted “The Future Is Now: AI, Search, and the Next Marketing Frontier,” a webinar led by David Shapiro, VP of Global Earned & Owned Media. The session focused on how AI-powered experiences are reshaping discovery, consideration, and conversion, and what marketing leaders should do now to stay visible as search becomes more conversational,…
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