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The AI-Driven Marketing Playbook Reshaping Modern Retail

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By Al Sefati

Retail marketing has changed drastically in recent years. Consumers no longer discover brands only through search ads, visiting stores or browsing social media. Today’s shoppers move from Google, TikTok, marketplaces, AI assistants, review platforms and influencer content before buying anything.

This change has created both a challenge and opportunity for retailers.

Many times, the most successful brands don’t carry the biggest advertising budgets. They are the ones connecting digital ecosystems including SEO, AI visibility, paid media, AI automation, reputation management and customer retention into one strategy.​

The Customer Journey Is No Longer Linear

The traditional retail funnel is no more. Customers no longer move from awareness to consideration to purchase. Instead, they jump between devices, apps, AI assistants, marketplaces, reviews and social channels in a fragmented buying journey.

Someone shopping for sneakers might find a product on TikTok, search Google for reviews, ask ChatGPT for alternatives, compare prices on Amazon and then finally make a purchase after seeing a retargeting ad days later.

This behaviour applies to all retail segments. Visibility alone is no longer enough. Retailers must have consistency across every digital touchpoint.

SEO Has Expanded Into AI Visibility

SEO still matters, but retail brands are now competing for visibility inside AI-generated answers, not traditional rankings. Platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews are changing how consumers research products.

Instead, customers are asking conversational questions like, “What are the best sustainable clothing brands?” or “Which standing desk is best for small apartments?”

This is where answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) enter the picture. To capture the visibility retailers need, AI-generated responses need fast websites, strong product data, new content, authentic reviews and FAQ-driven pages.

Brands relying only on traditional SEO tactics are becoming invisible in AI-driven searches.

AI Automation Is Becoming Essential

AI is rapidly becoming one of the biggest competitive advantages in retail.

Retailers are using AI to automate customer support, product recommendations, CRM automation, email and SMS workflows and lead qualification, among other things. From what I’ve seen, this doesn’t just reduce manual work; using AI improves speed, personalization and scalability across the business.

In my experience, companies are moving beyond experimentation and focusing on operational AI systems that directly improve efficiency, customer experience and revenue growth.

AI automation is a differentiator for businesses in a crowded market.

Product Pages Have Become Conversion Hubs

One of the biggest mistakes retailers still make is treating product pages like static catalogues.

Modern product pages must function as full conversion environments, meaning they include customer reviews, FAQ sections, rich media, shipping transparency and user-generated content. AI systems are pulling directly from these pages when generating recommendations. Pages with thin or repetitive content lose visibility and trust.

Retailers I’ve worked with who invest in detailed, conversion-focused product pages tend to see stronger organic traffic and higher conversion rates simultaneously.

Reviews And Reputation Influence Discovery

Reviews no longer only influence conversions. They now influence visibility. Search engines and AI evaluate trust signals across Google Reviews, Trustpilot, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok and other marketplace ratings.

Peer validation always beats polished advertising. That is why modern retail brands are investing heavily in review acquisition, social proof and real customer experiences.

From what I’ve seen, brands generating authentic customer conversations online tend to perform better in both search visibility and conversion rates.

Retail Marketing Is No Longer Just About Driving Traffic

Retail marketing in 2026 is not about simply driving traffic. The focus is now on visibility across search engines, AI platforms, marketplaces and social ecosystems. ​

Growing brands are the ones creating connected systems that combine modern SEO, AI visibility, paid media, AI automation, customer trust and operational speed into a unified strategy. Retailers that are still relying on disconnected tools and outdated marketing playbooks risk becoming increasingly invisible in the modern digital buying journey.​

Feature image credit: Getty

By Al Sefati

COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)

Al Sefati is an enterprise SEO, AEO\GEO, and digital marketing expert, and CEO of Clarity Digital with over two decades of experience. Read Al Sefati’s full executive profile here. Find Al Sefati on LinkedIn and X. Visit Al’s website.

Sourced from Forbes

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How the UK’s social media ban could transform graphic design hiring

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An under-16s ban on TikTok and Instagram might do more than protect children – it could reshape who gets hired by agencies.

There’s a moment that’s become familiar to anyone hiring creatives over the past decade. You’re looking at someone’s portfolio. It’s solid enough. Then you spot the line: “50K followers on TikTok.” Suddenly, the conversation changes.

When that happens, those of us of a certain age, who came up during the days of print, have felt the fear. The fear of no longer being relevant. Maybe it’s paranoia, maybe it’s realism. Either way, if you’ve not a died-in-the-wool social native, it’s tempting to feel your “old-school” skills are no longer adequate, and the algorithm has become the new resume. But what if that era is about to fade? The path to getting your first design job might soon look very different.

A close-up of a young woman looking down at her smartphone, overlaid with text in a stylized window box that reads "GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCES BAN ON SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES PROVIDING SERVICES FOR UNDER 16s."

(Image credit: Gov.uk)

Is the tide turning?

The assumption that social fluency equals creative value made sense when social media sat at the centre of cultural life. Increasingly, though, that centrality appears to be weakening.

Ofcom data published in April found that fewer than half of UK adult social media users are now actively posting, sharing or commenting, down from 61% in 2024. Meanwhile, only 36% believe social platforms are good for their mental health, and a third have deleted an app because it was affecting their wellbeing.

The mood is shifting. This week’s announcement that the UK will ban under-16s from using TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook and X feels like another sign of that change. What’s striking isn’t simply the policy itself, but how little public resistance it appears to have generated, compared with the debates that surrounded social media a decade ago.

Whether the legislation succeeds remains to be seen. But culturally, it reflects a growing willingness to question assumptions that once seemed untouchable. And that’s where things get interesting for creative industries.

Rebalancing, not revolution

Two young designers look at a a computer screen using the best graphic design software

(Image credit: Gilaxia via Getty Images)

None of this means social media skills are about to become irrelevant. Clients will still want social content. Agencies will still need people who understand how visual culture moves online. And teenagers will inevitably find ways around restrictions, just as they’ve done elsewhere. But there’s a difference between circumventing a platform and being shaped by it from childhood.

For over a decade, social media has acted as a powerful formative influence on aspiring creatives. It’s shaped not only what they consume, but how they think about creativity itself: what gets attention, what gets shared, what succeeds.

If future generations spend less of their developmental years optimising content for algorithms, they’ll arrive at design school (and eventually at job interviews) with different instincts.

They may be less conditioned by the high-stimulation, short-form aesthetics that platforms reward. They may be more willing to explore slower, deeper and more varied forms of creative practice. In some ways, it could feel a little like stepping back into the pre-2010s creative landscape (but with better WiFi).

What this means for hiring

If you’re responsible for hiring designers, it’s worth thinking now about what this shift means for the talent pipeline. The candidates you’ll see in five to ten years will have grown up differently. Their portfolios may look different too: less platform-optimised, potentially richer in other ways. The instinct to reject someone because they don’t have a strong social presence may start to look, frankly, as outdated as rejecting someone for not knowing QuarkXPress.

Maybe I’m a hopeless optimistic, but I think there’s a broader opportunity here to restate what design education is actually for. If the appetite for digital natives has put pressure on colleges to teach content creation over craft, a cultural shift away from social media could ease that pressure.

None of this is inevitable, of course. Industries don’t change hiring habits easily or quickly. But the UK’s ban challenges a long-standing assumption: that the people best equipped to navigate social platforms are necessarily the most creatively valuable.

They never were, of course. It just took a piece of legislation, and the beginnings of a cultural retreat from the doom scroll, to remind us.

Feature image credit: Galina Zhigalova via Getty Images

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Tom May is an award-winning journalist specialising in art, design, photography and technology. He is the author of the books The 50 Greatest Designers (Arcturus) and Great TED Talks: Creativity (Pavilion). Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine.

Sourced from CREATIVE BLOQ

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How TikTok Shop is winning over major brands

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By Melissa Daniels

On this week’s episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, co-hosts Gabriela Barkho and Melissa Daniels are joined by Modern Retail’s platforms reporter, Allison Smith, to dig into why TikTok Shop is becoming a more legitimate sales channel in the eyes of bigger brands.

Less than three years old, TikTok Shop now makes up roughly 20% of all social commerce sales, according to data from eMarketer. The rest of the category is dominated by Meta. Last year, the company drove $500 million in sales during the four-day stretch from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.

In response, more established legacy brands and mid-sized companies are popping up on TikTok Shop. Smith reported this March that sales from big-name brands — those with at least $30 million in annual revenue — increased 97% year-over-year on TikTok Shop.

Here’s a rundown of their conversation.

Affiliate and incentives powering acquisition

To help boost their presence on TikTok Shop and get eyes on their products, some brands are launching affiliate networks that use creators to drive sales. Companies like Portland Leather Goods have marshalled hundreds of fans into their affiliate channel and are seeing it drive first-time customer growth.

TikTok Shop has also deliberately courted companies to join by offering co-branded partnerships where it picks up the share of a major discount or free shipping offer. At one point, it had a program called Project Horizon to incentivize agencies to onboard large brands, driving at least $10 million in annual sales on competing platforms. But as the platform matures, such incentives might be less common.

Small versus big brands

Early successes on TikTok Shop often came from digitally-native startups. And their playbook that relied on UGC, live shopping or flash sales may not be a fit for major multinational companies like Samsung, Disney, Ulta and others that are newer to the platform. They may also not be able to post as frequently or authentically as a founder-led brand can, due to the approvals and processes that corporate marketing typically involves.

But those larger companies may have an edge when it comes to price competition. And they also may see more of a halo effect on their other sales channels if they’re showing up in front of TikTok Shop buyers who aren’t quite ready to add to cart.

Discovery and awareness over retention

Despite the success any brands are seeing, the trio discusses how TikTok Shop won’t be for everybody. Companies are still losing margin by selling on a different platform, meaning they have to make sure they can handle a potential hit. There’s also the question of whether TikTok Shop sales could cannibalize the growth they’re seeing in other channels, whether direct-to-consumer or Amazon.

Still, there’s evidence that TikTok Shop is growing at a rate that requires brands to pay attention and determine if it plays a role in their customer journey. EMarketer’s research from December also shows that TikTok Shop sales are poised to surpass $20 billion in 2026 and reach over $30 billion in 2028. The podcast concludes with a discussion on whether it’s a “must-have” or “nice-to-have.” As with many retail choices, the answer depends on the brand’s unique positioning

By Melissa Daniels

Sourced from Modern Retail

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Podcast: the future of platforms and marketing

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By Chris Sutcliffe, 

Social platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook offer huge opportunities for marketers. They are the new de facto gatekeepers to huge audiences, and there are very few other means to reach younger audiences at scale with ease. But that access comes with trade-offs, and different platforms emerge and disappear rapidly. As part of our Predictions season, The Drum Network seeks to examine where brands and agencies fit into that environment.
To discuss that rapidly evolving landscape, and how we can ensure the primacy of brands when it comes to marketing on platforms, we’re joined by three experts from across the industry. Amy Gilbert, head of social at The Social Element; Tahir Rashid, paid media manager at UNRVLD; and Callum Gill, head of insight and innovation at DRP Group, join The Drum’s senior reporter Chris Sutcliffe to discuss all things platform-related.
The Drum Network Podcast can be found on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play and your favourite podcast app.

By Chris Sutcliffe, 

Sourced from The Drum

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TikTok is tracking you, even if you don’t use the app. Here’s how to stop it

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By Thomas Germain

TikTok is growing its data harvesting empire, and avoiding the app won’t protect you – but some easy steps can keep you safe.

TikTok keeps track of everything you do on its app – no surprises there. What’s less obvious is how the company follows you around other parts of the internet that have nothing to do with TikTok.

In fact, TikTok collects sensitive and potentially embarrassing information about you even if you’ve never used the app. Over the past week, I’ve watched websites sending TikTok data about cancer diagnoses, fertility and even mental health crises. It’s part of a tracking empire that extends far beyond the social media platform. Now, thanks to a new set of features, TikTok is poised to expand its network and see even more details about your life.

The change comes just weeks after the sale of TikTok’s US operations to a group of companies with ties to US President Donald Trump. The deal has led to fresh privacy concerns from some human rights experts and users, though TikTok says it has transparent guidelines on how it responds to government requests for data.

Fortunately, this is a privacy story with a positive note. Some easy steps you can take in about five minutes will help you keep your information out of TikTok’s hands.

The issue centres around major changes to TikTok’s “pixel”, a tracking tool that companies use to monitor your online behaviour. I asked a cybersecurity company called Disconnect to analyse it. They found the updated TikTok pixel collects information in unusual ways compared to its competitors.

“It’s extremely invasive,” says Patrick Jackson, chief technology officer at Disconnect. “This expanded data sharing, when you do analysis of the actual pixel code, you see things that look really bad.”

When I clicked a button on a form that said I was a cancer patient or a survivor, the website sent TikTok my email address along with those details

TikTok says its users are informed about its data practices in privacy policies and notifications in some cases. The company also says it gives people privacy settings to take control.

“TikTok empowers users with transparent information about its privacy practices and gives them multiple tools to customise their experience,” a TikTok spokesperson says. “Advertising pixels are industry standard and used widely across social and media platforms, including by the BBC.”

But most people might not realise that TikTok holds data about them even if they have never used the social media platform.

An invisible trackerTracking pixels are nothing new. For years, companies that run advertising networks – including Google, Meta and hundreds of others – have used them to eavesdrop on what people do across the web. They’re an invisible image the size of one pixel of your screen that loads in the background of a website, full of data-harvesting tech. They’re everywhere, and they’re constantly watching you.

Here’s how it works. TikTok, for example, encourages companies to put pixels on their websites to help the social media giant harvest more data. Let’s say I have an online shoe store. If I use a pixel, it lets TikTok collect lots of data about my customers in order to show them targeted ads. Plus, it helps TikTok figure out whether people who see those shoe ads end up making a purchase. That way, I know the ads I paid for are working, and maybe I’ll pay for more. (Like most news organisations, the BBC uses analytics tools and shares data with advertising partners in accordance with our privacy policy. The BBC does not use TikTok tracking pixels on its website or place advertising pixels on third-party sites.)

When it’s shoe store data, the information might be innocuous. But I’ve reported on TikTok’s data collection for years and pixels can collect extremely personal information.

For example, last week I visited the website for a cancer support group. According to Disconnect, when I clicked a button on a form that said I was a cancer patient or a survivor, the website sent TikTok my email address along with those details. A women’s health company sent TikTok data when I looked at fertility tests. A mental health organisation pinged TikTok when I indicated I’m looking for a crisis counsellor. Websites that use pixels send data about every single visitor, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a TikTok account.

A TikTok spokesperson says, essentially, that this isn’t TikTok’s responsibility. They say websites are required to abide by privacy laws and tell you about their data practices. TikTok says websites are prohibited from sharing certain kinds of sensitive information, such as health data. And the company says it takes proactive steps to alert websites that share anything inappropriate.

Many of the world's top websites have pixel trackers on them that send data back to big tech companies (Credit: Serenity Strull/ BBC)

Many of the world’s top websites have pixel trackers on them that send data back to big tech companies (Credit: Serenity Strull/ BBC)

If you’re concerned about these individual websites you’re missing the point. Critics say the issue is that large tech companies like TikTok are increasingly following everything you do online. According to DuckDuckGo, a privacy company, TikTok has trackers on 5% of the world’s top websites. That number has grown steadily, though it’s nothing compared to Google with trackers on almost 72% of top websites and Meta at about 21%.

“This is verbatim the playbook that Google and Meta have used over the years,” says Peter Dolanjski, executive director of product at DuckDuckGo. They started collecting small amounts of data and grew that into an empire that has massive visibility into your daily life, he says.

All of this data could mean you see ads that are more tailored to you, which you might like. But these detailed records of your personal life wouldn’t exist if tech companies weren’t surveilling you, and it exposes you to all kinds of risks, Dolanjski says.

“Algorithms can use this data to exploit you,” he says. “It could be coercing you to buy something, it could be political campaigns, it could be price discrimination.” Advertising data has been used for all kinds damaging purposes, from alleged civil rights violations to sexual discrimination.

TikTok’s data empireTikTok’s pixel is years old, but it just shifted in some major ways. On 22 January 2026, when TikTok’s US operation officially changed hands, users had to agree to a new set of data collection practices. That includes a new advertising network that TikTok will use to show targeted ads on other people’s websites. To facilitate that new advertising system, TikTok updated its pixel.

In the past, TikTok’s pixel basically just told companies if their ads were generating sales in the app itself. Now, the pixel will help companies follow users who see an ad when they leave TikTok and make a purchase elsewhere.

That probably means more companies will buy TikTok ads and the pixel will show up in more places, according to Arielle Garcia, chief operating officer at Check My Ads, a digital advertising watchdog group. In other words, TikTok’s tracking empire is set to expand. “These tools naturally make the platform more attractive to advertisers, which is ultimately how ad platforms grow,” Garcia says.

Keeping Tabs

Thomas Germain is a senior technology journalist at the BBC. He writes the column Keeping Tabs and co-hosts the podcast The Interface. His work uncovers the hidden systems that run your digital life, and how you can live better inside them.

Disconnect found TikTok’s pixel now collects more information than ever before, automatically intercepting data that websites are sending to Google. Experts tell the BBC this is unusually invasive. “They’re silently capturing that data without the site owner explicitly sharing that information with TikTok,” Jackson says, and that means websites might unintentionally send TikTok even more data than they intend to.

TikTok disagrees. A spokesperson says TikTok is clear about what data the pixel collects, and companies can just set up their websites differently if they don’t want TikTok to see what they send Google. (Google did not respond to a request for comment.)

TikTok also has some privacy controls you can use. Users can “clear” the data TikTok collects with pixels using a setting in the app. People who don’t have an account can ask TikTok to delete any data it has about you.

But if you want to stop the data collection before it happens, you need additional steps.

How to protect yourselfThere’s good news and bad news. Let’s start with the cheerful stuff.

The best option? Use a more private web browser. I know switching seems like a pain, but it’s easy to import your bookmarks. Try it.

Something like 71% of people use Google Chrome, which has been found in preliminary academic research to leak more information than many competitors. Privacy experts often recommend the DuckDuckGo browser and Brave, which are specifically built to safeguard data. Firefox and Safari are considered better options than Chrome, though they’re less strict about privacy by default.

If switching browsers is too much, install a browser extension that blocks these trackers. I asked Disconnect and DuckDuckGo to help with this article because they both make tracker blockers, but there are other options, including Privacy Badger and Ghostery. Certain ad blockers also block some data harvesting, including AdBlock Plus and uBlock Origin. DuckDuckGo has a chart comparing which ad blockers do it best. Just don’t install browser extensions that aren’t recommended by reputable sources – it’s just like installing an app. Some are dicey.

Now the bad news. Following those two steps will block the TikTok pixel and lots of other privacy invasions. But I won’t pretend your data problems are solved.

There are lots of other ways that companies share data with TikTok, Google, Meta and other advertising companies. Companies collect data about you and send it directly to the tech giants from their own servers, for example. “It’s a black box, I can’t tell you how often that’s used because it all happens behind the scenes,” says Dolanjski. “It’s much harder to protect yourself from that. Your only real defence is to not use the same personal information on different services”, so it’s harder to match up what you do on different parts of the internet.

The real solution is better privacy laws, says Garcia from Check My Ads. “This isn’t a problem limited to one platform. It’s a broader advertising technology ecosystem issue that ultimately needs to be addressed through stronger regulation,” she says. “The only thing that’s really going to change this is when people make their voices heard with lawmakers and make it clear that privacy is something they actually care about.”

By Thomas Germain

Sourced from BBC Future

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Earn real money with 10 powerful TikTok strategies

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By Tega Egwabor

From the Creator Fund to brand deals, these monetization methods help content creators turn engagement into actual income

TikTok has evolved from a simple short-form video platform into a powerful ecosystem where creators can build audiences, express creativity and earn substantial income. With millions of users worldwide, the platform offers a range of monetization options that allow individuals and businesses to transform engagement into real revenue streams.

Understanding these earning opportunities helps creators choose the best strategies for their content style, audience demographics and financial goals. The key lies in knowing which methods align with your strengths and how to maximize each opportunity.

Platform-supported payment systems

  1. The TikTok Creator Fund represents one of the platform’s primary monetization mechanisms, paying creators based on engagement, views and activity on their videos. While the exact payout per view varies, consistent posting and high engagement increase earnings substantially. Eligibility typically requires meeting a minimum follower count and a set number of views over a defined period. Once accepted into the fund, creators earn money as their eligible videos generate views, with more interaction translating to higher potential payments.
  2. Live gifts and diamonds allow creators to interact with audiences in real time during streaming sessions. Viewers can purchase virtual gifts using TikTok coins, which they send to their favourite creators during live broadcasts. Creators then convert these virtual gifts into diamonds, which can be exchanged for actual money. This system creates a direct support channel between audiences and creators, offering immediate interaction and feedback while tying revenue to live performance quality.

Leveraging business relationships

  1. Brand partnerships and sponsored content represent one of the most lucrative earning methods on TikTok. Companies pay creators to produce content featuring or promoting products and services. These partnerships vary widely, from single-post sponsorships to long-term collaborations involving multiple videos or entire campaigns. The value of these deals depends on audience size, engagement rate, niche relevance and creative influence. Brands seek TikTok creators with authentic voices and loyal followers since genuine endorsements tend to perform better than traditional advertisements.
  2. Affiliate marketing allows creators to earn commissions by promoting products and linking to online stores. When followers click unique links and make purchases, creators earn a percentage of the sale. TikTok supports affiliate integrations and shopping features that make it easier to tag products and track revenue, creating passive income potential that works especially well with product reviews, tutorials and recommendations.

Direct sales opportunities

  1. TikTok Shop enables creators to sell products directly through the platform, whether merchandise, digital goods or curated items. The integrated shopping experience allows followers to buy without leaving the app, combining social engagement with direct sales in a seamless way.
  2. Selling digital products and services like ebooks, courses, tutorials, presets and templates positions creators as experts in their fields while turning knowledge into income. Educational and specialized content often attracts dedicated followers willing to invest in tools and learning materials.

Building deeper connections

  1. Fan subscriptions and exclusive content offer subscription-based access to special perks or private communities. These subscriptions can be hosted on TikTok or external platforms that link through social profiles, providing benefits like behind-the-scenes videos, exclusive tutorials, early content access and personalized messages. This model creates steady revenue streams while fostering deeper connections with fans.
  2. Crowdfunding through platforms like Patreon, Ko-fi or Buy Me a Coffee allows followers to contribute financially to support ongoing content creation. TikTok videos can drive traffic to these external pages, turning engagement into recurring support with predictable monthly income and diverse reward tiers.

Expanding beyond the platform

  1. Licensing and media opportunities emerge when viral content attracts attention from television programs, advertising agencies or larger media networks, leading to paid appearances and extended creative collaborations.
  2. Cross-platform monetization converts TikTok popularity into wider opportunities on YouTube, Instagram or podcasts, each with their own monetization systems. This approach amplifies audience reach and diversifies income streams.

Success requires strategy, consistency and creativity combined with authentic engagement that resonates with audiences.

Feature image credit: Shutterstock.com / 19 STUDIO

By Tega Egwabor

Tega Egwabor is a writer with RollingOut, covering diverse stories that span politics, health, fitness, finance, and more. Guided by a philosophical background, Tega approaches stories with depth, balance, and nuance. Passionate about connecting ideas with everyday life, her work seeks to spark curiosity, encourage reflection, and open up meaningful conversations.

Sourced from RollingOut

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Are TikTok and X tracking you across the internet? This privacy tool can tell you

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By Miles Hilton, Cal Matters

Since 2020, readers have used Blacklight, our pioneering website privacy inspector tool, to run more than 18 million scans. Previously, Blacklight detected tracking pixels from Google and Meta. Today, we’re announcing that it can scan for two more digital trackers: TikTok and X pixels.

A tracking pixel is a small piece of code added to a website that sends information about the site’s users to the platform that operates the pixel. That can include details of a user’s activities, such as their browsing activity, purchases and searches. A website that embeds a pixel often does so to inform its advertising campaigns on the platform that create the pixel. When its pixel is embedded across many websites, the platform can compile a user’s data to build a detailed profile of their interests, behaviour and other personal information. These profiles allow other businesses to buy ads from the platform to target categories of users — though this data can also be used for other purposes.

When you look up a website in Blacklight, it will now report if it finds the TikTok pixel or X pixel. More detailed information about the specific data being passed through pixels is also available by clicking on “Learn more” in the top right of the results, then clicking the link to “download an archive.”

To develop these new features, we partnered with a group of computer science students in Brandeis University’s Capstone in Software Engineering course. These students – Yiyou “Felix” Fan, Jiawen “Zena” Hu, Hengye Li, Hongchen “Steven” Yang and Yiquan “Frank” Zhang – researched and developed the features with the support of our product team.

Blacklight’s pixel detection features have already powered our Pixel Hunt investigations, which revealed that sensitive personal user information was being shared from government websites with Meta and Google, leading to lawsuits, removal of pixels from sites and increased government scrutiny. These new features give a fuller picture of the digital privacy landscape by exposing tracking pixels from two more companies.

We hope these new features will help you better understand what happens to your data as you navigate the internet. While Blacklight can’t say exactly what companies like TikTok and X do with our data, it can provide a starting point for deeper investigation into how that data is stored, shared and used across the web.

Do you have questions, suggestions or need help understanding your Blacklight results? You can always reach us at [email protected].

Feature image credit: iStock Photo via CalMatters

By Miles Hilton, Cal Matters

CalMatters is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable. For more information about its mission, donors, staff and contact information, see CalMatters’ About Us page.

Sourced from The Mercury News

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The new search frontier: How TikTok is redefining discovery

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By Peter Allen Clark

Search has seen an enormous upheaval recently in terms of tools, intent, and expected experience, with social platforms like TikTok forging new consumer routines.

“Search has fundamentally transformed from this old model of ‘I have a question, I need an answer,’ to really a place for stories and perspective,” said Rema Vasan, TikTok’s head of North America business marketing, at a panel during Advertising Week New York. “This isn’t just a change in behaviour, this is a fundamental shift.”

According to TikTok’s data, Vasan said the top three reasons people search on the platform are to explore personal interests, educate themselves, and entertain themselves. And for younger audiences, the shift is even more pronounced.

Here’s how experts are viewing changing consumer habits when it comes to search and product discovery.

From answers to inspiration

Cypress Villaflores, vice president of social at Publicis, described what she sees as driving the change during the panel.

“People are really going to a platform like TikTok because we want inspiration,” she said. “We want information. And when you go into TikTok search, it’s giving you all of that and then that added layer of in-the-moment engagement.”

For US shoppers TikTok is the most useful social platform (28.4%) for researching and evaluating new brands/products, according to June 2025 data from EMARKETER.

“You’re not only getting an influencer’s perspective, but you’re also really getting ordinary people,” said Villaflores. “And sometimes that’s what you need to finish your search journey.”

Vasan noted that 86% of Gen Zers now search on TikTok instead of traditional search engines.

“Consumers’ intentions have changed,” she said. “They’re not just looking for quick answers. They’re looking to explore, compare, and really shape their perspectives.”

The middle-funnel battleground

In partnership with WARC, TikTok mapped four stages of search: Understanding, exploring, evaluating, and buying.

“TikTok plays a very strong role in the exploring and evaluating phases,” Vasan said. “Eighty-four percent of searches on TikTok happen in that exploration phase, which is 1.2 times higher than on traditional search platforms.”

Villaflores said that journey often leads directly to purchase.

“It really helps you make the purchase and create things that are more meaningful,” she said. “By the time I hit that buy button, I’m very confident in the thing that I’m purchasing.”

Keywords, but smarter

While culture drives discovery, precision still matters if TikTok is to remain vital to business’ strategies. Some 64% of worldwide B2B and B2C marketing leaders say TikTok drives more business impact than other social media platforms, according to a June 2025 survey from Sprout Social.

“Keyword strategy is so important to any search campaign,” Vasan said. TikTok’s new Keyword Planner, now in open beta, helps advertisers identify high-value terms and track search trends before committing spend.

Villaflores noted that traditional tactics still apply. “You can do branded versus non-branded, exact versus broad match, and a lot of those strategies are transferable to TikTok.”

For marketers still viewing TikTok as “just social,” Villaflores offered a challenge.

“Search has changed overall as a behaviour. It’s not anything anyone can truly ignore,” she said. “Be open to testing and integrating it as part of your larger strategies, because human behaviour is always continuously evolving.”

By Peter Allen Clark

Sourced from EM Marketer

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Instacart grows its retail media bona fides with TikTok integration

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By Aaron Baar

The grocery delivery platform is the first retail media partner to enable targeting and end-to-end measurement directly within TikTok’s ad platform.

Dive Brief: 

  • Instacart is collaborating with TikTok on a program that will integrate the company’s retail media network data into the platform’s Ads Manager, the companies announced in a press release.
  • Select CPG advertisers soon will be able to use Instacart data for targeting and measurement, and to enhance their shoppable ad formats. Instacart is integrating its purchase and grocery selection data directly into TikTok Ad Manager.
  • The integration makes Instacart the first retail media network to offer marketers end-to-end capabilities natively on TikTok, according to release details. The move follows other recent efforts from Instacart designed to boost its appeal to advertisers.

Dive Insight:

With the TikTok integration, Instacart aims to establish itself as the most advertiser-friendly media network, providing its data to help brands reach new and motivated audiences with minimal friction. While other retail media networks have worked with TikTok on specific campaigns, Instacart is “the first to work with Tiktok [on] what we’re calling an end-to-end integration,” Ali Miller, Instacart’s general manager of advertising, told Adweek.

That means advertisers will soon be able to use Instacart’s audience segments to better target campaigns on TikTok’s platform to reach consumers with high purchase intent. Additionally, they will be able to enhance shoppable formats through TikTok’s Smart+ campaigns, which are integrated with Instacart grocery selection data. Advertisers will also be able to measure campaign and conversion performance through a closed-loop platform.

Instacart claims to have more than 7,500 active brands and 1,800 retail partners in its ecosystem, giving it a robust pool of data for its retail media network. The TikTok partnership is part of the company’s strategy to help marketers cut through fragmentation and complexity by allowing them to tap into Instacart’s retail media data wherever they’re already buying media, per release details.

Beyond its latest move, Instacart recently announced a partnership with Pinterest to make ads on the platform shoppable via the grocery delivery service. The company also expanded its partnership with The Trade Desk to integrate its grocery selection data on the programmatic company’s platform, enabling advertisers and agencies to use specific criteria to build first-party custom audiences.

By Aaron Baar

Sourced from MarketingDive

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TikTok child data protection inadequate, Canadian privacy officials say

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By Peter Hoskins

TikTok’s efforts to stop children using the app and protect their personal data have been inadequate, a Canadian investigation has found.

Hundreds of thousands of children in the country use TikTok each year despite the firm saying it is not intended for people under the age of 13, according to the findings.

The investigation also found TikTok had collected sensitive personal information from “a large number” of Canadian children and used it for online marketing and content targeting.

TikTok told the BBC that it will introduce a number of measures to “strengthen our platform for Canadians” although it disputes some of the findings.

Feature image credit: LightRocket via Getty Images

By Peter Hoskins

Sourced from BBC

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