☕️ Only 36 brands stay visible across AI search

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In today's MarketingShot:

🤖 Only 36 brands stay visible across AI search

🎬 TikTok is turning mini dramas into ad space

🛒 OpenAI is building a full ad platform

📌 Pinterest is becoming a connected TV ad channel

🎁 + 6 other news you might like

💡 + 5 strategies & tactics

🧰 + 6 trending tools

🤖 Only 36 brands stay visible across AI search LINK

Semrush's AI Visibility Index 2026 found that only 36 brands, a group it calls the Universal 36, appeared in the top 100 most-mentioned list on ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews in every month studied.

The study drew on 126 million United States AI search prompts collected from January to April 2026, examining how the four platforms describe and cite more than 1,200 brands across 22 industry verticals.

Within the Universal 36, mention volume drops sharply from YouTube at the top with 47.9 million mentions down to Nintendo at the bottom with 1.5 million, with only YouTube, Amazon and Facebook ranking top 10 on every platform.

🎬 TikTok is turning mini dramas into ad space LINK

TikTok has launched a new advertising option that lets brands promote episodic Mini Dramas through its Growth Max system, turning short-form serialized drama content into a way to build engagement and earn revenue on the platform.

Brands can publish through two formats: a dedicated viewing experience in the TikTok Minis Center, available in ten countries, or a Drama Series in the TikTok Drama Center, offered globally, with both embedding ads viewers watch to unlock more episodes.

TikTok said Growth Max campaigns drove a 52% increase in incremental audience reach beyond off-platform acquisition campaigns, while promoting Mini Dramas alongside off-platform apps drove a 10x increase in advertiser scale, according to internal campaign data.

🛒 OpenAI is building a full ad platform LINK

OpenAI is moving past the setup phase of its ad business and is now building the various ad formats that will run it, including text, image, video, native, conversational and interactive types.

Three job listings on its careers page describe ad format software engineering roles based in San Francisco, paying $230,000 to $385,000 plus equity, with one senior role needing at least seven years of experience.

Privacy and safety sit inside what these engineers build, with all three roles listing safety, privacy, fairness and policy compliance across ad rendering, while the iOS and Android engineers handle policy-aware UX patterns and format validation.

📌 Pinterest is becoming a connected TV ad channel LINK

Pinterest is moving into connected TV advertising after buying CTV performance ad platform TVScientific earlier this year, bringing its audiences off-platform for targeting and adding tools to measure and optimise ads running in CTV environments.

By letting TVScientific train on Pinterest's taste graph of intent data, the company saw a 65 percent rise in outcomes and conversions, drawing on 630 million daily users and 80 billion monthly searches, of which 96 percent are unbranded.

A case study with LG showed that applying Pinterest audiences raised reach and addressable households by 76 percent and lifted conversions by 24 percent, while early users of the Creative Advisor tool saw a 13 percent average conversion lift.

💡 Strategies & Tactics

> How to Use Reddit for SEO (The Right Way): Build genuine, long-lived Reddit accounts and contribute useful content so your brand earns visibility in Google, AI answers, and Reddit's own search.

> Why TikTok deserves a place in your SEO strategy: Optimize for TikTok search because nearly half of U.S. consumers now use it to discover and vet local businesses and products before buying.

> What Meta’s broad targeting teaches us about optimization signals: Choose the conversion event carefully, because the outcome you optimize toward shapes who Meta finds far more than audience targeting does.

> How campaign structure shapes Google Ads performance: Consolidate scattered Google Ads campaigns and ad groups so automated bidding gets enough conversion data to learn and optimize accurately.

> How ChatGPT ads are forcing brands to rethink GEO and paid strategy: Rivals now buy ChatGPT ads targeting your brand comparisons, so defend by aligning organic and paid efforts to box competitors out.

Other news you might like

• How Time and others are rebuilding parts of the web for AI agentsLINK

• How brands can improve chances of showing up in AI search overviewsLINK

• Podcasting platform Riverside enters the newsletter publishing gameLINK

• AI platforms split on beauty brand recommendationsLINK

• Instagram Tests Simplified Controls for Feed and Explore RecommendationsLINK

• X Makes it Easier For AI Tools To Use its PlatformLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Mark by Airtop: lets you build AI web agents using plain English to automate browsing, data extraction, outreach, and marketing campaigns without writing code.LINK

Tadka: generates on-brand ad creatives at scale from a single brief, auto-optimizes winning variants across Meta, Google, TikTok, and Pinterest.LINK

heyly.io: embeds a personal video greeting widget with up to five CTA buttons on any webpage, swappable per campaign without coding.LINK

AudienceCue: scrapes YouTube comments and uses AI to extract sentiment, recurring themes, and content ideas with direct source links across 12 languages.LINK

ContentPilots: automatically repurposes long-form videos into platform-ready short clips with AI-generated captions, tags, and scheduled cross-platform publishing.LINK

LayerProof Bristol: converts uploaded files and data into interactive, chat-shaped web reports that clients can actually engage with, not just skim.LINK

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