☕️ AI is quietly killing your search traffic

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In today's MarketingShot:

🔍 AI is quietly killing your search traffic

🔒 Europe may cut off your teen audience

📺 Disney+ could become your next free ad channel

🍪 A shopping app may be stealing your affiliate credit

Plus: 💡 5 strategies & tactics, 🎁 6 other news you might like, and 🧰 6 tools.

🔍 AI is quietly killing your search traffic LINK

A Fractl study with Search Engine Land found that search volume across more than a million high-volume keywords fell 29 percent over the past year, passing the 25 percent drop Gartner had projected for 2026.

Total search demand hasn't shrunk but moved, since 285,489 declining keywords lost roughly 10.29 billion monthly searches while 140,835 growing keywords gained about 10.31 billion, leaving the net change essentially flat.

Middle-of-funnel comparison queries fell fastest at 36 percent, while transactional queries dropped 34 percent and informational top-of-funnel queries declined only 19 percent, contradicting the assumption that chatbots absorb awareness searches first.

🔒 Europe may cut off your teen audience LINK

European regulators are seeking more power to police Big Tech, with the European Commission debating a social media ban for younger users after an expert panel shares its findings on July 13.

The Commission plans to propose digital fairness rules before year's end that target the addictive design of websites and apps, subscription traps and other "dark patterns" that push people into spending money, focusing on young people.

Several countries are weighing online protections for children, with the U.K. announcing a ban on TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram for people under 16, and France restricting access at a national level.

📺 Disney+ could become your next free ad channel LINK

Disney is discussing plans to launch a free tier on Disney+, letting people watch some content without paying, according to two sources familiar with the internal conversations at the company.

Product and tech chief Adam Smith raised the free-tier idea during a streaming town hall on Thursday, though he gave no timeline or scope, while the Disney+ and Hulu bundle currently starts at $12.99 monthly with ads.

Free streamers like YouTube keep gaining ground, as the three largest ones reached 18.7% of watch time on US TVs in April, up from 16.8% a year earlier and 12.7% in April 2024.

🍪 A shopping app may be stealing your affiliate credit LINK

Phia, the shopping startup co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, has been accused of "cookie stuffing," a practice that may have let the app claim commissions and credit for sales it did not generate.

A Bloomberg investigation found that when a user shopped online, Phia opened a new background tab and overrode referral codes from other affiliates, such as Wirecutter, by injecting its own during checkout.

Founded in 2025, Phia has raised more than $40 million from investors including Kim Kardashian and Hailey Bieber, and the report led to its suspension from the affiliate platform Impact.com.

💡 Strategies & Tactics

> When is a Campaign Worth Scaling?: Scale only campaigns that perform well among brand-new audiences within one day of clicking, since remarketing-driven wins collapse once budgets grow.

> I Built a Workflow That Reads My Community's Slack and Writes a Week of Posts in My Voice: Explains how to turn a community's buried Slack questions into scheduled social posts by using AI to filter, cluster, and draft in the writer's voice for review.

> 5 questions to ask AI vendors before you buy anything: Vet AI marketing vendors by demanding clear problem-solving proof, relevant case studies, data-ownership terms, and honest implementation costs before signing anything.

> How to win SEO budget conversations with your CFO: Reframe SEO budget requests around business risk like rising customer acquisition costs and lost AI visibility, because finance chiefs approve investments that reduce downside, not traffic charts.

> How to Build a Lead Gen AI Agent That Books Meetings While You Sleep: Build a button-driven website chatbot that routes visitors by type, qualifies them, and books meetings straight onto sales reps' calendars for about $40 monthly.

Other news you might like

• Measurement investments haven’t simplified advertising decisions: reportLINK

• Mobile web display is now the top digital media quality risk, IAS findsLINK

• YouTube Turns Playlists Into TV-Style Shows With Seasons and EpisodesLINK

• Why CIPA is changing the conversation around digital trackingLINK

• The Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social MediaLINK

• TikTok Shop sellers face shipment seizure risk under new CPSC filing ruleLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Vivago Video Agent: an AI tool that turns text descriptions into on-brand narrative videos, letting you preview keyframes before committing to final rendering.LINK

Loova Agents: lets you generate structured ads, short films, and social media videos from plain-language descriptions, skipping manual production entirely.LINK

AI Media Buyer By Creatify: automates video ad creation from a product URL, generating scripts, visuals, and voiceovers without manual creative work.LINK

Sleek Analytics: a privacy-first, cookieless website analytics tool with real-time dashboards, revenue attribution, and custom event tracking for modern web teams.LINK

Genspark Design: turns text prompts and Figma files into UI prototypes, animations, videos, and posters without requiring design skills.LINK

Chatbotx: The open-source ManyChat alternative, built for AI 🤖LINK

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