Meta's new Muse agent shops and pays for shoppers

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ MarketingShot.

In today's MarketingShot:

🤖 Meta's new Muse agent shops and pays for shoppers

📺 YouTube opens live commentary to more of your creators

🔍 Google AI overviews are swallowing your people also Ask traffic

📈 What 7 Brew and Mr. Pibb did to grow in a tough market

🏪 Google Ads gives you new ways to track in-store sales

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

🤖 Meta's new Muse agent shops and pays for shoppers LINK

Meta launched Muse on Tuesday, September 8, a personal AI agent that can open a browser, fill out forms, negotiate deals, shop for items, and complete payment transactions for users.

For payments, Muse relies on Stripe's Link to create a one-time card so the agent never sees the real card number, and it can reach Gmail, Spotify, Ticketmaster, OpenTable, and Shopify.

At launch Muse is available only in the U.S. on web, iOS, and Android, with a free version plus subscriptions priced at $20 and $100 a month, according to reports.

📺 YouTube opens live commentary to more of your creators LINK

YouTube is widening its test of Watch With, a feature that lets more creators broadcast their own live reactions and commentary alongside livestreams inside the mobile app.

Creators in the experiment group get a "React live" button in the Share panel on eligible streams, which locks the phone camera horizontally and cannot be switched off during the reaction.

Reaction creators earn revenue normally and share viewing metrics with the original broadcaster, while YouTube reported that in September 2025 more than 30% of daily logged-in viewers watched live content.

🔍 Google AI overviews are swallowing your people also Ask traffic LINK

Google now answers close to 100% of its People Also Ask questions in search with AI Overviews, a sharp jump from roughly 12% recorded about 14 months earlier.

AlsoAsked reviewed a sample of 19.2 million English questions made in 2026 and found 97% of People Also Ask answers in the first week of September were AI Overviews, up from 86% in August.

The rise was first spotted by Saeed Khosravi of Allintitle, whose Also Ask Miner data showed answers hitting 100% AI-generated starting August 2026, while Mark Williams-Cook of AlsoAsked measured 97%.

📈 What 7 Brew and Mr. Pibb did to grow in a tough market LINK

7 Brew and Mr. Pibb managed to grow their purchase consideration during a tough market, landing on Morning Consult's 2026 Fastest Growing Brands report at a time when only 14% of brands saw any growth.

Mr. Pibb's growth came from its October 2025 relaunch, which retired Pibb Xtra and added a new formula with 30% more caffeine and a cherry kick, doubling purchase consideration and lifting previously flat awareness.

7 Brew won with Gen Z, women, parents and TikTok users by opening more locations, launching its mobile app in August for ordering ahead, and giving away a free branded NeeDoh squishy toy with two medium or large drinks.

🏪 Google Ads gives you new ways to track in-store sales LINK

Google Ads is launching two features for multi-location retailers, restaurants and local service businesses: Local Customer Optimization for Performance Max store goals campaigns and a simpler way to bring store sales data into Data Manager.

Local Customer Optimization is a campaign-level toggle that, when enabled, prioritizes budget toward reaching consumers who are actively in-market nearby across Google Maps, Waze and local Search, and it is rolling out now.

Store Sales in Data Manager lets advertisers connect their CRM or Google Sheets directly to measure in-store sales and optimize campaigns toward their highest-potential walk-in customers, and it begins rolling out in the coming weeks.

💡 Strategies & Tactics

> How to build your first AI SEO agent (full walk-through): Build a narrowly scoped AI SEO agent that automates one repeatable task like keyword research, connecting verified data sources and keeping human approval on risky steps.

> Inside Google Maps: 72 ranking signals and the architecture behind local search: Google ranks places by scoring an underlying entity assembled from 793 data sources, so fixing a listing edit competes against other evidence rather than overriding it.

> How to Approach Meta Advertising Control: Default to Meta's automated targeting for age, gender, and remarketing, and only intervene with bid-lowering value rules when data shows Meta wasting budget on cheap, low-quality conversions.

> A better way to answer the AI ROI question: Sort AI work into three layers, foundation, systems built on it, and business outcomes, so leaders see honest progress instead of overclaimed or undersold revenue gains.

> How to optimize your website for AI search: Optimize sites for AI search by pairing strong SEO fundamentals with original, expert content that answers questions upfront so answer engines can cite you.

> How To Optimize for Claude Visibility: AEO Guide for B2B Companies: Structure comprehensive, honestly-sourced comparison pages that Claude can reason across and cite when B2B buyers research vendors, since Claude rewards depth over snippets.

Other news you might like

• OpenAI launches Images 2.5 with faster editing toolsLINK

• StreetTalk Study Shows Street Interview Ads Reach More New Buyers Than Standard CreativeLINK

• Cision report finds 66% of journalists use PR content for story ideasLINK

• Marketers say they want transparency—their ad spending says performance matters moreLINK

• Google Opens AI Mode to Exact-Match Search Ads in Quiet TestLINK

• Infobip study finds brands struggle to prove sports ROILINK

🧰 Trending tools

OpenSEO: an open-source Ahrefs alternative for keyword research, competitor analysis, backlinks, rank tracking, and technical audits powered by real DataForSEO data.LINK

AdAnt AI: converts product URLs or inspiration videos into editable short-form ad variants for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, streamlining creative testing at scale.LINK

Astute: a B2B new media platform that tracks your creator presence, builds data-backed partnership strategies, and automates campaigns with trusted influencers.LINK

Unabyss for Claude: pulls context from Slack, Gmail, Notion, and GitHub into one shared memory for MCP tools, so you stop re-explaining yourself across apps.LINK

AgentSky: runs managed AI coding agents with auto-recovery, letting you control remote development from WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, web, API, or CLILINK

akta.pro: private company data platform offering deep coverage, event signals, and news to help finance and GTM teams source deals and target outreach.LINK

See you tomorrow for a new dose of ☕️ MarketingShot!