📈 OpenAI buys the biggest ad on earth, Grok backs down & retail marketing goes hologram-first

xAI restricted Grok’s image editing features after they were used to generate sexualised deepfakes of real people, prompting regulatory attention in the UK. The rollback is narrowly focused on that category of misuse, not a broader shutdown of Grok’s capabilities. However, the episode put X back into the spotlight over safety controls and enforcement gaps. For brands advertising on the platform, the issue is reputational context, not lost functionality.

Why it matters: Platform scandals shape brand adjacency whether you are involved or not. When trust breaks down, marketers inherit stricter scrutiny and higher brand safety expectations by default. 📰 Reuters

Microsoft rolled out January updates to Performance Max, adding new-customer acquisition goals so spend can prioritise first-time buyers, not just easy conversions. It is another push toward automated campaign management, but with slightly more control for marketers who dislike pure black boxes. For paid search and shopping teams, this shifts the job from manual optimisation to feeding the system clean audience and conversion data.

Why it matters: Paid media advantage is now about data quality, not tactical tweaks. If your tracking is weak, automation will make the problem louder, not smarter. 📰 Search Engine Land

Google is rolling out more personalised Gemini experiences that pull from your Google context (think Gmail, Docs, Calendar) to answer and act more like an actual assistant. For marketers, this is another step toward inbox and calendar becoming the new “search bar”. Also, your audience’s attention is now one prompt away from abandoning your carefully crafted funnel. If your lifecycle comms are generic, you are about to feel it.

Why it matters: Email performance is about to hinge on whether AI can summarise you in one flattering sentence. Make your value obvious in the first 5 seconds, not the first 5 paragraphs. 📰 TechCrunch

Salesforce announced Slackbot upgrades aimed at pulling answers and actions straight into Slack. The pitch is simple: fewer “where’s the latest report?” messages, more decisions in-channel. It is part enablement, part adoption hack, and fully a bid to make Slack the default workspace interface for business data. If this works, it will quietly kill a chunk of internal status meetings.

Why it matters: Faster internal decisioning means campaigns ship quicker and get iterated more often. Your bottleneck is no longer “data access”, it is “do we trust the answer enough to act?”. 📰 VentureBeat

OpenAI is taking generative AI mainstream with a Super Bowl ad buy, according to reports. It is a brand play, not a demand gen one, and it signals confidence that “AI company” can be a consumer brand category. Expect copycat spends from every AI startup with a runway and an ego. The real competition is not features, it is mindshare.

Why it matters: The marketing bar for AI brands just went from “smart demo” to “cultural moment.” If you sell AI and your homepage still looks like a GitHub README, take the hint. 📰 Mashable

Nicole’s thoughts on how marketers should approach data and AI in 2026.

Retail’s big industry show was basically an AI theme park this year, and it is not just chatbots anymore.

In-store holograms are becoming marketing surfaces
One standout demo was a holographic AI assistant designed to grab attention and steer shoppers. That means physical retail is borrowing tactics from digital: personalised prompts, guided discovery, and conversion nudges. The store becomes a programmable channel, not just a place to hold stock. If you run brand experiences, your “merchandising” team is about to become your “media” team.

The new funnel starts before Google, inside AI interfaces
The show highlighted how product discovery is increasingly mediated by AI layers. That shifts the battleground from classic search ranking to how products are represented in data, feeds, and structured content. Brands that cannot explain themselves cleanly to machines will get misrepresented by machines. And when AI gets your product or service wrong, customers don’t blame the system, they judge the brand.

Marketing measurement is moving closer to the shelf
AI-powered tools are being positioned to link in-store behaviour with marketing exposure. That is the holy grail: attribution that does not rely on cookies or vibes. It also raises obvious privacy and creep-factor questions that most vendors conveniently speed-run. Marketers should assume scrutiny is coming, and build governance before the headlines do.

Our takeaway: Experiential marketing is turning into a measurable, AI-driven channel. If you are not thinking about “store as media”, someone else will.

📖 Read more on this topic at The Verge

It's not about working harder — it's about having a CRM that actually thinks ahead. HubSpot Smart CRM learns how your team operates and adapts to make everyone more effective. Streamline day to day tasks and track the activity that actually matters to your business. The result? Your team gets back hours every week to spend on growth instead of admin work. Start free. See the difference.

Get Started Free

This week’s episode comes from PR Week who do a brilliant job of digging into how PR teams are navigating generative AI without turning every press release into bland slurry. It also gets practical on governance, brand voice, and the risk of “AI speed” beating “human judgement” to the finish line. - watch it here.

The overview: Use TheTabber to turn a single campaign idea into platform-native posts, then schedule and publish them in one flow.

Step-by-step:

Pro tip: Reuse top-performing posts by feeding engagement data back into your next prompt to refine tone and hooks by channel.

Here are 4 trending tools to explore this week. Quick, practical upgrades to your AI marketing arsenal: