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In today’s email:
Zalando scales AI-generated content to 90% of marketing output with striking results
Similarweb's new index reveals which brands are winning AI search, and it's not always the biggest ones
Omnicom's CEO unveils AI growth strategy at investor day, but cautions the technology hasn't matured yet
Plus: Nataly Kelly of Zappi on why your AI brand presence is now as critical as your first-party one, Canva's CMO on the freemium playbook that built a global brand and a step-by-step workflow for building your first Claude skill in 30 minutes using Anthropic's official guide
The Top 3 Stories
1. Zalando scales AI-generated marketing content to 90% of total output
Zalando reported full-year 2025 results this week, with AI now producing 90% of its marketing content, up from near zero twelve months prior. Campaign creation time fell from six weeks to days, enabling 70% more content at the same cost. Its AI virtual try-on tool is also reducing size-related returns across 62 million active shoppers.
Why it matters: Zalando is the clearest signal yet that AI-generated creative is past proof of concept in e-commerce. Volume, speed, and return reduction together make a compelling case for full creative automation. 📰 Retail Gazette
2. Similarweb's GenAI Brand Visibility Index reveals which brands are winning AI search
Similarweb published its 2026 Generative AI Brand Visibility Index on 3 March, tracking 113 brands across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity across six sectors. The headline finding: brands with deep subject-matter authority are outperforming larger competitors in AI citations. Specialists like B&H and iFixit are punching well above their conventional search weight.
Why it matters: AI citation share is emerging as a distinct metric from search ranking. Scale alone is no longer sufficient; authority built over time is now compounding in AI search. 📰 Similarweb
3. Omnicom unveils AI growth strategy at investor day, but CEO warns the technology "hasn't matured" yet
At Omnicom's investor day on 12 March, CEO John Wren introduced a new corporate positioning, "Our right to win," built around the company's expanded AI and data capabilities following the IPG acquisition. Wren told investors that creative teams can now generate 50 concepts and test them synthetically before spending on media. He cautioned, however, that current AI hasn't yet matured enough to generate direct cost savings for clients.
Why it matters: The world's largest agency group is betting its growth story on AI while simultaneously tempering near-term ROI expectations. For brand marketers, it is a useful reality check: AI is reshaping agency workflows now, but the measurable client payoff is still incoming. 📰 Ad Age
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More trending AI marketing news from last week
Ad agencies including Broadhead and Supergood are using vibe coding to build custom GEO monitoring platforms in hours.
Perplexity's Computer agent reportedly replaced a $225,000 annual marketing stack over a single weekend, making 224 micro-optimisations across an $8M ad spend.
Google expanded AI Mode Canvas to all US users, giving searchers a document-building workspace inside Google Search without any opt-in.
Gartner predicts traditional search volume will fall 25% this year as users shift to AI-powered answer engines instead.
90.3% of marketing organisations use AI agents somewhere in their martech stack
Quote of the week
My top priority going into 2026 is meeting customers where they're actually searching, and that is increasingly in AI chat and summary, not just traditional digital channels. Your AI brand presence is becoming just as important as your first-party one."
Trending AI tools for marketers
Here are 4 trending tools to explore this week. Quick, practical upgrades to your AI marketing arsenal:
📊 Timelaps – Surveys 4,000 real consumers to confirm if your marketing is working
🎯 Gojiberry AI – Finds buyers via 10+ intent signals and books demos automatically
🪞 Teract – AI twin that learns your voice and tells you exactly where to show up online
📽️ Chronicle 2.0 – Turns notes or a URL into a polished, on-brand presentation instantly
TV, podcasts & streaming
Canva CMO on the marketing strategies that built Australia's largest private company
Zach Kitschke, CMO of Canva, joins host Jon Evans to walk through the brand and growth decisions that took Canva from a five-person startup to a global platform with 200 million users. The freemium model deep-dive alone is worth the listen, and Kitschke is refreshingly direct on what actually drove growth versus what made a good story at the time - listen here.
AI training
How to build your first Claude skill using Anthropic's official guide
The overview: Anthropic's Complete Guide to Building Skills for Claude is a 32-page playbook that walks any marketer through creating a reusable, trigger-based workflow that Claude loads automatically whenever you need it.
Step-by-step:
Start with your use case
Write down two or three concrete tasks you repeat weekly where you want Claude to follow a consistent process.Create your skill folder
Name it in kebab-case (e.g.,weekly-report) and add a single SKILL.md file inside it.Write your YAML frontmatter
Open SKILL.md with a name, a description, and the trigger phrases a user might naturally say to activate the skill.Add your instructions
Write clear, step-by-step guidance in plain English below the frontmatter, exactly as you would brief a colleague.Move supporting detail to a references folder
Keep SKILL.md focused and link to longer documentation in a separate references folder to reduce token load.Test and iterate
Run the skill with obvious phrases first, then try paraphrased requests to confirm it triggers reliably.
Pro tip: Use Claude's built-in skill-creator skill to generate your first SKILL.md draft in under 15 minutes, then refine from there.
The weekly deep dive
Why agencies are building their own AI tools instead of buying them
The dominant pattern in agency AI adoption this month is not procurement, it is construction. A wave of media and creative agencies are shipping bespoke internal tools using AI coding assistants, and the results are arriving faster than anyone expected.
Building over buying
Broadhead and Supergood have shipped custom GEO monitoring platforms and competitive intelligence dashboards, with Broadhead's VP completing a full build in a single evening. Teams are using Claude and Replit to produce tools that would previously have taken months of development resource.
The economics of custom tooling
Enterprise AI agreements can run to multiple millions annually, which is shifting the build-versus-buy calculation sharply. Bespoke tools built on API access offer the same underlying model capability with far greater control over interface, data handling, and client customisation at a fraction of the licensing cost.
What this means for martech vendors
For point-solution SaaS vendors, this trend is uncomfortable. If a senior strategist can spin up a reporting tool in an evening, the value proposition of a five-figure annual contract becomes harder to defend. Agencies building now are packaging these tools as client-facing products, putting them in direct competition with traditional software vendors.
Our takeaway: Agencies that invest in internal build capability this year will enter 2027 with proprietary tools, differentiated offerings, and cost structures that off-the-shelf software cannot match.
📖 Read the full article at Adweek
That’s it today!
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