Nearly half of patients in a 2026 rater8 survey used AI tools to research providers, and most now screen doctors by star rating before booking. At the same time, hospital tracking-pixel settlements and new state health-privacy bills are pushing healthcare marketers to rethink how they measure patient acquisition.
Two years after the NAR settlement, agents must sell their value in writing, first-time buyers have fallen to a record-low 21% and Compass has dropped its suit over Zillow's listing rules. Here is what that means for agencies marketing agents and brokerages, from social leads to uneven AI adoption.
Rolling U.S. tariff revisions on Chinese and Southeast Asian goods are forcing mid-market online stores — those doing $5 million to $50 million in annual revenue — to rethink sourcing strategies that may no longer hold, with apparel, furniture, and home goods facing the steepest duty exposure as the holiday peak approaches.
Short-form video is replacing static photography on ecommerce product pages, but conversion experts warn the gains are category-dependent, the A/B testing evidence is thin, and a poorly executed implementation can hurt SEO rankings through Google Core Web Vitals regressions.
TikTok Shop, Instagram, and YouTube Shopping now function as full storefronts with their own product-data requirements, forcing US merchants to maintain parallel product records and rethink where conversion optimization dollars should go.
Apple Pay has become the dominant mobile wallet at checkout across Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce stores, prompting merchants, agencies, and payment consultants to weigh platform dependency risks, fee opacity, and checkout design lock-in — even as regulators in the EU, Australia, and the US begin to reshape the rules around digital wallet infrastructure.
