Every Industry Playbooks article in the published edition, newest first.
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.
Forrester says 94% of business buyers now use AI during purchases, and typical decisions involve 13 internal stakeholders plus nine outside influencers. For agencies running demand generation for SaaS and tech clients, influence has to happen earlier, reach whole committees and come with proof.
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.
A growing number of digitally native direct-to-consumer brands are signing wholesale deals with Target, Nordstrom, and Whole Foods as rising Meta CPMs make pure-play DTC increasingly costly. The shift is dividing operators: proponents see retail shelf space as subsidized customer acquisition, while critics warn that handing transactions to a retailer erodes the first-party data and pricing control that made the DTC model valuable in the first place.
New research from Financial Media & Marketing highlights seven data-backed content marketing strategies for financial advisors and B2B professionals, centering on personalization, content format mix, publishing consistency, distribution channels, compliance, analytics, and resource management.
AmSpa survey data and 2026 ad benchmarks reveal that the average med spa spends 7% of revenue on marketing — slightly below the cross-industry norm — while Beauty and Personal Care paid search costs dropped sharply and repeat patients already account for nearly three-quarters of visit volume.
New benchmark data shows attorneys and legal services average $131.63 per Google Ads lead — more than double the cross-industry average — while Clio's survey data finds referrals remain the top client source, yet 87% of declined prospects never get referred anywhere else. For personal injury firms, response speed and referral discipline may matter as much as ad spend.
TikTok Shop's creator affiliate program has grown to 200,000+ active U.S. creators and anchors a platform that processed over $100 billion in global GMV in 2024 — but brands and agencies are increasingly questioning whether its blended economics hold up once platform fees, commission rate competition, and limited customer-data access are factored in.
Subscription brands from Hims & Hers to HelloFresh are reporting that letting subscribers pause—rather than cancel—is reshaping their LTV/CAC math. But growth operators are sharply divided on whether the mechanic genuinely extends customer lifetime value or merely delays churn while inflating active subscriber counts.
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.
