Pinterest has shared some new insight into rising search trends, which could help to guide Pin marketing approaches heading into summer in the southern hemisphere.

Pinterest has already provided a range of insights into rising trends and topics of interest for your planning, but this new guide looks more specifically at summer-themed activity, and what people are seeking as we head into the warmer months.

Pinterest has highlighted four areas of interest:

First off, we have food trends, and as you can see, cocktails and picnic trends are picking up in the app.

Next, Pinterest highlights fashion and beauty searches, with “holiday make-up looks” getting attention:

Then there’s home living trends, where people are seeking outdoor engagement options:

And finally, Pinterest presents rising travel trends, including the Australian Open:

As noted, Pinterest has already highlighted a range of similar trends in its larger Summer trends report, but this updated listing could give you more guidance for your strategy, based on the latest emerging shifts.

I mean, most of these are fairly obvious, based on generic summer trends, but there may be relevant notes of interest for your planning, which could help to reshape or realign your creative assets.

And it could be worth considering. As per Pinterest:

“By matching your campaign to the current season, you can drive better results. Case in point: Pinterest campaigns with summer-specific themes outperformed other kinds of campaigns in summer 2024.”

So there is clear benefit to better aligning your promotions with the latest trends, which could make these insights more valuable, and actionable in your marketing approach.

Either way, some additional food for thought for your Pin marketing efforts.

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In recent months, millions of people around the world have seen something new at the top of their Google search results – AI-generated summaries. The brief answers, called AI Overviews, appear automatically in response to many searches, giving users a quick summary pulled from various online sources.

While it’s possible to hide these summaries, most people don’t. According to new research from Pew Research, many users are skipping the traditional list of links altogether. The data shows that users presented with an AI summary are much less likely to click on the search results beneath it.

In contrast, users who weren’t shown an AI summary were twice as likely to click on links and explore other sources. “Google users were less likely to click on result links when visiting search pages with an AI summary compared with those without one,” Pew wrote, based on data from over 900 participants who shared their browsing activity.

The shift in behaviour suggests growing trust in AI summaries – even though these summaries are known to contain errors or lack reliable sourcing. Most users “very rarely” clicked on the links provided in the AI summary itself, Pew said. That means fewer people are visiting the original sources, including news outlets and websites that rely on web traffic to survive.

The most common sources for Google’s AI summaries were Reddit, Wikipedia, and YouTube, according to the research. Government websites also appeared more frequently in AI summaries than in traditional search results, while the presence of news sites was about the same in both formats.

Longer search queries, especially those written as full sentences or questions, were more likely to trigger AI summaries. Shorter, one- or two-word searches were less likely to do so.

The change comes at a time when publishers are already under pressure. Google’s algorithm updates in 2023 and 2024 caused traffic to many news websites to fall sharply, as Google began to present news directly in search results pages. Some smaller outlets, like Turkey’s Gazete Duvar, were forced to shut down.

Now, AI Overviews are delivering another hit to publishers that depend on SEO and ad revenue. Sites offering information like travel guides, health tips, or product reviews have been especially affected. According to data from Similarweb, organic search traffic dropped 55% between April 2022 and April 2025.

The Wall Street Journal reported that HuffPost, the Washington Post, and other major news outlets have seen similar declines. At HuffPost, traffic from organic search has more than halved in three years. The NYT‘s share of traffic from Google searches fell to 36.5% in April 2025. Business Insider cut 21% of its staff this May, blaming a sharp and uncontrollable drop in search traffic.

Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, believes the trend will only get worse. “Google is changing from a search engine to an answer engine,” he told the Wall Street Journal. He and other publishers are now focusing on building direct relationships with readers instead of relying on Google.

Google maintains that it still drives valuable traffic to websites and that people who do click links after reading AI Overviews tend to spend more time on those pages. But the Pew data tells a different story. It shows that most users are satisfied with the AI summary and don’t click through to the original sources.

One troubling case involved 404 Media, a site that covers technology and internet culture. It found that a story it published about AI-assisted music production wasn’t appearing in Google search results. The content had been summarised in an AI Overview – but the summary didn’t link back to the original story.

“The AI Overview ensures that information is presented in such a way that the source itself is never clicked on,” the site said.

The situation is also reshaping how search engine optimisation works. According to The Register, click-through rates for the top-ranked result in searches with AI Overviews have dropped by an average of 34.5%. Being ranked on the first page no longer guarantees visibility or traffic.

There’s another issue: reliability. AI summaries can be inaccurate – and can cite other AI-generated content. In one case, 404 Media reported that a Google summary was built on another AI-generated response, which itself was based on AI-sourced material. Experts say this creates a loop of recycled, low-quality information, which will eventually degrade the quality of AI systems themselves.

When reliable sources are no longer getting traffic, and poor content circulates more easily, users are left with summaries that may be wrong, vague, or missing context.

At the heart of the issue is advertising, and most websites offer free content and earn money from ads shown to readers. Google sends users to these sites, where they can view ads. But if people stay on Google – reading the AI Overview and not clicking anything – then websites lose traffic and revenue.

Search drives much of the internet’s activity. The BBC reports that around 68% of internet sessions begin with a search engine, and 90% of those happen on Google. That dominance has shaped how publishers earn money. Now, AI summaries could break that system.

Still, Google isn’t losing money. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, posted record revenue in late 2024. Total revenue rose 14% year over year to $96.4 billion, with $54.2 billion coming from advertising. That’s partly because ads are now placed in or near the AI Overviews.

A study by SparkToro found that by 2024, only 36% of Google searches in the US resulted in clicks to websites with no Google elements such as ads. As AI summaries spread, that number could shrink further.

While Google remains dominant, alternatives like Perplexity – an AI-powered search engine – are starting to gain ground. According to Bank of America analyst Muhammad Rasulnejat, Google’s $14 billion investment in infrastructure last quarter shows “desperation in the face of competition,” not just rising demand.

Adding to the pressure is the US Department of Justice’s ongoing antitrust case against the company. The DOJ is pushing for Google to sell off its Chrome browser, citing monopolistic behaviour. Google’s moves in AI and advertising may only deepen scrutiny in the months ahead.

(Photo by Christian Wiediger)

See also: Google launches Web Guide: A bet on AI-curated results

Find out more about the Digital Marketing World Forum series and register here.

Tags: advertising, ai, customer experience, google, search

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Digital marketing methods are adapting alongside emerging and developing technologies, according to Mediaocean’s H2 Market Report for 2025, with methods and tech considered experimental earlier this year becoming established strings to marketers’ bows.

The survey is based on the responses of over 500 marketing professionals the company contacted, and is the eighth publication from Mediaocean in its bi-annual research series.

The biggest and most powerful trends in the industry in the last six months, Mediaocean says, are AI, CTV, and identity, with nearly three-quarters of marketers surveyed citing AI as a priority. Current uses for the technology focus on creative, copywriting, media planning, data analysis, and campaign optimisation.

Identity remains a core pillar for marketers, driven in part by the apparent decline of cookie use, plus an uptick in media channels available to campaigns. Pinning down elusive customer profiles tends to entail a mixture of first- and third-party data, and “probalistic approaches,” the survey’s results show.

As part of activities that increase the focus on personalisation, cultural and political sensitivities were held to be increasingly important by the marketers who responded to Mediaocean. Brands are becoming aware that their communications intersect increasingly with political and advocacy issues, needing more detailed and nuanced messaging to reach diverse audiences, messages that need to change rapidly according to events.

As companies examine and allocate their budgets, Connected TV (CTV) looks set to benefit the most from marketers’ spending. CTV is the placing of ads on streaming platforms, and thanks to both the multiplicity of providers and better user identification metrics from broadcasters, companies can now focus more on precise targeting and individual ad performance, rather than a ‘spray and pray’ approach that concentrates merely on reach.

Privacy concerns have slipped down in the list of what marketers consider important, with the survey suggesting that marketers may be “deprioritising compliance-specific initiatives in favour of more proactive, identity-based solutions.”

Search advertising spending has fallen by 22% from H1, Mediaocean says, as AI results continue to replace ‘traditional’ SERP pages, with marketers now undertaking broader optimisation than pure-play keyword and incoming link activities – traditionally the cornerstones of SEO.

Optimising content for AI can be highly technical, with processes required that fall outside the remit of marketing function: moving JavaScript rendering to server-side, rather than in-browser, means re-coding online platforms, for example.

Despite the drop in search advertising budgets, overall marketing spend seems to be holding up, Mediaocean says, with companies reallocating funds from search to different channels and methods.

W Media Research’s principal and chief analyst, Karsten Weide, says “marketers are meeting change with a blend of resilience and reinvention.” Arron Goldman of Mediaocean say technologies and methods like AI, CTV and multi-ID strategies have moved beyond an experimental stage for marketers, and predicts that success in marketing later this year will be dependent on “how well brands align their technology, data, and creative.”

One primary technological challenge in digital marketing continues to be the unification of data sources from disparate platforms, an issue which is both technical and time-based – technologies and channel popularity change quickly compared to the speed at which data aggregation tech can be built and put into production.

Mediaocean is holding a webinar on July 29 to discuss its H2 Market Report, with input from IAB, Weide, and Lafayette Media.

(Image source: “Mistakes were made: evolution (HMM!)” by lindakowen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)

See also: TikTok pushes AI ads that look just like real creators

Find out more about the Digital Marketing World Forum series and register here.

Tags: ai, cookies, data insights

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