Digital Marketing Update August 2025

Here’s your digital marketing update for August 2025.

Search Updates from August 2025

Search experiences continue to be re-written with AI systems re-shaping search engine results pages and ultimately how people discover content.

Reddit evolves into Search Engine

Reddit is unifying it’s core search function and Reddit Answers into a single search experience that will be front and centre of the app. It’s an interesting move, positioning Reddit to become a true search destination. And I’ll be honest, I think they might be on to something. Answers from real people. (we all know people buy from people). This is one to watch. More here.

Google Web Guide

Google continues to experiment with Web Guide – a new way of displaying search results where it uses AI to organise content into clusters around sub topics related to the search query. I know I mentioned this last month. But it’s the biggest change to Google search results pages we’ve seen in years. Google are still testing it, so I’m bringing it up again. It means that both content structure and topical depth are becoming increasingly important if you’re creating content.

LLM browsers

Meanwhile LLMs are working on their own browsers – giving alternative approaches to content discovery that bypass Google altogether. For example, Perplexity has introduced its Comet browser. With this in mind, you need to make sure that your content can be easily interpreted by machines (through use of schema and meta data for example).

AI written content

Let’s flip that on it’s head. What if you’re using LLMs to help you write your content? Will your content still rank? According to Ahrefs (who analysed over 600,000 pages), fully AI written content often fails to rank – because it lacks depth. But AI content that has been edited by a human does tend to rank. So by all means use AI for drafting, but make sure you use your own depth of knowledge and authority if you want that content to rank. And beyond ranking, it’s your personality that will actually engage the reader – so sprinkle your content with plenty of you. 

Advertising Updates from August 2025

Language targeting removed

If you run multilingual campaigns in Google Ads, it’s time to check your set up. Google ads have removed the ability to target ads by language. If you run language specific campaigns, use geo targeting and language specific ad copy instead.

Threads advertising

Meta has added Ads to Threads. If you’re already running Facebook or Instagram ads, Threads is just another placement. So you can set them up in Ads Manager without the need for new creative (though we’d always recommend creative testing).

Tik Tok metrics

Tik Tok launched the Engaged View metric. This tracks sessions where users stay on your site for at least 10 seconds. This is great as it flips the script – when you switch to ‘Engaged View Bidding’, instead of optimising for volume (clicks), you optimise toward intent (engagement).

Meta rules

Meta has introduced Value Rules. For smarter bidding, ‘value rules’ allow users to adjust bidding based on user characteristics such as age or location so that spend can be aligned to expected customer value. In theory this could help drive efficiency (by moving budget to segments that produce better lifetime value or return on ad spend). But in reality, I wonder if for now the rules are too simplistic (age etc.) to build valuable customer profiles? What do you think? Perhaps worth a test against Advantage+ campaigns?

Social Media Updates from July 2025

Pinterest audience growth

Still an underused channel in my opinion. Pinterest offers low competition and high potential for conversion given that users tend to be planning with high intent. They’ve helpfully released a framework for audience growth. The new guide to growing engaged audiences emphasizes trending content, SEO optimised pins, and of course, consistent posting.

Instagram Insights

Instagram have introduced a useful chart that shows the exact moment that people liked your reel. These insights should be useful for identifying any trends in what’s engaging your audiences.  

That’s it for this month. Hopefully this has given you some food for thought. 

Come back next month for more digital marketing updates from The Marketing Den 😊