Google's Biggest Acquisition Ever Will Shake Up the Marketing Industry

If Google's parent company does indeed buy Hubspot, what will that mean for marketers?

Today's News

HUBSPOT • Google is Close to Buying the Platform

Why Hubspot?

PINTEREST • Content Trends for the Summer

Maximalist fashion

90s beauty

Dopamine home décor

AMAZON ADS • “Performance+” Better CPA Costs?

The background

Early results

FUN • Snapchat’s Goofy Filters Back in Zoom Calls

HUBSPOT • Google is Close to Buying the Platform

Google’s parent company Alphabet is said to be close buying Hubspot — the large marketing automation platform. If it goes through, it will be the largest acquisition in its history. Hubspot is worth about $30 billion.

(By way of comparison, Google bought YouTube for about $1.6 billion in stock. Pretty good deal considering YouTube brought in more than $30 billion in revenue last year alone.)

Why Hubspot?

Why do they want Hubspot? To compete with Microsoft’s lead in the productivity suite space. Google is in third place among cloud services, but is well behind the first two. Amazon controls about a third of the market, and Microsoft holds more than twice what Alphabet has.

Google is also catching up with Microsoft in the AI race, recently unveiling many updates to its Gemini AI tools.

Both companies face scrutiny from European regulators.

PINTEREST • Content Trends for the Summer

Pinterest has released an overview of rising Summer content trends, offering insight into popular topics that could guide your marketing strategies.

✅ Link to the trends’ pinboard

So, what's trending?

Maximalist fashion

“Maximalist” fashion is at the forefront, featuring “rock and roll style, alternative outfits, eye-catching patterns, and unconventional silhouettes.” Pinterest says users are leaning more into bold fashion as a way to express personalities and break from conventional norms.

Searches for “tomboy femme” have increased by 3,900%, “baggy outfit ideas” by 290%, “Rock and Roll outfit” by 1,050%, “Leather wear” by 470%, “Geek chic” by 870%, and “Y3k outfits” by 6,030%.

90s beauty

Another trend is “90’s Beauty,” with rising searches for “90s makeup look” and “2000s makeup.” Specific trends include “Calico hair” (+6,500%), “Heavy highlights on dark hair” (+2,840%), “90s layered bob” (+985%), “90s nail art” (+250%), and “90s glam makeup” (+280%).

Dopamine home décor

“Dopamine home décor” is also trending, favoring vibrant and personalized spaces. Key searches include “Grandma core bedroom” (+2,605%), “Tea sets vintage” (+168%), and “Vintage plates on wall” (+119%).

Pinterest says it has 518 million monthly active users, 40% of whom are Gen Z.

AMAZON ADS • “Performance+” Better CPA Costs?

A couple of months ago, Amazon launched a new automated ad product called Performance+. It uses machine learning to optimize campaigns based on predicted conversion rates.

We now have some data on how those ads are performing.

The background

This, of course, a reaction to the AI-driven ad products by Google and Meta. Amazon is trying to claw back some of the ad budget being consumed by those two.

Performance+ operates within Amazon’s demand-side platform. It uses an AI model to predict the likelihood of user conversions every hour. Advertisers set target cost-per-acquisition goals. Amazon then handles campaign setup, audience targeting, and optimization.

Ads can run on Amazon’s sites and external publisher inventories.

Early results

Amazon says most Performance+ campaigns have achieved 30%-90% lower CPAs compared to standard Amazon DSP ad buys with similar goals and formats.

These are, of course, numbers provided by the platform, so they do have an interest in only talking up the positive results — we weren’t able to find any independent studies on this.

FUN • Snapchat’s Goofy Filters Back in Zoom Calls

Marketing executives of a certain — well, I’ll just say — of a certain “age” don’t spend a lot of time in the Snapchat app. Honestly, I’ve never felt more old trying to figure out Snapchat’s convoluted UI.

I think for the most part, most marketing people who have spent time with the brand have done so in one of two places:

The ads manager

The Snapchat camera. No, not the one in the mobile app — the virtual camera that extends the crazy face filters into your Zoom meetings.

Sadly, the company shut that app down more than a year ago — suddenly returning thousands of Zoom meetings to their soul-destroying realities.

Well, it’s back, baby!

It’s not an app any more, but it is a new Chrome extension that basically does the same thing.

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