KIMP’s Picks 9th May: Weekly Highlights In Design, Marketing, AI, & More

AI continues to surprise us in new ways. It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago, AI seemed like a technology straight out of sci-fi movies. But today it’s an integral part of everyday conversations. It has become a crucial component in most modern workflows. 

But how do you keep up with all the AI buzz? Social media is one place to keep up with all the highlights. But it feels overwhelming to scroll endlessly through social media feeds to stay in the loop, right? If that’s you, then the KIMP’s Picks is for you. 

KIMP’s Picks is our weekly recap post to give entrepreneurs, marketers, and tech-enthusiasts their much-needed end-of-the-week roundup of the big social media updates, announcements that stole the spotlight that week, and shareworthy posts. 

Ready for this week’s dose of inspiration? Let’s get started with the KIMP’s Picks 9th May edition. 

In the Marketing Realm 

Google announces CTV-focused upgrades for advertisers

At Google NewFront, Google unveiled some major updates to Display & Video 360. The idea behind these updates is to redefine how brands connect with audiences across Connected TV (CTV). 

Reportedly, viewership trends show people using CTV for everything from live sports and video podcasts to bite-sized content, and Google’s new features aim to meet them wherever they watch their favorite content. 

Google has also introduced a commerce and retail media solution to turn viewers into buyers. Accordingly, Google is collaborating with partners like Costco and YouTube for better audience targeting and sales tracking.

Google is enhancing Search campaigns with AI Max 

Google is introducing AI Max for Search campaigns, a powerful new suite of AI-driven tools designed to expand ad reach, improve targeting, and dynamically generate creative assets. 

Google Search has been evolving, becoming more exploratory and supporting multimodal experiences. And there are new features like AI overviews, AI Mode, and more enhanced tools like Google Lens. Amidst all this, AI Max helps advertisers stay ahead by tapping into emerging moments of intent.

In short, advertisers can make the most of these updates to optimize their ads to align better with customer intent so as to ensure that their content reaches the right people at the right time. 

The power of local brand partnerships 

Search Engine Journal recently shared a post highlighting useful strategies for local brands to build their SEO authority and strengthen their community presence. 

For small businesses, building authority is key to standing out in local search results, and partnerships with other local organizations can make a big difference. Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines emphasize authoritativeness, which businesses can enhance through strategies like high-quality content, industry backlinks, and community engagement. 

Collaborating with reputable local businesses or groups creates a co-branding effect, boosting credibility when trusted brands validate each other. These partnerships can lead to shared content, such as guest blogs or social media posts, exposing brands to wider audiences and generating valuable local backlinks.

The post also recommends steps like engaging in local events or supporting community organizations, and how these can help build trust and earn citations. The idea is to reinforce the brand’s local presence. 

In the Content Marketing Realm 

YouTube trends to know now 

You know that YouTube is crucial to your brand’s marketing but the problem is – finding ideas for content to share. That’s where this post from YouTube comes in. Here, YouTube shares some of the recent trends to inspire creators and brands to find the right type of content that resonates with their audience. 

The post talks about the growing popularity of Doechii’s 2019 track “Anxiety” after fan-driven buzz sparked the “Anxiety Challenge”. Secondly, “Homebody” vlogs are gaining traction, with creators sharing cozy, introvert-friendly routines like cooking and nesting, offering a more authentic take on lifestyle content.

Delve into more such trends through the post shared by YouTube. These trends show how creators are blending nostalgia, authenticity, and innovative storytelling to connect with diverse audiences.

Creating content in the age of AI Overviews 

Great content increases your website’s traffic through AI Overviews, but data shows that AI Overviews seem to be reducing click-through rates. Amidst this, if you wish to ensure that your content strategy is up to date, the post here from Semrush is for you. 

The post presents useful information highlighting shifts in Google Search and what this means for content marketing. 

About 88.1% of all search queries that trigger AI Overviews are informational. Given that AI Overviews appear above organic search results, brands and marketers need to take them seriously. 

The post delves into details like Zero-Click Behavior and types and percentage of keywords that trigger AI Overviews, and how these signals can be used to refine content strategies. 

In the Design Realm

Highlights from Figma’s Config 2025 

At Config 2025, Figma announced a suite of innovative tools to streamline design and development workflows. 

Firstly, there’s Figma Make, a prompt-to-code model to conveniently generate functional prototypes. Then there is Figma Sites to let users easily design, prototype, and publish responsive websites with pre-built templates and live HTML previews.

Figma Draw is for those who are looking to add illustration tools like brushes to bring custom vector editing into their Figma workflows. Grid brings a new auto layout option to create galleries, bento grids, and more. 

Figma Buzz helps brand designers create and share on-brand assets, such as social media posts, using a simplified editor for quick, scalable asset production. 

In addition to these core updates, Figma also announced enhancements to their existing AI tools, including autosuggest text and image editing. These updates aim to make Figma a one-stop platform for creative and technical teams alike.

Lady Gaga’s website design sets new standards in fan engagement 

Time for some creativity inspiration. Yung Studio, collaborating with Lady Gaga’s team, crafted an innovative, evergreen design system for Lady Gaga’s website, ladygaga.com. The site blends artistry with technical finesse to deepen fan engagement. 

Moving beyond the constraints of algorithm-driven social media, the site features immersive experiences like the Rorschach Reveal, an interactive lyric discovery tool, and seasonal landing pages that complement social teasers with rich, emotional storytelling.

The design shows how breaking away from templated norms and cliched design approaches can help artists and brands transform fan engagement. It’s all about thinking beyond the scroll and creating websites that flow seamlessly and keep visitors engaged from the moment they encounter them. 

Adobe discusses using textures in design 

From enhancing the emotional appeal of a design to creating visual interest, there are several benefits to adding textures in designs. 

Adobe recently shared a post exploring some useful tips and tricks to add textures to designs. From including natural textures through high-quality photography to adding artificial textures and textured backgrounds, the post discusses various ideas. 

So if you are looking for ways to bring your designs to life and give them a new dimension, this is a good read. 

In the AI Realm 

Google announces Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview with major coding upgrades 

Google has released early access to Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (I/O edition), ahead of its planned debut at the I/O event 2025. This upgrade brings major improvements in coding, especially for building interactive web apps. It particularly builds on Gemini 2.5 Pro’s strong multimodal and coding capabilities. 

The updated model boosts performance in code generation, editing, and agent workflows, significantly surpassing its predecessor. According to Google, this new model also sets a new benchmark in video understanding. 

Now available through the Gemini API, Google AI Studio, and Vertex AI, this version enhances tool use and supports seamless multimodal experiences. 

Freepik’s AI Assistant gets a makeover 

Freepik’s AI Assistant is known for its ability to simplify the process of generating design assets within Freepik. This tool is getting a few fresh upgrades intended to amplify its capabilities and enhance user experience.

To begin with, the Composition feature lets you draw the desired layout for your design, add elements, and use simple text prompts and watch GPT-4o model design the assets you require. Secondly, the AI assistant now lets you switch between styles and colors to customize your design effectively. 

Anthropic upgrades Claude with Integrations & Advanced Research

Anthropic has launched Integrations, a feature that lets users connect Claude to popular tools like Jira, Zapier, and Intercom. This update builds on the Model Context Protocol, allowing Claude to interact with remote servers and access deeper project context across apps. 

Additionally, Claude gains enhanced research capabilities, meaning that the tool will now be able to search the web, Google Workspace, and use Integrations to access data from connected apps too. The result? More detailed reports with citations taking about 45 minutes for the process. 

These features aim to turn Claude into a highly informed and productive assistant capable of managing complex workflows. 

ChatGPT is all set to surpass X in web traffic 

Similarweb recently shared some interesting data about website traffic. Reportedly, ChatGPT is poised to overtake X in terms of total website visits for April. This marks a major shift in digital engagement trends. 

According to Similarweb, over the past 28 days, ChatGPT logged 4.786 billion visits compared to X’s 4.028 billion. While ChatGPT followed X consistently in January, it began to match and surpass it more frequently by March (except on weekends when its productivity-focused use typically dips). Moreover, April data shows that even the weekend gap is narrowing, signaling ChatGPT’s rising dominance online.

LTX Studio unveils a new open-source video model 

LTX Studio has released a novel open-source video model boasting 13 billion parameters. Undoubtedly, this sets new standards for speed, quality, and creative control. 

Featuring multiscale rendering, the model processes scenes at multiple resolutions simultaneously, ensuring smooth motion, sharp visuals, and consistent frame-to-frame coherence, even in complex sequences. 

According to LTX Studio, this tool is up to 30 times faster than leading competitors. Fully open source, this model can be run on your own hardware or accessed for free through LTX Studio.

Meta’s FAIR has announced new AI innovations 

Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team has unveiled five open-source advancements to push advanced machine intelligence forward.

The Perception Encoder is a vision encoder that excels in image and video tasks and boosts language tasks like visual question answering. The Perception Language Model (PLM), trained on 2.5 million human-labeled video samples, tackles complex visual recognition with a new PLM-VideoBench for fine-grained tasks. 

Thirdly, there is Meta Locate 3D to help robots pinpoint objects in 3D spaces using natural language. The Dynamic Byte Latent Transformer comes with 8 billion parameters and is a strong contender to traditional language models. 

Lastly, Collaborative Reasoner enhances AI’s social skills through synthetic multi-agent conversations. This also helps improve task performance by up to 29.4% on math and reasoning benchmarks. 

On the whole, these releases, complete with models, datasets, and code, aim to empower the research community to build smarter, more perceptive AI systems.

Netflix unveils a new TV experience & experiments with AI search on iOS 

Netflix has introduced a revamped TV experience focusing on a more intuitive design to help users find great content effortlessly. The updated homepage features a modern look, spotlighting key details to help with convenient decision-making. The platform is also moving Search and My List shortcuts to the top for easier access. 

Additionally, real-time recommendations now adapt better to users’ moods, thus enhancing personalization. On mobile, Netflix is testing a generative AI search feature for iOS users, allowing natural queries like “something funny and upbeat,” and a vertical video feed for discovering shows through clips. This feature is likely to roll out soon. 

The updates leverage Netflix’s tech strengths, from its Open Connect network to advanced recommendations, to deepen user engagement. 

HeyGen reveals the next big thing in AI avatars 

HeyGen has rolled out its Avatar IV model. This cutting-edge AI avatar engine is designed to transform a single image into a fully animated video. But that’s not all. This AI video includes natural voice sync, expressive facial dynamics, and realistic hand gestures. All this without requiring any video or motion capture. 

Avatar IV’s multimodal voice-to-motion engine ensures lifelike expressions in portrait, half-body, or full-body formats. The technology aims to revolutionize digital storytelling, making it easier for users to craft engaging, realistic videos for personal or professional use, setting a new standard in AI-driven content creation.

Anthropic adds web search to Claude API 

Anthropic recently added We Search capabilities to Claude to keep up with the competition in the AI chatbot segment. Building on this, they have now unveiled Web Search features in their API as well. 

This means that developers can now enable up-to-date, citation-backed responses by toggling web search in the Messages API. Web search is also integrated into Claude Code, aiding developers with troubleshooting and framework updates.

Social Media Feature Updates and Algorithm Changes 

TikTok announces innovations for brands to connect with fans 

At this year’s NewFronts, TikTok showcased its latest innovations to help brands connect with its fast-evolving culture. 

With the introduction of TikTok Pulse Core and Pulse Premiere, brands can now align themselves with the platform’s hottest trends and cultural moments. 

Pulse Core allows ads to appear next to user-generated content that’s relevant to specific categories or seasonal events, giving advertisers a unique opportunity to tap into real-time community conversations. On the other hand, Pulse Premiere takes it a step further, offering exclusive placements alongside premium content from top publishers like Formula 1, Red Bull Media House, and Warner Bros Discovery.

Snapchat unveils new ad features 

Snapchat at the NewFronts event introduced its “Say it in a Snap” campaign to capture spontaneous moments, amplified by billboards in cities like New York. The company also launched Under the Ghost, a music series in its Santa Monica studio, enabling artists to connect with fans while offering brands sponsorship opportunities through media packages. 

Additionally, they announced Sponsored Snaps updates like Web & App Auction Ads and First Snap, alongside AI-powered tools like smart bidding and Smart Budget, optimizing performance for advertisers.

Pinterest adds AI-powered visual search tools 

Pinterest is reshaping the way people search for fashion inspiration with the launch of new visual search features. These tools are designed to help users find style matches without needing the right words. 

Starting with women’s fashion in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, the platform now allows users to interact more deeply with images to refine and shop styles that align with their personal taste. 

With these updates, Pinterest can break down elements of an image, like aesthetic, color, or fit, and suggest descriptive search terms to guide further discovery. An animated glow highlights specific objects in Pins, making it easier to search for similar products.

Time to Wrap Up…

This was just a handful of posts from the sea of updates that shaped this week. We hope this quick summary gave you a gist of the week, letting you quickly catch up on all the trends and technologies that are likely to influence your industry. With that, we are wrapping up the KIMP’s Picks 9th May edition. To stay in the loop and get more such updates, stay tuned, and we’ll be back with the next round of weekly social media highlights wrapped up neatly for you.