KIMP’s Picks May 1st: Weekly Highlights In Design, Marketing, AI, & More
Friday is here. Time to catch up on the latest buzz, the latest AI news you missed throughout the week. Time to look back on all the social media algorithm changes, the new features, marketing inspiration that lie buried amidst the thousands of posts that were shared this week. And how do you do that without endlessly scrolling through your feed? Through the KIMP’s Picks, of course!
Welcome to KIMP’s Picks’ May 1st edition. Let’s get started with this week’s recap.
In the Marketing Realm
Spotify’s move demonstrates the brand’s understanding of its audience
Spotify is launching guided workout experiences inside its app, expanding into fitness and wellness. Users can now access curated workout playlists, creator-led fitness content, and, through a new Peloton partnership, more than 1,400 on-demand classes for Premium subscribers in supported markets.
The move builds on strong user demand, with Spotify reporting that nearly 70% of Premium users work out monthly and more than 150 million fitness playlists are actively used globally.
From a marketing perspective, this strengthens Spotify’s ecosystem strategy by increasing time spent in-app and expanding opportunities for creator partnerships, wellness sponsorships, and branded fitness content.
Adobe completes its Semrush acquisition
Adobe has officially completed its acquisition of Semrush, expanding its marketing and customer experience capabilities as AI-driven search reshapes how consumers discover brands.
The deal gives Adobe deeper SEO, generative engine optimization (GEO), and agentic search optimization (ASO) tools, helping businesses improve visibility across traditional search engines, AI chatbots, and emerging AI agents.
Adobe says AI traffic to U.S. retail sites surged 269% year over year in March 2026, highlighting how quickly AI-led discovery is growing.
Adobe and Semrush say the move positions them to build a more complete platform for brand discoverability in an AI-first digital landscape.
Search is no longer limited to Google. Brands now need to optimize for AI assistants, LLMs, and agentic search or risk losing visibility where purchase decisions increasingly begin. Adobe’s recent move is aimed at helping brands keep up with this shift.
LinkedIn launches Off-Platform Event Ads for external event promotion
LinkedIn is rolling out Off-Platform Event Ads, a new ad format that lets marketers promote events hosted outside LinkedIn directly in the feed.
Previously, advertisers needed a LinkedIn Event Page to run Event Ads. With this update, brands can now promote webinars, field events, hybrid events, and livestreams using external registration or landing page links instead. Advertisers simply add the third-party event URL along with event details like date, time, format, and creative assets.
The new format supports multiple campaign objectives including brand awareness, engagement, website visits, and lead generation. LinkedIn says marketers will still get access to Event Ad features such as event-focused CTAs, accelerated delivery, and Campaign Manager performance tracking.
The feature is rolling out globally now and will be available to all advertisers by May 6.
Google x Albertsons partnership to boost retail media reach
Albertsons is partnering with Google to bring its retail media data into YouTube and Display & Video 360 through Google’s Commerce Media Suite.
The move allows brands to use Albertsons’ first-party shopper data to target high-intent consumers across YouTube and other premium publisher inventory. Advertisers will also gain access to SKU-level sales reporting, thus being able to get more detailed measurement of how campaigns influence product sales.
By integrating Albertsons’ retail signals directly into Display & Video 360, brands can manage shopper marketing and broader media campaigns in one place while optimizing spend with more precise performance data.
Retail media is moving beyond retailer-owned platforms. This update gives advertisers stronger closed-loop measurement and more advanced audience targeting across YouTube and the open web using real shopper purchase data.
Google expands Demand Gen with new features
Google has introduced two major updates to Demand Gen campaigns aimed at improving performance and measurement for advertisers.
First, Demand Gen is now integrated into Google’s Commerce Media Suite, allowing brands to use retailers’ first-party shopper data across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail.
Second, Google has launched view-through conversion (VTC) optimization for YouTube within Demand Gen campaigns.
Google is making Demand Gen more competitive with paid social platforms by improving attribution and retail data integration, giving marketers stronger visibility into how upper-funnel campaigns drive real conversions.
In the Content Marketing Realm
Meta’s new research encourages marketers to rethink generation gaps
Meta’s latest Generation Zeitgeist 2026 study shows a major shift in how audiences behave online. Notably, results are challenging long-held ideas about generational marketing.
Across nearly 10,000 respondents, the data shows only a 4 percentage point difference between Gen Z and Boomers in key app motivations. Instead of age, lifestage has emerged as the strongest predictor of intent, with life events like buying a home or having a child increasing purchase intent by up to 26 percentage points.
The research highlights that how people use platforms matters more than when they were born. Users who actively curate their feeds show up to 47 percentage points higher engagement than passive users, cutting across all age groups.
Meta says marketing content strategies built purely on age segmentation are becoming outdated as behaviour becomes more unified and intent becomes more context-driven.
In short, targeting based on age alone is losing relevance. Brands need to shift toward lifestage, behaviour, and intent signals if they want to stay effective in how they reach and convert audiences.
Time for SEO teams to automate repetitive tasks
SEO teams often spend a lot of time on manual tasks that can run in the background with the use of the right tools. Search Engine Land recently shared an insightful discussion that delves into tools and ideas that help SEO teams automate such tasks.
The opportunity now is to use AI and simple workflows to automate this work and free up time for analysis, planning, and decision-making.
The starting point is identifying tasks that feel like “intern-level” work. These include content audits, keyword research, internal linking suggestions, reporting, metadata creation, and content briefs. These are ideal for automation because they follow repeatable patterns and rely heavily on structured data.
One useful approach is the 70/30 model. Let AI handle about 70% of the work, such as drafting insights or generating reports. Then humans focus on the final 30%, which includes validation, refinement, and publishing. This keeps quality high while reducing manual effort.
However, automation has limits. It won’t fix poor data quality, broken tracking systems, or slow approval processes. Human review is still essential, especially for accuracy and intent alignment.
In the Design Realm
Freepik is now Magnific
Freepik has rebranded to Magnific. This marks a major repositioning from a stock resource platform into a full AI-driven creative infrastructure company. Just last week, Canva announced Canva AI 2.0 demonstrating its transformation from a design platform with AI features to an AI platform with design tools.
Now Freepik is joining the league. The company says the change reflects how the creative industry is shifting toward AI-powered production across image, video, 3D, and audio.
The company positions this shift as part of a wider “no-collar economy” where individuals and small teams can produce agency-level creative output using AI tools. It argues that while technology enables scale, human taste and creative judgment remain the key differentiators.
Creative production is moving from tool-based design to AI-powered systems, allowing brands to scale high-quality content faster while shifting more focus to strategy and creative direction.
In the AI Realm
Google introduces downloadable files inside Gemini
Google Gemini has introduced a new feature that lets users generate downloadable files directly from chat prompts, removing the need to switch between tools or manually format documents.
Users can now create files such as PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and more simply by describing what they need. The system converts prompts into structured outputs that can be downloaded or exported to Google Drive.
It is designed to streamline workflows like turning brainstorms into structured drafts, converting budgets into spreadsheets, or compiling notes into presentation decks.
Google says the goal is to reduce friction between idea generation and execution, helping users move from raw input to finished documents in one step.
Google introduces an AI-wardrobe feature in Google Photos
Google Photos is rolling out a new AI-powered wardrobe feature that turns everyday photos into an organized digital clothing collection.
The tool automatically identifies clothing items in users’ photo libraries and builds a “wardrobe” view. This lets users browse outfits by category, making it easier to rediscover pieces already in their closet.
Users can also mix and match items to create outfit ideas and save them into moodboards for different occasions like travel, weddings, or workwear. A virtual try-on option allows users to preview how selected combinations may look before getting dressed.
The feature will roll out starting this summer, first on Android and later on iOS.
X rebuilds its advertising platform with more powerful AI-driven features
X has begun rolling out a full rebuild of its advertising platform, marking the most significant overhaul in its 20-year history.
The new Ads Manager is being redesigned around three core areas: simplicity, greater advertiser control, and AI-powered performance. The goal is to make campaign setup faster while improving targeting accuracy and return on investment for advertisers.
At the centre of the update are new AI-based retrieval and ranking systems that analyze user behavior in real time. This allows ads to be delivered with more contextual relevance based on what is happening on the platform at any moment.
X says the new system will improve engagement and efficiency by shifting toward semantic and contextual advertising, rather than relying on traditional static targeting methods.
Amazon Connect expands to accommodate new agentic AI solutions
Amazon Web Services has expanded its Amazon Connect platform into a suite of four agentic AI solutions designed to automate and improve core business functions using Amazon’s internal operational expertise.
The new offerings include Amazon Connect Decisions for supply chain optimization, Talent for hiring, Customer for customer experience, and Health for healthcare operations. Each product is designed to integrate directly into existing workflows rather than requiring companies to rebuild systems around them.
AWS positions the system as a shift toward AI “teammates” that actively participate in work rather than acting as passive tools.
Social Media Feature Updates and Algorithm Changes
Snapchat Introduces AI Sponsored Snaps
Snap Inc. is launching a new ad format called AI Sponsored Snaps, designed to let brands engage users directly inside Chat through interactive AI-driven conversations.
The feature builds on how users already behave on Snapchat, where messaging is the core activity. Snap reports that users sent over 950 billion chats in Q1 2026, and more than 500 million people have interacted with its My AI chatbot since launch, signaling strong adoption of conversational AI.
AI Sponsored Snaps allow brands to embed AI agents within Chat, enabling users to ask questions, receive personalized recommendations, and explore products without leaving the conversation.
YouTube introduces a conversational search feature
YouTube is experimenting with a new conversational search experience designed to make content discovery more interactive and structured.
The feature, called “Ask YouTube,” allows users to type natural language queries directly into the search bar and receive AI-generated, step-by-step responses instead of a standard list of videos. For example, a travel query can return a full itinerary, combining long-form videos, Shorts, and supporting text in one guided answer.
Users can also ask follow-up questions within the same search flow, allowing deeper exploration of topics like local recommendations or specific details related to the original query. Results still include linked video segments, titles, and creator information to encourage content discovery.
Instagram adds new metrics to Insights
Instagram has updated its analytics system with a redesigned Insights interface and expanded performance metrics to give creators clearer visibility into how their content is performing.
The new update introduces a simplified layout with dedicated tabs that surface key data such as engagement activity and audience demographics directly from the main Insights screen. The goal is to reduce friction in accessing performance information for posts and Reels.
Instagram is also adding new engagement signals, including share rate, skip rate, and views over time. These additions give creators a better understanding of both immediate engagement and longer-term content performance.
To Conclude…
Platforms are moving toward AI-first discovery, automation, and real-time intelligence. Search is becoming more conversational, automation is becoming the new reality and brands are actively investing in tools and processes that help improve efficiency. From AI being seen as a threat to AI being treated as a co-worker, we’ve come a long way in technology. If keeping up with these changes feels overwhelming, don’t worry, we’ll meet you soon with another round of updates. Until we meet again with our next edition of KIMP’s Picks, stay inspired, stay curious!
