There’s good traffic, bad traffic – and now bot traffic.
Cloudflare’s CEO expects AI bots to overtake human web traffic by 2027. It raises the question of whether our measurement methods, ad models, and SEO strategies are even built for the reality we’re heading into.
Find out more in this month’s Xtracts.
Get fully up to date with the May edition of Xtracts, your digital news digest.
Google changes its consent rules – your Google Ads campaigns may be affected
From June 15, 2026, Google is making fundamental changes to how Google Ads and Google Analytics share data. The change is technical, but the consequences are concrete: your tracking, attribution, and ad measurement could be impacted if you don’t act now.
Until now, the data flow has been governed by a combination of Consent Mode and Google Signals – a setup that has caused confusion, as some settings were buried deep in Analytics menus. From June, it gets simpler. Going forward, only the ad_storage signal from Consent Mode will determine what Google Ads is allowed to collect and use. One well-known case illustrates the risk: an advertiser’s conversions dropped 90% overnight due to a misconfiguration – and it took days to identify the cause.
What should you do? Review your Consent Mode setup before June 15. Make sure the ad_storage parameter fires correctly, and that your Consent Management Platform is properly connected to your Google tags.
Source: Search Engine Land
Canva acquires AI companies and bets on full marketing automation
Canva announced on April 8 the acquisition of two companies: Simtheory, which works on AI agents, and Ortto, which specialises in marketing automation and customer data. Both companies were founded by the same founders, who will now join Canva in leadership roles.
The goal is clear: Canva no longer wants to be “just” a design tool. With these acquisitions, they aim to cover the entire marketing lifecycle – from ideation and creative production to publishing and optimisation – in one unified workspace.
This is Canva’s fourth acquisition in a short period. Previous purchases include the animation tool Cavalry and the ad performance platform MangoAI. Together, the acquisitions paint a picture of the boundary between design, automation, and marketing tech disappearing.
For marketers, it’s a signal that the next major platform shifts won’t necessarily come from Google or Meta – but from the creative tools you already use every day.
Source: Tech Crunch
Google Business Profile tests AI-generated responses to reviews
Google is testing a new feature in Google Business Profile that allows businesses to generate AI-suggested replies to customer reviews. The suggestion can be edited and manually approved before publishing – so it’s not a fully automated response.
For businesses with a high volume of reviews, it can save time and ensure a more consistent tone in customer communication. And since review responses are a confirmed local ranking signal, a more consistent response practice can have a direct impact on visibility in local search.
It’s yet another indication that AI is infiltrating the local search landscape. Google Business Profile is already central to Ask Maps and AI-generated local recommendations. Now customer communication itself is becoming AI-assisted – making it more important than ever to keep your profile updated and active.
Source: Search Engine Land
Bots could overtake human web traffic by 2027
Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince warns that AI bots will generate more web traffic than human users by 2027. This isn’t just a technical curiosity – it strikes at the very foundation of how digital marketing works today.
Ad models are built on human page views. SEO is optimised to attract real users. Analytics is designed to measure human behaviour. If the majority of traffic is soon generated by machines, the question is whether our current measurement methods make any sense at all.
For marketers, it raises some uncomfortable questions: What is organic traffic actually worth? Who is actually reading the content we produce? And which channels and formats are robust enough to survive in a digital landscape primarily used by AI systems?
Cloudflare sells bot protection, so Prince is not without bias in this debate. Nevertheless, the trend points unmistakably in one direction – and it’s a question marketers need to address.
Source: Search Engine Land
TikTok expands its HubSpot integration
TikTok and HubSpot have expanded their partnership – and it’s good news if you work with both paid advertising and CRM. The update gives HubSpot’s more than 268,000 customers the ability to manage TikTok campaigns directly within HubSpot’s Marketing Hub – without switching between platforms.
In practice, this means you can now use HubSpot CRM data to build ad audiences on TikTok, automate lead follow-up, and get a clearer picture of ROI across the entire funnel. The TikTok Pixel integration has also been improved, making data tracking run more smoothly.
In addition, HubSpot users can now manage organic TikTok content directly within HubSpot’s social tools – meaning planning, publishing, engagement, and reporting all in one place.
For marketers working with lead generation, it’s a genuinely time-saving update. Paid and organic TikTok activity now lands in the same workflow as the rest of your marketing efforts – making it easier to document what TikTok actually contributes to the bottom line.
Source: Social Media Today
