As the great Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel once sang: “August, die she must”. As the eighth month of the year (originally assigned to October in the original Roman Calendar, wouldn’t you know?), August is a time of transition. The pavements dusted with a light sprinkling of dead leaves, there’s an ever-so-slight breeze once the evening rolls around, and those long summer days are slinking off into the Southern hemisphere.
However, when it comes to digital marketing strategies, search engines, and artificial intelligence, time moves a little differently. Unlike the slow, reassuring predictability of the seasons, news, trends, and industry shifts happen at a breakneck speed. So, to help slow things down a little, we’ve distilled August’s biggest digital marketing stories and must-reads into one easy-to-swallow — and dare we say it, entertaining-to-read — roundup.
To keep things simple, we’ve selected our top six marketing insights; but if you think we’ve missed anything, or just fancy weighing in on the conversation, do let us know!
1. Press Gazette reveals top 50 news outlets
Press Gazette’s latest study into the top 50 news outlets was revealed at the beginning of the month.
The Daily Express is the biggest winner, according to the report. The Express ranks in the top 10 by audience, having risen by +2.2% month to month and +31% compared to last year. The biggest loser? The Daily Mail (or as they prefer to be called in the US, Mail Online).
Unsurprisingly, the biggest audience share still belongs to that ol’ reliable British media institution — the BBC. With an audience of 40.4m — dwarfing its closest competitor, The Guardian’s 22.6M — the Beeb’s share may’ve shrunk by 1.2%, but it’s still the ultimate prize when it comes to press coverage.
Any shocks or shake-ups? Yes. GB News is up 15.1% month-on-month, with its audience devoting a collective 54.4M minutes to its output, making it one of the biggest year-on-year minute growers, up by 89.5%. But the crown for month-on-month audience growth goes to Reach Regional’s Devon Live, with the report showing a whopping 33.2% increase.
You can read the full report by heading to Press Gazette’s complete data study, where you’ll find summaries of the last eight months’ results, too.
2. Reach set to reshuffle their editorial team
Reach — the UK’s largest commercial news publisher — has told staff to prepare for what it’s calling radical reorganisation. Plainly speaking: redundancies are to be expected.
Source: Pixabay
Stepping away from “text-only” reporting, the newsbody plans to create a new “live news team”, with journalists spread across the country. This follows a recent directive from senior stakeholders to produce more video content, along with a focus on ensuring greater distinction between each regional news brand.
The intention? Less duplication, more publication. It’s hoped this shake-up will reduce instances where, for example, the Daily Mail, Mirror, and Star (all of which are owned by Reach PLC) attend the same event without any overarching coordination. The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding. As it stands, Reach has a 120-strong team of video and audio content creators at its beck and call, so they’ve definitely got the people power to pull it off!
What does it mean for your average reader? They should expect to see more “everyday journalism”. Think on-street reporting, short-form clips, rough ’n’ ready updates, with more focus on the story than the edit. Meanwhile, the studio team will work on Reach’s more polished, directed productions such as podcasts and sponsored advertising content.
3. Gemini launches Intelligent Google Sheets — and Bananas?!
Is it possible to write a digital marketing news roundup without mentioning AI?
In August, the relentless mechanical march of our soon-to-be-overlords continued. While the automaton death lasers are still comfortably over the horizon, progress is ramping up…
Two major Gemini updates launched: “intelligent” tables and “nano banana”. Of the two, one is significantly more likely to induce the familiar feeling of what I’m now calling Ex-AI-stential dread. Admittedly, naming terrifying new tech developments after inoffensive, everyday food items does take the edge off, but I digress…
Kicking off with Gemini’s new Google Sheets integration: the latest update does plenty to make life easier for the world’s spreadsheet architects. Sheets now formats data and even assigns descriptive table names automatically. In practice, this means formula ranges will look like this:
=SUM(Office_Expenses[Amount])
Instead of this:
=SUM(E2:E15)
These newly named tables will automatically shrink or expand as changes to the table are made, too — no more manual edits. Now if that doesn’t excite your inner office suite nerd, we’re not sure what will. The rollout is currently underway for some users and will begin a wider rollout for most on September 12, 2025.
Nano Banana, on the other hand, is a different beast entirely…
A less charitable writer might describe Gemini’s latest update (real name: “Gemini 2.5 Flash Image”) as a deepfake machine. Using AI to edit images or create lifelike recreations of real-life figures is nothing new, of course, but it’s Banana’s character consistency that sets it apart. Faces, pets, and everyday objects maintain their visage remarkably well. As you’ll see from the example below, little is lost in translation:
Source: Google
If you ask us, this kind of editing power was unsettling enough when it was confined to the finicky realms of the tech-savvy AI enthusiasts. It’s currently the top-rated image editing model in the world, scarily-simple to use, and blisteringly fast, producing polished edits in under 1-2 seconds. If you’re looking to create photorealistic fiction, Banana’s the way to go.
Google offers some reassurance — the inclusion of invisible SynthID markers presenting an obstacle for any would-be deepfake creators. A sensible step in theory, until you learn that the program used to detect these markers is still looking for both partners and early testers, and isn’t widely accessible today. Every image is watermarked, too, but aside from preventing my dear old mum from any AI-based trickery, this is more of an inconvenient puddle than a moat, defensively speaking.
Societal destabilisation potential aside, Gemini’s latest update is objectively remarkable. Aside from its image-mooshing abilities, it’s also brilliant at editing existing scenes, so if you’ve ever wondered what your living might look like painted salmon pink, you’re in luck.
Source: Google
And before you scoff at these recent developments or claim discerning real and synthetic imagery is simple, we suggest you put it to the test.
4. Motive outlines KPIs to track in your next DPR campaign
Here at Seeker Digital, we’re huge advocates for the power of digital PR — particularly in the new era of entity-based search, where unlinked mentions and brand sentiment are gaining precedence over traditional link building techniques.
Source: Pixabay
If you’ve ever struggled to communicate the value of a campaign (or wondered where it all went wrong), you’ll understand the importance of tracking metrics, capturing data, and the all-important post-match analysis phase of the PR process. But with so many data points to keep an eye on, it’s sometimes hard to see the wood for the trees.
And what if your campaign caught fire — gaining worldwide coverage and multi-channel mentions — all without a single outlet publishing a measly backlink? What do you tell your client then? The marketing world may be slowly waking up to the importance of LLM visibility and AI overviews, but that’s little consolation when you’re being dressed down on a monthly reporting call.
What should you be tracking? In August, Motive PR released a super handy guide explaining exactly that. Deliberately avoiding the outdated backlink-oriented approach, Motive’s Laura Bamford breaks down the six most important KPIs to track in your next DPR campaign. Give it a read — we highly recommend it.
5. Wired and Business Insider AI-written articles removed
Editor’s note: This essay has been removed.
That’s the message that was displayed to anyone trying to view one of Margaux Blanchard’s articles. It turns out the author never existed.
Thanks to an earth-shattering report by the Press Gazette, it’s now been revealed that at least six publications — including Wired and Business Insider — have published articles penned by AI. Speaking to the Guardian, a Business Insider spokesperson said:
“We have removed first-person essays that didn’t meet Business Insider’s standards and have since bolstered verification protocols.”
Wired were also quick to acknowledge their slip-up, saying:
“If anyone should be able to catch an AI scammer, it’s Wired. In fact we do, all the time … Unfortunately, one got through… We made errors here: This story did not go through a proper fact-check process or get a top edit from a more senior editor … We acted quickly once we discovered the ruse, and we’ve taken steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again. In this new era, every newsroom should be prepared to do the same.”
The story first came to light when the editor of Dispatch Magazine, Jacob Furedi, received a suspicious pitch from the now-infamous Ms. Blanchard. In it, “she” wrote about wanting to tell the (admittedly rather intriguing) story of “Gravemont”, one of the world’s most secretive training grounds for death investigation.
Margaux Blanchard: An artist’s impression. Source: ChatGPT
Immediately sensing something all-too-artificial about Margaux’s message — chiefly the fact that Gravemont doesn’t exist — he voiced his concerns to the Press Gazette.
Furedi has since launched on-the-record allegations of publishing false stories, but is yet to receive a rebuttal from Ms. Blanchard. And as you might imagine, the scandal has forced marketers and publishers alike to reckon with their own verification protocols. We’d reach out to Margaux ourselves, but we doubt we’d fare much better. After all, journalists commanding fees like hers — $670 for the Gravemont article — are notoriously time-poor…
6. GPT-5 launches
Two years into the AI revolution, the circadian rhythm of techies everywhere has adapted to accommodate another regular release schedule. Move over, Apple. Bore off, Google. Altman’s here to drop another bomb.
Source: The Verge
Billed as OpenAI’s “smartest, fastest, most useful model yet”, ChatGPT’s latest milestone update promises to “put expert-level intelligence into everyone’s hands”. Does it live up to its promises? Yes, sort of.
Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman isn’t one to downplay the capabilities of his creation. A man who stands to gain everything from the AI hype train, you’ll find him in the engine room, furiously shovelling coal into the flames. Back in June, he published a blog on “The Gentle Singularity” — a quasi-religious open letter to humanity welcoming the approach of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), asserting his software as the tip of the definitely-not-world-ending spear. “What about our jobs? What about misalignment? What about humanity?”. No worries — Altman assures us “we will figure out new things to do and new things to want, and assimilate new tools quickly”. How comforting.
But all parallels to Skynet aside — and ignoring Altman’s tendency to over-egg his tech’s efficacy at every turn — GPT-5 is a step forward. So, what’s new?
- It’s smarter: It can “think longer” for tricky problems (GPT-5 Thinking mode).
- It’s chattier: Voice chat is improved, and free users get access too.
- It’s nerdier: It’s better at code generation & debugging, and can handle bigger projects.
- It’s a multitasker: Multimodal gains mean it understands images + text together more effectively.
- It stays on task: It can process huge documents or long chats without losing track.
- It’s less tripped-out: Fewer hallucinations mean more reliable facts & better follow-up questions.
- It’s agentic: GPT-5 now integrates with Gmail and Google Calendar, so it can help out with scheduling, reminders, email follow-ups, and more.
It also comes in four different personalities now:
Cynic: Sarcastic and dry, delivers blunt help with wit
Robot: Precise, efficient, and emotionless, delivering direct answers without extra words.
Listener: Warm and laid-back, reflecting your thoughts back with calm clarity and light wit.
Nerd: Playful and curious, explaining concepts clearly while celebrating knowledge and discovery.
And it scores higher on benchmarks compared to GPT-4o:
AIME (Maths): 84.2% (up from 82.9%)
Aider Polyglot (multilingual coding): 88% (up from 25.8%)
MMMU (multimodal understanding): 84.2% (up from 72.2%)
Hallucination rate for health-related queries: 1.6% (reduced from 15.8%)
Ignoring the stats and tech bro marketing spiel, what’s it actually like to use?
It depends who you ask. Users claim GPT-5 is slower, its outputs are bland and lack detail, and its personality has been neutered. So widespread was the backlash — culminating in the hashtag campaign #keep4o — that shortly after 5’s release, OpenAI gave users the option to revert back to GPT-4.
Do I like it? Given that I primarily use it for synonym suggestions and bulletpoint summaries, I can’t say I’ve noticed much of a difference. So, to find out from someone who works a little more closely with the software, I asked Robert, our Senior SEO Strategist, and Paul, our AI Engineer:
“The speed improvement. That’s number 1, and number 2 is the ease of use. Before GPT-5, I’d always resorted to using o3 and never anything else. I know a lot of people prefer the tone of 4o, but I use it for work purposes, so I’ve always preferred o3’s reasoning abilities. Everyone now has access to the reasoning model, but because the router is still imperfect, complex prompts should include ‘think hard’ to ensure they’re sent to the right model — while those needing GPT-5 High’s full power should use the API.”
— Robert Lora, Senior SEO Strategist
“GPT-5 isn’t a huge leap in raw power over GPT-4, but it feels more refined. OpenAI combines multiple models into one system that routes simple tasks to smaller, faster models and complex ones to larger models. At launch the routing often misfired, but it’s improved since. Put simply, the latest update is more about efficiency and user experience than brute performance — at least that’s how it feels from my experience coding with Cursor.”
— Paul Pintea, AI Engineer
And that’s a wrap for August. As the autumn winds blow chilly and cold, September promises its own share of digital marketing headlines, and we’ll be sure to keep you covered on all the latest happenings with a similar roundup this time next month. Thanks for reading!
