MarTech360’S Weekly News Roundup With UserTesting, Meta, Zoom, NIQ, Omneky And More!

Here is MarTech360’s weekly roundup of the top news from global markets. In this fast-paced world, breaking down information helps readers grasp the nuances that follow the news.

Top 11 News from this Week

• In Marketing Automation news this week…

Google Ads brings Smart Bidding Exploration to Performance Max

Google Ads has rolled out enhanced Smart Bidding guidance for Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, aimed at helping publishers, advertisers, and adtech teams maximize performance during high-demand retail periods. With digital marketing increasingly competitive, these improvements provide a roadmap for driving more meaningful engagements and better return on ad spend (ROAS).

Amazon Ads and SiriusXM Media Launch Programmatic Audio Integration via Amazon DSP

Amazon Ads and SiriusXM Media have unveiled a new programmatic audio advertising partnership, enabling marketers using Amazon DSP to seamlessly access SiriusXM Media’s extensive digital audio portfolio-including Pandora and SoundCloud U.S. For the first time, brands can reach SiriusXM Media’s 160 million monthly digital listeners directly through Amazon DSP.

• In Social Media Technology news this week…

Meta Rolls Out WhatsApp Status Ads to Boost Social Commerce Engagement

Meta is bringing a major new ad placement to its ecosystem, giving social media marketing professionals a fresh way to drive engagement: ads in WhatsApp Status. Integrated directly within Meta Ads Manager, this new feature lets brands run ads that appear in the WhatsApp Updates tab-alongside users’ Status posts and Channels-and drive viewers straight into one-to-one WhatsApp chats with businesses.

• In Customer Experience news this week…

UserTesting Introduces “UserTesting Verified™” to Safeguard Research Data from Fraud

UserTesting has launched UserTesting Verified™, a new fraud prevention capability that leverages AI, behavioral intelligence, and geolocation technology to strengthen the integrity of feedback and insights for enterprises. Designed to reduce fraud risks and improve confidence in decisions, the system combines machine learning with behavioral signals and location verification to detect and block suspicious activity.

Zoom Unveils AI Companion 3.0 at Zoomtopia 2025, Ushering in the Next Era of Agentic AI

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. has announced AI Companion 3.0, the company’s most advanced release of agentic AI to date, at its annual flagship conference, Zoomtopia 2025. This milestone marks a significant leap in Zoom’s vision to deliver intelligent collaboration, productivity, and connected experiences across Zoom Workplace and Zoom Business Services.

• In Mobile Tech news this week…

Omneky Unveils Interactive AI Video Suite to Turn Products into Data-Driven Ads

Omneky, Inc., a leader in generative AI for advertising, announced the launch of a groundbreaking, interactive video generation suite. The new feature allows users to select a product or service and choose from a variety of data-driven video ad concepts, which are then transformed through an interactive AI workflow into multiple scripts, storyboards, and fully-edited, on-brand videos.

Hawk by Azerion & Adsquare Expand Global Partnership

Hawk by Azerion, a leading omnichannel advertising platform within the Azerion Group, and Adsquare, the global location intelligence platform, are proud to announce the expansion of their strategic partnership into new key markets, including Latin America, the Middle East, the United States, and several new European countries.

• In Marketing Analytics news this week…

Simon AI Launches Agentic Marketing Platform to Transform Contextual Personalization

Simon AI has launched its new Agentic Marketing Platform, introducing Composable AI Agents designed to help marketers unlock customer data and deliver real-time, 1:1 contextual personalization at scale. Built on Snowflake Cortex AI and powered by Claude from Anthropic, these agents enable marketing teams to explore, analyze, and activate data directly within Snowflake.

NIQ Joins the Decentriq Network to Enable Secure Data Collaboration

• In Martech Content news this week…

CisionOne Expands AI-Powered Platform with Enhanced Instant Insights and Social Intelligence

Cision, a global leader in consumer and media intelligence solutions, announced two major upgrades to its CisionOne platform: enhanced Instant Insights dashboards and expanded CisionOne Social intelligence.  Together, these innovations deliver a more unified, AI-powered solution for PR teams to monitor conversations, manage reputation, distribute media releases, and demonstrate impact-all from one place.

Zeta Unveils Generative Engine Optimization for Post-Search Era

Zeta Global, the AI Marketing Cloud, announced its Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) solution, a new capability built into the Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP) to help brands stay visible, accurate, and competitive as consumers shift from traditional search to AI-generated answers. The new tool enables marketers to monitor how their brands appear across leading AI systems including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

Article Of The Week…..

Decoding SEMrush: A Study in Tools, Trust, and Transformation

If Google is the library of the internet, SEMrush is the librarian who quietly points you toward the right shelves and sometimes nudges you toward what everyone else is checking out. Millions of marketers, entrepreneurs, and students rely on it to not just find information but to understand which strategies actually work and how to improve them.

At first glance it looks like an SEO tool, but it has evolved into much more. Today SEMrush is a full-scale marketing platform. It maps competitor strategies, dissects ad campaigns, measures content performance, and even forecasts market opportunities. In other words, it moved from being a toolkit for specialists to a decision-making hub for entire marketing teams.

Psychology Behind Social Commerce: What Drives Customers to Buy on Social Media

Okay, so social commerce is kind of everywhere now. People are literally buying while scrolling through Instagram or watching a live stream. Crazy, right? Unlike regular e-commerce where you go to a website, search, and shop, here it happens while you are just hanging out online. You do not even leave the app.

Basically, social commerce mixes shopping and social media. You see what others buy, get some recommendations, and sometimes even chat about stuff in real time. Makes it feel social, immediate, kind of fun, and honestly a little addictive.