What's New in Marketing This Week - April 15th

This post contains all the source links and expanded details from Edition #45 of our weekly Marketing Roundup newsletter.

We keep external links out of the emails to ensure it lands in your inbox (not spam). Here’s where you can dig deeper into each story.

This week we talked about:

Sales Strategies: Andrew Hulbert scaled a bedroom startup to a £50 million company and exited in his thirties.
Advertising Updates: Google is bringing back Data Studio as a free, lightweight reporting hub.
Creator Economy & Social Updates: TikTok upgrades its Symphony ad toolkit with Seedance 2.0 video generation, and X brings back voice replies in DMs.
SEO News: Google will start penalizing back button hijacking on June 15, 2026.
AI Advancements: OpenAI launches a $100/month ChatGPT tier (sitting between Plus and Pro).

Note: This is just the news and links.

For our full analysis, strategic insights, and implementation tips for each update, subscribe to the Marketing Roundup and get the complete newsletter delivered to your inbox every week.

Andrew Hulbert On How to Grow a Business and Exit Successfully

Andrew Hulbert On How

to Grow a Business and

Exit Successfully

In this 1-hour episode of the All About Business podcast, entrepreneur Andrew Hulbert breaks down how he scaled Pareto Facilities Management from a bedroom startup in Oxford to a £50 million company with 500+ employees — before exiting in his thirties.

Google Brings Back Data Studio

Google Brings Back

Data Studio

Google is reviving the Data Studio name, separating it from Looker Studio three years after folding it into the broader Looker rebrand. The new Data Studio is positioned as a free, lightweight hub for individuals and small teams to analyze and visualize data across Google’s ecosystem — pulling from Google Ads, Sheets, BigQuery, and more in one place.

TikTok Adds Seedance 2.0 to Symphony Ad Toolkit

TikTok Adds Seedance 2.0

to Symphony Ad Toolkit

TikTok integrated ByteDance’s latest Seedance 2.0 video generation model into its Symphony ad creation suite. The update lets advertisers generate realistic video content from text prompts, images, or reference clips.

X Brings Back Voice Replies in DMs

X Brings Back Voice

Replies in DMs

X re-added voice notes to its DM system as part of the broader X Chat rebuild. The feature originally launched on Twitter in 2020, was removed last year during platform reconstruction, and is now back in the updated app. Users can send audio replies directly within DMs.

Google to Penalize Back Button Hijacking

Google to Penalize Back

Button Hijacking

Google announced it will begin penalizing sites that interfere with the browser back button starting June 15, 2026. Back button hijacking is when a site prevents users from returning to the previous page — instead redirecting them to pages they never visited, showing unsolicited ads, or otherwise trapping them in a navigation loop. Sites that don’t remove the behavior by the deadline will be subject to manual spam actions or automated ranking demotions.

OpenAI Launches $100/Month ChatGPT Tier

OpenAI Launches

$100/Month ChatGPT Tier

OpenAI added a new $100/month subscription tier for ChatGPT on April 9, sitting between the $20 Plus plan and the $200 Pro plan. It’s built for power users and developers, offering 5x more Codex usage than Plus — bumped to 10x through May 31 as a launch promotion. It includes access to Deep Research, Codex, and the Pro model, with different usage caps than the $200 plan.

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