Ninety three percent of the marketers in a new survey now use AI somewhere in their blog writing. Fourteen percent say that blog delivers strong results. That second number is the weakest in the twelve years the survey has run, and the two figures sitting side by side explain most of what went wrong with content this year.
Content marketing
Only 14 percent say their blog is working
Orbit Media surveyed 1,042 content marketers for its 2026 blogging report, published last week. AI use in blogging went from roughly zero to nine in ten in three years, the fastest adoption curve digital marketing has produced. Over the same three years, self reported blog performance slid to its lowest point since the survey began in 2014.
Look at how people actually use the tools and the picture sharpens. Two thirds use AI to generate ideas, up from 43 percent in 2023. Fifty eight percent use it for headlines. Only about one in ten hand over a whole article. The machine is doing the planning, not the writing, and results still fell.
The survey points at a different culprit. Orbit tracks eight practices its strongest performing blogs share, things like publishing original research, running a proper editing pass, adding original images and going back to update old posts. Not one respondent used all eight. Teams saved time with AI and spent none of it on the slow work that made content land in the first place.
Why this matters for your business: stop measuring your content by how fast you publish it. Pick two practices you quietly dropped and put them back this month. One piece of original data beats four rewritten summaries of what everyone else already said. Interview a customer and quote them properly. Take your own photographs. Go back to the three posts that used to bring you enquiries and bring them up to date. Keep using AI for outlines and headline options, then spend the hours you saved on the parts a machine cannot fake.
SEO and search
Google has a search API you cannot sign up for, and a deadline you cannot miss
Google refreshed the developer documentation for its Web Search Service API on 9 September. The service returns genuine Google Search results as JSON, up to 20 per request, filterable by language, country and date range, with SafeSearch and a spelling correction field. It looks like exactly what a lot of tools have been waiting for.
Then you reach the access rules. Every request needs a client ID tied to a partner agreement. There is no sign up page, no published pricing and no stated query limit. Google calls these users programmatic partners and does not explain how a company becomes one.
The deadline is the part that matters. The older Custom Search JSON API is now closed to new customers and switches off on 1 January 2027. Google has documented the replacement without saying who is allowed to use it.
Why this matters for your business: if a search box on your site, a rank tracking tool you pay for, or a WordPress plugin pulls live Google results, email the supplier this week and ask one question. Which API does this run on today, and what is your plan for January 2027? Site search limited to your own domain stays fine. Anything wider needs an answer now, not in December next year when every developer in the country is asking the same thing.
Social and platforms
OpenAI stopped letting rivals advertise inside ChatGPT
The Information reported on 10 September that OpenAI now blocks ads for standalone image and audio generation products inside ChatGPT. Adobe was caught out. It had joined the original advertising pilot and was running campaigns for Acrobat Studio and its Firefly image tool. The rule went to advertising partners privately rather than being announced.
Video generation tools can still buy ads. The list of what counts as competing belongs to OpenAI and can grow whenever it likes.
Why this matters for your business: this is the clearest reminder this year that paid reach is rented, not owned. Adobe is a very large company with a direct relationship and it still found out by email that a channel had closed. Your version of that risk is smaller but the same shape. Check how much of your enquiry flow depends on a single platform you do not control. If one channel brings more than half your leads, this quarter is the time to build the other half, starting with an email list and a website that ranks on its own merits.
Automotive
South Africans searched for BMWs and bought Polo Vivos
AutoTrader released its 2026 mid year report on 11 September, covering January to June. The scale is worth stating. More than 19 million users, 315 million searches and 212 million vehicle adverts viewed in six months.
BMW was the most searched brand with 36.26 million searches, narrowly ahead of Volkswagen. The Golf GTI was the most searched variant and the BMW M3 climbed to fifth. Now look at what people did next. Toyota took the most enquiries of any brand. The Volkswagen Polo took the most enquiries of any model at 71,588. The Ford Ranger sold the most units at 11,365, the Polo Vivo overtook the Polo to reach third, the Suzuki Swift climbed to fifth and the Hyundai Grand i10 entered the top ten for the first time.
The market grew. 195,455 used vehicles changed hands, up 8 percent, worth R82.38 billion. The average selling price rose just 1 percent to R421,499, but the top ten models averaged R344,354. Used hybrids and electric vehicles nearly doubled, up 92 percent to 4,703 units. AutoTrader chief executive George Mienie called the distance between browsing and buying “one of the most useful signals in this report”.
Why this matters for your dealership: your traffic report and your sales report are describing two different people. Do not let performance car sessions set your stock plan or your page priorities. The vehicles that sold fastest were the cheap ones, the Swift in 28 days and the Grand i10 in 29, against a 37 day average across the market. Build proper landing pages for the affordable models you actually turn over, with finance figures on the page rather than behind an enquiry form, and price them against what similar stock is listed at this week. Keep the aspirational stock in the window by all means. Just stop letting it write the marketing plan.
What to do this week
- Pick two content practices you dropped when AI arrived and put them back, starting with updating the old posts that used to bring you enquiries.
- Ask every supplier whose tool returns Google results which API it uses and what happens on 1 January 2027.
- Work out what share of your enquiries comes from a single platform you do not own, and start building the alternative.
- Dealers, compare your six most viewed vehicle pages against your six fastest selling units and fix the gap.
If you want a second opinion on which of these actually applies to your business, get in touch and we will look at it with you.
Sources
- Search Engine Land, Content marketing success falls to 12-year low
- Orbit Media, 2026 Blogging Statistics
- Search Engine Journal, Google Documents Partner-Only API For Full-Web Search Results
- Google for Developers, Web Search Service API overview
- Search Engine Land, OpenAI reportedly blocks rival AI tools from advertising in ChatGPT
- Lifestyle and Tech, AutoTrader 2026 Mid-Year Report