The TwoSix team is back and ready to share what’s On Our Radar for October so that you can stay ahead of the always-evolving digital marketing landscape. This month, the TwoSix team discusses Meta One, AI Visibility, The Instagram Algorithm, and more! Keep reading to find out what we’re keeping On Our Radar for October 2026.

Is your CVB marketing team scratching their heads over Meta’s latest rollout? The link limits are throwing a monkey wrench into our organic social media practices!

Now that Meta has launched Meta One Business plans, the feature causing a stir is strict limits on link-sharing for free accounts. Right now, free Pages have just two links per month that they can share on their feed. This is a BIG issue when we measure our success on our social media referral traffic to our websites.

If you want higher link allowances, you’re gonna pay dearly for it. Plans start at $15 per month and balloon up to $500.

For a deep dive into the paid pricing options, check out Jon Loomer’s blog.

These added costs are probably not a line item in your 2027 budget. What if there was a bit of a workaround for the time being by leveraging an existing free tool in Meta Business Suite? I think there is.

Meta’s Free Comment-to-DM Automation Tool

Instead of paying to just to drop URLs in captions and comments, we could (and probably should) leverage Meta Business Suite’s built-in “comment to DM” automation tool.

Instead of saying “click the link” we simply need to change our language to say, “comment TRIP to receive the free planning guide” or “comment WOW to get the itinerary”.  When you boil it down, there are some big advantages to this:

• Algorithm Boost: Comments drive significantly higher organic reach than link clicks. The algorithm interprets user comments as high interest and boosts your post to wider audiences.
• Direct Access: Links end up straight in the user’s inbox—creating a 1-on-1 channel for follow-ups, event calendars, and hotel deals.
• Higher Engagement: You trade link clicks for engagement

It’s currently a free feature that I rarely see used in tourism. It takes just a few minutes to set up. Additionally, it could be a direct replacement for any paid plans you are leveraging using ManyChat or other similar third-party services. At the end of the day, Meta One might not be needed if we’re willing to modify our approaches a bit. Now might be a good time to give Comment to DM Automation a try.

Learn how to set up your automated DMs here.

What Google’s AI Mode said when I asked for the most overrated tourist attraction in the U.S.

Have you ever asked AI what it thinks of your organization? You’ll find it has an opinion, and it’s likely a pretty strong one.

I asked Google’s AI Mode for the most overrated tourist attraction in the U.S. and it said Plymouth Rock, “essentially just a medium-sized boulder sitting in a concrete pit. You can’t even touch it.” Opposite of a ringing endorsement.

Most of the talk around AI so far has been about visibility — does it mention you at all? Well, what it says about you matters just as much. It could mention you and then talk someone out of choosing you in the same sentence.

And people are listening. A Similarweb study from June found that brands ChatGPT recommended were 2.5x more likely to get a website visit within 7 days than brands it didn’t.

So where does that opinion come from? Mostly from forums like Reddit, online reviews, social media posts, articles, and the like — where most of AI’s information comes from, essentially. AI is repeating what people already say about you — but with a lot more confidence.

This is something that’s going to become increasingly important. Be sure to look into what it’s saying about you now, and what the sources are, to get a handle on it sooner rather than later.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri just dropped a series of videos on his own Instagram breaking down how the algorithm (supposedly) works. If you have been in social media marketing for any length of time, most of it will feel familiar and not too groundbreaking. But a few things are worth flagging. According to Mosseri, recency matters a lot, the feed is roughly chronological, and engagement rate is the number to watch, not total views or likes. Original content also gets prioritized over reposts, which is worth keeping in mind for pages that lean heavily on resharing without adding their own take.

Is there a reason Mosseri is suddenly feeling chatty about all of this? Probably. Australia is actively pushing legislation that would let users opt out of algorithmic feeds entirely, and platforms are clearly feeling some pressure to appear more transparent right now. Whether any of this actually changes how Instagram operates behind the scenes is another question. But it is a decent gut check on whether your content strategy is built around how the platform actually

We’ve talked this year about planning on Pinterest for the holiday season and now that we’re into October and those holiday campaigns are hopefully running and driving a lot of early interest, it’s time to focus on what comes next. What are people looking for post-holiday? Last year Pinterest saw a big shift from gifting to self-care. After all the party planning, vacation planning and gift buying, people are ready to relax and reset ahead of the new year. They’re focused on planning for the new year, organization and routine updates to go along with their resolutions. They may be looking for a trip to look forward to, a day at the spa or the newest gym routine to try out. This is a chance for marketers to get in front of a changing audience and appeal to them with a deal or offer. We’re all for pushing holiday events and getaways but when they’re done, we need to follow the audience and meet them where they’re at, so as holiday promotions start, start to think about that next step. Happy pinning!

In the past year, there have been so many AI-powered tools released that using them often feels more distracting than helpful. Occasionally, an AI tool pops up that genuinely makes life easier. For me, that tool has been Gmail Search’s AI.

Google recently expanded AI Overviews in Gmail search, allowing eligible paid users to ask natural-language questions and receive AI-generated answers based on their emails. Rather than searching for specific keywords and scrolling through thousands of old messages to find an email; users can now ask questions like “What time is my hotel check-in?” or “What were the details of my upcoming reservation?” and get a summarized answer directly in Gmail.

What Does This Mean for Email Marketers?

As AI becomes more integrated into the inbox experience, the way subscribers find and interact with emails is changing. Instead of digging through old emails to find information, subscribers may rely on AI-generated summaries to pull out the details they need. This makes clear, well-structured email content more important than ever. Descriptive headers, specific language, and clearly stated details like dates, locations, offers, and deadlines can help make email content easier for AI to interpret and summarize.

While it’s still early to tell if this will affect email engagement, the update is another reminder to prioritize clarity and valuable content in your email marketing campaigns. For travel and tourism marketers in particular, making information about upcoming events, travel experiences, and special offers the bulk of your email content can help ensure your newsletters remain useful long after it lands in a subscriber’s inbox.

If you’ve been checking analytics for ChatGPT referrals and coming up light, new research suggests you’re only seeing part of the picture. Much of the traffic that AI visibility drives never arrives labeled as AI.

New Similarweb research found that when a brand was recommended by ChatGPT, users were 2.5x more likely to visit that brand’s website within seven days, even when there was no direct referral from the AI platform.

Among those who visited the site, 55.9% were AI-influenced visits who arrived through branded searches on organic channels. Here’s an example of what that journey could look like: Someone gets a recommendation from ChatGPT, remembers the name, and Googles it later, perhaps even a week later. In your analytics, this user shows up as ordinary organic traffic, and the AI conversation that sparked the awareness gets no credit.

Those visitors were also more engaged, viewing about twice as many pages and spending roughly twice as long on site. Those AI-inspired web visits are worth the wait. Branded searches that often happen days later indicate a strong sense of consideration from the user.

Here’s the perspective shift:

AI introduces your brand, and search is often where the visit actually happens. The two separate, but related, channels work closely together.

The right question isn’t “how much traffic did ChatGPT send us?” It’s “is our organic search growing as our AI visibility grows?” If your destination is showing up more in AI answers and your organic search, especially branded search, is climbing at the same time, your strategy is working. The results just aren’t wearing an AI label.

AI visibility is a discovery play. Measure it by the lift it creates across your entire search footprint, not just the clicks it sends directly.

With the ever-changing digital marketing world, we are here to keep you informed of new digital trends and what we are keeping on our radar each month. Have any questions? Contact us! We’re here to help. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter  to receive monthly updates on trends and insights in the digital marketing and tourism industries straight to your inbox! Click the buttons below to connect with us on social media and stay in the loop on all things TwoSix Digital.