Community | University 

Feb 19, 2026

Hello, GrowthHackers! 

Welcome to your Weekly unfair advantage.

Once a week, we cut through the noise to bring you sharp insights, fast news, and fresh sparks to light up your brain and fuel your hustle. From scrappy hacks to big tech moves, AI shifts to culture flips this is your intel to stay ahead, move fast, and break boring.

Think of it as your growth-fueled espresso shot.
Short. Smart. Addictive.

Let’s dive in.👇

Quick Hits

1. Google Says Links Will Be More Visible In AI Overviews
   (Backlinks fighting for their lives)

2. Are Your Google Ads Gen Z Proof?
   (Gen Z scrolls faster than your CPM strategy)

3. Yes, YouTube was actually down for millions
   (Nothing unites humanity like a streaming outage)

4. Bing Now Shows Which Pages Get Cited in AI Answers
   (Finally, receipts for AI answers)

5. From Performance SEO To Demand SEO
   (Demand SEO = make them look for you)

6. OpenAI and Google reveal competing visions for AI ads
   (The battle isn’t for clicks. It’s for answers.)

The Growth joke of the day

Why did the sales team love AI at first?
Because it worked 24/7… until they realized they were expected to do the same.

3-Minute News Bulletin with Roxie

This week's 🙌 News Bulletin explores:
Austin Startups and AI Innovation Lead Today’s Top Business Headlines

This week’s News Bulletin spotlights the forces reshaping innovation, AI investment, and digital marketing.

From female-led startups driving Austin’s rise as a tech powerhouse to India’s $200B AI infrastructure push, capital and leadership are accelerating global competition. In marketing, “invisible engagement” signals like saves and private shares are redefining how brands measure impact, while AI-driven search and shopping ads continue to disrupt traditional traffic and PPC models.

The signal is clear: growth now lives at the intersection of AI infrastructure, smarter metrics, and evolving platform power dynamics.

Latest Growth Hacking News

Strategies

• WooCommerce May Gain Sidekick-Type AI Through Extensions
  Automattic's James LePage shares AI features coming soon to WooCommerce, including Sidekick-type functionality delivered via extensions.

• ActiveCampaign’s latest move signals the era of self-driving campaigns
  The purchase of Feedback Intelligence shows that learning, self-correcting AI agents are redefining how modern campaigns are built and measured.

• Ford turns to F1 and bounties to build a $30,000 electric truck
  Ford is promising to deliver an EV truck next year that starts at $30,000 and can compete with Chinese automakers without undermining profit margins. A combination of 3D-printed Lego-like parts, Formula 1 thinking, and a bounty program will help the company hit that target

• AI ROI confidence is slipping, and that’s not a bad thing
  As confidence in AI ROI slips, it’s a sign marketers are raising the barand getting serious about real business value.

• Shopping Ads Testing In AI Mode, Microsoft’s AI Search Guide & Keyword Strategy Shift
  Google tests Shopping ads in AI Mode, Microsoft explains AI search visibility, and Google reframes keywords. What PPC advertisers should understand now.

• OpenAI removes access to sycophancy-prone GPT-4o model

  OpenAI will cease providing access to five legacy ChatGPT models, including the popular but controversial GPT-4o model.

OUR NEXT EPISODE IS LIVE
GrowthHackers🎙️

A Founder’s Journey in Microscope

In this episode, we sit down with Jack, the 22-year-old founder of ARK-STEM — the global community and marketplace built by STEM lovers, for STEM lovers.

ARK-STEM is a dedicated platform where makers, engineers, and innovators can share projects, collaborate, sell inventions, and preserve what they build in a way that’s deeper and more enduring than fleeting social posts or video snippets.

Jack opens up about his journey from a young tinkerer to launching a platform that bridges community, creativity, and commerce.

Are you ready?

What's New in Artificial Intelligence (AI)

• How AI Changes Where Marketing Budgets Are Spent
  Transform your PPC budgeting approach with rebalancing based on buyer intent signals for effective media spending.

• 5 Ways Emerging Businesses Can Show up in ChatGPT, Gemini & Perplexity
  When ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity mention a company, these large language models (LLMs) are deciding whether that business is safe to reference, not how long it has existed.

• As AI data centers hit power limits, Peak XV backs Indian startup C2i to fix the bottleneck
  Power, rather than compute, is fast becoming the limiting factor in scaling AI data centers. That shift has prompted Peak XV Partners to back C2i Semiconductors.

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