This Week in M&A Issue #198
August 18, 2025
G’day!
Today’s trend of the week is “scent beads”. 👃
Scent beads, also known as in-wash or booster scent beads, are making waves in the laundry market. These small, dissolvable beads or crystals are designed to dissolve in the wash water and release their fragrance, leaving clothes smelling fresh for an extended period.
Search interest has skyrocketed 288% over the past five years, with 73,000 searches for “scent beads” last month alone. There are over 3,500 posts on Instagram under the tag #scentbeads.
The global market is already worth $373 million and is projected to nearly double to $758 million by 2032, growing at a 10.9% CAGR.
For ecommerce entrepreneurs, this presents an opportunity to tap into a high-demand, consumable product niche. From private-label manufacturing to influencer-driven marketing, scent beads offer multiple entry points for building a brand or expanding an existing product line. Differentiation through unique scents, eco-friendly ingredients, or subscription models could help capture market share – and the sweet smell of success.
Today we have for you:
- Perplexity makes a surprise 34.5 billion bid for Google Chrome
- How ChatGPT-5 will affect search marketers
And:
- Turning content into conversions with social commerce
- The smart way to do due diligence on digital products
- What Google’s new Preferred Sources means for publishers
Alright, let’s dive in.
Google Chrome
Image Source: Giphy (Futurama)
Perplexity Offers More Than Its Own Valuation to Buy Chrome
AI search startup Perplexity has made a headline-grabbing offer to buy Google Chrome for $34.5 billion, a price nearly double its own $18 billion valuation and far more than the $1.5 billion it has raised to date.
The unsolicited all-cash proposal, confirmed to multiple news outlets, pledges to keep Chrome’s engine, Chromium, open source and inject $3 billion into its development over the next two years. Perplexity also promises not to change Chrome’s default settings, meaning Google would remain the default search engine despite the company’s own AI-powered alternative.
Perplexity had previously stated it would be interested in acquiring Chrome if regulators ever forced Google to divest it, but no such mandate has been issued. Google has not agreed to sell Chrome and has vowed to fight the ruling that it acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search. However, Perplexity believes the court could soon set divestment terms, perhaps even later this month.
This isn’t Perplexity’s first high-profile acquisition attempt. Earlier this year, the startup also floated an offer to buy TikTok. While neither deal has materialized, the bids highlight Perplexity’s ambition to secure a foothold in major digital platforms. Notably, OpenAI has also expressed interest in acquiring Chrome should it become available.
Chrome is the dominant web browser with roughly 68% global market share, and some estimates, including from DuckDuckGo’s CEO, suggest it could be worth over $50 billion. That makes Perplexity’s bid potentially a bargain, even if it’s a long shot.
Perplexity has confirmed that the $34.5 billion offer is fully financed and that multiple large investment funds have committed to backing the purchase.
While the chances of Google accepting the offer appear slim, Perplexity has shown its willingness to take on entrenched tech giants, even if it all turns out to be a publicity stunt, as many experts theorize.
The Opportunity Podcast
![Turn Content into Conversions with Social Commerce and Video Marketing With Eitan Koter [Ep.186]-min](https://1745913.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/1745913/Turn%20Content%20into%20Conversions%20with%20Social%20Commerce%20and%20Video%20Marketing%20With%20Eitan%20Koter%20%5BEp.186%5D-min.png)
Turn Your Videos into Sales with Social Commerce
If your videos aren’t driving sales, you could be overlooking one of the biggest growth opportunities in digital marketing right now.
Social commerce is reshaping the way people shop online, and when combined with the right video marketing approach, it has the power to turn casual viewers into loyal customers.
In this episode, we sit down with Eitan Koter, co-founder of Vimmi, to explore how brands can turn content into real revenue using the combined power of social commerce and video marketing.
We dive into his Content, Community, and Commerce framework, a proven model for turning engagement into sales. Eitan also explains what truly valuable content looks like, how to consistently produce videos at scale without sacrificing quality, and which metrics actually matter when you want to measure sales impact rather than vanity numbers.
Whether you’re launching your first campaign or scaling an established brand, this conversation is packed with actionable insights to help you transform your video marketing into a reliable sales engine.
AI
GPT-5 Is Redefining How Search Marketers Build Authority
ChatGPT-5 has officially launched, available to both paid and free users. While it may not be the giant leap some expected, it brings meaningful improvements for businesses, marketers, and developers aiming to leverage AI in search and content strategies.
Sam Altman describes GPT-5 as moving from a “college student” level of understanding in GPT-4 to an “expert” level, able to handle complex topics with speed and accuracy. It writes more naturally, hallucinates far less, and excels at coding and math, opening possibilities for custom apps, automation, and even personalized tools.
Enhanced voice interaction, memory features, and integration with Gmail and Google Calendar add practical productivity benefits, while safety updates and a knowledge cutoff extending to October 2024 ensure more reliable, up-to-date responses.
What does this mean for search marketers? According to Leigh McKenzie, the fundamentals remain the same. GPT-5 still pulls from search engines, so SEO remains essential. Your site needs to be optimized, technically sound, and aligned with search intent to appear in AI-driven answers.
But AI visibility now spans multiple platforms, ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Claude, Perplexity, and others, so a strategy limited to a single tool will miss potential customers. Unlike traditional search, large language models reward brand mentions over backlinks, meaning brands that appear in high-quality, context-rich content are more likely to be surfaced. Tracking and earning mentions is now as important as traditional SEO metrics.
Another shift is in “prompts versus keywords.” Users ask nuanced, conversational questions rather than simple search terms, so the brands that win are those anticipating these queries and providing clear, relevant answers. Mapping content to real customer questions, monitoring visibility across AI platforms, and strengthening your presence in category-defining content are now critical.
Essentially, success in AI-driven discovery depends on a brand that is clear, trusted, and visible across multiple generative engines.
Read All About It!
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🕒 China tariff increase delayed by another 90 days: good news for holiday season
YouTube
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The Buyer’s Guide to Digital Product Due Diligence
Digital product businesses are some of the hottest acquisitions in today’s market, but they can also be some of the riskiest.
Unlike ecommerce stores with physical inventory or SaaS companies with clear dashboards, digital products are intangible. That means the usual checks and balances don’t always apply, and skipping the right steps can leave buyers exposed.
In this video, Greg breaks down exactly how to approach due diligence for digital product businesses, so you can confidently spot red flags, verify assets, and make a smart purchase.
Watch now to learn how to protect your investment before you buy.
The Opportunities and Risks of Google’s Preferred Sources Feature
Google has introduced “Preferred Sources” in Search, a new feature that lets users in the U.S. and India choose which news outlets they want to see more often in the Top Stories section.
By clicking the star icon next to Top Stories during a news-related search, users can add publications or blogs to their list, then refresh results to see more coverage from those outlets. In some cases, a separate “From your sources” section will appear beneath Top Stories.
For publishers, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. On the plus side, Preferred Sources offers a direct route to repeat visibility with loyal readers. If someone adds a publication to their list, that outlet stands a better chance of appearing whenever it has fresh, relevant coverage. This could translate into more clicks, stronger brand recognition, and deeper audience loyalty, especially if publishers actively encourage readers to star their site through social posts, newsletters, or on-site prompts.
The feature also levels the playing field slightly by giving readers, not just algorithms, more influence over which outlets they see. For publishers with strong relationships and trust among their audiences, this could be a powerful tool to maintain visibility even in competitive news cycles.
However, there are downsides. Google only allows frequently updated outlets to be chosen, which puts smaller or niche publishers that post less often at a disadvantage.
The feature is also geographically limited for now, meaning outlets with global audiences can’t fully leverage it. And while Preferred Sources boosts exposure to loyal readers, it doesn’t guarantee broader discovery; publications will still need to meet Google’s ranking standards to appear at all.
Ultimately, Preferred Sources rewards publishers that focus on retention, trust, and consistent output. Those who adapt quickly could see measurable benefits, while others risk being left out of readers’ customized news feeds.
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