Plus new revenue recommendations for your site  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ Raptive News FEBRUARY 18, 2026 By Maddie McHugh Director, Content Marketing Hi Raptive, How do you find information these days? If your answer is more complicated than just typing a few words into Google Search and clicking on the top result, you’re like most. Our team conducted the 2026 Search Behavior Survey to better understand search behavior and make sure we’re always providing you with the latest guidance to understand and connect with your audience. What we found probably feels like how you find information yourself: cross-checking results across multiple platforms and exploring the capabilities of AI assistants. This week, we’re sharing our findings from the survey as well as: • New and personalized Revenue Recommendations • Our 2026 Content and Monetization Planning Calendar to inspire and help you plan • Last week’s Google Discover deep dive on Ctrl Alt Ask What’s new New Revenue Recommendations in your dashboard The Revenue Recommendations page in your dashboard is our way of making sure you always know your options for increasing ad revenue. Our team recently released a new batch of personalized recommendations that you can apply with just a click, including suggestions to earn more from video ads. Each recommendation is vetted by our performance team, who make sure anything we suggest is a net positive for your site and user experience. You’ll also see the expected RPM increase, estimated annual revenue impact, and the percentage of your peers who opted in so you can make an informed decision about whether to accept or dismiss the recommendation. Head to your dashboard to see the latest for your site. And don’t worry if you don’t see any recommendations right now—this means your site is fully optimized for the suggestions we can automatically make. We’ll send you new recommendations for your site when we have them. Check out your recommendations → Inside the SEO Workbook: Turn your data into a clear growth plan Most SEO tools overwhelm you with data. The SEO Workbook shows you what to do next. This new dashboard feature uses your site’s data to identify high-impact posts to update and uncover new content opportunities. By analyzing rankings, traffic trends, seasonality, and content freshness, it creates a clear, prioritized action plan so you can focus on the content most likely to drive traffic. Join us on Thursday, March 12, at 1 pm ET for a live demo of the Workbook with Eddie Mercado, VP of SEO Solutions. He’ll show you how it’s organized, walk through the four core tabs, and demonstrate how to use them together to build a consistent, repeatable SEO workflow. Bring your questions for the live Q&A. Reserve your spot now → The end of the single click search is here For years, winning search meant securing the number one spot to earn the most clicks. But our 2026 Search Behavior Survey shows what we’ve all felt—that the old search-and-click model is fading fast. Only 8.8% of people trust the top result alone when looking for information, while nearly half cross-check across multiple tools, platforms, and sites before they’re satisfied. For creators and publishers, it’s a critical reminder that winning isn’t just landing the top spot on search, it’s building a trusted brand through expertise, empathy, and quality content will keep your readers coming back. Read the full survey recap → Top resource Content trends to spark your next big idea We published the ultimate guide to this year’s holidays, trends, and earning tips to help you capitalize on the moments throughout the year that your audience will love celebrating with you. Check out our 2026 Content and Monetization Planning Calendar for inspiration and information around demand trends, seasonal opportunities to earn more, and workflow recommendations so you never feel behind. Get the calendar → Quick tip Don’t underestimate the impact of social search “Search behavior isn’t just changing inside search engines—across generations, one-third of searches now begin on social platforms. Think of your social media presence as the front door to your website. Lean into authenticity, and your audience will trust your brand and keep coming back to your content.” Alexandra Sebestyen Director, Audience Growth and Engagement In case you missed it PODCAST RECAP Ctrl Alt Ask Episode 10: How do I optimize for Google Discover? Discover traffic can feel unpredictable, but it’s a powerful opportunity to diversify where your traffic comes from. In this episode of Ctrl Alt Ask Tom Critchlow breaks it all down alongside host Stephanie Woodin and guest Tim Konrad of Unofficial Networks to answer the question: how do creators really take advantage of this channel? Listen to the episode → Don’t miss Share your spring and summer content plans What does your content slate look like for the next six months? Take our quick, 3-minute survey to share your perspective and help our Direct Sales team turn your creative vision into stronger advertiser and agency partnerships. Your insights help us tell a bigger story: creators aren’t just following trends—you’re building the brands of the future. Take the survey → In the news Inside baseball: programmatic advertising edition Last year, Amazon announced the development of their Amazon Publisher Services (APS) Prebid Adapter which provides publishers greater choice in how they integrate with APS. Historically Amazon had a separate header-bidding setup, meaning publishers had to run a separate auction in parallel to access demand from Amazon. It’s a win for open standards and Raptive has already begun testing Amazon’s Prebid adapter on small slices of traffic to measure the impact. “Once Amazon’s bids are exposed inside Prebid, Raptive can see and score them alongside every other bid instead of treating Amazon as a separate black box. That visibility lets Raptive tune its floor prices based on real Amazon demand and weed out low‑value bids, which makes the whole auction more efficient. It’s still too early to draw conclusions on things such as bid density, win rates or clearing prices, but the infrastructure shift alone is meaningful.” Patrick McCann Senior Vice President of Research Hear more from Patrick on this industry shift → What we’re reading Catch up on news from around the industry • When AI slop breaks the signals buyers trust (Deepsee.io) • The Economist’s shift to vertical video meets younger audience need (International News Media Association) • TikTok launches Local Feeds in the US (The Verge) • A wave of unexplained bot traffic is sweeping the web (Wired | Gated) Question of the week Where do you start when you’re looking for information these days? 🔎 Google first It’s still the synonym for “look up information about” to me! 📱 TikTok or Instagram My algorithm knows me best 🧵 Reddit Real people, unfiltered answers 🤖 AI tools Summarize it all for me, please Was this email helpful? 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