Edition #492 Lots of AI changes in flux, WhatsApp sponsored content on Netflix & Microsoft Ads 2.0. I think it’s kind of interesting that Google is talking about re-building search with AI at its core. It makes sense, AI slop could mess up results, what’s the best tool to handle it? AI itself. Checks out. Google has also been hitting its stride with its AI solutions. BUT also, Microsoft opted to scrap Xandr DSP, in light of just building for… Continue reading
Edition #491 On is Google growing or not? AI trends & Linkedin as the new creator spot. So is Google search usage up or down? In questioning Eddie Cue said April was the first time Google searches from the Safari address bar was down. Yet Google said, the queries have only gone up. Google stock dropped on the news. But you have to imagine, that Apple have some incentives here to play down how mission critical Google… Continue reading
Edition #490 On the outpost play, zero followers required and Bernard Arnault. Thanks to Ben for his tweets out of Possible this week, he had a couple of Gary Vee bangers. I remember watching Gary in the very early days, where he was mostly focused on the wine (and then some bangers). But one thing shared was this idea: And that’s super interesting, basically, the algorithms and ‘For You’ tabs are so powerful, if you get the… Continue reading
Edition #489 Punditry, Lyft ads & cookies. After a spring break road trip I am back in the hot seat! I am happy to inform you of a couple of milestones, I have now dined at the place which invented the hamburger. And had a pint at the oldest pub in the US. A lot to dig in to this week, some things I might pick up next week and go a little deeper. The surprising news was Google Chrome… Continue reading
Edition #488 Asking the right questions, the platform generated content era & Quake. One thread of chat at this weeks breakfast was on this idea of the fourth content era, content created by platforms. And that this now, is the aim for brands, to make sure platforms are fed with the right ingredients, to represent your brand when queried by their users. I liked the framing, and asked if they could write it up. So hopefully have something in… Continue reading
Edition #487 On CHIPS not Cookies, AI driving content quality & new Spotify ad announcements. CHIPS not cookies, CHIPS stands for: Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State. I mean who is in charge of naming these things ha. And it is an interesting novel concept, it enables a ‘third party’ cookie to be set, but partitioned within the site it is shown in. Thus retaining the privacy benefits. This rolled out to Safari 18.4 this week. Even simple examples like, hey… Continue reading
Edition #486 On creating time to play, AI’s impact on agencies & Discord is getting mobile ads. On creating time to play, AI’s impact on agencies & Discord is getting mobile ads. Coming next week I’m going to give readers a preview of a new newsletter from me. It’s called Dux, and it’s a short note, of one marketing idea a week, relevant to senior marketing folks, it can be read above the fold on your phone. So short, snappy… Continue reading
Edition #485 On the risk of change fatigue, Perplexity’s Squid Games & Netflix engagement. Had a great breakfast this week, getting folks together to chat on all things media. Funnily enough, a lot was around last weeks topic, how LLMs are driving traffic, getting your company mentioned in them, what are good prompts to have, how to write a good prompt (hint have the LLM help you do that). Fun. We don’t seem to have it yet but I… Continue reading
Edition #484 A rapid uptick in new users from LLMs, brand safety AI agents and Substack goes brand. We all saw it coming, the growth of LLMs as an acquisition source, but interesting to see two businesses in the past week note their growth directly from them. Mercury bank, and Vercel app platform both experienced approximately a threefold increase in their signups, driven from the LLMs. Notably ChatGPT as the biggest source. Mercury noting exponential rise of signups from AI… Continue reading
Edition #483 Who is winning the AI search wars, newsletter hustlers and AI spending your ad dollars. I wrote on this a while ago, but the thesis was that ChatGPT etc had a huge risk of being undermined by Google itself, because it has the muscle memory and ability to roll out AI products to billions. And this story from BI seems to confirm that, Google said Monday that it now sees more than 5 trillion searches… Continue reading