AI

💭 OpenAI proposes policies for social safety.

🤖 Google says its AI-powered ads help some brands lift online sales by 80 percent.

SOCIAL

📅 Instagram allows creators to schedule Trial Reels.

💸 If marketers pulled ad spend from social, where would it even go?

🤔 It turns out that reposting feed posts to Instagram Stories doesn’t boost reach.

CAMPAIGNS

🔥 Bic introduces “Flick Your Bic” to a new generation.

🚀 Nutella makes the most of its unexpected airtime aboard Artemis II.

PLATFORMS

🤝 TikTok announces expanded partnership with HubSpot.

🎬 Netflix launches ad-free playground for kids.

🍎 Apple Maps’ ads shift focus to context and intent.

Tuesday: New research from SparkToro suggests that influence is distributed across a fragmented web of platforms where people spend their time before they ever search. This means that what looks like a “Google-driven” conversion is usually the result of earlier interactions across multiple channels. So, marketers risk overinvesting in BOFU channels and underinvesting in the environments where awareness and trust are actually built. Here’s what you should know.

Wednesday: TikTok users scroll quickly and expect constant variation, so even your high-performing ads have a short half-life as repetition sets in and things get stale. So, switch from campaign-based thinking to production-based thinking. Creative is must be continuously manufactured, tested, and iterated. Here’s a better operating model.

Thursday: Users routinely abandon a website’s built-in search in favor of external engines like Google, even when looking for content on the same site. This happens because most internal search systems still behave like rigid indexes, requiring exact keyword matches rather than understanding intent. This is a “syntax tax.” Improving findability—through better labeling, semantic relationships, and “fuzzy” matching—can dramatically improve outcomes without changing algorithms. Here’s what to know.

Can you solve this puzzle? 👀

Weigh in on The Daily Carnage Subreddit:

• The Daily Carnage Show Ep 2.9 Discussion: “If AI agents become the primary interface to knowledge, what happens to the humans and businesses that knowledge originally came from? What does it mean for the internet to quietly transition from an open ecosystem of destinations into a closed ecosystem of gate-kept answers? Are we speeding toward a future where people stop visiting the web directly? If that behavior ends, we ever be able to rebuild it?”

✨ Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, Transgressive Out-of-Home Advertising (18:45).

Shannon gives a brief history of OOH—all the way from ancient murals to Mail Pouch Tobacco barns to augmented reality. Then, we deep dive into 12 examples of transgressive OOH in the 21st century that changed or challenged how we as a public move through space and time.

Catch up on Season 2:

• Your Brain on AI (12:33)
• Meta, McDonald’s Mukbang, and The OpenAI Mess (14:41)
• Ethics in the AI Era (18:33)

🎙️ Now streaming on Youtube, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.

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VW, 1969

Answer: Tang.

Astronaut John Glenn originally put the orange drink mix on the map after taking it on his first orbit around Earth in 1962.