ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

🤖 Ads in ChatGPT are here.

• According to our poll, 34% of marketers say they’re likely to ditch ChatGPT now.

🤔 Facebook is offering Meta AI-powered animations for profile photos.

🎯 How Target is testing ChatGPT ads.

BIG GAME

🦅 Budweiser wins the USA Today Ad Meter for the 10th time.

📉 Celebrities in Super Bowl ads still skew white, and LGBTQ+ representation dropped for the second year in a row.

🖼️ IKEA sparks engagement with a social post honoring Bad Bunny.

BRANDS

💘 Here’s how brands are celebrating Valentine’s Day.

🍎 Angry Orchard is accepting your ex’s abandoned junk in ex-change for cider.

🥫 Kraft Heinz pauses the big split… for now.

SOCIAL

📍 Snapchat now lets users alert friends when they arrive at any location.

🎮 Twitch is testing pause screen ads.

🛡️ Meta, TikTok and Snap agree to teen safety ratings.

Monday: Check out our 2026 Super-latives to recap our favorite ads from the big game.

Tuesday: Digital Summit’s Valentine’s Day sale ends today. Buy one pass, get one half off with code BEMINE50 for events in Tampa (Mar 17–18), Chicago (April 7–8), and more, featuring brands like Patagonia, DoorDash, Meta, and Google.

Wednesday: Google Ads is moving from a keyword-matching engine to an intent-modeling system. Instead of auctions being triggered primarily by specific phrases and match types, Google’s AI now evaluates the broader context of a search, including user behavior, signals, and predicted needs, to determine which ads are eligible. So, what does that mean for us?

Thursday: TikTok’s SMB Creative Playbook is all about how creative execution is the biggest performance lever for small and medium businesses. Here are the key takeaways.

Can you solve this puzzle? 🥇

Trending in The Daily Carnage Facebook group…

“My boss signed up for ChatGPT and is using it to do everything now, including my work, arming him into thinking he’s at my level in experience. So now, every time I propose or do something, he thinks and questions what I do, when I do it, compared to ChatGPT. It’s crazy and I actually feel like I’m being pushed out now because of this.”

💬 Our community of experts says…

• “I think any great leader knows that AI can make us work faster and more efficiently but it cannot replace critical thinking. We are seeing the pendulum shift back the other way and people are getting inundated and annoyed with AI content and they are craving more human centered content.”
• “I’ve found so much help and productivity using AI as a one person marketing team. Yet I struggle with the impacts to our environment and job market. I wouldn’t get half of what I get done if I didn’t use AI. So it really begs for deeper conversations around budget and personnel capacity.”
• “I ended up losing my job to AI. It’s great in some ways and really inferior in other ways. That being said, I’m finding that some people are now rabidly against it and will go to war with anyone who uses it for any purpose.”
• “I had a mentor tell me that the point of AI is to help you improve your work efficiency, but it is only effective because I have developed the skills to know when it is right or not and what edits need to be made.”

“The Daily Carnage was the newsletter that brought us the most meaningful demo clicks and new trials.” — Digital Summit

“Open rate was nearly 50% and CTR was relatively high, especially considering this newsletter’s audience was likely being exposed to our event for the first time.” — Adweek

Hop on our 2026 sponsorship calendar to get your content in front of 25,000 marketers.

Book a $99 Classified ad instantly, or ask us about our custom sponsorship packages tailored to your campaign objectives.

Season 1 of The Daily Carnage Show is streaming everywhere:

• Marketer Burnout: A Crisis of Creativity (16:29)
• Unhinged Marketing: The Age of Absurdity (15:07)
• State of Marketing: Pride Month, Neurodivergence, and More (18:40)
• Game-Changers: The Cannes Lions 2025 Shortlist (18:47)
• Brand vs. Planet: The Chilean Sea Bass (9:41)

True Temper, 1957

Answer: MEAL PREP.

Sweethearts has released potentially its most relatable batch of conversation hearts ever, called “Love in This Economy.” Sexy.