🤖 AI can scale your promises faster than you can build trust — and that could be marketing’s next big problem.

🥒 Grillo’s Pickles has turned social media into a brand playground.

🦉 Duolingo is casting a spell on NYFW.

🧠 Anthropic’s CEO wants AI competitors to slow down.

🎨 People are using AI flyers to advertise drawing classes.

🔎 Google avoids an ad-tech breakup after losing its monopoly case.

🗳️ IKEA is the place where Swedes abroad go to vote.

If you’re not sure what to test next in Google Ads, the answer probably isn’t “change everything and hope for the best.”

WordStream’s list of 21 experiment ideas breaks testing down by what’s actually happening in your account — whether you’re trying to scale, fix declining performance, improve conversion rates, or simply don’t have enough data yet.

A few places to start:

• Need more volume? Test budget increases, new match types, AI Max, or expanded geotargeting.
• Getting clicks but not conversions? Look at search intent and experiment with messaging that better matches what people actually want.
• Performance getting stale? Refresh ad copy using your best-performing themes, customer questions, reviews, and competitor messaging.
• Need more awareness? Test campaigns higher up the funnel instead of expecting Search to do everything.
• Want to understand the competition? Use Auction Insights to spot changes in impression share and competitive pressure.

The important part is to test one meaningful variable at a time and let the data tell you what deserves more investment.

Head to WordStream for 21 ideas to add to your testing list.

Need to make something look good without opening Photoshop? PicMonkey has you covered.

The online design tool lets you edit photos, create social posts, ads, presentations, logos, banners, and more using templates, graphics, fonts, stock photos, and video. You can also remove backgrounds, retouch images, resize designs, and keep your brand fonts, colors, and logos handy with Brand Kits.

It’s a handy option for marketers who need to turn an idea into a polished visual without making every design a whole production.

Let’s take this party outside of the inbox, Carnies!

Connect and network with over 20,000 marketers to get (and give) advice, feedback, support, and LOLs.

• 💬 Join r/TheDailyCarnage on Reddit
• 👍 Join The Daily Carnage Facebook Group

😎 See ya there.

🎙️ The Daily Carnage Show is growing!

So, we’re excited to share a new sponsorship opportunity.

Book a Pre-Roll Ad at the top the episode with your preferred script, on-screen text, and link in description.

🎧 Podcast advertising is one of the highest-performing brand channels:

• 60%+ of listeners say they’ve searched for a product after hearing it on a podcast.
• Podcast ads consistently outperform display ads on engagement and recall.
• Pre-roll ads are among the most-heard placements, with the strongest completion rates.

🗣️ This is your opportunity to reach a highly engaged audience of marketers, creatives, and strategists when they’ve got their listening ears on.

Interested in sponsoring an upcoming episode? Reach out and let’s build something together.

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, here’s what we’re covering:

🔒 Apple’s secret blocklist: How Safari’s restrictions work and which ad tech companies have been affected.

📉 The impact on advertisers and publishers: Why disruptions to ad delivery and audience signals could affect campaign performance, publisher revenue, and programmatic advertising.

📊 The measurement problem: Why winning an ad auction doesn’t always mean an ad actually appeared on a user’s screen.

⚖️ Privacy vs. platform power: What happens when the company controlling the browser also operates an advertising business?

🛠️ What marketers should do next: Audit your ad tech dependencies, verify campaign delivery, strengthen your first-party data strategy, and ask vendors about their contingency plans.

Apple’s approach raises a bigger question for the open web: How do we protect user privacy while maintaining the infrastructure that supports digital advertising?

🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• AI Is Killing Entry-Level Marketing Jobs (12:55)
• Microdramas Are Taking Over Marketing (10:43)
• AI CEOs Want to Slow Down. The AI Race Won’t. (11:39)
• Reddit Is Changing SEO & AI Search (10:55)
• The Creator Economy Rules Gaming (43:53)
• Dark Patterns Are Becoming a Legal Problem for Meta (12:06)
• Dissecting the Brand Apology (11:35)
• Google Image Search is… Pinterest? (9:26)
• Sony & The Death of Physical Media (8:57)

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

Got a marketing problem you’re trying to solve? Need a second opinion? Wondering whether a new platform, AI tool, campaign idea, or strategy is worth pursuing?

Every Friday, we’re clocking in for Agency Office Hours sessions: 30-minute sessions for Daily Carnage readers to chat with the Carney team.

Bring your questions. We’ll bring our experience.

Whether you’re trying to improve performance, navigate industry changes, troubleshoot a campaign, or simply sanity-check an idea, we wanna hear what you’ve got going on.

No pitches. No obligations. No sales deck. Seriously.

Just a free 30-minute conversation with the team behind The Daily Carnage.

👉 Reserve your Office Hours session now.

Dacia is playing with the idea that electric cars used to be the kind of thing you’d find in a toy store.

The film starts with a tiny remote-controlled Spring tearing through a house, navigating stairs, furniture, and even a cat flap. Then it meets a full-sized version of the car, blurring the line between the toy and the real thing.

The best part? We eventually find out the kid has been controlling the whole adventure from the start.

Delineator Magazine, 1933