🌍 The best and worst countries for women ranked by women’s rights and equality.

📱 TikTok agrees to a $400M settlement over a child privacy lawsuit.

🎮 GTA VI exists in its own universe — and apparently, so does its marketing strategy.

📊 Marketers don’t trust the data shaping their budgets.

⚽ The Premier League is making a big U.S. soccer push with a new campaign.

🍔 A&W is redesigning its restaurants and trying not to become the next Cracker Barrel.

💘 A dating app cofounder has bailed after a scandal involving fake AI influencers.

Google Search is becoming a much less predictable place for marketers. Between a new spam update, generative UI in AI Overviews, and changes to how users choose their preferred sources, the rules around visibility keep shifting.

Search Engine Journal breaks down several of the changes happening at once, including Google’s August spam update, which began rolling out on August 18, and the growing role of AI-generated experiences in Search.

So what should marketers pay attention to?

• Watch your rankings: Let the spam update finish rolling out before reacting to traffic changes.
• Think beyond blue links: Generative UI means Google can now answer queries with interactive experiences, not just webpages.
• Build source preference: Google’s Preferred Sources feature gives users more control over which publishers they see.
• Diversify AI visibility: Reddit’s share of ChatGPT citations reportedly dropped 86.4% in August, showing how quickly AI visibility can shift.

Get the full scoop at Search Engine Journal.

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Google is making the biggest change to Image Search since it was created 25 years ago:

• The homepage is being redesigned into a personalized, Pinterest-like feed.
• AI can now generate images directly inside Search.
• The interface itself is getting a major refresh.

And together, these updates signal a substantial shift from Google Image Search as simple visual retrieval tool into a place for discovery.

How will this affect image SEO for marketers, brands, and publishers?

🎙️ Don’t miss “Google Image Search is… Pinterest?” now streaming on:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Amazon Music
• Apple Music

🎙️ 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.

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.

A campaign from Bangladesh is giving 100 children with cleft lips or palates the chance to smile through free surgeries and renewed hope.

Created in partnership with Dhaka Bank, Sajida Foundation, Smile Asia, and the Government of Bangladesh, the campaign follows children and their families as they move from uncertainty toward a future filled with possibility.

Wendy’s, 1980