👖 American Eagle removes part of its Sydney Sweeney campaign following pro-eugenics accusations.

💬 Meta adds new follow-up messaging features for brands.

🎃 Sorry, beach bums. Chobani’s Pumpkin Spice Creamer returns to store shelves.

🧛‍♂️ And Aldi blends Summerween and Back-to-School in latest product rollout.

🛋️ La-Z-Boy repositions as more than your grandma’s recliner.

📚 Spotify wants you to Read Like You Listen.

Google’s newest conversion metric, Branded Searches, is finally live.

Unveiled at Google Marketing Live 2025, it lets advertisers track how many users searched for their brand on Google or YouTube within 30 days of seeing an ad.

It’s not a direct conversion like a purchase or signup, but it’s still a powerful signal of brand curiosity, especially useful for upper-funnel campaigns.

✅ What counts as a Branded Search:

• Users searching your brand on Google Search
• Users searching your brand on YouTube Search

📦 Supported campaign types:

• YouTube ads
• Performance Max (YouTube, Discover, Gmail)
• Demand Gen (YouTube, Discover, Gmail)

Branded Searches won’t replace traditional conversions, but they will add some context to the influence your ads are having up the funnel.

You guessed it.

PodClips is an AI‑powered clipping tool built to extract and edit segments from your podcast episodes into shareable video shorts.

Upload your full episode via audio file or link, and then PodClips will select the highlight-worthy clips, resize for various platforms, add captions and custom thumbnails, and generate end‑screens and metadata.

“Wuzzjakuk. Dukat dukuk.”

That’s a glowing review of an IKEA mattress.

IKEA Canada’s new campaign with Rethink invited real participants to snooze in their Toronto showroom and filmed their surreal sleep talk.

You can’t get much clearer than that.