SOCIAL

📱 New app Divine hopes to recapture the magic of Vine.

❗ Instagram launches “AI Creator Labels.”

🏆 LinkedIn announces new Ads Agency Certification.

ADVERTISING

📊 Report: Google Ads CTR is rising, but conversions remain flat.

💡 Advertisers can now create ChatGPT ads through a beta self-serve Ads Manager.

💬 Opinion: Marketers can no longer afford to laugh at Reddit.

INNOVATION

🌴 A recap from Possible 2026.

✨ TikTok recreates its ads for billboards through Vistar partnership.

✈️ A Spirit Airlines fan has launched Spirit 2.0, a crowdsourcing effort to buy the airline.

AI

🍪 OpenAI enables cookies by default for free ChatGPT users.

⚠️ Data: Gartner finds 40% of agentic AI projects will fail.

🤖 Meta is reportedly working on launching an AI agent for users.

Monday: On the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, Shannon recaps social platform updates that turn ads into conversations, search into chat, and quietly reshape where content actually lives. Instagram launches Instants to rival Snachat, TikTok now lets creators suggest relevant keywords for clips, and YouTube tests comprehensive AI responses to search queries with “Ask YouTube.” Plus, Snapchat announces AI Sponsored Snaps and LinkedIn finally allows off-platform Event Ads. Stream The Daily Carnage Show now (8:17).

Tuesday: New research from SparkToro highlights a huge AI misconception: While we tend to think of tools like ChatGPT as consistent “answer engines,” they actually behave more like probabilistic generators. In controlled experiments with nearly 3,000 responses, identical prompts rarely produced the same list of brand or product recommendations (less than 1% of the time) and almost never in the same order. But while rankings are chaotic, brands that consistently show up, regardless of position, are more strongly associated with a given intent in the model’s training and retrieval patterns. Here’s what you should know.

Wednesday: Authentic human connection remains a primary driver of conversion. Businesses investing in real conversations (via phone, live chat, or direct interaction) see stronger relationships and higher satisfaction, even at higher operational cost. Physical and tangible marketing (like direct mail) is also regaining power. And, since most purchasing decisions are emotionally driven, sharing real customer experiences, especially through testimonials and case studies, builds credibility in ways AI-generated messaging cannot replicate. Take a closer look at the data.

Thursday: Tracking ChatGPT traffic is a new discipline that blends SEO, attribution modeling, and brand monitoring. A brand might be recommended inside ChatGPT, considered by the user, and only visited later via direct or branded search. If you’re only measuring last-click attribution, you’re missing most of the impact. Here’s a practical, step-by-step way to track and act on ChatGPT traffic.

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, “The Future of Google Search,” to learn more about Google’s plans to replace the search box with 24/7 AI-powered information agents and interactive “Generative UI” that builds mini-apps and custom widgets directly on your results page.

What does that mean for advertising, for SEO, for the Internet as we know it?

Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• GLP-1s are Disrupting Every Sector (9:56)
• Spirit Airlines 2.0: Will it Fly? (11:08)
• Major Platform Updates (8:17)
• Nike Runs into Controversy (12:19)
• Transgressive OOH (18:45)
• 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.

“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

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Frito-Lay, 1960s

Answer: Taco Bell Electric Lime Cheesecake.

Sorry to get your hopes up.