Be in The Know
🎵 TikTok will remain available to U.S. Here’s what to know about the TikTok deal.
📧 Google says it’s fixed Saturday’s Gmail issues with spam and misclassification.
🏬 What Amazon’s proposed big-box store could mean for Walmart.
🤖 Microsoft Clarity now lets you track how AI agents interact with your site.
🦉 Duolingo drops a “Bad Bunny 101” crash course ahead of the halftime show.
📸 Instagram is testing an update to the profile display that could change app dynamics.
🟣 How Yahoo is reimagining its voice after 30 years.
From AI Experimentation to Execution
Mediaocean released its 2026 Advertising Outlook, and it’s looking to be a transitional year.
Marketers are confident about digital investment and the potential of AI, but there’s a persistent execution gap restraining real impact.
Generative AI has moved beyond curiosity to become the top consumer trend cited by ~70% of marketers, but its adoption falls sharply the closer you get to actual campaign execution, from data analysis (~43%) to orchestration (~19%). So, enthusiasm hasn’t exactly translated into systematic use.
And then there’s the martech bottleneck. Most marketers recognize that cross-channel orchestration is important (86%), but only ~10% have fully unified systems to connect planning, activation, and measurement.
The report also shows selective rebound in media investment, especially in CTV, digital video, social, and AI-driven media on AI agents, while traditional channels like print and linear TV continue to lag.
So, what does this mean for us?
- Generative AI is now core to industry thinking but still immature in execution.
- The biggest AI barriers are data quality/access (42%) and system connectivity (41%).
- Most marketers are shifting from siloed, channel-level tactics to system-level intelligence and cross-platform orchestration.
Take a closer look at the data from Mediaocean.
Smash or Pass 👍/👎
Would you try Pepsi Maple Cola? (Available in Canada only).
Ramble
Todoist’s new voice-to-tasks tool, Ramble, turns natural speech into structured to-dos.
Launched in beta for iOS, Android, web, and desktop, it lets you tap a waveform icon and speak, transcribing and interpreting in real time, and capturing task names, dates, deadlines, priorities, durations, etc.
You can even live-edit (like “actually, make that…” or “remove that”) before finalizing your tasks.
Sponsor The Daily Carnage
“The Daily Carnage was the newsletter that brought us the most meaningful demo clicks and new trials.” — Danielle Blanchette, Digital Summit (2025)
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.
Trails Will Blaze
BBC Creative dropped a stop-motion trailer for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics that celebrates all the art and fierce physicality of the games.
Created with animation studio NOMINT and director Yannis Konstantinidis, the work features Olympians as they carve luminous trails through the frozen Dolomites.
It took 700 individually 3D-printed figures, animated against painstakingly crafted physical sets, with complex combustion and lighting techniques to achieve the flickering intensity.
No AI, no CGI. It’s soundtracked by a live-recorded arrangement of Verdi’s Requiem by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
Ads from The Past
Sno-Jet, 1971
