TECH

🤖 ChatGPT is testing a new heading treatment for ads.

🖱️ Google’s AI Mode ads now show non-clickable sitelinks.

⌚ Apple may be giving the Apple Watch a ceramic redesign.

🔎 LinkedIn releases a playbook for optimizing your content for AI search.

BRANDS

🍟 How DoorDash turned CringeMart into a marketing strategy.

🏙️ Netflix paid a man to live inside a Sunset Boulevard billboard for 24 hours.

🍕 Domino’s new rectangular pizza targets the solo-dining crowd.

🎃 Target is betting on newness to make Halloween shopping irresistible.

CULTURE

🪖 A green toy soldier gets a very different role in the Imperial War Museum’s latest campaign.

🎨 Is there a retirement crisis in the creative industry?

🎙️ Spotify’s new skip button could change podcasting as we know it.

BUSINESS

⚖️ Meta was fined $567M over teen safety concerns.

🔞 Texas’ app store age-verification law takes effect after the Supreme Court declines to block it.

📊 Nielsen’s $2B DoubleVerify deal raises questions about independence in ad measurement.

📈 Marketers are more than twice as likely to prioritize sales over profit.

Monday: Your Google Ads target could be quietly shaping your campaign’s performance. Starting August 17, budget-limited campaigns using Target CPA or Target ROAS will more consistently optimize toward the target you’ve set, even if they’ve historically performed better. Review your targets against recent results, check affected campaigns with Google’s Bid Target Adjustment Tool, and avoid changing targets too quickly. See what Search Engine Land recommends before the update rolls out.

Tuesday: AI search may be changing how people discover brands, but the SEO fundamentals behind strong visibility haven’t gone anywhere. Useful content, clear site structure, technical health, original insights, topical depth, and third-party authority can all help your brand get understood and referenced across search experiences. Get the full SEO breakdown at Carney.

Wednesday: Marketing in 2026 is being shaped by a mix of AI-driven changes and more human approaches to relevance. GEO still relies on strong SEO foundations, AI is moving earlier into the buyer journey, contextual advertising is gaining importance, smaller creators are opening new opportunities, and LinkedIn is becoming increasingly creator-led. Explore all five trends at WordStream.

Thursday: A low Google Ads Quality Score isn’t necessarily a problem to solve on its own. Instead, use it to identify what may be affecting performance, whether that’s expected CTR, ad relevance, or landing page experience. Tighten your messaging, improve keyword-to-ad alignment, strengthen landing pages, and judge the results by conversions and CPC—not the score alone. See how PPC Hero breaks down each area.

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

• 💬 Join r/TheDailyCarnage on Reddit
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😎 See ya there.

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

Put your Google Ads knowledge to the test: Can you solve this puzzle? 📉

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.

🎙️ 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.

Mattel, 1967

Answer: C) 58%.

Zero-click searches have become a major part of the search landscape, with more queries being answered directly on the results page instead of sending users to a website. As AI-generated answers become another layer between people and brands, being visible in search increasingly means being useful even when that click never happens.

Want to dive deeper into what this means for SEO? Read the full article on the Carney blog.