🤓 The rise of the technically minded creative.

🤫 Google is hiding search data from advertisers and profiting.

🤩 Report: Podcast listeners are superconsumers and trendsetters, making them a highly sought-after audience.

🔗 Here’s Meta’s 10-page Reels Performance Playbook.

📱 All the news from Apple’s iPhone 16 event.

💸 Infographic: The purchasing power of $100 in each U.S. state.

⚠️ Meta’s new data restrictions aim to enhance privacy but may complicate ad targeting and potentially pause some ads.

🛍️ Report: 45% of Gen Z prefer to visit stores; plus, they’re wary of ads and rely on word-of-mouth.

🍕 Hormel invites consumers to request more PTO (Pepperoni Time Off).

Monday: One thing we’ve learned? No matter how smart you’re ChatGPTing, someone is always ChatGPTing smarter. Pocket these prompts for your PPC efforts, starting with “How might this fail?”

Tuesday: Demos or free trials? A new report found that while demo calls to action (CTAs) had a higher conversion rate, free trial CTAs generated a higher click-through rate (CTR). Free trials consistently outperformed demos in terms of conversions per impression, especially in non-branded campaigns.

• According to our poll, 93% of marketers prefer a free trial when they’re shopping B2B SaaS.

Wednesday: A new report from iHeartMedia and Malcolm Gladwell’s Pushkin Industries highlights the increasingly widening gap between U.S. consumers and the marketers that communicate to them. Case in point, 44% of U.S. consumers feel forgotten by advertising and media.

• The U.S. consumer reports feeling uncomfortable about ad targeting, instead relying on recommendations from friends and family for purchase decisions. Only 23% of respondents to our poll believe that a hyper-targeted, optimized ad can trump word-of-mouth influence.

Thursday: MERGE conducted a study of 1,000 Gen Z consumers and tracked spending for a select group attending concerts, sporting events and festivals this summer. The study reveals key insights into Gen Z’s spending habits around events.

Can you solve this puzzle? 🫴

Jack posted: “How to tell if our Facebook ad webinar sign-ups are bots or real!?”

Marlana posted: “What are ways you are identifying Instagram and TikTok trends/planning out content?”

Sara posted: “I’m looking for recommendations on Google Ads training programs to help me get up to speed to run the program in-house. Paid training programs okay. I find Google online free training is a bit too novice.”

An anonymous Carney posted: “I don’t feel like I’m strong in strategic thinking. I’m great under pressure, I’m concrete and immediate, I’m organized, detailed, and a great, clear communicator, but I don’t feel like strategic thinking is my strong suit and I don’t know how to get there. It feels to me like a ‘you are or aren’t’ skill that’s always being asked of me but that I can never quite achieve in the way my company wants. Any tips or training you can recommend?”

Place a Classified Ad in a Friday edition of The Daily Carnage for just $99.

What you get:

• 200 characters 📣
• An internal link 🔗
• Your ad lives on our site indefinitely 💛

Let’s get it on the calendar.

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 oz mezcal
• 1 oz Cointreau
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1/2 oz black-cocoa-and-orange syrup
• 3 dashes mole bitters
• Soda water
• Lime wheel

Steps

1. Add all ingredients except soda water into a shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.
2. Top with soda water and stir gently to combine. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Recipe by Liquor.com

Answer: $800 million.

There’s a word for people who are so frightened by Friday the 13th that they don’t travel, spend, or make any other decisions on the day. According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, an estimated 17–21 million people in the U.S. are paraskevidekatriaphobics.