SOCIAL

📎 How the viral “Staples Baddie” is turning a struggling retailer into a Gen‑Z obsession.

🚫 Russia blocks access to WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.

📍 TikTok launches Local Feeds under new U.S. ownership.

🕵️ Meta looks to sneak through a controversial system update.

👀 LinkedIn is implementing more direct penalties for pod posters.

ADVERTISING

🔎 Google is “reinventing ads.”

🚪 Amazon’s Ring cancels partnership with Flock after backlash to that controversial Super Bowl ad.

📱 Apple Music posts a tribute to Bad Bunny’s halftime show, shot on iPhone. Is it blurry for you too?

🤖 OpenAI and Google reveal competing visions for AI ads.

BRANDS

💼 LinkedIn trades corporate polish for laughs in a new brand platform.

🎨 KitchenAid’s color of the year is spearmint.

🍎 Apple takes on YouTube and Spotify with new video podcasting push.

Monday: Socialinsider’s 2026 Social Media Benchmarks report, based on analysis of 70+ million posts across major platforms, suggests that engagement is concentrating on short-form video platforms (no surprise there), while legacy networks continue to see flatter or declining interaction rates. Here’s what you should know.

Tuesday: As you know, OpenAI has begun testing ads inside ChatGPT. But how do they integrate into the chat experience? For now, they’re clearly labeled and appear in a dedicated, visually separate section beneath the chat interface and not embedded within the model’s responses, so they don’t interfere with or alter the answers the AI provides. Here’s how they work.

Wednesday: Traditional “keyword-first” SEO is being eclipsed by an answer-first approach. LinkedIn’s new guide on optimizing owned content for AI search emphasizes that blog posts, product hubs, and how-tos form the core knowledge base that LLMs draw on when synthesizing answers. Here are the key insights.

Thursday: Research using fMRI brain scans reveals the key elements that make people actually like (not just tolerate) video ads. It turns out likability is all about emotional engagement at the jump, a logical landing, and a multimodal experience. Here’s a little cheat sheet.

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Season 1 of The Daily Carnage Show is streaming everywhere:

• Marketer Burnout: A Crisis of Creativity (16:29)
• Unhinged Marketing: The Age of Absurdity (15:07)
• State of Marketing: Pride Month, Neurodivergence, and More (18:40)
• Game-Changers: The Cannes Lions 2025 Shortlist (18:47)
• Brand vs. Planet: The Chilean Sea Bass (9:41)

Chia Pet, 1970s

Answer: Netflix.

Here is the first group of brands reported to be testing the new channel.