📱 Meta launches Pocket creative app.

🎬 The AI tool behind fake Brad Pitt fight is making Hollywood inroads.

⚙️ Amazon Web Services will stop accepting new customers for its Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing service.

🎯 Opinion: Leave platform-specific social strategies behind.

🤖 WTF is AI poisoning?

It’s time to revisit some of those old email-marketing best practices.

Many of the most common subject line rules were built on outdated spam filters, limited datasets, or one-off studies.

Nowadays, mailbox providers care far more about engagement, sender reputation, and whether subscribers actually want your emails than whether you used a certain word or hit a specific character count.

Here are a few subject line myths you can safely retire:

• “Never use the word ‘free.’” Modern spam filters don’t blacklist individual words the way they once did. Context, authentication, and sender reputation matter far more than a single term.
• “Keep every subject line under 50 characters.” There’s no universal ideal length. Mobile devices, desktop clients, audiences, and message types all perform differently, so test what works for your subscribers.
• “Personalization always boosts opens.” Adding a first name isn’t a magic bullet anymore. Behavioral personalization (referencing actions, interests, or purchase history) is often better.
• “Open rate is the ultimate success metric.” IYKYK… because of Apple, opens are less reliable than they used to be. Clicks, conversions, replies, and revenue tell a much more complete story.
• “There’s one perfect formula.” Nope, there isn’t. The best-performing brands constantly A/B test subject lines, audiences, and messaging instead of relying on universal rules.

No more email folklore. Head to MarTech for more.

Reddit just rolled out Split Testing to all advertisers, a built-in A/B testing tool that lets you compare two campaign variants in a controlled experiment (without relying on manual workarounds or third-party tools).

Choose from pre-built testing templates, like Reddit Max vs. Standard campaigns, automated vs. manual targeting, or one creative against another.

Then, Reddit handles audience splitting, budget allocation, and simultaneous delivery.

Because users are divided into non-overlapping groups, you can isolate a single variable and determine which approach performs better with greater confidence.

Reddit declares a winner once a test reaches 65% statistical confidence.

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, “Marketing as Infrastructure: Our Cannes Titanium Lions Picks,” Shannon shares the Carney shortlist of campaigns that raised the bar and changed the game over the last year.

🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• Silent Spring: Is Rainbox Capitalism Dead? (11:41)
• The Future of Google Search (9:56)
• 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.

Let’s take this party outside of the inbox, Carnies!

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

• 💬 Join r/TheDailyCarnage on Reddit
• 👍 Join The Daily Carnage Facebook Group

😎 See ya there.

🎙️ 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.

Wedding planning platform Zola and dog food brand Ollie have teamed up for a crossover.

These days, beloved pets are walking down the aisle, too, so the collab showcases those real-life moments… while highlighting how Zola helps couples plan the big day and how Ollie helps keep four-legged VIPs healthy enough to enjoy it.

Esso, 1966