📊 Study: Shoppers who trust AI are 6x more likely to trust creators.

🏆 Report: Amazon and Nike reign supreme with Gen Alpha teens.

🎒 Urban Outfitters launched its first back-to-school campaign.

📱 Why Nuuly is taking a chance on microdramas.

💧 How Evian and the US Open keep bottled water a status symbol.

ChatGPT ads work a lot more like search advertising than traditional social ads.

OpenAI’s self-serve ad platform is now available to advertisers, with campaigns targeting conversations where a product or service may be relevant.

If you’re thinking about experimenting, here’s a useful seven-step guide:

1. Confirm you’re eligible. Check OpenAI’s advertising policies and make sure your business and target markets qualify. Daily budgets can start as low as $25.
2. Set up your ad account. Have your legal business name, tax ID, payment method and favicon ready before creating an account.
3. Structure your campaigns. Campaigns contain ad groups and ads, with options for objectives, locations, budgets, bids and conversion events.
4. Choose your targeting. There are no traditional keywords, demographics or in-market audiences. Instead, advertisers use “context hints” to describe the conversations and topics where their ads should appear.
5. Create your ads. Static ads include a headline, description, destination URL and image. Product ads can use product feeds.
6. Set up measurement. Install OpenAI’s pixel and use UTM parameters so you can track traffic and conversions in tools such as GA4.
7. Optimize with limited data. Test different ads, campaign structures and targeting approaches, but expect less visibility into exactly which conversations triggered your ads.

MarTech reports average CPCs of roughly $2–$5, while one test found ChatGPT traffic converted at a much lower rate than Google Ads. Still, the platform can reach people researching solutions in ways traditional search may not.

Check out more at Martech.

Google is adding a new layer of AI and agentic capabilities to Google Ads and Google Analytics.

There are now AI-powered summaries on platform homepages that surface important performance shifts and trends, giving you a quicker read on what deserves attention.

There’s also a new way to build visual reports using simple prompts. You can ask Google’s AI to create visualizations and explain the “why” behind their performance.

Plus, Google is also introducing benchmarking capabilities, allowing businesses to compare their results with similar companies and identify areas where they may be underperforming or missing opportunities.

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show to dive into the dark patterns that have been a UX and marketing problem for years. Now, they’re increasingly becoming a legal one.

In this episode of The Daily Carnage Show, we’re looking at Meta’s growing legal scrutiny over the design of Facebook and Instagram—and what it could mean for marketers, UX designers, and anyone building digital products.

We break down what deceptive design and “dark patterns” actually are, including manipulative defaults, difficult cancellation flows, buried information, infinite scroll, autoplay, and other design choices that can steer users toward decisions they might not otherwise make.

We’ll also look at the bigger question behind the current litigation: When does persuasion become manipulation, and when can a company become legally responsible for the way its product is designed?

🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• Dissecting the Brand Apology (11:35)
• Instagram’s Controversial New Logo (10:34)
• Google Image Search is… Pinterest? (9:26)
• Sony & The Death of Physical Media (8:57)
• Brand vs. Planet: The Marketer’s AI Footprint (12:14)
• The Future of Google Search (9:56)
• GLP-1s are Disrupting Every Sector (9:56)
• Transgressive OOH (18:45)
• Your Brain on AI (12:33)
• 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.

Disney is celebrating World Princess Week with a campaign created with Fallon and Publicis Production and directed by Alex Prager.

“Once a Princess, Always a Princess” follows two girls who live across the street from each other and use their imaginations to transform everyday life into a Disney Princess adventure. :’)

The kicker here is that it’s made with practical craftsmanship. The team built miniature “bigature” castles, custom puppets, and hand-painted backdrops, while using practical effects to create everything from flying carpets to underwater sequences.

Plus, a 56-piece live orchestra provided the score.

The emotional payoff comes years later, but you gotta watch it for yourself.

Head & Shoulders, 1981