🎬 Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery to become Skydance.

📱 YouTube updates Shorts algorithm to put more focus on original content.

🚀 Instagram lets creators boost Livestreams directly from the app.

🤖 Google warns sites to fact-check AI content before publishing.

🎙️ These are 2026’s biggest moments in podcasting… so far.

The social media metric we’re all supposed to care about might be getting harder to come by.

According to new data from Socialinsider, organic social reach is continuing to decline, particularly on Instagram.

The company analyzed more than 872,000 posts published by brand pages between January 2025 and August 2026, and found that Instagram’s reach rate fell 14% year over year. As of August 2026, the average Instagram reach rate was 3.2%, compared with 1.25% on Facebook.

So… how you publish may matter almost as much as what you publish.

Smaller accounts consistently reach a larger percentage of their audiences than massive ones. On Instagram, accounts with 1,000–5,000 followers averaged a 6.65% reach rate, while accounts with 100,000–1 million followers averaged just 3.5%. Facebook showed an even more dramatic drop, from 4.35% for the smallest accounts to just 0.5% for the largest.

Despite the seemingly endless push toward short-form video, Reels aren’t actually the reach champion on Instagram. Socialinsider found that carousels performed slightly better:

• Instagram carousels: 4.5% reach
• Instagram Reels: 4.1%
• Instagram images: 4.0%
• Facebook images: 1.2%
• Facebook albums: 1.15%
• Facebook Reels: 0.55%
• Facebook link posts: 0.2%

It looks like “the algorithm wants video” is probably too simplistic. The format that gets the most attention in industry conversations isn’t necessarily the format earning the most distribution for your particular audience.

It’s also important to separate reach from engagement. Reach tells you how many unique people saw something; engagement tells you how many of those people actually did something with it. And even engagement by reach is declining on Instagram, falling from 3.7% in January 2025 to 3.2% in August 2026.

What should marketers actually do with all of this?

Probably not panic, or blindly start making more Reels. Instead, use your own data to figure out which formats consistently earn distribution, compare your performance against brands of a similar size, and experiment with content that gives people a reason to interact or share. Socialinsider specifically points to UGC, Instagram SEO, and leaning into high-performing formats as potential ways to improve organic reach.

Check out Socialinsider for more.

Clueso is an AI-powered platform that turns rough screen recordings into polished product videos and step-by-step documentation.

Record yourself walking through a product or process, and Clueso can clean up the transcript, generate a professional voiceover, add captions, zooms, callouts, transitions, music, and branding, then turn the same recording into a written how-to guide with automatically captured screenshots.

Clueso’s AI agents can actually navigate a product, capture the workflow, write the script, and build the finished video, too.

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show to find out why brands are spending big to turn TikTok scrollers into soap opera addicts.

Microdramas — short, episodic video series built around characters, cliffhangers, romance, plot twists and ongoing stories — are becoming a serious marketing format. And brands like Crocs, JCPenney, Bilt, P&G and Dr Pepper are already experimenting with them.

But there’s a big question: do microdramas actually drive business results, or are brands just buying views?

🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• Meta Muse Will Change How We Use the Internet (11:53)
• AI CEOs Want to Slow Down. The AI Race Won’t. (11:39)
• Reddit Is Changing SEO & AI Search (10:55)
• The Creator Economy Rules Gaming (43:53)
• Dark Patterns Are Becoming a Legal Problem for Meta (12:06)
• 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)

🎙️ Now streaming on Youtube, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.

The Daily Carnage reaches decision-makers at brands, agencies, SaaS companies, and startups who are actively researching solutions, evaluating vendors, and making purchasing decisions every day.

Now, we’re opening up a limited number of Friends of The Daily Carnage partnerships for brands that want to build a consistent presence with our audience, not just run a one-off ad.

Friends get discounted sponsorship inventory, priority booking, first access to unsold placements, bonus opportunities, and performance reviews throughout the year.

Partnership levels include dedicated newsletter features, premium placements, podcast pre-rolls, classified ads, social promotion, and more.

Past sponsors include Canva, HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Marketing Brew, and dozens of other leading brands.

Interested in reaching marketers who actually click? Reach out to get started!

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.

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.

Taco Bell and Duolingo have found a pretty perfect way to make a sauce packet do some marketing work.

For this year’s National Taco Day, the brands are teaming up to turn it into Global Taco Day, built around one supposedly universal word: “taco.”

The centerpiece is a limited-edition Duo Habanero Sauce, with Taco Bell’s sauce packets getting a Duolingo makeover.

Instead of the usual sauce “wisdom,” the packets feature taco-related sayings in nine languages, including Spanish, French, Hindi, Portuguese, German, Korean, Mandarin, and Japanese.

Rewards members can get a month of Super Duolingo for free, while 1,000 limited-edition Taco Bell x Duo plushies will be up for grabs. The brands are also taking over Taco Bell locations around the world, including New York, Mumbai, Toronto, and Shanghai, with Duo appearances, giveaways, and language-themed activations.

Fairy Soap, 1915