🏆 The Cannes Lions Titanium 2026 shortlist is here.

⚽ Meta apps get temporary World Cup makeovers.

📣 And 83% of global Gen Z fans plan to cheer on the 2026 World Cup.

🎁 Why T-Mobile is going all-in on customer rewards.

🦎 How GEICO is bringing the Gecko to life with AI.

As Google PMax and Meta Advantage+ automate more of the campaign management process, we have fewer manual controls than ever before.

The algorithm is doing the targeting, placement, and bidding. But we still control the signal we’re telling those platforms to optimize toward.

The problem is that we often choose conversion events based on what was easiest to set up rather than what actually predicts business success.

A form submission, newsletter signup, or trial start might be easy to track, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it represents a valuable customer.

Treat conversion events as a strategic business decision, not a tracking task. Some key recos:

• Optimize for outcomes that reflect real customer value.
• Consider backend or CRM events, not just website actions.
• Use predictive proxy events if your true conversion takes too long.
• Pass conversion values so platforms can prioritize quality over volume.
• Implement server-side tracking to improve signal quality.
• Send hashed email and phone data when appropriate.
• Capture click IDs (like gclid and fbclid) for stronger attribution.
• Deduplicate events across client-side and server-side sources.
• Revisit conversion events regularly as your business evolves.

Check out the insight from Barbara Galiza.

Slashy is an executive assistant that lives inside your inbox.

It drafts replies in your voice, surfaces conversations that need follow-up, prepares meeting briefs automatically, and nudges you when important emails are slipping through the cracks.

The goal is to reduce the mental overhead of managing relationships, not just the time spent typing.

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, “The Future of Google Search,” to learn more about Google’s plans to replace the search box with 24/7 AI-powered information agents and interactive “Generative UI” that builds mini-apps and custom widgets directly on your results page.

What does that mean for advertising, for SEO, for the Internet as we know it?

Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• 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.

Weigh in on The Daily Carnage Subreddit:

• The Daily Carnage Show Ep 2.9 Discussion: “If AI agents become the primary interface to knowledge, what happens to the humans and businesses that knowledge originally came from? What does it mean for the internet to quietly transition from an open ecosystem of destinations into a closed ecosystem of gate-kept answers? Are we speeding toward a future where people stop visiting the web directly? If that behavior ends, we ever be able to rebuild it?”

🎙️ 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.

People are roasting Timmy Chalomet for a new campaign with prediction market platform Kalshi.

The ad is surreal, intentionally cryptic, and features the actor in a series of random scenarios with little explanation beyond repeated appearances of the Kalshi logo.

It’s racked up millions of views, but much of the conversation centered on Chalamet’s involvement with a gambling company rather than the brand itself.

Star power, in this case, seems to have not paid off.

Ovaltine, 1955