META

🔍 Instagram is generating inaccurate SEO bait for posts.

💰 Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud to safeguard billions in revenue.

📺 Instagram launches Reels for TV.

💸 Meta might start charging Business Pages to post links.

TRENDS

👟 Denny’s unveils sneakers made with syrup.

📖 Merriam-Webster names “slop” the word of the year.

🚗 Uber Intelligence offers trip and takeout data to marketers.

VIDEO

🎬 A look back at some brands inspired by Rob Reiner’s classics.

🏆 YouTube just won the Oscars.

🖼️ And image carousels come to YouTube.

📏 DoubleVerify brings attention measurement to TikTok.

Monday: Brief your creators, ambassadors, or influencers with hook frameworks they can actually use. Here are 5 hooks that consistently perform because they tap into how people process attention, emotion, and familiarity.

Tuesday: Ahrefs’ latest AI visibility study analyzed 75,000 brands and found that the strongest predictor of whether a brand appears in ChatGPT, AI Mode, or AI Overviews was how often brands show up on YouTube. Dig into the full list of top brand visibility factors.

Wednesday: TikTok rewards trust and traction. The platform wants to know: Is this account real? Is the content original? Do viewers stick around? When those signals are missing or compromised, distribution suffers. So, consider these 10 common reasons for TikTok flops.

Thursday: Google Ads had quite the year. From AI Max to AI Overviews and AI Mode, these were some of the biggest updates from 2025.

Can you solve this puzzle? 🤏

“The Daily Carnage was the newsletter that brought us the most meaningful demo clicks and new trials.” — Danielle Blanchette, Digital Summit (2025)

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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)

Gibson Art Co., 1952

Answer: Dubai chocolate.

Indeed, it was the year of beans and tinned fish, with some micro-luxuries like cold foam, according to Grubhub’s 2025 Delivered Trend Report.