💸 Brands rush to request tariff refunds.

🎵 TikTok is testing an “AI remix” setting.

💬 Threads is adding Live Chats to boost real-time engagement.

🧠 LinkedIn tests Crosscheck, a new tool that helps you select the best AI for your use case.

📉 Growth slows on Bluesky.

YouTube rewards videos that attract clicks, hold attention, and encourage viewers to keep watching more content on the platform. In other words, views are a byproduct of viewer satisfaction and strong positioning.

Videos perform better when they combine familiarity (topics people already care about) with novelty (a fresh angle or insight).

From there, thumbnails and titles function like “hooks” that determine whether a viewer clicks at all. Even excellent videos underperform if the packaging doesn’t communicate value instantly.

Growth depends heavily on retention and session time. The first 30 seconds of a video are crucial for setting expectations and maintaining attention.

Channels that consistently lead viewers into another video—through playlists, end screens, and suggested content strategies—tend to scale faster because they increase total watch sessions, not just single-video views.

Basically, YouTube is a long game.

Here’s a recap:

• Strong video ideas matter more than production polish
• Titles and thumbnails drive the click
• Early retention determines long-term distribution
• YouTube rewards binge-watching and connected content
• Analytics should guide constant iteration
• Consistency compounds over time rather than delivering instant results

Head to Buffer for the full YouTube growth guide.

RankAI is an SEO and GEO platform that functions like an autonomous marketing agent.

It identifies high-value keywords, generates optimized content, publishes it at scale, and continuously improves it based on performance data.

It has a “rewrite until it ranks” approach, automatically revising underperforming pages. It also integrates technical SEO fixes, internal linking suggestions, and AI-focused optimization to increase the chances of being cited in generative search results.

✨ Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, Transgressive Out-of-Home Advertising (18:45).

Shannon gives a brief history of OOH—all the way from ancient murals to Mail Pouch Tobacco barns to augmented reality. Then, we deep dive into 12 examples of transgressive OOH in the 21st century that changed or challenged how we as a public move through space and time.

Catch up on Season 2:

• 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.

“The Daily Carnage was the newsletter that brought us the most meaningful demo clicks and new trials.” — Digital Summit

“Open rate was nearly 50% and CTR was relatively high, especially considering this newsletter’s audience was likely being exposed to our event for the first time.” — Adweek

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For Earth Day yesterday, Miracle-Gro released 24 Instagram posts—one every hour—each acting as a prompt to re-engage with the physical world.

The posts artfully juxtaposed tech with nature (like plants interacting with devices) to emphasize gardening as a sensory escape from digital burnout.

And no AI was used to create the images.

Weigh in on The Daily Carnage Subreddit:

• B2B lead gen and data enrichment tools: “Our team has just had an abysmal experience with Seamless.ai and we’re interested in exploring competitor. Do you have a tool you’d recommend?”
• Smash or Pass: Your Email Service Provider: “What is your ESP and why do you love it? If you hate it, what keeps you on board?”
• Using LinkedIn’s Post Inspector to Reset Cached Meta Data and Images: “LinkedIn will sometimes stubbornly associate an out of date featured image with a URL from your website. Here’s a super simple fix.”

Crayola, 1970s