Monday: More Google Ads optimizations don’t necessarily lead to better performance. WordStream highlights six mistakes, including chasing optimization scores, changing bids too frequently, oversegmenting campaigns, and prioritizing low-value conversions. Marketers should evaluate recommendations against business goals, give automated bidding time to learn, and avoid making changes without enough data. Check which Google Ads tweaks could be setting you back.

Tuesday: U.S. holiday retail sales are expected to exceed $1 trillion in November and December, but consumers are approaching purchases with greater attention to price and value. Marketers can make the most of the season by creating more compelling promotions, reaching shoppers before Black Friday, simplifying gift discovery, using social content to inspire purchases, and removing friction from checkout. Give holiday shoppers more reasons to choose your brand.

Wednesday: AI is helping marketing teams produce work faster, but those productivity gains don’t always translate into better results. MarTech highlights how approval bottlenecks, unclear decision-making, and inefficient workflows can cancel out the time saved. To demonstrate ROI, marketers need to rethink how work moves from brief to launch, give teams more autonomy, and measure improvements across the entire process. See what’s holding up your AI productivity gains.

Thursday: Moving to a CDN can temporarily increase the load on a website’s origin server as Googlebot responds to faster page delivery while caches are still warming up. Google recommends preparing important URLs, allowing verified crawlers through security systems, and using temporary rate limits when needed. Poorly configured bot protection can turn a performance upgrade into a search visibility problem. Keep Googlebot welcome during your CDN move.

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Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, where we explore how States are taking social media regulation into their own hands—and what that could mean for platforms, users, and advertisers.

From teen screen time limits and age verification to algorithmic feeds and restrictions on addictive design, new state laws and legal agreements are reshaping how social media platforms operate.

In this episode of The Daily Carnage Show, Shannon breaks down the growing wave of social media regulation, including Meta and TikTok’s agreements with states, New York’s Safe for Kids Act, and Florida’s push for stricter restrictions.

🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• Apple’s Secret Ad Tech Blocklist: What Marketers Need to Know (11:04)
• AI Is Killing Entry-Level Marketing Jobs (12:55)
• Microdramas Are Taking Over Marketing (10:43)
• 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)
• Dissecting the Brand Apology (11:35)
• 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.

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Bic, 1973

Answer: C) To tell users the founders were out of office. In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin added a Burning Man stick figure to Google’s logo to signal they were heading to the festival. Yep, Google’s Doodle tradition started as an OOO message. Got that one without Googling? If you love a challenge, click through to play Carney’s own games and give your brain another workout.