Happy hump day.
Question: do you too go through the 3 PM survival montage?
That glorious moment when your body threatens a full shutdown and somehow you claw your way to the other side feeling like you mainlined an entire espresso machine?
Congratulations, you’re now vibrating.
Meta owns the most eyeballs in social, and it’s still shipping like a challenger
Market leaders are supposed to coast but Meta skipped that lesson.
Three billion here, three billion there: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have each cleared 3 billion monthly actives, keeping Meta comfortably ahead of YouTube’s 2.7 billion.
The family-wide total sits at 3.56 billion, a slight dip on the previous quarter but nowhere near a loss of dominance.
Still, Meta’s shipping like a challenger.
Attribution comes to the shop floor: Lightspeed’s new Meta Conversions API integration pipes point-of-sale transactions straight into Meta, with no ecommerce site required.
Physical-only retailers can finally measure in-store sales driven by their ads. Omnichannel merchants get Meta’s AI optimizing against cross-channel revenue.
Your image, Meta’s headline: Advantage+ Creative can now rewrite the text on your ad images, using your file as the template and leaving fonts, colors and layout untouched.
Jon Loomer fed it one image and got three angles plus eight usable variants back. Creative volume just got a lot cheaper.
Calls without the download: WhatsApp now rings from the browser, with call transfer between devices, waiting rooms, and background noise suppression.
Everything stays end-to-end encrypted, with no time limits and no cost.
And the paperwork: Meta is signing the EU AI Act Code of Practice on AI content transparency.
Run AI-generated creative in the EU and labeling expectations are about to firm up.
Not resting on those laurels. Barely sitting down.
Google Ads tidies up its menus and hands you a deadline
None of this will rescue a losing campaign. But two items are asking you to save the date…
Clicks with specifics: Google Ads added product clicks and non-product clicks to some reports.
Product clicks mean someone tapped the actual product. Non-product clicks mean they tapped your store name, headline, or CTA instead. Handy for judging which SKUs earn their spot.
Bidding gets a clearer menu: Target CPA and Target ROAS now show up as standalone strategies rather than optional targets bolted onto Maximize Conversions.
Same mechanics, fewer setup mistakes. Possibly groundwork for the 17 August bidding changes.
Sort your passkey early: From 5 August, new OAuth refresh tokens require passkey authentication.
Existing tokens keep working. New passkeys can sit in a seven-day trust delay, and the requirement extends to Editor, Scripts, and Looker Studio.
Compliance moves in-house: Social Casino Games certifications can now be applied for inside your account, rolling out gradually from August.
Two AI updates worth a glance: You can now upload a reference image so the generated creative matches your style instead of your prompt writing skills.
And AI content labels are landing in asset studio for disclosure across Ads, DV360, Merchant Center, and more.
Meta was not the only one busy with updates, as you can see.
4x ROAS, 33% lower CPA, and lifted AOV 20% with this strategy
Most testing problems aren’t a discipline problem — they’re a supply problem. Two ad angles from one creator isn’t a real test: when one underperforms, you can’t tell if the hook, format, or creator was the issue.
Any Age Activewear sourced 36 creators through Insense and ran 43 pieces of content into one seeding-to-paid test — enough variation to isolate what was working. The winning angle cut CPA 33%, drove a 4x ROAS, and lifted AOV 20%.
Insense makes that volume possible without weeks of sourcing: 100,000+ vetted creators, one brief, creative variation back in days, with lifetime content usage rights.
- 36 creators, 43 assets — enough variation to find the winning angle
- 33% lower CPA, 4x ROAS from the creative that worked
- 20% AOV lift — it didn’t just cost less, it converted better
Book a strategy call by August 14th for $200 platform credit.
Insense — trusted by PetLabCo, Made Good, and 3,500+ brands.
How competitors hijack your branded traffic
Bidding on your brand name is old news.
But your rivals have gotten sneakier, quietly siphoning your best searchers while staying squarely inside Google’s rules.
Dii Pooler reveals the playbook and also shares some tips on how to fight back.
1) They let Google say your name for them: Dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) is the loophole. A competitor bids on your branded terms, and Google automatically drops your brand into their headline in real time.
They never typed your trademark, so nothing gets flagged.
The issue? You won’t spot this inside Google Ads. You have to audit the actual SERP or you’ll only notice once your branded CPCs start climbing.
2) The “vs. you” landing page trick: Google reviews the ad, not the page behind it. So competitors run a totally generic ad (“Compare top tools”), then unleash comparison charts and “why teams choose us” framing after the click.
Technically compliant. Obviously not neutral.
3) Modifier keywords do the dirty work: Instead of your exact name, rivals bid on “[your brand] alternative” or “[your brand] vs.”
Google allows it because the searcher supplies your name, not the ad. Even when those clicks barely convert, they inflate your branded CPCs.
The lesson? Treat modifier queries as their own audience. Segment by intent, build dedicated landing pages, and stop overpaying to defend every variation.
4) Don’t fight fire with lawyers (usually): If someone uses your trademark directly in ad copy, start with Google’s complaint process. Everything else, like modifier bidding, comparison pages, DKI, is a PPC strategy problem, not a legal one.
Before going scorched earth, do the math. Measure what the competitor activity actually costs you, then make sure your defense costs less than the brand you’re protecting.
The strongest defense is owning the whole SERP with reviews, directories, and third-party voices that back you up.
When everyone’s using the same marketing playbook, psychology gives you an edge
Most marketers pull ideas from the same formulas, frameworks, and templates.
There’s no harm in using what works—but it also means your offer risks blending in.
But marketers who understand how people actually make decisions know how to package powerful offers and stand out—even when they’re selling similar things as their competitors.
Want to receive one psychological principle each week so you sharpen your instincts for positioning and persuasion?
The engagement struggle is a matter of stuff… and staff
If engagement is the goal, what’s getting in the way of good content?
Let’s break it down:
- Limited content creation resources (38%) says there’s not enough hands on deck or dollars in the pot.
- General lack of time/resources (30%): The clock is the enemy.
- Limited design resources (24%): Content might be smart, but if it looks dull, no one engages.
Surprisingly, SME cooperation is the least of their worries, cited by only 6%.
Marketers are being asked to do more with less. The pressure to be “engaging” is high, but the bandwidth to produce high-quality visual or interactive assets is often missing.
Our tip? Repurpose your top-performing text assets into simple visual formats.
A great blog post can become five LinkedIn carousels or three short-form videos using basic AI design tools.
AI MARKETING: This daily newsletter condenses the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. They read the noise, pull out the signal, and explain what actually matters for work, strategy, and the tools your team is already using. Trusted by 700k+ readers. Subscribe right here.*
SNAPCHAT: Snap Map now shows what your friends are listening to. Now Playing pipes live Spotify activity in, and you can save tracks directly from Spotlight clips. Live wherever both apps operate. Canada’s next.
AI MARKETING: Courts just repriced infinite scroll and autoplay as negligence in a $6 million US verdict against Meta, and chatbot makers are next in line. How much of AI’s headline engagement growth survives if the compulsion mechanics behind the numbers gets cut?
META: Newsmax joins CNN, Fox News, USA TODAY and Le Monde in licensing content to Meta AI, which cites and links back to those sources when answering news questions. Visibility in AI answers is turning into a signed deal instead of a crawl, so plan accordingly.
CLAUDE: Those “private” Claude threads people shared by link? Google and Bing indexed hundreds, sensitive topics included. The results have since been pulled, but go review every share link you’ve generated for client or campaign data and kill it.
*This is a sponsored post.
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