Good morning,
Do you ever apologize out loud to your plants when you forget to water them?
We definitely do. Sometimes we even explain why we were late, as if they’re keeping track. “Sorry, buddy, we had a rough week…” Hopefully this is normal behavior.
Facebook gets sleeker, Snapchat highlights its advertising wins, and Pinterest shows you how to get ahead in 2026
The cold must be getting to Facebook.
It’s moving everything around to keep warm: Facebook is streamlining its entire experience.
That means a cleaner Feed, simplified content creation tools, and a navigation that puts the most-used features front and center.
Creating Stories and posts should feel more intuitive, and photos will now be arranged in a standardized grid, complete with double-tap to like.
Less clutter usually means better visibility, so your content might finally get the attention it deserves. Like when you finally sort out your “everything” drawer.
Automation is maturing: Snapchat’s AI-powered Smart Campaign Solutions drove an 8.8% conversion boost in Q3 for the ad sets that adopted them.
Meanwhile, reports show that 85% of users say Sponsored Snaps feel relevant to their habits. With Spotlight now accounting for 40% of total time on the platform, it might be risky to ignore it.
Pinterest is already in the new year: Its 2026 prediction report is out, and it looks like consumers are ditching trend fatigue in favor of comfort, curation, and grounded optimism.
Search trends are growing 4.4x faster than they were seven years ago, and the report shows 67% of 2026 trends are driven by Gen Z, but they span all generations.
If you’re planning 2026 campaigns, understanding what consumers will crave before they know it themselves gives you a massive leg up. So check that report out.
Small core updates might be shaking up your site, YouTube Create for Android gets updated, and the EU is investigating Google… again
Big Google is always watching.
And always ranking: Google has released official documentation on its smaller, unannounced core updates that it pushes out between the big ones.
This means your site improvements do not have to sit in limbo for months. You could see ranking movements anytime Google tweaks the algorithm. And that is… often.
But don’t get too comfortable. John Mueller says a larger core update is coming soon, so make sure your content is ready for volatility. If that’s even possible.
AI videos for all: The Android version of YouTube Create now includes Google’s Veo 3 Fast AI model, letting you generate vertical video clips with customizable lighting and style.
If you missed the perfect shot, AI can fill the gap. There is also an Edit with AI feature that assembles videos from raw footage, adding music and effects automatically.
YouTube also rolled out seller-level shopping analytics and revamped its Inspiration tab with data-driven content ideas customized for your channel.
Now you can see why YouTube thinks a topic will perform, based on audience interest and your past videos.
Oh, and one more thing: The European Commission is investigating Google for potentially scraping publisher content to train AI models, without proper compensation or opt-out options.
This could reshape how AI Overviews work in the EU and signals broader regulatory pressure on how tech giants use content for AI training.
Turns out the #1 most requested gift isn’t a product
You spend hours agonizing over the perfect, thoughtful, personalized gift guide for your customers.
Turns out, they just want a piece of plastic with money loaded onto it.
You might think romance is dying, but practicality is alive and well. According to our latest data, Gift Cards are the #1 most desired gift this season, with 53% of consumers wanting them.
This beats out clothing, electronics, and certainly home decor.
Why? High demand for gift cards suggests “risk aversion”. Shoppers don’t want the waste of a “bad” gift—they want the freedom to choose.
So, stop hiding your gift cards in the footer of your website.
We break down exactly how to position them as the “Fail Safe Choice,” along with the rest of the 2025 holiday spending trends, in our latest report.
Get the 2025 Christmas Trend Report inside Stacked Marketer Pro.
Make small discounts a gamble
Who doesn’t love a sure thing?
Well, according to university researchers, your customers might actually prefer a gamble… If the sure thing is boring enough.
Depending on the size of the discount, certainty isn’t always the best sales driver.
A gamble is more appealing than a low offer. If you’re offering a small discount, such as one under 10%, it often feels trivial to the buyer.
This is what researchers call the “peanuts effect.” The reward feels like peanuts. Customers are much more willing to take a risk for a potentially larger reward.
If you can afford to give a significant discount, stick to a guaranteed offer. People value that certainty. However, if your margins don’t allow that, switch to an uncertain one.
For example, offering a 1 in 10 chance to get 50% off is often more attractive than a flat 5% off, even if the cost to you is roughly the same.
The researchers ran five experiments to prove this: In one hotel booking scenario, people were around 93% more likely to choose a 10% chance of a free night over a guaranteed 1% discount per night.
Similarly, for gym memberships, they were about 12% more likely to choose a mystery offer over a guaranteed 10% off.
It’s all about perception: When a guaranteed discount is shown as a percentage or a small fixed amount, it feels safe but unexciting.
An uncertain discount triggers our optimism. We stop looking at the small savings we will get and start focusing on the massive savings we might get.
Don’t just discount, gamify your offer: Target might offer a guaranteed $1 discount on a bag of candy. It’s safe, but dull.
They’d likely drive more sales by letting customers spin a wheel to get the bag at half price.
If you can’t slash prices deeply, gamify the experience instead.
Keep it on the screen: This strategy works best online, where gamification is native. It’s less tested in physical retail, luxury or B2B markets.
Also, keep in mind your audience’s culture. This risk-taking behavior is more prominent in individualistic cultures like the US compared to collectivistic ones.
One AI tactic you can apply now beats a dozen you’ll forget next week
Every Saturday, the Tactics newsletter delivers one effective AI tactic, three ways to use it, and real examples that make it easy to apply.
… Because you’re more likely to succeed when you act on one clear AI strategy Monday vs. juggling five half-baked ideas and forgetting them by Friday.
And each issue takes just seven minutes to read, so you can literally go from reading to execution in minutes.
Small steps move your business forward.
Like this one: Subscribe to Tactics for free.
If you want users to trust you, bring 5-star reviews
When we want to appear trustworthy, we pour money into influencers and fancy funnels.
But it turns out the most powerful marketing asset is still good old-fashioned social proof.
Yep, the most valuable currency is still the opinion of a stranger.
Trust in “reviews from other users” has skyrocketed from 49% in 2020 to a projected 64% by late 2025. Meanwhile, trust in companies themselves is climbing to 47%.
The flip side? Influencers sit at the very bottom at just 22%, lower than TV ads and even AI-generated search results. Users value peer verification over paid personality apparently.
So users trust ads, but there are just too many. As feeds get saturated with sponsored content, they are retreating to the one thing that feels unbuyable: verified reviews.
Actionable Tip: Audit your post-purchase flows immediately.
If you aren’t aggressively incentivizing and collecting user-generated content (UGC) and reviews, you are ignoring the single most trusted channel available to you.
See where this is going? Stacked Marketer Pro subscribers do, before everyone else.
AI EDUCATION: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Midjourney… So many names, but what’s actually useful for you in your work? There’s a newsletter called The Deep View that exists to sift through all the noise and get you up to speed on what’s actionable with AI products, and it’s free. Join 512,000+ subscribers with one click and let AI empower you.*
AI MARKETING: No shopping intended. A new analysis of 3.9M conversations reveals around 65% of AI chats have zero commercial intent. People are brainstorming, leaning, and analyzing instead, with commercial queries often being top-funnel. So manage your expectations.
TIKTOK: If you need proof that nostalgia drives engagement, look no further than TikTok’s top song of 2025—a classic from 1962. This proves your next viral soundtrack might be gathering dust in the archive rather than topping the charts. Some tracks are just timeless, eh?
NEWSLETTERS: Substack has launched a pilot sponsorship program to help you monetize your newsletters. It handles the admin work so you can focus on the content. The platform takes a cut only when you earn, but it could streamline revenue if you want sponsorships without the hassle.
LINKEDIN: Over 100M professionals have verified their IDs on LinkedIn, and the perks are hard to ignore. You get 60% more profile views and 50% more engagement on your posts just for proving you’re actually you. If you haven’t yet, these numbers might convince you.
SEO: Instagram has been caught auto-generating SEO-style headlines for posts appearing in Google search results. While creators say they often misrepresent content and add clickbait phrasing, Google says it’s pulling directly from Instagram. Have you noticed this?
META: You can streamline your storyboard with the latest Edits update, which now lets you attach clips directly to sticky notes in your planning flow. You’ll also find new trend-aligning templates if you’re in the US or UK, along with lock screen widgets and faster capture access.
*This is a sponsored post.
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