Good morning.
We hope you never experience the answer to today’s Brain Teaser.
Not only is it a little scary, it’s also incredibly difficult to say.
We’re not sure which one’s worse, to be honest.
TikTok has a new owner, Instagram expands Shots, Snapchat adds new features, and more
If you keep pushing for long enough, you’ll eventually get what you want.
You wore me down: It appears US and Chinese officials have settled on a framework agreement to switch TikTok to US-controlled ownership, which is a relief.
The deal for the app is set to be confirmed in a forthcoming call between both nations’ presidents, so expect changes soon…
Hey, this looks familiar: Instagram is expanding its Shots feature—the no-edit, no-filter option for sharing a quick moment with friends who also follow you back.
Recipients can only view the image once before it disappears, though it will be saved in your personal archive.
So, basically just like Snapchat.
Speaking of which, Snap is rolling out Infinite Retention to let users save chats permanently.
Yep, basically like Instagram. We checked the calendar and it’s definitely not April Fools Day. Maybe it’s opposite day?
Anyways, Snap also added Group Streaks, which enable group chats to maintain a collective streak as long as most members participate.
All three of these updates are your friendly reminder that if DMs aren’t a part of your social strategy yet, you should probably change that.
A now, a test: Threads is developing topic-based Communities in an effort to keep dedicated fan groups and discussions on the platform. Yep, kind of like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Are the differences between these social apps getting blurry, or is it just us?
Metrics are getting a major shake-up, and another unhappy publisher is suing
Another week, another set of ripples across the Googleverse.
Christopher Nolan’s Inception is easier to follow than this: If your Search Console data looks funky, you’re not the only one.
Following Google’s removal of the “100 results per page” view, many marketers spotted a noticeable decline in desktop impressions and a sharp increase in average position.
Even worse, most third-party search tracking tools appear to be broken, which adds to the chaos.
Chances are, this could be impacting your data right now. We really wish there were a Harry Potter spell for stuff like this…
And another heads up: Google plans to add store visits as a primary conversion and assign its own monetary value to them automatically.
The bad news: This could inflate performance metrics without reflecting real sales.
The good news: You can opt out via a form before the change rolls into campaign reports and bidding strategies.
Maybe take action now before you get distracted by another team chat.
Someone’s in trouble… again: Penske Media is suing Google over AI Overviews, claiming the feature illegally uses its content and siphons traffic.
This is the first time a major US publisher has taken legal action against Google for its AI search and marks a serious new challenge for the tech.
How long can Google keep dodging these swings?
Improve your Google Ads performance—work 1:1 with an ex-Googler with 18 years of proven results
Most Google Ads agencies pass accounts to junior staff. Lighthouse Growth Consulting doesn’t.
Every campaign is built and managed directly by ex-Googler and founder Mike Kowieski, who helped build the very ad products businesses rely on today and has overseen more than $1B in ad spend.
With Lighthouse, it’s 1:1. There are no handoffs, no layers of account managers, and no wasted budget: just senior-level strategy and hands-on execution from day one.
Businesses partner with Lighthouse to:
- Eliminate wasted budget on unprofitable clicks.
- Stabilize unpredictable performance.
- Build campaigns that scale profitably over the long term.
Because the founder runs every account personally, Lighthouse only takes on a limited number of new clients each quarter.
Gating in the AI world: What to hide, what to show, and why
For years, we’ve all been part of the great debate: Should you gate your best content to capture leads, or ungate it to maximize reach?
Carolyn Shelby argues that AI-driven search has completely moved the goalposts, making this old binary choice obsolete.
Now, the AI bouncer won’t let your content in: AI Overviews, Copilot, and other generative search tools work by synthesizing information, not just indexing it.
If your most valuable insights are locked away, AI models can’t see them, and your brand becomes invisible in the AI answer layer that matters more and more.
However, if your competitor’s key findings are public, AI will name them the authority by default. Invisibility is the new irrelevance—don’t hide your brand’s business card.
What to show: Some assets should never be gated, like executive summaries, FAQs, definitions, pricing, and author bios. Your “get to know me” assets, if you will.
These assets are a miniature knowledge graph for your brand; hiding them prevents AI and users from understanding and trusting you.
So offer the abstracts, methodologies, and key findings of a report for free. This allows AI to include your takeaways in its answers.
What to gate: You can still gate deeper assets like full research reports, templates, or in-depth case studies.
The modern approach is to use conditional gating. Ungate enough of the asset to get seen and cited, then gate the rest.
The serious prospects will still hand over their email for the full dataset.
Warning: Soft gates like “read more” toggles can also render your content invisible. AI models retrieve what’s visible on page load, they don’t click buttons or expand tabs.
Even a PDF that requires a click to view can be an effective gate for an AI crawler.
Make sure your most important, trust-building content is visible by default, not hidden behind a minor user interaction.
The old justification was that if someone wanted your content badly enough, they’d fill out the form.
But AI just doesn’t want it badly enough…
POV: A client just asked you a question, and you need the data now
Instead of logging in into three different dashboards and crunching numbers while they wait, you just log into your Adverity account, ask the question… and boom.
You get a reliable answer you can use to move projects and budgets forward.
With Adverity, have straightforward conversations with your data.
No coding. No analyzing. Intrigued?
Millennials are past their “I’m scared of AI” phase
While some folks are still eyeing AI with a healthy dose of skepticism, millennials are pretty much all-in.
According to new data, that is.
It turns out millennials are true AI optimists.
The numbers are striking, especially for the 35–44 age bracket.
A whopping 90% are comfortable using generative AI at work, and 62% claim to have extensive familiarity with it. That’s significantly higher than other age groups.
They aren’t passive users, either. The majority (81%) want to participate in the design of new gen AI tools, which shows a desire to be collaborators, not just consumers.
The Crew’s opinion: Millennials don’t see AI as a threat. And their hands-on experience has made them more comfortable and optimistic.
It appears that they’re ready to take the driver’s seat in AI’s evolution. Are you?
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 452,000+ subscribers with one click and let AI empower you.*
AI SEARCH: Whoa. A new study of 1.5M chats shows ChatGPT has gone mainstream—global adoption, a closed gender gap, the works. 70% of the time, it’s used for personal, everyday life tasks like writing and getting practical advice. Keep this in mind if you’re building for discovery in AI search.
SOCIAL MEDIA: Heads up. A California bill backed by Google and Meta could set a new US standard for age verification. The plan requires device-level age checks and sorts users into brackets without photo IDs. Keep an eye on this, because it could directly impact your audience targeting capabilities.
ADVERTISING: Also, the FTC is investigating both Google and Amazon for potentially misleading ad buyers. The current probe focuses on whether both companies failed to properly disclose their ad pricing terms, like hidden auction price floors and cost increases. Tell us it isn’t so.
*This is a sponsored post.
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