Know What's Happening in Marketing
Know What's Happening in Marketing
PopSockets turned phone backs into a $169M revenue stream
The company transformed the unused back of a smartphone into a monetizable surface, evolving from a garage prototype in 2011 to a global brand that posted $169 million in revenue by 2017. Its success hinged on embedding a simple grip into an existing daily habit, generating constant repeat interactions and word‑of‑mouth growth.
Samba TV’s H2 2025 advertising report shows a sharp pivot toward essential and infrastructure categories, with utilities ad impressions jumping 48%, insurance up 18% and pharma rising 12%. Discretionary sectors such as career services, apparel and food & beverage posted double‑digit declines, reflecting heightened consumer caution. Over half of the top 100 U.S. advertisers (56%) increased TV ad impressions year‑over‑year, while legacy brands like Toyota and Chase trimmed spend. The study also flagged a major audience mismatch in car‑insurance advertising, where TV spots reach aspirational viewers instead of value‑conscious shoppers online.
Brands are increasingly favoring in‑game integrations over fully owned virtual worlds, a trend already evident on platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. In 2025 advertisers shifted spend toward embedding logos and branded assets within popular user‑generated experiences. Minecraft creators, however, feel...
Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, has leveraged giveaway‑centric videos to set new viewership records on YouTube. In the past 90 days his "Subscribe For An iPhone" clip topped U.S. charts with over a billion views, while a holiday $100K giveaway...
Brands that scale fastest rely on distribution infrastructure, not louder messaging. Digital newswires act as a scalable engine that moves verified content through media ecosystems, delivering immediate reach and credibility. By syndicating releases to online publications, financial platforms, and AI...
Target rolled out a dedicated Space Jam 30th‑anniversary endcap, featuring licensed basketballs, secret‑stuff bottles, and a popcorn bucket. The display was tightly curated, avoiding SKU sprawl and presenting a single nostalgic story. The article argues that while nostalgia captures shopper...
OpenAI's @fidjissimo explained on the ACCESS Podcast with @alexeheath that the ChatGPT ad experience is will be unique since users could even ask ChatGPT about the ads running. The model will not know about the ads but a user could...
Brands risk missing fast‑moving conversations on TikTok, Reddit, and other platforms. Social media monitoring provides real‑time detection of mentions, spikes, and sentiment shifts, while listening analyzes longer‑term themes and analytics measures owned‑content performance. The article outlines how teams should define...
The IAB Tech Lab unveiled the Agentic Ad Management Protocols (AAMP), an umbrella initiative that consolidates its Agentic Real‑Time Framework, Agentic Audiences, and buyer‑seller SDKs. AAMP is organized around three pillars: a high‑performance execution plane (ARTF), open‑source agentic protocols, and...
"I think it’s the most sophisticated conversation that will exist on this topic." @oliviaakory's feedback after watching back this episode. She and @Davisg207 came by the office to talk about Cozy Earth's incrementality testing journey. I think it is incredibly instructive...
The 2026 Database Strategies & Contact Acquisition Benchmark Survey shows segmentation has vaulted to the top database priority, with 73% of marketers citing targeted segments as their primary focus. Unlike the 2024 era of retroactive measurement, firms now design databases...
⚡️ WEEKLY VLOG 02 @ @ChoppityAI Founders are never truly satisfied with the speed of shipping, but looking back at this week... we’ve had some absolute bangers. We hit an all-time high of 295 signups in a single day (We broke...
I was on a call with a CEO. "We are 100% Sales-driven. We have absolutely ZERO Marketing" I probed a bit more to understand. Turns out they hired a CMO once for a 8 month stint. All she wanted to...
Live sports remain a high‑impact ad environment, delivering strong attention and recall. A 2025 LG Ad Solutions study shows 48% of U.S. streaming sports viewers notice ads and 54% find them entertaining. Programmatic technology now offers SMBs access to premium...
Google DeepMind unveiled Nano Banana 2, the Gemini 3.1 Flash Image model that blends the intelligence of Nano Banana Pro with the lightning speed of Gemini Flash. The new model adds real‑time web grounding, sharper visual fidelity, and production‑ready outputs ranging from 512 px to 4K....
the best brand accounts have a through line of familiarity. content woven together by a thread that makes people comment “my show is on”. the old mood board model does not work anymore.
Applebee’s parent Dine Brands trimmed its promotional calendar to four or five events a year, shifting focus to the core menu and the 2 for $25 value platform. The change helped reverse a slump, delivering positive same‑store sales in Q2 2025 and attracting...
In the race to Jarvis, now Gemini can tap into Google Chat -> Google Chat is now a data source for Gemini, making your message history actually useful "In a new update on the Workspace blog, Google announced that Chat is...
A new eMarketer survey of 100 U.S. marketers shows digital audio advertising is gaining traction, with 67% of respondents already allocating budget to the channel. While only 25% plan to increase spend within the next year, 83% view incremental reach...
The retention stack at most brands is three platforms pretending to be one. Email in one tool. SMS in another. A "customer journey" that's really just a guess stitched together from disconnected data. Attentive solves this by putting email and SMS in...
The article explains how to leverage Anthropic's Claude AI skills to generate synthetic feedback that pressure‑tests written content. By prompting Claude with specific critique templates, writers receive instant, objective comments on tone, structure, and audience alignment. The guide walks through...
Google DeepMind unveiled Nano Banana 2, a Gemini 3.1 Flash Image model that delivers Pro‑level text rendering, subject consistency, and image search at roughly half the cost of the Nano Banana Pro tier. The new offering reduces per‑image pricing to...
Threads is rolling out a new DM shortcut to select users in the U.S. and Canada “DM Me” is a new feature that automatically hyperlinks the phrase “DM me” in any post or reply, allowing people to message you with...
Azamara Cruises has launched a Travel Advisor Council composed of ten high‑performing advisors across North America. The council members, each with at least five years of cruise experience and AWA graduation, will commit to a 12‑month term to test ideas,...
💰 What is the most underrated retail SEO lever for 2026? Key takeaways from an insightful roundup by @SearchPilot : * Feeds decide eligibility. Weak product data does not push you down a few spots. It can remove you from...
3 reels a week and 10 variations of the same concept is not a creative strategy that will save you from rising CPMs. Andromeda processes 10,000x more ad variants in parallel than Meta's old system. It has more creative combinations...
Borden Cheese has launched a nationwide contest to crown “America’s Favorite Grilled Cheese,” inviting consumers to vote for one of four recipe contenders through March 24, 2026. Each vote doubles as an entry to win a year’s supply of Borden cheese and...
How to build a $10M+ ecom brand (based on some of the most expensive lessons I’ve ever learned) PRODUCT & BRAND - Dropshipping isn't a business, it's a test - validate demand then move to white-label or you'll be racing to the...
Google Marketing Platform announced the "Gemini advantage" at NewFront on March 23, showcasing AI‑powered Gemini models across its entire suite. The rollout promises deeper visibility into the consumer journey, real‑time data activation, and reduced fragmentation for advertisers. Leading brands will demonstrate...
Walmart’s advertising business surged 46% to $6.4 billion in FY26, outpacing Amazon’s 22% rise to $68.6 billion. The dollar gap narrowed from roughly 15:1 to 11:1, though it remains sizable. Growth figures include the VIZIO acquisition, while Walmart Connect – the core...
PepsiCo leveraged its DRIPS platform to launch two limited‑edition beverages for the theatrical run of *Wicked: For Good* at Regal Cinemas. The drinks—Mountain Dew Emerald Mischief and Tropicana Lemonade Good Witch Swirl—were crafted with bold colors, boba and edible glitter...
The U.S. hosts over 202 million adult YouTube users, 177 million on Instagram and 105 million on TikTok, creating massive ad‑supported audiences for creators. While a few, like Markiplier’s promotion of *Iron Lung*, have turned social clout into box‑office hits, most creators struggle to...
Outback Steakhouse recorded a 0.9% traffic increase in Q4, its first rise in four years, driven by the popular Aussie 3‑Course value meals, though same‑store sales slipped 0.6% because of lower pricing. The chain will allocate $50 million toward further restaurant...
It can be too easy to look at buyer research and come away with a perspective that buyers make overly-safe, incomplete, and sub-optimal decisions. Worse, it can be too easy as a marketer to see buyers as needing us to...
Ozone, a coalition of more than 500 UK and US publishers, has secured its first deal to list inventory on Microsoft’s Media Marketplace, exposing over 200 million monthly users to programmatic buyers. The integration leverages Ozone’s first‑party reader data, promising more...
Target is rolling out a limited‑time collaboration with cult‑favorite lifestyle brand Roller Rabbit on March 7, offering more than 250 items that span apparel, travel gear, home goods and new categories such as luggage and outdoor products. The collection is anchored...
ChatGPT now influences buying decisions but offers no native analytics, forcing brands to devise a dedicated monitoring strategy. Mentions appear either from the model’s training corpus or real‑time Retrieval‑Augmented Generation searches. The guide outlines a quick manual audit using targeted...
“Hours” works better than “days” in email. Why? Present Focus Bias. Humans are hardwired to want instant gratification. We don’t like to wait. According to Jay Schwedelson of SubjectLine.com , you can increase your open rate by 24% by using...
In most of the growth troubleshooting I do — which spans qualitative research and a deep dive into product, marketing, and subscription analytics — activation is almost always where the opportunity is hiding.
Visibility Labs analyzed 94 ecommerce sites in 2025 and found that traffic referred from ChatGPT converted at a 1.81% rate, 31% higher than non‑branded organic search. While ChatGPT visits surged 1,079% over the year, they accounted for only 1.48% of...
SEO for AI—or AEO—is having a moment Profound just raised at $1B valuation But after talking to many brand leaders this week, most agree much of the hype in the space is outpacing results & no dashboard does the work for...
I spent $10k on a Facebook ads course from a famous 'guru'. My ROAS went down. I spent $200 testing my own weird ad angles. Found a 5x ROAS winner in 48 hours. The market doesn't care about experts. Test...
Spring’s longer days and holiday breaks create a prime travel window, prompting hotels to revamp direct‑booking channels. The article showcases seasonal tactics—bright homepage layers, limited‑time discounts, and gamified Easter hunts—that turn seasonal enthusiasm into bookings. Real‑world examples from Savoyen, Penta...
One of the most common things I hear from site owners who were hit by Google updates: “we were doing everything right.” 🤔
Discounts get you customers who can’t afford the product. And so they churn when the discount wears off. Wasting everyone’s time, and unprofitable. Redirect your efforts towards getting customers who want your product so much, they think it’s too cheap.
Brands that authentically engage Black audiences can unlock significant economic upside, as Black consumers are projected to wield $2.1 trillion in buying power by 2026. They are four times more likely than average shoppers to follow the WNBA and spend roughly...
That’s the problem. • Homepage speaks to every persona • CTA assumes everyone wants a demo • Hero lists features, not outcomes High-converting sites are structured. Every element has a job. Fix the weakest section first. Then the next. See the 8-part framework 👇 https://t.co/JDMlMnrHfM
7 Ways to Use Content to Build Authority and Trust in Any Niche (+ Real Examples) - B2B Marketing Blog | Webbiquity - https://t.co/CJYHcehmSM https://t.co/aQ6RDwYiCA
Influencer marketing budgets are set to surge, with 72% of marketers expecting over a 50% increase in 2026. This rapid expansion brings heightened scrutiny from finance, procurement and leadership, especially around audience authenticity, which 56% cite as their top risk....
Meta’s Andromeda overhaul replaces the legacy ad‑retrieval layer with a unified deep‑learning system, reshaping which ads enter the auction on Facebook and Instagram. The change was driven by exploding creative volume, the rise of Advantage+ automation, and the limits of...
The article argues that traditional keyword‑based search is being eclipsed by AI‑driven personal agents that handle the entire decision‑making workflow. As conversational interfaces reach massive scale, users shift from typing queries to delegating outcomes, turning the search loop into a...
