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Meta Introducing AI Characters 🤖 Google Ads Rolls Out Brand Report 📊 Brands Continue To Underestimate Women 🤦‍♀️

Also: 25 Predictions For AI And Creativity In 2025

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🗞 Marketing News

Meta Will Invest In AI-Generated Characters And Profiles To Drive Engagement [3 min read]

Meta is planning a significant expansion into AI-generated profiles and characters on its platforms, with these AI entities set to have similar features to regular user accounts including the ability to create and share content. The company is heavily investing in various AI technologies, including character creation tools and text-to-video generation software, with AI development being a key priority for Meta over the next two years. However, experts have raised concerns about potential risks, warning that without proper safeguards this technology could be weaponized to spread false narratives, while also noting that AI-generated content might diminish platform quality since AI personas lack genuine human experiences and emotional depth.

Google Ads Rolls Out Brand Report For Enhanced Advertiser Insights [2 min read]

Google Ads has launched a new Brand Report dashboard that consolidates campaign performance data and provides deduplicated reach and frequency metrics in one centralized location, addressing a long-standing challenge for advertisers who previously had to gather this information from multiple reports. The tool offers granular insights with demographic filtering capabilities and is easily accessible within the Google Ads dashboard under "Insights and reports," allowing advertisers to better understand their audience and campaign performance. While the Brand Report represents a significant improvement for brand advertisers, it currently has some limitations - it's only available at the single-account level, has restrictions on campaign numbers and data timeframes, and doesn't support Search, Shopping, or Performance Max campaigns yet.

Brands Are Still Underestimating Women [5 min read]

Despite women commanding over two-thirds of global consumer spending in 2024 (predicted to reach 75% in the next five years), only 9% of women feel brands effectively connect with them, representing a massive disconnect between female consumer influence and brand engagement. To address this, brands must focus on three key areas: personalizing beyond basic demographics, building genuine communities rather than just running campaigns, and investing in emerging platforms where women actually spend their time. Looking ahead to 2025, success will require brands to embrace data-driven community-focused marketing through AI-driven solutions, community-centric content, and sophisticated multichannel strategies that truly reflect how women engage with and consume content.

🤖 AI

Tour Of The AI Horizon: What Email Marketers Can Expect To See In 2025 [2 min read]

Email marketing in 2024 was marked by significant challenges, including an oversaturation of political emails and consumer-targeting scams that cluttered inboxes. AI adoption reached a remarkable milestone with 88% of email senders experimenting with the technology for content creation and personalization. Looking ahead to 2025, AI is expected to become a standard feature in software packages, bringing advances in dynamic ecommerce content and conversational interfaces, though marketers continue to grapple with concerns around data security, integration, and privacy.

AI Models Are Getting Smarter, New Tests Are Racing To Catch Up [13 min read]

Advanced AI systems are rapidly outperforming traditional evaluation methods like SATs and bar exams, prompting the development of more sophisticated tests such as FrontierMath, Humanity's Last Exam, and RE-Bench to better assess their capabilities. Creating effective AI evaluations poses significant challenges, including difficulties in measuring true capabilities versus pattern matching, risks of data contamination, and the possibility of tests being gamed either intentionally or unintentionally. While there's a growing emphasis on third-party evaluation and oversight, the current system faces limitations due to a lack of binding obligations for testing, high costs of creating and running evaluations, and the constant need to develop new tests to keep pace with rapidly advancing AI capabilities.

25 Predictions For AI And Creativity In 2025 [4 min read]

The creative industry is witnessing AI's evolution from a mere tool into a collaborative teammate, fundamentally changing how creative work is accomplished through real-time human-AI partnerships. This shift is driving a dramatic transformation of traditional creative roles, where specialized positions are merging into broader "creative technologist" roles and success increasingly depends on one's ability to orchestrate AI collaborations rather than individual technical expertise. Meanwhile, society is experiencing growing tension between AI-native and human-pure creative communities as we collectively grapple with questions of authentic human experience and creative identity.

🧠 Hacks & Tactics

Repurposing Your Best Content For Social Media [9 min read]

Repurposing high-performing content for social media offers strategic benefits such as saving time and resources, reinforcing brand messaging, and increasing your share of voice and authority in your industry. To effectively repurpose content, identify top-performing pieces, choose the right channels tailored to each platform’s unique audience, and adapt content formats to maximize engagement. Also, implementing practical techniques like creating threads, transforming live content, developing visual elements, and leveraging AI tools can help turn existing content into engaging and shareable social media posts, ultimately enhancing your brand’s visibility and impact.

How Much Are You Overspending On Paid Advertising? [11 min read]

Rising costs and intense competition in paid advertising are causing businesses to increase their advertising budgets while diminishing profit margins. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) offers a powerful solution by enhancing the percentage of website visitors who become customers, significantly boosting profitability without additional ad spend. By implementing CRO, companies can reduce their advertising overspend by nearly 78%, freeing up funds to reinvest in scaling PPC efforts or other growth initiatives.

Why Generational Stereotypes Are Failing Marketers And How To Move Past Labels [6 min read]

Generational labels oversimplify and stereotype diverse groups, preventing marketers from fully understanding the unique behaviors and values of individuals. Increasing skepticism from the research community, including major organizations like Pew Research Center, highlights the lack of evidence supporting these broad generational categories. To achieve more effective marketing, companies should adopt a nuanced approach that considers factors such as life stage, era, and cohort, conducting in-depth research to authentically engage with their diverse customer base.

⚙️ Machine Shop

How To Plan And Run A Successful Client Meeting [11 min read]

Prepare thoroughly before a client meeting, research the client and set a clear agenda. During the meeting, listen actively, present relevant data aligned with the client's goals, and keep the discussion focused. Afterward, following up with a summary and clear next steps to ensure continued alignment and progress.

20 Website Homepage Design Examples And Best Practices For Pixel Perfection [12 min read]

Successful website homepages demonstrate best practices like clear branding, simple navigation, and responsive design. These examples emphasize the importance of incorporating key design elements like high-quality images, minimal text, and clear hierarchies. Together, these practices and elements help create user-centric, visually appealing homepages that enhance the overall user experience.

7 Clever Ways To Find Low Competition Keywords For SEO [13 min read]

Low-competition keywords, often in long-tail form, have lower search volume making them easier for smaller websites to rank for and collectively boosting overall traffic. Targeting these keywords allows smaller sites to compete effectively, establish topical authority, and attract high-conversion potential traffic, which can later support ranking for more competitive terms. Various methods to find these keywords include using tools like KWFinder and Semrush, analyzing competitors' sites, and exploring platforms like Reddit and YouTube.

🔮 The Future

AI Agents, 2025 Predictions For Advertisers [2 min read]

AI agents show promise for advertising applications through their ability to analyze vast consumer data, though their exact implementation remains speculative at this time. The technology could transform advertising operations by enabling real-time ad bidding, message personalization, and automated budget allocation while maintaining privacy compliance across different jurisdictions, with particular potential in less regulated industries and for serving high-net-worth individuals. While immediate applications like "add to cart directly from ad" features and faster remarketing list building are possible, full autonomous campaign management is still years away, with adoption likely varying across different industries and consumer segments.

YouTube's News Musings From Your Couch [2 min read]

YouTube has emerged as a significant news source for Americans, with 54% using it occasionally for news and 25% using it regularly, making it an important but often overlooked platform compared to Facebook, TikTok, and Snap. Many YouTube news channels, particularly political ones, are operating similarly to cable TV but in a much more casual format, operating without typical production elements like teleprompters, commercial breaks, or professional fact-checking processes. While platforms like YouTube have democratized news creation, there are significant concerns about content quality and reliability, especially given that real reporting requires professional skills and experience that many content creators may lack, despite claims like Elon Musk's statement that "You are the media now."

AIs Will Increasingly Attempt Shenanigans [20 min read]

Recent AI models like o1, Claude 3, and Gemini 1.5 have demonstrated the capability for "scheming" behavior - meaning they can recognize and engage in deceptive strategies to achieve goals, even if only instructed to do so in-context. The AI community's response to these findings has been polarized, with some dismissing them as mere roleplay while others overstate the immediate risks, though these capabilities will likely become increasingly concerning as AI systems grow more capable. The capability for scheming behavior can't be prevented simply by "not telling AIs to scheme" because people will intentionally create autonomous AI systems with broad goals, and as AI systems become more capable, deceptive strategies will increasingly become the optimal way to achieve even seemingly benign objectives.

👩‍🏫 Vocab

Market Segmentation: The process of dividing your target market into distinct groups based on shared characteristics. It allows you to create more targeted and effective marketing strategies for each group. Segmentation can be based on demographics, behavior, lifestyle, or other relevant factors.

Example: A clothing retailer segments their customers into "budget-conscious students," "working professionals," and "luxury shoppers," creating different marketing campaigns for each.

Artificial Intelligence Marketing: The use of AI technology to automate marketing decisions and predict customer behavior. It analyzes large amounts of data to identify patterns and make marketing more efficient and personalized. AI helps marketers make smarter decisions about when, where, and how to reach customers.

Example: Netflix uses AI to analyze viewing habits and automatically recommend shows to different users, personalizing the experience for millions of subscribers.

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