In partnership with

The War For Memory 🧠 Google Ads Editor Updates 📝 Recommendations In Reddit's Ad Manager 🗣️

Also: Google Keyword Planner New Forecast Views

Institutional-Grade Opportunities for HNW Investors

Long Angle is a private, vetted community connecting high-net-worth entrepreneurs and executives with institutional-grade alternative investments. No membership fees.

Access top-tier opportunities across private equity, credit, search funds, litigation finance, energy, hedge funds, and secondaries. Leverage collective expertise and scale for better terms.

Invest alongside pensions, endowments, and family offices. With $100M+ invested annually, secure preferential terms unavailable to individual investors.

Apply to Join

🗞 Marketing News

The New Marketing War Isn't For Clicks, It's For Memory [16 min read]

Marketing is changing because AI systems now make decisions for users instead of users clicking through websites, which means traditional tracking and measurement tools no longer work since marketers can't see what influenced the AI's recommendations. Instead of trying to get people to visit your website, marketers now need to focus on getting mentioned and trusted by AI systems that read everything on the internet and use that information to make suggestions to users. This means companies need to build their reputation everywhere online - in forums, documentation, reviews, and other places that AI systems read - so they become the obvious choice when AI systems are deciding what to recommend.

Google Ads Editor Updates [4 min read]

Google Ads Editor 2.9 adds new features like shared labels across multiple accounts, support for Masthead ads, and the ability to create vertical videos for video campaigns, making it easier to manage campaigns across different account types. The biggest change is that older video campaigns (VRC 1.0) are being replaced with newer ones (VRC 2.0) that have better controls, and the Editor includes tools to help convert your old campaigns to the new format automatically. The update also makes everyday tasks easier with better export options to Google Sheets, preview features so you can see how ads will look before publishing them, and new targeting options for different campaign types.

Google Keyword Planner New Forecast Views [2 min read]

Google updated its Keyword Planner tool to show how keywords perform in different cities, regions, and on different devices, so you can see that one city might account for 30% or more of your search traffic. The tool now lets you filter by specific states, cities, and market areas, making it much easier to plan budgets and target ads for campaigns that focus on particular locations. They also added the ability to view keywords either individually or grouped together with similar keywords, giving you more options for organizing your keyword research.

Introducing Recommendations In Reddit's Ads Manager [1 min read]

Reddit launched a new recommendations feature in Ads Manager that evaluates account setup and active campaigns to provide personalized, data-driven suggestions for improving performance. The system centers around an Optimization Score that provides a simple way to understand how well an ad account is set up for success, with each recommendation contributing to the score and the platform highlighting areas for improvement when the score falls below 80 points, aiming for 100 points as optimal. Recommendations appear in two key locations: the new Recommendations Center hub that houses all active recommendations and displays the optimization score, as well as throughout Ads Manager with timely, contextual suggestions directly within campaign creation and management flows on the Dashboard and bulk edit panel.

🤖 AI

Perplexity Launches Comet, An AI Powered Web Browser [5 min read]

Comet puts their AI search front and center and includes an AI assistant that can help with tasks like summarizing emails and answering questions about whatever webpage you're looking at. The browser is entering a competitive market where companies like Google, OpenAI, and others are all racing to build AI-powered browsers, as Perplexity tries to reach users directly instead of relying on Google Chrome. While Comet's AI assistant works well for simple tasks like explaining web content or checking your calendar, it makes serious mistakes on complex tasks like booking travel, entering wrong dates and information that make it unreliable for important workflows.

OpenAI Experiments With "Study Together" Tool On ChatGPT [1 min read]

Study Together creates a more interactive, guided study environment where ChatGPT poses questions, breaks down topics step-by-step, and helps users actively learn rather than just providing explanations. The feature is designed for educational use with adaptive feedback capabilities that check answers, offer follow-ups, and provide clarifying explanations as needed, targeting students and educators for structured learning, revision, and potentially classroom or university settings as part of an education-focused ChatGPT plan. While the rollout status is unclear with some suspecting it's an internal test or mistake, growing user reports indicate a limited A/B test or pre-release trial, with the breadth of reports pointing to a possible wider launch or formal announcement in the coming week.

🧠 Hacks & Tactics

Competitor Ads That Flopped And What We Can Learn From Them [12 min read]

Successful competitor advertising requires a delicate balance between highlighting your own strengths and pointing out rivals' weaknesses, as demonstrated by notable failures like Microsoft's "Scroogled" campaign, Samsung's anti-Apple ads, and Burger King's "McWhopper" stunt. These case studies reveal that competitive ads can backfire spectacularly when they appear petty, fail to anticipate responses, or don't offer a compelling alternative to what's being criticized. The key lesson for marketers is that effective competitor-focused advertising should reinforce your brand's value proposition rather than merely attacking rivals, anticipate potential responses, and ensure the criticism resonates with your target audience in meaningful ways.

How To Leverage 18 Favorite 'Old School' Marketing Tactics [6 min read]

Despite the rapid evolution of technology and digital marketing's ubiquity, traditional "old school" marketing tactics remain powerful tools for cutting through online noise when implemented thoughtfully. Personal connection emerges as the cornerstone of these approaches, with tactics like handwritten notes, phone calls, and face-to-face meetings creating authentic relationships that purely digital interactions often lack. The most successful marketing strategies integrate these time-tested methods with modern digital approaches, combining the tangible impact of traditional tactics with the reach and efficiency of digital channels. 

Instagram SEO: What It Is, How To Do It & Best Practices [8 min read]

Instagram SEO revolves around optimizing your profile and content to increase discoverability through keywords, user activity patterns, and engagement metrics. Implementing specific tactics like profile optimization, strategic keyword usage in captions and hashtags, adding video subtitles, writing alt text, maintaining visual consistency, and posting at optimal times can significantly improve your visibility. These optimization strategies not only enhance your presence on Instagram but also boost your discoverability on traditional search engines like Google, creating a comprehensive approach to digital visibility.

🏗️ For Founders

How The Smartest Founders Are Already Winning With AI [6 min read]

AI is completely changing how businesses work, with AI versions of people now outperforming the actual humans they're based on, traditional software becoming obsolete as everyone moves to ChatGPT-style interfaces, and many jobs like sales reps and writers being eliminated while small teams generate massive revenue. The startup world has flipped upside down - it used to be nearly impossible to reach $1 million in revenue, but now AI makes it very likely, while investors are betting on $100 billion outcomes instead of $1 billion, creating a winner-take-all environment. Everyone knows AI is huge and will create massive wealth, but nobody knows exactly where the best opportunities are, similar to the early days of mobile apps and crypto, making this a critical time to either go all-in with strong conviction or stay out completely.

How To Talk About Your Competition [6 min read]

Competition is actually good for your business because it proves there's real money to be made in your market, and competitors help educate customers about problems you can solve, essentially doing free marketing that you can benefit from. Instead of attacking competitors, focus on clearly explaining what makes you different - if you're an established company, emphasize your experience and scale, but if you're a startup, highlight how you're faster and more agile than the big players. Keep a long-term perspective because today's competitors might become tomorrow's partners or even buy your company, so stay respectful while using competition as motivation to improve your product rather than getting distracted by every new feature they release. 

🔮 The Future

YouTube Tests Ask Studio Analytics Bot [2 min read]

YouTube is testing a new AI assistant called "Ask Studio" for creators that's designed to help analyze channel statistics, summarize comments and feedback from videos, and brainstorm ideas and outlines for future content. The tool consolidates existing AI features rather than creating entirely new functionality, since YouTube has already been rolling out AI comment summaries, in-depth channel insights with AI notes, and AI-generated ideas in the "Inspiration" tab over the past year, so "Ask Studio" appears to streamline these various processes into a single interface. The main benefit is simplification and integration of YouTube's AI tools, providing creators with a centralized way to uncover key audience trends and performance notes that might otherwise be missed, making it easier to optimize and plan content strategy rather than having to visit different sections for various AI insights. 

YouTube Rolls Out New Rules To Curb AI Content [3 min read]

YouTube is implementing new rules starting July 15, 2025, to stop monetizing mostly AI-generated, repetitive content by updating its YouTube Partner Program guidelines to better identify "mass-produced and repetitious content" that lacks human input, targeting channels that use automated videos with AI voiceovers, basic slideshow visuals, or follow the same format repeatedly without variation. Creators who use AI as a tool while maintaining personal input and creativity are safe, as YouTube clarified that the policy targets those who use AI to replace originality altogether, not creators who show up in videos, speak in their own voice, or bring personality and ideas to their content, meaning explainers, tutorials, reactions, and other content with human vision remain valued. New transparency requirements mandate that creators must clearly disclose if their videos include AI-generated voices, faces, or visuals that could mislead viewers, with failure to do so resulting in videos being taken down or demonetized, especially for content involving deepfakes or impersonations.

Ad Sharing Functionality Will Be Deprecated In Google Ads API In October 2025 [7 min read]

Google is removing the ability to share the same ad across multiple ad groups in their advertising API, with this change happening in October 2025 and all shared ads stopping completely by early 2026. Developers and advertisers need to update their systems to create separate, unique ads for each ad group instead of reusing the same ad, which means starting over with zero performance history for the new ads. Google recommends manually converting shared ads to new Responsive Search Ads before the deadline rather than waiting for automatic conversion, since manual migration allows for better customization and performance.

👩‍🏫 Vocab

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): A prospective customer who has been vetted and deemed ready for direct sales outreach. These leads have shown clear buying intent and meet specific criteria for sales engagement. SQLs are more likely to convert than other types of leads.

Example: A software company marks a lead as SQL after they've attended a product demo, downloaded pricing information, and have the budget authority to make a purchase.

Sales Enablement: The process of providing sales teams with the tools, content, and information they need to sell effectively. It bridges the gap between marketing and sales departments. Sales enablement helps sales teams engage buyers more successfully throughout the sales process.

Example: Marketing creates product comparison sheets, case studies, and email templates that sales reps can easily customize for different customer conversations.

Learn how to make AI work for you

AI won’t take your job, but a person using AI might. That’s why 1,000,000+ professionals read The Rundown AI – the free newsletter that keeps you updated on the latest AI news and teaches you how to use it in just 5 minutes a day.

Sign up to start learning.

That's it for this week! See you next week. 😎

Forwarded this email? Click here to subscribe. Don't want to miss out? Make sure to whitelist our email! 🥳😉

Something else you’d like to see here? Hit reply and let us know what you think. 🧠 Or smash a button on our feedback poll!

✌️ Team Marketing Machine

🗳️ Feedback Dept!

🥞 Stack

Tools we use to keep our business running.

Discord - find community with text, voice, and video chat. Join us!
Beehiiv - engage newsletter audiences and grow subscribers
Clickup - project management and team collaboration
WordPress - build websites and blogs
Elementor - drag-and-drop builder for WordPress
Buffer - streamline social media scheduling and analytics
ElevenLabs - convert text into realistic voiceover
Riverside - record high-quality audio and video remotely
Transistor - all-in-one podcast hosting platform
Zapier - automate tasks by connecting web apps
Claude - AI language model focused on safe and ethical text processing
Midjourney - generate images from text prompts using AI

*contains affiliate links - let us know if you have any questions or recommendations!