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Google Won't Ditch Third Party Cookies After All 🤦‍♂️ Improving Search Ads Relevance 🎉 Threads Begins Testing Ads 🧪

Also: UAE To Use AI For Writing Laws

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🗞 Marketing News

Google Won't Ditch Third-Party Cookies In Chrome After All [3 min read]

Google has abandoned its long-standing plan to help users disable third-party cookies in Chrome, despite years spent developing the Privacy Sandbox initiative as an alternative tracking method. While Google will continue developing these privacy tools, they will now play a "different role" in the market, with the company no longer pushing for the elimination of tracking cookies. This policy reversal likely stems from Google's recent antitrust troubles, as forcing an industry-wide change through Chrome's market dominance would look problematic while the company faces government scrutiny over its power in the advertising ecosystem.

Improving Search Ads Relevance Lower Down The Page [3 min read]

Google's recent update to Search ads now allows advertisers who appear in top ad positions to also compete in the bottom ads auction, enabling them to show relevant ads in multiple locations on the same page. This change was implemented after observing user behavior and has resulted in a 10% increase in highly relevant ads and 14% increase in bottom ad conversions during testing. Despite this change, Google maintains that their policy against "double serving" within a single ad location remains intact, emphasizing that this update only allows advertisers to appear in both top and bottom positions with potentially different ad content tailored to each placement.

Threads Begins Testing Ads [2 min read]

Meta has begun testing ads on Threads with select advertisers including Wendy's and GroupM, displaying them between content in home feeds for a small percentage of users. Advertisers can easily extend existing Meta campaigns to Threads by checking a box in Ads Manager, allowing them to reach Threads' 320 million active users. Meta is implementing user controls and brand safety measures, including options for users to skip, hide or report ads, and AI-powered inventory filters for advertisers to control what content their ads appear next to.

🤖 AI

UAE To Use AI For Writing Laws [3 min read]

The United Arab Emirates is employing AI to draft and review federal and local laws through their newly established Regulatory Intelligence Office. This initiative addresses the UAE's unique demographic composition, where 90% of residents are expatriates from approximately 200 nationalities, by potentially enhancing legal accessibility through multilingual capabilities. The ultimate success of this innovative system will hinge on striking the proper balance between increased legislative efficiency and necessary human oversight, as AI systems still face reliability challenges that could lead to impractical or culturally inappropriate legal proposals.

Values In The Wild: Discovering And Analyzing Values In Real World Language Model Interactions [10 min read]❤️

Anthropic has developed a methodology to observe and analyze Claude's values during real-world user interactions, creating the first large-scale empirical taxonomy that categorizes these values into five hierarchical groups: Practical, Epistemic, Social, Protective, and Personal. Their research confirms that Claude generally upholds the "helpful, honest, and harmless" principles it was designed to embody, with common values like professionalism, clarity, and transparency appearing frequently in conversations. Importantly, the study reveals Claude's values are contextual and adaptive, sometimes mirroring users' values, occasionally reframing them with new perspectives, and in rare but significant cases, strongly resisting user values that conflict with its core principles, particularly when asked to engage with unethical content.

GenAI: Prompting A Better Marketing Strategy [6 min read]

Prompts have become bridges between human and AI capabilities, transforming strategic marketing goals into actionable outputs across competitive analysis, brand positioning, and channel execution. Effective prompting delivers four key marketing advantages: personalization at scale (demonstrated by L'Oréal and Airbnb), increased efficiency (as shown by Coca-Cola and Nike), cross-channel consistency, and enhanced creativity (exemplified by Sephora's 35% sales boost). To maximize these benefits, marketers should craft specific, contextual prompts aligned with data while iterating approaches, as the future promises real-time capabilities, multimodal inputs, and comprehensive automated tools.

🧠 Hacks & Tactics

Your Brand Guidelines Are Not Enough, Make a Brand Playbook Instead [10 min read]

Traditional brand guidelines often fall short in creating distinctive and memorable brands because they focus on static elements like logos and positioning statements without providing actionable strategies. In contrast, a Brand Playbook bridges this gap by outlining specific actions, campaigns, and creative executions that bring the brand to life. To develop and maintain an effective Brand Playbook, companies must map key channels, clearly define their brand strategy, incorporate actionable examples, engage their teams through workshops, and continuously update the playbook to ensure the brand remains distinctive and relevant.

Creating Winning Email Marketing Welcome Sequences [18 min read]

A well-crafted email marketing welcome sequence is important for engaging new subscribers, building relationships, and driving conversions. An effective sequence involves steps like sending a pattern-interrupt email, setting expectations, and making a final push for action. Customizing the sequence based on business type and tracking key metrics such as open rates and conversions are important for optimizing its success.

What Is A Personalization Engine? A Complete Guide [10 min read]

A personalization engine is a sophisticated system that leverages data analysis, machine learning, and AI to create, deliver, and manage personalized user experiences in real-time, encompassing components like Customer Data Platforms, content marketing tools, and analytics suites. Implementing a personalization engine requires a strategic approach that includes careful planning, data integration and segmentation, as well as effective delivery and measurement of personalized content to optimize user engagement and satisfaction. The benefits of using a personalization engine are significant, including increased conversion rates, enhanced customer loyalty, and improved operational efficiency, with practical applications across e-commerce, content personalization, and marketing automation that provide a competitive edge in delivering tailored experiences.

🏗️ For Founders

Your Beliefs Are Your Strategy [6 min read]

Founders and CEOs should write a manifesto that articulates why their business exists and what it stands for, following a structured approach that addresses customer needs, current market failures, strategic differentiation, core beliefs, and a compelling viewpoint. By documenting these beliefs, business leaders aren't merely crafting marketing copy but making fundamental strategic decisions that provide a competitive advantage in noisy marketplaces, bringing clarity to sales conversations, presentations, and investor meetings.

🔮 The Future

Time Spent With Media Reaches 'Saturation', Declines First Time Since Great Recession [2 min read]

According to PQ Media's 2025 Global Consumer Media Usage Forecast, consumer time spent with media grew to 57.2 hours weekly in 2024 but is projected to decline for the first time since the Great Recession, with a more significant 1.8% drop expected in the United States specifically. Meanwhile, the share of time spent with ad-supported media continues to fall, reaching historic lows of 44.4% in the U.S. and 52.3% worldwide, creating challenges for advertisers and traditional media businesses.

Netflix Is Eyeing Video Podcasts As It Looks To Expand Beyond TV And Film [2 min read]

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos acknowledges the blurring lines between podcasts and talk shows that could soon find their way onto the platform. YouTube has emerged as the dominant podcast destination, attracting 31% of weekly podcast listeners who increasingly prefer watching shows on smart TVs rather than just listening. Netflix believes its superior monetization model for premium storytelling offers creators better opportunities to reach audiences and support more ambitious projects compared to typical user-generated content platforms.

👩‍🏫 Vocab

Buyer Persona: A detailed profile representing your ideal customer based on real data and market research. It goes beyond basic demographics to include behaviors, motivations, and pain points. Buyer personas help teams make customer-focused marketing decisions.

Example: "Professional Paula" represents a busy working mother aged 35-45 who values convenience and quality, shops online, and makes household purchasing decisions.

Lookalike Audiences: A targeting tool that finds new potential customers who share similar characteristics with your existing best customers. It uses data patterns to identify people likely to be interested in your brand. Lookalike audiences help expand your reach to similar high-value prospects.

Example: Facebook creates a lookalike audience based on people who've already purchased your fitness program, targeting similar users who might also be interested.

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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

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