Nonfarm payrolls expanded by 353,000 for the month, much better than the Dow Jones estimate for 185,000
unemployment rate held at 3.7%, against the estimate for 3.8%.
On a year-over-year basis, wages jumped 4.5%, well above the 4.1% forecast.
December and November numbers were revised up and GDP ended the year strong.
But The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged
In the last year, tech giants made massive cuts to their workforce, which didn’t just please investors — they led to sky-high profits.
Mostly good but not all rainbow farts and unicorn giggles
Ads that rhyme, stay in mind
The average believability of the proverbs in the non-rhyming condition was 5.26 on a 9-point scale, but 6.17 in the rhyming form.
That’s an improvement of 17%.
Acast is brining AI to podcast ads
Called Collections+, the AI-powered tool pulls podcast and listener data from different sources to automatically group podcasts into contextual categories. This allows Acast to package up smaller shows from Acast’s catalog of podcasts to meet advertisers’ briefs
Contextual targeting—supercharged by AI—will be the future, as personalized targeting accrues to first-party data mines.
Also, wider placement spread!
advertiser named 11 shows it wanted to buy in order to reach a particular audience. Glenday said his team used the AI tech to show the advertiser what it would look like to buy 52 shows that reached the same target demographic, but reach more scale and at lower CPMs. The advertiser’s budget did not change as a result
Going one step further on:
The grow first, monetize later playbook is what causes louder disapproval of ads.
I think personalized advertising quiets these objections back down.
#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt is the extreme end of this.
Ads feel less like ads if they are perceived to provide value (by getting you to purchase, subscribe, etc).
This is also where the uncanny valley of “they’re listening to me to target ads!” arises.
If privacy advocates and regulators keep pushing, we’ll soon see if I’m right or wrong on this hypothesis.