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Add this to the interesting pile:

Google Shopping ad clicks surge 18% in Q2 as Amazon, Temu pull back

The big low price players dropped spend (thanks tariffs) opening up room in the auction competition for other retailers. And shoppers seemed to like it.

🍵 Reading the tea leaves, people aren’t searching Google Shopping to find products on cost competing aggregator platforms. They either don’t want to buy on Amazon or already searched there and the came to Google.

Amazon (and other platform) discovery doesn’t happen via other shopping channels, it happens before shopping searches start.

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Gary Washburn gets it, generations are garbage:

I think it’s stereotypical of people putting millennials, like all millennials should all be hanging out and doing all the same things and listening to Drake and playing video games and posting on Snapchat.

They’re not all the same. They’re different.

Similar demographics do not mean similar psychographics do not mean the same needs, wants, dreams, and aspirations.

Don’t fall for the proxy trap.

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Listening to my morning Celtics podcast when host John Karalis uses the example of leaving a party as a metaphor:

You know when you’re getting ready to leave a party and you start looking at your watch and you’re like “ok, I’m going to start looking for the opening here”. And unless somebody comes along and hits you with a great story, unless somebody comes along and hooks you to stick around…you’re going…

That’s everyone on the internet scrolling and clicking.

They’re constantly leaving the piece of content in front of them until it hooks them.

You have to hit them with the great story.

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Amtrak on creating a viral messaging campaign

We need to be really different and captivate … attention

Similar with a twist is the recipe for algorithmic attention.

Being the same doesn’t stand out.

Being too different might backfire.

Using a familiar hook (Friday! Friday! Friday!) in a new context provides an on ramp to curiosity.

🚂

via EMARKETER

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Partnerships and ad buys with prestige names confer status internally in the businesses that make the buy. “No one ever got fired for choosing IBM.”

Your audience doesn’t care that you paid to be on the top / hot channel. They care that you met them where they are.

Vanity / scale metrics are lazy proxies and ladder climbing fodder.

44% of the U.S. podcast audience who do not listen to shows within the top 1,000 have ever purchased a product as a result of hearing it on the medium, similar to the rate (47%) of U.S. podcast listeners to shows in the top 1,000 who say the same. 

via Edison Research