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Beware negative social proof. a.k.a. the “well, if everyone else is doing it…” effect

Definition = if you make an unwanted behaviour seem commonplace, more people will perform the unwanted behaviour.

Negativity is a downward spiral. And one hard to harness.

Be aspirational.

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It’s easy to focus on winning but I think have to focus more on how not to lose than you do on how to win.

Because how not to lose is more controllable than how to win.

When you’re trying to win championships you can’t focus on winning championships. You have to focus on what goes into the process of winning but also how can you prevent losing by doing the things that are simplest to do under high duress.

-Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla

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It’s looking like inflation is back on the bingo card for 2025.

Using our rule of thumb that every 1 [percentage point] increase in the effective tariff rate would raise core [Personal Consumption Expenditures] prices by 0.1%, we estimate that the proposed tariff increases would boost core PCE prices by 0.9% if implemented

Disposal income might get further squeezed, meaning marketing efficiency will be ever more important.

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Interesting to see Google continue to shift features into the third-party realm. This time, it’s ad creation tools for YouTube and Display.

Google will sunset Ads Creative Studio by the end of March 2025, shifting its focus to new growth areas and enhancing partnerships with creative agencies to deliver tailored campaigns at scale.

For YouTube-specific customizations, advertisers are encouraged to engage third-party partners.

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Plenty of pixels have been spilled discussing the Jaguar rebrand, but this post is worth checking out.

If you’re going to rebrand:

  • Do it without alienating your core audience.
  • Make sure your product is at the heart of the story—not completely absent
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Foursquare is open sourcing its locations database.

a foundational open data set, Foursquare Open Source Places (“FSQ OS Places”). This base layer of 100mm+ global places of interest (“POI”) includes 22 core attributes (see schema here) that will be updated monthly and available for commercial use under the Apache 2.0 license framework.

Maps will be a foundational OS of the future (haven’t they always been though?), so this data set could be a big deal (and could place Foursquare at the center of it).

Could this spark an ImageNet moment for geospatial computing?

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You can no longer follow hashtags on Instagram. Which is not something I particularly care about, but I wanted to highlight this from the article:

Though it also feels like another step towards the death of the hashtag, which has slowly lost relevance as a connective option as algorithms have got better and better and understanding content, context, and user interest.

If AI can bring contextual “understanding” to platforms it means we can get back to creating for humans not for “X engine optimization.”

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Some big ifs, but this means GPT is not an insignificant player.

Google won’t be overtaken by one player, but by all these other slices growing over time. Chipping away and taking more and more search share.

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Reddit traffic is exploding thanks to its recent licensing deal with Google.

And some of those visitors are turning into users, adding 31 million daily actives in the last year.

“Reddit also says that its Weekly Active Unique user count (WAUq) averaged 365.4 million in the third quarter, an increase of 53% year-over-year. The amount of daily to weekly usage here is unusual for social apps, which usually see about 2.3x usage between daily and monthly actives. Reddit seemingly sees a lot more than this, which could point to the less consistent way in which visitors use the app.”

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From Seth:

stories are the basic building block of culture

&

Stories that resonate are the ones that sit with the stories we already believe and value.

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Why is Spotify a video platform now?

the reason why there's this big video push is because it's part of an anchor into the company's deeper push into advertising.

advertisers are more accustomed to buying video ad inventory than audio ad inventory. And if Spotify can get new advertisers on board through video, something that's familiar to them, maybe those advertisers will be more likely to spend on audio elsewhere in the surface.

Benjamins, baby

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The headline:

OpenAI is thinking about making its own browser

Not a surprise. They’re also rumored to be working on a phone and more integrations with hardware makers.

“The New Google” is a pretty obvious avenue for them to pursue.

This is why regulator’s reasoning for forcing Big G to sell Chrome feels off.

Google is getting chipped away at from many angles as options proliferate. But a better option is the only thing that will knock the company synonymous with search out of its number 1 spot.

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The game of “take control, give control” continues, this time with Meta giving advertisers another lever to control their ad delivery

Frequency controls help you control how often your ad is shown to a person. When creating your campaign, you’ll have two options to choose from for your frequency controls. These controls are target frequency and frequency cap.

Now you can better control frequency of awareness and engagement campaigns, at least for Reach and ThruPlay goals.

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Regulators have submitted their Google punishment wishlist to the judge, and it rivals many a kid’s Christmas list.

The Justice Department wants:

  • Chrome sold off
  • no playing favorites on Android (& maybe sold)
  • can’t buy default status
  • no favoring Google services in other Google services
  • license search index data to others
  • ad cost transparency
  • blah blah AI training access blah

No. 3 is the most obvious one on the list. The others range from 🤷 to 😮

Not sure this is the obvious outcome:

A sale of Chrome “will permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet”

How much better does Google Search get if $20B a year gets reinvested instead of paid to Apple?

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The good news: While the election was surely a distraction, US consumer spending continues to be strong. Overall spending growth outpaced expectations in September, for instance. And third-quarter earnings reports have looked solid, too.

There’s a tension between the numbers and the vibes.

As whole, the economy is doing well. On an individual level, inflation makes things feel bad.

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I like this idea, just might steal it

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We’ve started to see performance bounce back for our clients most in danger of a “pre-election slump” (vindication!), so I’m dipping back into that well one more time.

via Sounds Profitable:

Many brands either reduced or outright halted investments in influencer marketing to barricade themselves from political blowback during a heated election season.

Not only did the campaigns spend a lot, but other advertisers spent less, furthering the omnipresence of political messaging.

Consumer focus narrowed and behavior followed.

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Google Analytics 4 adds benchmarking data

reference metrics that help you compare your business performance against the performance of other businesses in your industry.

in percentiles (median, 25th, and 75th) based on peer groups of businesses for a wide range of industry categories. The businesses that form the peer groups are determined by an industry category assigned to each property. This industry category is determined by a combination of factors including the broad industry category provided in setup and signals from things like a property’s URLs and App attributes.

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Google’s getting ready for shopping szn

Google Lens

Google Lens can quickly show you product insights tailored to the store you’re in. Just snap a photo to find product information, similar products in-stock, whether a store’s price is competitive and shopper reviews.

Shop Via Maps

search for products in Maps and find nearby stores selling them

As the moat around Google’s Knowledge Graph erodes in a post-AI world, the “Shopping Graph” may be the next fulcrum for revenue growth.

∞

Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses to rival Meta’s Ray Bans to be released late next year.

Gemini would handle AI tasks alongside support for “payment,” QR code recognition, “gesture recognition,” and “human recognition functions.”

I think we’ve found the most probable next consumer computing platform.

AI needs a computer, but not necessarily a screen.

The era of ambient computing is upon us.