Despite solid realtime reporting, it can take up to 24 (and maybe even 48) hours for data to fully populate the reports throughout GA4.   

I haven’t found a reliable way around this (other than paying for 360), so this is just a PSA. Processing time is inconsistent too, especially when Google services are unstable (like they are now). 

This table is from Google's official data freshness documentation:

Be wary of yesterday’s numbers in your reporting. If something seems off, you’ll need to wait a day or exclude the prior day and do trend analysis to see if anything jumps out.   

For immediate peace of mind, use realtime reporting or Tag Assistant to do a quick check, making sure things look to be firing as they should. 

Henry Ford’s “any color as long as it’s black” choice may have been too minimalist, but more, more, more isn’t always better.

Studies have found that there is a choice cliff where sales drop when too much choice is present.

Too many choices can lead to procrastination, dissatisfaction, and suboptimal decisions.

Reducing the number of choices you offer can also decrease your costs.

A good listen on how to think about the current landscape of AIs and LLMs.

Add some Douglas Rushkoff quotes for additional context:

AIs are probability engines.

If AIs are based on us (our writing, knowledge, etc.), the only way to raise better AIs is to be better ourselves.

Emotional labor has become a competitive advantage. Our commitment to showing up as a human, even (especially) when we don’t feel like it is precisely how we create value. And it’s this human work that helps us feel seen and valued as well.

-Seth

Why am I extra bullish on podcasts right now?

TV and film producers prepare for potential post-strike production logjam

Once the actors’ strike ends the shows and movies still need to be made and the backlog will be big.

Content owners (Disney, Nickelodeon, Dr. Seuss, PBS, etc.) have been turning to audio to fill the entertainment gap and ad dollars are pulling back from TV because of the lack of new content.

The longer it lasts the more likely habits are to change in a meaningful way towards channels producing new entertainment.

Shocks cause shifts.

Marketing nerds unite! A chewy piece comparing ecomm promo language performance.

Thrown in the ring:

• $ off vs. % off
• Free vs. Fast delivery
• Promo code error codes
• “Black Friday” vs. “Cyber Week”

And maybe some more ideas you can steal.

Streaming’s big pain point: there’s too much stuff to watch
/
Despite more available programming than ever, 1 in 5 viewers abandon streaming sessions out of frustration, according to Nielsen.

The Great Unbundling into the infinite shelf space of the internet still has a major problem: discovery.

Modern search has largely the same issue.

Maybe AI can fix it, but what does the knowledge graph underlying the model look like?

Pandora always underwhelmed me when, and this feels like the likely analog for TV and movies. But podcasts could be prime for AI discovery thanks to LLMs and transcription.

TikTok doesn’t want marketers obsessing about last-click attribution. In part because TikTok looks really bad when viewed as a direct performance channel. But also, attribution is less helpful these days.

It’s not about what a specific channel does. It’s about what it adds to your marketing mix.

How can you turn an L into a win?

The ad above is from La Vie Foods, a vegan food company from France. The translation of the ad below should make everything clear. But first, the setup:

Vegan bacon producer La Vie has been accused of unfair competition by a French pork lobby.

INAPORC claims that the company’s plant-based lardons are too similar to conventional pork alternatives, thereby copying the originals.

Now, the response:

The light pink portion at the top of the ad reads:

The pork lobby is attacking us because our veggie lardons are indistinguishable from pork lardons.

The small, darker pink bar in the middle reads:

Help us defend ourselves, by sending them this letter.

The postcard looking bit at the bottom says:

Dear pork lobby. Thanks for the compliment. We think that your pork lardons are indistinguishable from our veggie lardons. Would you mind changing your recipe? Thanks.

We may not talk about Bruno, but what's something your sector doesn't usually talk about that you can turn into a differentiator?

An HTTP exploit is being used for DDoS attacks.

This means that while patching efforts are well underway, fixes will need to essentially reach every web server globally before these attacks can be fully stamped out.

Dubbed “HTTP/2 Rapid Reset,” the vulnerability can only be exploited for denial of service—it doesn’t allow attackers to remotely take over a server or exfiltrate data.

This is fine.

CPMs are dropping across streaming TV platforms and the gap between platforms is shrinking. Could mean more ad slots are coming to increase revenue.

From the linkblog (which you can get as a handy weekly email digest):

This bit from The Garden Report podcast is bigger than sports.

The teams are your property as the fans. They’re yours. [The players] are the stewards—they’re carrying the mantle now and then they’ll hand it to someone else and someone else. So they’re managing something that’s yours. It’s more yours than theirs. They come and go. This is your team.

Teams are the ultimate. We get irrational about our teams.

But they’re still brands. Brands built on community.

Employees of companies come and go but the customers (hopefully) stay. Which means the brand is theirs, not yours.

Be good a steward.

I'd thought about including sports teams in my piece about the death of social media managers as an example of brands that will trick others into thinking that organic social can work.

R.I.P. Social Media Managers

The role as it’s currently constructed is obsolete, but it has a future. For those with the right skills.

CuriousMarketers.ClubKyle Mensing

I didn't because it was leading me down a rabbit hole of brand as community. But isn't that the brand dream? To become a point of identity and gathering for customers/fans/stans?

What do sports teams have–as far as branding goes?

• Clear iconography for easy identification of fellow fans (there is a hierarchy of iconography for many teams as well that act as gates to ever deeper levels of fandom (Scary Terry anyone?))
• An opponent (or enemy (possibly many)). Fandoms can as easily be defined by who you love as by who you hate. Being a Boston fan is nearly synonymous with being anti-LA and/or NY.
• Differentiation. There is (usually) only one team per market, which means geographic monopoly. It also allows for rivalries based on local pride (see the point above). There is also differentiation within the style of play and roster, which means each season a team can be different than the season before.
• A routine fans can galvanize and evangelize around. It's called game day. (And for the hardcore fans it can also be called draft day, preseason, offseason, training camp, trade deadline, and on & on.)

Teams are cults. Fandom is cultdom.

What if you thought of your brand more as a team and less like a business (teams are most definitely businesses, but this is about public perception)?

What would you change if you thought of your customers not just as customers but as fans?

An aside:

As in the world of brands, sports is seeing a shift towards persona-centric fandom. Some people are Lakers fans and some people are LeBron James fans. For now they wear the same colors, but that fan camaraderie will end when the player-team relationship does.

Running a brand that has loyal customers means your are in charge of an entity that people have chosen to make part of their identity. You are not just managing a business with a recognizable logo, you are managing an instrument of personal identity and social signaling. You are working in service of your fans (or you are about to burn down all the value (everything is customer service)).

Be a good steward.

Imagine that people with disabilities are pioneers anticipating your future.

-Yuki Goto

OXO Good Grips was created because the founder’s wife’r arthritis made it hard to use a vegetable peeler.

When you design for the extremes, you design for everybody.

2 types of curiosity via the ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin (paraphrased):

When the shaman holds out the pipe, the anthropologist declines, saying it will make them impartial. The ethnobotanist says “yeehaw.”

Both are valid and both are needed.

Figure out which one you are and which the situation calls for.

Yeehaw

When groups of people with a shared preference or attitude choose to do something, we see markets and cultural trends.

But these people aren’t different kinds. They’re simply people responding or reacting to what’s on offer. This means that people can have different responses based on different offers and different conditions.

-Seth Godin

Generations are useless. In-depth personas have always felt overwrought to me.

Our ideal customers are best defined by the problem they’re trying to solve and the state they’re in.

Sometimes this leads to demographic similarities, but don’t confuse the two.

Daniel Jalkut with the product design dream:

If you can take something that people do today and make it doable in more contexts then it is now, you get a winner.

Previously the iPhone.

Next up, large language models + voice assistants (the new Siri already seems better).

Next next: broad augmented reality?

Different is better than better.

Broadening use cases / increasing contexts is a form of differentiation.