YouTube Shorts are commonly viewed as a vehicle for clips to function as marketing / awareness tools for longer form content. Looks like Netflix wants to expand this thinking with a dash of UGC.

Last fall, Netflix released “Moments,” a new feature that lets users clip and share parts of shows they’re watching via links that point back to Netflix. Now, the company is considering expanding that effort — perhaps with more prominent billing in the product itself — according to a new job listing.


Display is dying

Returns on programmatic ad auctions are returning so little, Digiday could not find a source to speak on the record. One anonymous revenue lead at a North American publisher says they’ve seen double-digit CPM decreases across the board in 2025. An executive says online display ads bought through auction in the fall are down as much as 30% compared to 2023’s Q4

AI (and other algorithms) + the growth of retail media (thanks 1st party data) + longstanding wariness around programmatic = growth of more attractive (or hyped) alternatives for marketers

via Sounds Profitable


According to Semafor:

[YouTube] is currently developing a feature that would allow host-read ads to be dynamically inserted and swapped out within individual YouTube videos

Should make it more appealing for podcasters.

But what’s the long term plan? How does Google monetize these ads? Does YouTube want to become a legit podcast hosting platform? Will it build a host read marketplace?

And how does this impact current efforts to place podcast ads via Ads Manager?


🚨 Annotations are back in Google Analytics! 🎉


On consumer modes:

People respond far better, purchase more often, and remain more loyal when marketers design campaigns that are targeted to their situations. Not to their personalities. Not to their preferences. And not necessarily to their past purchase behavior.

A mode is a mindset and a set of behaviors that people get into temporarily

The brands that understand consumer modes can effectively target the mode and support the buying process of anyone who is in that mode.

Seems a much better model than personas and funnels.