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Advertising accounted for 9% of Amazon’s revenue in Q3 (up 19% from Q2). That’s compared to 40% of revenue from their online store.

It accounts for 12% of Walmart’s profits.

Everything is an ad platform now.

Because…

Retail profit margins tend to be slim – in the 3% to 4% range. The margin on ad sales is usually 70% to 90%

∞
Your creative is more important than your targeting. 

Don’t leave the ad content as an afterthought. 

Your ad creative is more important than your ad targeting. 

You’ve got to grab attention. Spend at least as much time on your creative strategy as your targeting strategy. 

Creative is the new targeting.

∞

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 227,000 in November, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.2 percent

Employment trended up in health care, leisure and hospitality, government, and social assistance. Retail trade lost jobs.

Per CNBC, gains are due to:

the effects of a significant labor strike and violent storms in the Southeast receded

∞

The simplest law of pricing

The price paid will always be less than the value it creates for the purchaser. And the price is never more than the amount the purchaser can exchange.
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A good economic rebuttal to some of the requested punishments in the Google anti-trust case.

Defaults matter, but switching also isn’t hard.

Also, it’s a bit late, isn’t it?

the antitrust case is happening when Google is losing advertising share and is under pressure from a new search technology, Artificial Intelligence. AI search from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Llama, and xAI is very well funded and making rapid progress.

∞
“But, our server is FIVE times slower. There is no silver bullet that is going to fix that. We’re going to have to use a lot of ‘lead bullets.’”

they had to build a better product. No silver bullets, only lead bullets.

Silver bullets are flashy and exciting and fun. And probably just distractions.

Lipstick on a pig, as it were.

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‘Immediately recognizable’ is the key. What do you have that is?

As for rockstars, so for brands (because they’re basically the same).

Bonus points if what’s immediately recognizable about your brand is not specific to your industry or product.

∞

To expand on the approach of peak media, the peak was probably 2023.

People worldwide spent less time with media across all categories except mobile (which remained the same) in H1 2024 as compared with H1 2023

via EMARKETER

∞
The status quo, relative to alternatives, likely will get worse as the pace of innovation increases.

The status quo provides diminishing returns.

∞

Google may not be killing off cookies, but it is ramping up first-party data features for marketers.

You can now use customer match to supplement Analytics audiences exported to your linked Google advertising products

If your data includes user-provided data, any audience exported to Google advertising products will match your consented, hashed customer data with Google data.

Money follows data.