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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.

∞

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.

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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.

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Pew Research has released the latest update to its data set on US adult social media usage.

The trends:

  • YouTube, Facebook up
  • big gap
  • Instagram growing
  • TikTok dipped
  • Pinterest: more popular than you think?
  • Up: LinkedIn, Reddit
  • Steady: WhatsApp, Snapchat, BeReal
  • Down: X (Twitter)
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A survey says trio

A study by Harvard Business Review found that 95% of purchasing decisions are emotional, not rational. 

Research shows that 40% of impulse purchases lead to regret, which can hit return rates hard.

Studies show that loyal customers are 60-70% more likely to convert than new customers.
  1. This is what always bothered me about economics, humans aren’t rational engines.
  2. The sale doesn’t truly end until the item gets used.
  3. Retention is the most important part*.

*caveat that not all businesses are high-repeat