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If you use Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping campaigns you may be familiar with the new(ish) audience segments. You may also be confused by a (characteristic) lack of clarity on how they work.

Thankfully, Jon Loomer is here to clear things up.

Per Meta:

If there is an overlap, such that a user will fit into both the ‘Engaged’ and ‘Existing’ category, we will prioritize the association that is lowest in the funnel (i.e ‘Existing’).

Or, as Jon says:

In other words, you don’t need to exclude existing customers when creating the Engaged Audience.

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when corporations talk about values, was it because of ethics? Or aesthetics?

Is it a value or a tactic?

It’ll come out eventually. One compounds goodwill, one erodes it.

via Mister Yam by Yeng Tan 📚

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AI is a sea change.

For marketing:

Out: Control

In: Context

In many ways this is a return to an earlier era of marketing, just with a new technological underpinning meaning the mediums have changed.

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Black Friday became the Turkey 5 weekend which feels like it’s becoming Black November with the way retailers are pushing sales earlier, but…

October’s and November’s share of US digital holiday consumer spending has not shown a consistent increase since 2018, despite retailers moving their holiday sales earlier

In retail, should you follow the competition so you don’t get left behind or follow the customer’s lead?

Creep or chill?

via Emarketer

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Google Marketing Live continued a recent trend for Google Ads, making it more and more like social ad platforms as far as creation flow and targeting.

Social marketers will inherit the earth?

Which means, your creative is the most important part of your ad strategy.

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Basically me, if you replace philosophy with marketing and the sign with a billboard promoting billboards.

via Existential Comics

This image is a comic strip depicting a humorous take on the philosophical transformation of Ludwig Wittgenstein, particularly from his early to later views on language and philosophy. Here’s the detailed description of each panel:&10;&10;1. **Panel 1:** Wittgenstein and Carnap are walking outdoors. Wittgenstein says, "The world is everything that is the case. It is a world of facts, not things." Carnap responds, "Yes, Wittgenstein! It feels like we are on the verge of solving philosophy once and for all."&10;&10;2. **Panel 2:** Wittgenstein and Carnap notice a sign that says "SIGN NOT IN USE." Wittgenstein points at the sign and says, "Exactly, Carnap. All future generations will be shown the way out of the fly...uh...What is that?" Carnap replies, "It's...a sign?"&10;&10;3. **Panel 3:** Wittgenstein, pointing at the sign, asks, "But what does it mean, 'SIGN NOT IN USE'?" Carnap replies, "It means it isn't in use..."&10;&10;4. **Panel 4:** Wittgenstein, now looking frustrated, says, "But it is in use." Carnap responds, "It just means not in use in the normal way."&10;&10;5. **Panel 5:** Wittgenstein, visibly upset, says, "No, I don't like that."&10;&10;6. **Panel 6:** Wittgenstein declares, "In fact, we have to start philosophy over. Throw all this in the trash." Carnap, holding a stack of books, protests, "But Wittgenstein, we almost finished—"&10;&10;7. **Panel 7:** Wittgenstein angrily throws books by Descartes and Plato into a trash can, shouting, "IN THE TRASH!"&10;&10;8. **Panel 8:** Wittgenstein, now holding his head in frustration, says, "I only want to talk about weird language stuff from now on. How are you even understanding me? How does anyone understand words? It's impossible, it can't be done!" Carnap, looking dejected, replies, "God damnit, we were so close..."&10;&10;The comic humorously illustrates Wittgenstein's shift from his early philosophy focused on logical positivism to his later work which questions the nature of language and meaning.
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While Google is Meta-fying its ad platform as fast as it can, Zuck+Co might be returning the favor.

Site links in your social feed!

The site links feature enables you to add multiple landing pages to your ads. Ads created without the site link feature can only include one primary landing page. The site links will appear as horizontally scrollable display labels under the main hero image or video. When someone clicks on one of the site links on your ad, they’ll be redirected to its designated landing page within the in-app browser to learn more about your business.

via Meta

a screenshot of Meta’s preview of how site links appear as clickable buttons beneath the main ad content in a carousel layout
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I’m fully bought into the gospel according to Jon Loomer

When you obsess over targeting, it becomes an unnecessary distraction from what is most important: the ad copy and creative.

Stop creating unnecessary work for yourself. When possible, take advantage of automated features like Advantage+ Audience.

Creative is the biggest targeting lever we have these days.

Focus less on control and more on context.

(I love when laziness is a viable strategy.)

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it’s teaming up with OpenAI to add the startup’s technology to iOS 18, the next version of the iPhone’s software

Sounds like OpenAI won the gig (Google always felt like a weird choice based on platform competition and default search payola scrutiny).

Now Apple gets to enter the consumer AI fray and establish a connection with its hardware platform while continuing to develop its edge differentiation and outsourcing hallucinatory reputational risk to someone else.

via Bloomberg (via @manton)

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Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used.
…
Functional fixedness is this inability to see a hammer’s use as anything other than for pounding nails

How can you defy functional fixedness in your positioning, strategy, and marketing?

Or, how can you zig where others zag?

via Wikipedia (via The Ringer)