The Top Three

🏆 THE INDUSTRY’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES TODAY

🥇 THE END OF ‘AGENCY’

⚡️"Agency" – the "They Who Should Not Be Named" of marketing: A great piece up on Digiday today breaks down how the rise of principal media buying is leading agencies to remove the term "agency" from client contracts. When agencies buy media directly, they take on the responsibility for costs, unlike traditional agencies that pass those costs onto clients. more

• For example, agencies like Publicis use separate companies, such as Apex, to handle these direct media purchases. This ensures the agency isn’t acting as an "agent" for the client, which is important for legal and transparency reasons.

• However, this shift has caused confusion in contracts, as clients sometimes need clarification on who is responsible for the media costs.

🥈 CASH 4 DEMAND GEN

💰️ It's not a bribe, it's an offer, guys: Google is using thousands in credits and free ad space to push Demand Gen, its automated media buying tool. more

Demand Gen, which was launched last year, selects advertisers’ top-performing video and image ads and serves them across YouTube, Shorts, Google Discover, and Gmail.

• Sources say the company has been aggressively promoting Demand Gen, offering some advertisers up to $20K in free ad credits to test it for two months.

• In some cases, it offers dollar-for-dollar credits — spend $5K, get $5K back.

• Google hasn’t commented on the credit offers.

🥉 LINKEDIN ROLLS OUT CONVERSION API

LinkedIn launched a new conversion API and updates to its revenue attribution report today, letting marketers use their own first-party and offline data to track campaigns over an extended lookback window. more

• The updated Conversions API (CAPI) lets marketers securely connect their data, and provides insights by tracking conversions across multiple touchpoints.

• The updated Revenue Attribution Report (RAR) now lets marketers analyze CRM data for up to 365 days.

Today’s Other News

📰 EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MATTERS

Advertising 📣

• 🚗 TikTok takes the wheel: The platform launched Automotive Ads today, targeting car dealers with two creative formats: Video + Product Card, which combines video with shoppable recommendations, and Multi-Link Carousel Card, which features catalog images. more

  • When a user views an Auto Ad, they can click on an item to visit its URL destination. Continuing to swipe leads them to a TikTok Instant Page or URL, letting them browse the full catalogue without leaving the app.

• 🧌 Google Ads letting marketers play Frankenstein with their ads: The company announced new creative tools today to generate lifestyle imagery across PMax, Demand Gen, Display, and Apps campaigns. Advertisers can input prompts like "middle-aged man chopping carrots" and customize age, gender, race, and ethnicity. more

• 📱 A big shift for app advertising: Apple is rolling out view-through attribution for Search Ads. When ATT was introduced, Apple Search Ads took a bigger slice of advertisers' budgets, but not always in a way that added new value. View-through attribution will likely amplify this. more

  • As with install ads, Apple’s proprietary Ads Attribution API will handle direct measurement.

• LinkedIn is pushing publishers in its pre-roll video ad program to post more on the platform, particularly from event footage. The Wire Program lets publishers sell 3- to 15-second pre-roll ads on their editorial videos. Digiday has a great piece up today about how the program can help publishers monetize the content they were already producing from live events and conferences. more

Social Media 📱

• Bluesky has added new reply controls, letting you limit who can respond to your updates. By tapping the “Anybody can interact” prompt you can restrict your replies to filter out noise/the haters. more

  • The platform also added profile search, letting you find mentions from a specific users.

• YouTube announced several new features yesterday:

  • Voice Reply Feature Testing: Select U.S. creators on iOS can now respond to comments with voice replies.

  • Promote Button Expansion to Shorts: Creators can now promote Shorts content via the Promote button on desktop.

  • New Immersive Effects including a new SIMS effect for Shorts.

• Facebook is about to hit delete on old live streams. Starting today, live broadcasts will be erased after 30 days, users must download their broadcasts before they expire. All previously recorded videos older than 30 days will also be wiped. more

• Social Media Today reports X is playing favourites, with Elon Musk pulling the strings. In Germany, X has repeatedly refused to share data for election interference research, while in Turkey, it recently complied with requests to block accounts critical of the government. more

Google Business Profile 🏪 

• 🐛 Can’t access your GBP? You’re not alone: Google Business Profile management pages are currently down, preventing access to the edit section within Search. Trying to make changes results in a 500 error. While it seems to be a temporary bug, there's no official update from Google yet. more

• ⏲️ And if you’re facing long wait times for Google Business Profile support, here's why: the support team is currently backlogged with requests, including suspended GMB reinstatements, video verification delays, and technical support issues. Expect delays as they work through the queue. more

Product Updates 🆕 

• ✅ AI now assigning your misery: Google Meet’s AI note-taking feature will now generate a checklist of action items at the end of meetings, going as far as assigning due dates and assigning a primary stakeholder to the task. more

• Google Sheets now lets you bulk convert data to people chips. For example, if you have a column with emails, Sheets will show a “Convert to people chips” suggestion when you click into your data range. Hover over it to preview the suggestion and convert your data. more

  • You can also customize the chip format to display Last name, First name, or Email address through the Format menu

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