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The Top Three

🏆 THE INDUSTRY’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES TODAY

🥇 NO CHECKMARK? NO CRED.

Meta: “This business might not be trustworthy…”
Also Meta: “...unless they pay us $34.99 a month.”

How do you get more businesses to pay for the blue check? Start warning users that non-verified pages might not be legit ✅. Meta $META ( ▼ 0.25% ) is testing an in-app pop-up that flags business profiles as potentially untrustworthy if they haven’t subscribed to Meta Verified. It’s a calculated move to boost subscription numbers... especially since most businesses haven’t opted in yet. more

• Meta Verified starts at $21.99/month per Facebook or Instagram account, or $34.99/month for both.

• The company will start testing these prompts and labels over the next few months.

🥈 YOUTUBE TO CART

🫡 From ad to bag: Checkout on Merchant is now available for Demand Gen Campaigns in the U.S, letting shoppers go from finding a product to adding the product to their cart or checking out on the merchant site. The feature is now available for campaigns on YouTube In-stream, in addition to PMax campaigns and organic shopping results.

• Merchants can enable this by adding a URL template of the checkout or cart page in GMC.

• Alternatively, enable it at the product level by providing the checkout link template attribute in your product feed in GMC.

• Available to all U.S. advertisers using product feeds.

🥉 YOUTUBE TESTS AIOs

Google’s $GOOGL ( ▲ 2.79% )  AI Overviews are coming to YouTube... sort of. Instead of text summaries, YouTube is testing a new video results carousel with AI-picked snippets. When users search for certain topics, the platform will surface clips from videos it thinks are most relevant. more

• YouTube said the AIOs are most likely to appear for product-related searches, like “best noise cancelling headphones."

• It’s also triggered by location-based queries, such as “museums to visit in San Francisco."

Today’s Other News

📰 EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MATTERS

Advertising 📣

• Amazon $AMZN ( ▼ 1.45% ) has opened up access to Amazon Insights for audience creation. And starting June 2, it will extend the same to Amazon Your Garage and Brand Store Insights. However, this isn’t full access for reporting — it's only for building audiences. If you're looking to pull insights or performance data, you'll still need to pay up. more

• 🍪 Cookiepocalypse delayed: Now what? Google recently announced it will continue supporting third-party cookies in Chrome, undermining years of cookieless planning. While its Privacy Sandbox will stick around, the urgency to adopt alternatives like The Trade Desk’s UID2 $TTD ( ▼ 3.36% ) or LiveRamp’s RampID $RAMP ( ▼ 2.7% ) has taken a hit. Digiday has a great piece up today looking at how the policy reversal leaves marketers in limbo, and what it means for the future of targeting, measurement, and all those expensive workarounds.

• The Local Services Ads updates keep coming: Starting May 22, Google is loosening its photo guidelines for LSAs. Meaning, that some photos that were previously not allowed may now be eligible to appear in your ads. It’s not yet clear whether those photos will be automatically added or if you’ll need to manually approve them. more

• Google Ads is rolling out a new Tree Table View option in reports. Instead of flat tables, you will see a hierarchical layout where dimensions are stacked visually. more

• The FTC’s new consumer protection director says he’s bringing a more balanced, evidence-based approach to targeted advertising, moving away from terms like "surveillance advertising." Adexchanger reports on how this marks a shift from the previous FTC’s more aggressive stance on data privacy and ad tech.

Social Media 📱

• Meta also added a new “Original” content tag to its paid verification for brands. Verified profiles can now use a “Request original credit” toggle during post-creation to request a human review. If approved, any reposts will automatically link back to the original brand profile.

• 🙊 Shadow banter: After trolling Elon Musk in December, a far-right influencer’s reach on X plummeted. This wasn’t an isolated incident... several other users also experienced a sudden drop in visibility following their public feuds with Musk. The New York Times reports that these accounts saw a dramatic decline in engagement overnight, raising concerns that Musk might be using his power to punish critics, contradicting the expectations of free speech advocates.

Creative Tools 🎨 

• Adobe $ADBE ( ▼ 0.86% ) launched a new Content Authenticity web app in public beta today, designed to help creatives get credited for their work, even if it’s screenshot and reposted. The app lets artists embed tamper-proof metadata into images, linking them back to the creator. Artists can add their social media links, websites, and other identifying info directly into their work. It’s currently free to use. more

• Adobe also launched two new versions of its text-to-image genAI model alongside updates to Firefly and Creative Cloud apps:

  • Firefly Image Model 4: Generate images up to 2K resolution with more control over style, formats, and camera angles.

  • Firefly Image Model 4 Ultra: Capable of rendering "complex scenes with small structures."

  • Firefly Boards: A new collaborative AI moodboarding tool, similar to FigJam, now in public beta on the Firefly web platform.

  • Firefly web app: Access to third-party AI models like OpenAI's GPT image, Google’s Imagen 3, and Veo 2 for video, with more models coming soon.

The Ticker

📈 HOW DIGITAL MARKETING STOCKS ARE DOING

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