🇨🇦 100% Canadian Owned and Operated 🇨🇦

The Top Three

🏆 THE INDUSTRY’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES TODAY

🥇 LINKED IN, CASH OUT

🤳 LinkedIn didn't choose the creator life... the creator life chose LinkedIn: With video on the rise, uncertainty around TikTok, and ongoing brand safety issues on X, LinkedIn is becoming a prime destination for creators and advertisers. Digiday has a great piece up today about how marketing agencies within the platform’s ecosystem are seeing major growth. As the LinkedIn doubles down on its creator strategy, agencies Dentsu and Ogilvy confirm rising brand spend, though they wouldn’t confirm specific numbers.

• Creator Match made 80% of its lifetime revenue in just the past few months, paying out $1M+ to LinkedIn creators.

• The Wishly Group scaled from 6 to 30 creators since August 2024 and tripled its monthly campaigns.

• Cherry Lane clients have grown their LinkedIn ad spend from tens to hundreds of thousands.

• Creator Authority expects 300–400% YoY growth, though it wouldn’t disclose its starting point.

🥈 MOZILLA’S LIFE LINE

Mozilla's $MZLA ( 0.0% ) CFO testified that Firefox could go out of business if the court enforces the Justice Department’s proposals to break Google’s $GOOGL ( ▼ 1.13% ) search monopoly. The DOJ wants to stop Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers like Firefox. Although Firefox competes with Chrome, it warns that losing these payments could threaten its survival. more

• Firefox generates about 90% of Mozilla’s revenue, with 85% coming from its deal with Google.

• Losing this revenue could force Mozilla to make significant cuts, putting both Firefox and its nonprofit projects at risk, including the Gecko browser engine, which is the only major browser engine not controlled by Big Tech.

• Ironically, this could reinforce Google’s dominance in the search market, which the court aims to break up.

🥉 THE REAL COST OF CHEAP ADS

Social Media Today reports that one major takeaway from the latest social media earnings calls is the looming impact of tariffs. While most execs avoided directly naming them — likely to dodge political backlash — Meta $META ( ▼ 0.59% ) , LinkedIn, and Snap $SNAP ( ▲ 0.3% ) all hinted that new fees from the Trump administration could hurt their bottom lines. And that has direct implications for marketers.

• Meta admitted the drop in ad spend from Asia-based e-commerce players like Temu and Shein is already baked into its revenue guidance.

• Snap warned of headwinds tied to the end of the “de minimis” exemption.

• For marketers, the short-term upside is cheaper ad rates, thanks to decreased competition in ad auctions. However, platforms may respond by cramming in more ads to make up for lost revenue.

Today’s Other News

📰 EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MATTERS

Advertising 📣

• Google has doubled the Search Theme limit in PMax from 25 to 50 per Asset Group. These optional prompts help guide Google’s targeting by signalling the queries your audience is likely using, without limiting reach. more

• Google announced a new tag gateway, letting advertisers run Google tags, both client-side and server-side, through their own website infrastructure, like a content delivery network (CDN), load balancer, or web server. By routing data through your own server, the gateway enhances conversion accuracy.

• Google also announced two app campaign measurement updates:

  • On-device conversion measurement using event data

  • Integrated conversion measurement

Search 🔍

• Google is reportedly testing replacing its local map pack in "near me" searches with AI Overviews, swapping the map and listings with AI-generated summaries with local info. more

Social Media 📱

• Instagram has rolled out its first update for its Edits video editing app, adding new fonts, voice effects, and editing options. Users now have access to 125 fonts, as well as 15 voice effects, and more. more

• U.S. President Trump said TikTok will be “very strongly protected” as it has a "warm spot" in his heart due to the app's role in helping him win young voters. He was asked about extending the January 25, 2025, deadline for ByteDance to divest its U.S. operations, which passed without a sale. Trump chose not to enforce the deadline, citing TikTok’s value to American users. He indicated he would grant an extension if necessary, but it might not need it. more

• X’s current verification system may not cut it for its upcoming payments feature, with new code suggesting a partnership with Persona for ID checks. Persona, already used by platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube, uses government-issued IDs and facial scans to verify users. more

Commerce 🛒 

• 👋 Tapping out of tariffs: Temu has stopped shipping products directly from China to the U.S. in response to U.S. tariffs. With tariffs now rising 100%+ on Chinese goods, the e-commerce company has shifted to a local fulfillment model, displaying only products available in U.S. warehouses. Items shipped from China are now listed as out of stock. more

  • A Temu spokesperson confirmed that the platform's pricing for U.S. consumers remains the same, as it transitions to local sellers fulfilling orders within the U.S. The company is also recruiting more U.S. sellers to join the platform.

• Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 0.53% ) is spending $4 billion to triple its American rural delivery network by 2026, adding 200+ delivery stations and reaching more than 13,000 zip codes — enabling a billion more package deliveries each year. more

Agencies 💼

• After a tough 2024 and a Q1 revenue fall, GroupM is facing increasing pressure to turn things around. Major clients, including big accounts like Coca-Cola $COKE ( ▼ 3.09% ) , have increasingly turned to rivals in France and the U.S. instead. So, what do clients really want, and what’s missing from GroupM’s toolkit? Digiday has a great piece up today looking at the challenges the agency faces in meeting client demands.

A Social Feed From Your Nightmares 🤖 

• If you ever wanted Pinterest, Threads, and generative AI slop to collide in a strange, uncomfy mess — Meta’s new AI app delivers just that. The app lets users share their AI chatbot results with the world, turning private prompts into public posts. While Meta is the first to introduce this concept, others like OpenAI are following suit. more

  • 🫣 It’s a bit like the social media version of a car crash... you know you shouldn’t look, but you can’t help it.

The Ticker

📈 HOW DIGITAL MARKETING STOCKS ARE DOING

In partnership with