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The Top Three 🏆

The industry’s most important stories today.

🥇 GOOGLE RANKINGS POWER AI BRAND MENTIONS

Page 1 of Google isn't just prime real estate, it's also the key to driving AI brand mentions: A new study found a correlation between Google rankings and brand mentions in ChatGPT’s answers, indicating that brands ranking on page 1 of Google are more likely to get mentioned in LLMs.

As brands push for discoverability in LLMs, optimizing for generative engines has become the next big challenge. While it differs from traditional SEO, according to the study’s researchers, the formula remains the same: rank high, stay relevant. more

• Google rankings seemed to matter, but backlinks and content variety did not.

• Brands on page 1 of Google showed a strong correlation (~0.65) with mentions in LLMs, whereas Bing rankings mattered slightly less (~0.5–0.6).

• Backlinks had a weak or neutral impact, and multi-modal content also didn’t deliver the boost researchers expected.

• 🎯 The study suggests creating high-quality, relevant content is still the most effective path to visibility in both search and AI.

🥈 META’S NEW PRO-SLUR POLICY

🚩 Goodbye brand safety, hate speech is now fair game: In its shift to "free speech," leaked training material obtained by media shows that Meta now welcomes a range of derogatory remarks targeting races, nationalities, ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and gender identities. The document gives Meta content moderators a rundown of the new hate speech policy, guiding them on how to enforce the new rules. more

• Among the newly permissible content on Facebook and Instagram, the training materials include examples like:

  • “Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit.”

  • “Gays are freaks.”

  • “Look at that tranny (under a photo of a 17-year-old girl).”

• When asked about the policy changes, a Meta spokesperson referred to a blog post by newly appointed global policy chief Joel Kaplan, who defended changes, saying the platform should allow controversial topics that are discussed freely elsewhere.

• WTAF?!: “Alex Schultz, the company's chief marketing officer and highest-ranking gay executive, suggested in an internal post that people seeing their queer friends and family members abused on Facebook and Instagram could lead to increased support for LGBTQ rights.” —Platformer

🥉 TIKTOK’S BIG DAY IN COURT

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard arguments from TikTok as to why the sell-or-be-banned legislation in the U.S. should not go through. more

• Legal analysts mostly said that the court appeared to be leaning toward upholding the law, which would mean TikTok either will sell its American operations, or it will be kicked out of app stores in the U.S.

• “During more than two hours of oral arguments, many of the justices appeared to view the sell-or-ban law approved by Congress in April not as one that primarily implicates the First Amendment but rather as an effort to regulate the potential foreign control of an app used by 170 million Americans.” — CNN

Today’s Other News ☑︎

Everything else that matters.

Advertising 📣 

• Google Ads now lets you test the impact of reallocating budgets from Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) or Display campaigns to Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. more

TikTok 🎵 

• Despite the uncertainty of whether TikTok will even still be an app in the U.S. in 10 days, agencies are going all in on ad spend. TikTok ad spend in the U.S. is set to surge nearly 60% year-over-year in the first two months of 2025. more

• With the TikTok ban looming, competitor platform Triller is seizing the moment by offering users the option to back up their TikTok content directly in its app. more

  • Now, at SaveMyTikToks.com, users can link their TikTok account to Triller and download their TikTok clips.

• TikTok has added post scheduling to its TikTok Studio management tool.

  • While scheduling isn't new (it was available via the video scheduler), this update integrates it directly into the tool, making it easier to manage, edit, and update scheduled posts and see analytics all in one place. more

• Creators are torn on a TikTok alternative. While 1 in 10 U.S. adults consider being a TikTok creator their job, many are turning to YouTube and Instagram. Creators favour Instagram for audience growth, while YouTube is the golden ticket for monetization. more

Corporate Policy ⚖️ 

• Meta has removed nonbinary and trans-themed options from Messenger. These themes, which featured the trans and nonbinary pride flag colours, had been available for years. 😞 more

• Meta also removed tampons from men's bathrooms, which had been in place for nonbinary and transgender employees. more

• The company today also abruptly ended its diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, moving its previous head of DEI to some yet-to-be-determined job focused on “accessibility and engagement.” more

• Amazon too has removed language about its diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, as well as its support for transgender employees, from its corporate website. more

Social Media 📱

• YouTube is expanding its 3-minute Shorts to all users. Now, any clip under 3 minutes will automatically appear in the Shorts shelf on your Subscription feed and Channel page. Plus, they’ll be listed in the Shorts section of YouTube Studio, and qualify to be recommended in the Shorts feed. more

• WhatsApp is testing a new homescreen design that gives AI chatbots prime real estate. In the Android beta, one of the app’s four tabs is now dedicated entirely to AI features, including “Popular AI characters,” AI-generated images and stickers, and a search tool using Meta AI. more

• Fortune reported that X is considering making new users pay money to sign up, as the company is expected to suffer major financial losses for 2024. Its initial reporting said new users would pay $8 to sign-up for X, and get one free month of X Premium, a $7/month subscription that includes a "verified” checkmark badge. more 

  • At our deadline today, Fortune said it has reason to doubt one of its sources for the story, and has placed it into review.

  • Elon Musk tweeted that the report was untrue.

Streaming 📺️ 

• Peacock, NBCU’s streaming platform, is testing mini-games and vertical videos through its mobile app to boost engagement and create a more Gen Z-friendly environment. more

Marketing Tool of the Day 🔨

Cool stuff we found on the web (not a paid placement)

AI Product Avatars looks interesting. Instead of spending big bucks on photoshoots or videoshoots, you can upload your product image and it will create a video of a digital avatar presenting it.

Not just images, but videos of the person talking about your product.

It supports multilingual speech with lip-sync and might be good for eCommerce or social campaigns when you need product videos fast without breaking the bank.

(Like everything mentioned in our Marketing Tool of the Day section, we gain nothing from this mention. No affiliate codes are used and nobody paid us to place this.)

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