The Top Three

🏆 THE INDUSTRY’S MOST IMPORTANT STORIES TODAY

🥇 GLOBAL AD SPEND FORECAST DROPS BY $20B

🚨 Adpocalypse Now(ish): Total ad spend is set to decline by nearly $20 billion as economic pressures mount. U.S. trade tariffs, tighter EU regulations, and weak consumer confidence are squeezing margins, forcing brands to pull back. The risk of stagflation, or even recession, continues to grow across major economies. more

• WARC has downgraded ad spend growth forecasts to 6.7% in 2025 and 6.3% in 2026, resulting in an almost $20 billion cut.

• Auto, retail, and tech brands are cutting budgets as supply chain costs rise.

• 🌞 One bright spot: Digital ad spend remains strong, with Alphabet $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.2% ) , Amazon $AMZN ( ▼ 1.28% ) , and $META ( ▼ 0.07% ) projected to control more than half of the market by 2029.

🥈 YOUTUBE SHORTS: MORE VIEWS WITH ZERO EFFORT

👀 Every scroll = a stat: Starting March 31st, YouTube will start counting every play or replay of a Short, just like TikTok and Instagram. Meaning, that if it starts playing, it counts. Previously, views only counted after a set watch time. more

• The company said view counts may increase under the new system.

• Despite the change, YouTube will still track the old Shorts metric as “engaged views” in its analytics dashboard.

• Monetization and YouTube Partner Program eligibility will continue to be based on "engaged views."

• So yes, Shorts might rack up more views, but advertisers and YouTube’s algorithm still care about who’s actually watching.

🥉 INSTACART TO PAY SHOPPERS FOR VIDEOS

🤳 Sheflie side hustle: Instacart $CART ( ▲ 0.4% ) is launching Store View, a new feature where shoppers can make money by taking videos of store shelves. This will let the grocery delivery service track product availability and identify out-of-stock items. more

• The videos will improve predictive models for restocking and help Instacart estimate product availability for next-day deliveries.

• Store View will roll out with select retailers and expand to more U.S. and Canadian stores in 2025.

• The company is also rolling out Second Store Check soon, which will send a second shopper to find out-of-stock items at another store, with no extra delivery fees for customers.

Today’s Other News

📰 EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MATTERS

Advertising 📣

• Discord $DISCORD.P ( 0.0% ) will launch mobile ads for the first time with an expansion of its Video Quests format starting in June. The ad type shows trailers or announcements in a full-screen, reward-based format. Already successful on desktop, it’s now going to reach Discord’s mobile users. The move helps brands connect with players without interrupting the user experience, and interested companies can join the upcoming pilot program. more

• Reddit is expanding its Conversation Ads feature, which will let serve ads between comments on conversation pages when they run conversation ads. Advertisers will be automatically opted into available ad slots that meet their brand safety requirements. more

Search and Business Manager 🔍

• Google $GOOG ( ▲ 0.11% ) has completed its March 2025 core update, which rolled out from March 13 to March 27. This update improved how Google ranks helpful and relevant content globally. The overall impact seemed less widespread than past updates. more

• Google appears to be making progress on the backlog of Google Business Profile suspension appeals and support requests. After weeks of delays, forum posts about suspensions are dropping, and some users report multiple reinstatements. While it's still expected to take weeks for appeal times to fully return to normal, signs suggest Google is slowly catching up on the backlog. more

Social Media 📈

• Meta giveth… Instagram now lets users share other people’s posts directly to their followers’ feeds using a “repost” feature—kind of like retweeting on X. Before, you could only share posts to Stories. This change could help boost engagement, though it’s unclear how often reposts will be shown. Instagram hasn’t shared full rollout details yet, and the impact on its recommendation-heavy feed is still unknown. more

• …and taketh away. Instagram is removing the option to add text notes to feed posts and Reels. The feature, added last year after success with Notes in DMs, didn’t really catch on. Instagram says it’s trying to simplify the app by cutting tools people don’t use much. Notes in DMs will stay. more

• Facebook is throwing it back to a friends-only feed, with a new "Friends" tab, which filters out algorithmic recommendations. The tab, now rolling out in the U.S. and Canada, will display your friends' stories, reels, posts, and birthdays. more

• YouTube is testing a new system to avoid overwhelming users with too many notifications. Some users subscribe to “All” notifications from channels but later turn off YouTube notifications completely. To fix this, YouTube will stop sending push alerts to users who aren’t engaging, though they’ll still see updates in the app. more

• 🤔 What was that about free speech?: Nearly two months ago, Elon Musk publicly criticized Reddit for blocking links to X in protest of his alleged Nazi salute. Alongside his public comments, Musk privately messaged Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, sources say. Following their exchange, Reddit imposed a 72-hour ban on the "WhitePeopleTwitter" subreddit, which hosted a thread about DOGE employees, citing violent content. The thread Musk flagged was also deleted. more

  • Reddit declined to comment on the specifics of Musk’s influence but doubled down on its commitment to enforcing its policies. Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Agencies 💼

• Ad agencies say Google Ads reps are becoming more aggressive, pushing AI tools and sometimes giving clients advice that clashes with agency strategies. Some reps even bypass agencies to talk directly to clients, which has caused confusion and trust issues. Agencies believe reps are under pressure to meet sales goals. Digiday has a great piece on all this.

The Ticker

📈 HOW DIGITAL MARKETING STOCKS ARE DOING

Today’s Trivia Question

🎁 TAP YOUR GUESS AND YOU COULD WIN

Steal Our Stack

🛠️ TOOLS WE USE TO PUT THE NEWSLETTER OUT

Google Ads courses: Inside Google Ads: Advanced
Meta ad courses: Foxwell Digital Courses
Media Buyers Slack: Foxwell Founders Community
Lifetime marketing tool deals: Appsumo 
Podcast recording: Riverside
Online forms: Tally (get 50% off first 3 months)
Email newsletter: Beehiiv

In partnership with