I’m watching Suits. And it’s ruining my life. (It’s a dramedy about a real lawyer and a fakey lawyer, if you didn’t know).

It’s ruining my life because it builds fantastic tension. There are secrets being held that we know will one day come to light. And that—along with the fifty other unresolved issues in each episode—keeps me watching late into the night.

Tension is the fuel of all storytelling. It drives the audience from one “page” to the next.

How are you using tension in your messaging? And how are you balancing that tension with hope to prime your audience?

Here’s my go at it:

It’s overwhelming to stay up-to-date on the marketing industry. There are always new ad features, evolving social media trends, algorithm updates, and new tools.

That’s the tension. Then a dash of ✨hope.✨

I spend hours identifying each week’s most important marketing news, so you don’t have to. Just read my skimmable (even enjoyable?) weekly email to stay on-top-of all the updates.

To tension!
Hayley

PS
This really shouldn’t be a PS. But I’m giving away a thousand dollar gift card to whoever sends me the most helpful tip for fellow marketers. And you won’t be competing with 100s of other entries. About 20 people will submit. Those are good odds.

It could be a productivity tool you love, a site you visit all the time because it’s so useful, a framework that helps you write landing page copy. Anything like that. Just hit reply and share.

​TIKTOK’S DEVELOPING AD TARGETING TECH THAT PROTECTS PEOPLE’S PRIVACY​

Their tech, PrivacyGo, uses “multi-party computation” (MPC). The idea is that it uses more than one list of data, compares the lists to find common pieces of data, and then doesn’t reveal the original sources when delivering the common ground it found in the lists.

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​TIKTOK ASKS USERS TO TAG AI-GENERATED CONTENT​

In the video upload settings, there is now the option to tag a video as AI-generated. TikTok told it’s users that AI-generated content that “shows realistic scenes” must be tagged as such, or moderators can take it down.
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​GOOGLE ADS GOT A BUNCH OF NEW FEATURES FOR HOLIDAY SEASON​

Here are some of the new features that I thought were exciting: the ability to create 3D product images through Google, decreasing onboarding time for local inventory ads, and a cool new suite of AI tools to edit your product images.

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​INTRIGUING CONTEXT TO GOOGLE CHANGING IN-STREAM ADS TO SKIPPABLE ADS​

A few months ago an ad intelligence provider found that Google’s in-stream ads weren’t meeting the ad’s placement standards. The provider suggested the ads were often auto-playing and muted. Google said that wasn’t true, and then changed the name of the ads from in-stream to skippable.

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​HOW-TO AND FAQ RICH RESULTS WILL BE DOWNGRADED​

Rich results allow extra content from your site to appear right on the Google’s search results page. FAQ rich results are largely going away and how-to rich results will only appear on desktop.

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​GOOGLE MADE UPDATES TO THE PERFORMANCE MAX BEST PRACTICES GUIDE​

There were many of them. For instance, they added info on their beta feature to identify high-value customers. Plus, they share more insights on new reporting features and advise consolidating your campaign structure.

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​YOUTUBE SHORTS WILL MAKE LINKS UNCLICKABLE IN COMMENTS AND DESCRIPTIONS​

This goes into effect August 31 to keep people safe from getting spammed or attacked by malware in links, according to the Google peeps. YouTube says they’re creating a safer way for creators to link their Shorts viewers to other YouTube content.

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​INSTAGRAM CAROUSELS GET MUSIC AND NEW COLLAB AND ENGAGEMENT FEATURES​

Now you can add music to your image carousels, include up to three collaborators on posts, and use an Add Yours sticker to encourage user-generated content.

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​X INTRODUCES SENSITIVITY SETTINGS FOR ADVERTISERS​

This lets advertisers select the degree of questionable content they’ll allow next to ads from their campaign. They can choose between Conservative, Standard, and Relaxed options. For instance, choosing Conservative would avoid all se𝕏ual content whereas the Standard setting would only avoid explicit se𝕏ual conduct.

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OTHER UPDATES

​Amazon sets a second Prime sale for October, again​

​Lyft Media Launches In-App Advertising Across the Lyft App​

​“Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn’t like “old” content? That’s not a thing!” – Google​

​Instagram is testing a feature to allow others to add photos and videos to your post​

​Instagram tests showing a post’s comment and share counts in feed​

​New Threads updates include ability to share threads in Instagram DMs and alt-text for images​

​Microsoft’s Bing Chat is coming to third-party browsers, including on mobile devices​

​Google is testing scan-to-call QR codes​

​YouTube is launching a new analytics report to show your new and returning viewers by format type​

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Wow. Congrats on making it through that hefty list of updates. Like a beloved teacher, I will let the class out early today. (As in, I’m not including the other usual newsletter sections. Because that was one heck of a list of updates this week and neither of us has the attention for more stuff today.)

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This one 👇 gets to stay because it’s more fun than work for both of us.

🛋️ FEELING LAZY? LA-Z-BOY’S GIVING AWAY ‘THE DECLINER,’ A CHAIR WITH AI TO CANCEL YOUR PLANS​

🫠 AI LANGUAGE MODELS ARE RIFE WITH DIFFERENT POLITICAL BIASES​

🌮 TACO BELL WILL HELP PAY FOR YOUR TACO TUESDAY CELEBRATION — EVEN IF IT’S NOT AT TACO BELL​

🦾 HOW BUZZFEED IS USING AI TO BOOST ENGAGEMENT​

🛀 OVERSTOCK’S REBRAND AS BED BATH & BEYOND MAY GO DOWN AS THE BEST IN MARKETING HISTORY

Some of the links in my newsletters are affiliate links. So sometimes I get monies (aka dollary doos, aka sweet sweet dough) when you buy or sign up for some of the stuff I mention—at no extra cost to you.