“A Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being.”

Seeing that Harry and Ron looked thoroughly confused, Hermione hurried on, “Look, if I picked up a sword right now, Ron, and ran you through with it, I wouldn’t damage your soul at all.”

“Which would be a real comfort to me, I’m sure,” said Ron.

Harry laughed.

“It should be, actually!”

I’ve always been intrigued by this dialogue about what *can’t* damage a soul. I believe in souls, in something that defines us apart from our physical body.

And it’s powerful to consider that part of my identity that may be wholly unaffected by physical danger may be unalterably affected by so many other factors.

And that is the deep, unrelated-to-marketing thought that I’m choosing to lead with today. Sorry but there was no one here to stop me.

Take care of your soul! And your marketing know-how too, I guess.
Hayley

​
PS

Everyone be impressed and a bit jealous of Spencer Schwartz. He’s getting a fat $1000 gift card for winning our marketing gems challenge. You guys voted his home-cooked explore report the best gem.

I only shared the top six resources last week. But there were many more very useful tools shared, and you can find them here.

​YOUTUBE WILL NOW CHOOSE WHICH AD TYPES TO RUN, INSTEAD OF CREATORS​

So far, video creators have had a say on the ad types that run with their content. They could choose from ad-type options like pre- and post-roll and skippable or non-skippable. But now when creators choose to run ads on long-form content, YouTube will use automation to choose which ad type. This doesn’t apply to mid-roll ads though.

​NEW PMAX FEATURE LETS YOU SPECIFY WHICH URL TO SHOW YOUR ADS TO​

This URL Contains targeting option has been available in Dynamic Search Ads, and it’s now available in Performance Max campaigns.

​INSTAGRAM TESTS SHARING FEED POSTS TO CLOSE FRIENDS ONLY​

For a while now, Instagram has given us the option to share our Stories to a select group of ‘close friends.’ Now, they’re testing the option to share feed posts to this same cozy group of besties.

​GOOGLE TEXT ADS MUST SHOW LOGO AND BUSINESS NAME ON LANDING PAGE​

Google lets you upload Business Information to enhance your desktop and mobile text ads. Mostly, this allows your business name and logo to appear next to your ad for brand recognition. They’re clarifying that “the advertiser’s business name and logo should be clearly present on the landing page of their ad.”​
​

OTHER UPDATES

​YouTube testing longer but fewer ads in its Connected TV app​

​Meta published its Holiday Guide for this year​

​TikTok testing a new Shop tab​

​Audience targeting is now available in Microsoft Advertising Editor ​

​Miscellaneous Google tests, like a wider search bar

​Oasis​

I’m going to attempt to explain how cool this app has been to use.

You know when you have a bunch of unorganized thoughts and ideas? And they hold something important in them, but you can’t easily recognize what? To work through that I normally type out all those thoughts. Then, I sift through what I wrote to find patterns and identify what the important info is.

But that process always takes a long time. And more importantly, I would do a lot of subconscious censoring of my thoughts when typing them out.

But this tool lets me ramble freely and record myself while I do that. And then after I record, I have the audio saved, a direct transcript saved, and any other formatting I chose saved as well.

Check out the cool formats it offers:

• To-do list
• Blog post
• LinkedIn post
• Teach me
• Explain like I’m five
• Song
• Twitter thread
• TikTok script

I’ve been using the Teach Me format the most. And it’s been ✨magic.✨ It sounds like myself and the ideas feel true to what I was trying to get across. But they’re organized and cleaned up for me.

​HOW TO MAKE CHANGES TO YOUR COMPANY’S WIKIPEDIA PAGE ​

Iykyk. This is a pretty fire walk-through, with a lot of detail.

​THE COMEDY OF ERRORS​

This is a rather delightful example of making boring, technical content digestible and engaging. It’s also useful if you want to understand Search Console error messages.

🥸 I’M A FAKE BRAND, IN A FAKE WORLD: THE SECRETS BEHIND DESIGNING A GREAT FICTIONAL BRAND FOR TV AND FILM​

🪦 THE END OF THE GOOGLEVERSE​

📢 PINTEREST IS INTRODUCING A NEW BODY TYPE TECHNOLOGY TO ITS SUITE OF INCLUSIVE AI INNOVATIONS

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.