💾 An 800-lb. Gorilla Wearing a Monocle

What Does an 800-lb Gorilla Do? Anything it Wants!

A lot of detailed testimony from the DOJ’s antitrust suit against Google is making its way into the public domain. Earlier this week, the folks at Search Engine Land shared 20 slides from the deck the DOJ used during its closing argument.

Anyone with a Google ads budget owes it to themselves to take a closer look at what’s been going down. 

What is striking about the closing arguments is that the DOJ’s final push is (for better or worse) just a lengthy attempt to use Google’s own words against it.

Is Google the only real option? The only game in town? Yes! That checks the 800-lb. Gorilla box.

Did Google establish a monopoly and use it to raise prices to increase their revenue? To paraphrase several Google executives, “Yeah, so what?”

Give that tech giant a monocle and tophat!

The overall impression that one gets from reading the transcripts is that of Google standing on a playground, holding the DOJ back with one hand as it struggles to get its ball back. But even if the antitrust suit should somehow result in an outcome that is less than favorable for Google, they’re probably not too worried. They’re too busy laying the foundations of their next playground conquest - The sandbox!

The secret to growing on LinkedIn in 2024

There's a rising demand for high-quality video content on LinkedIn, creating a major growth opportunity.

How can you capitalize? Just grab your existing videos, and use OpusClip to turn them into clips and schedule them to post on LI.

Read our full breakdown for free here

🚀 Why Should Brands Turn To Web3 Social Media?

The resurgence of web3 social media platforms has led to businesses and companies using them to engage with customers. Decentralized social media enhances a brand’s digital presence and provides enormous potential for long-term growth.

Web3 social media holds the promise of forging direct and authentic relations between companies, customers, and influencers. Although it’s still very early for decentralized social media, they’re slowly entering the market and amplifying their digital footprint.

📐 The problem with B2B marketing: Misaligned measurement is stifling innovation

It’s a tired cliche that B2B marketing is the “boring” sibling to B2C, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. When it comes to the creativity of our advertising and its effectiveness, there are more systemic issues at play.

Also, while B2B deals with leadership mindsets that make creativity difficult, that is only part of the problem. Most of the problem is that marketing success is measured by outcomes that have nothing to do with how advertising works.

🎬 Meta’s NewFronts Push Was All About Three Things: Reels, AI And Creators

Meta has three intertwined obsessions right now: short-form video, the creator economy and artificial intelligence. But video monetizes at a lower rate than other, more established surfaces, like the feed, where there’s way more ad inventory.

To be fair, there has been some improvement on the monetization front. But there’s clearly still more runway for growth, which is why Meta is exceedingly keen to make it easier for advertisers to create Reels ads, boost ad performance and partner with creators on its platform.

Study: In Podcast Advertising, Positivity Drives Effectiveness.

Having conducted more than 1,300 podcast brand effect studies since 2017, Nielsen has just released several key findings. 

One study, comparing participants exposed to podcast ads to those unexposed, shows that podcasts significantly lift brand awareness, likelihood to seek information, purchase intent, and recommendation. 

Alcoholic beverages, personal care, and automotive are among the brand categories showing the biggest lifts in both awareness and purchase intent, while tech brands also score higher in the former metric, and travel in the latter.

“Building brands is on the minds of B2B and performance advertisers, two groups of marketers who typically obsess only over the lower funnel,” Cumulus Media/Westwood One Audio Active Group Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard says. “A sure sign of brand marketers leaning into podcasts is the increase in brand lift studies conducted by Nielsen.”

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