👋 Hello! Welcome to the 7 new subs this week, pleasure having you here.👋

Whilst most of adland pretends to attend a conference in sunny Cairns, the rest of us are dealing with SAD watching SMI data trend negative quicker than the NSW’s chances in game 1.

👀Things you may have missed👀

• Well, this is depressing. SMI numbers paint a bleak picture 🥲

• This doomed feature from Microsoft is being rolled back 😅

• Paypal follows Revolut & more in advertising  💸

• X allows p*rn now, so that’s great 🫠

🤯The BIG stories🤯

Not content with you doomscrolling for 4 hours a day, the lovely folk at Instagram has decided that YOU deserve an ad-break. That’s right, an UNSKIPPABLE 15s ad, just what our overworked minds require, an ad from Temu to stop us from scrolling.

It’s an interesting take on how to solve Instagram addiction. Hey, you’re using our platform too much! To stop, here’s an ad, that’ll surely make you exit the app. Advertisers must be rubbing their greasy little mitts together, just think of the CPCV!!

It has not been a good couple of weeks for Google, bless them. They still can’t get used to that bloody pesky AI thingy majig! Just like millennials trying to adapt ‘no cap’ or ‘rizz’, Google is struggling to make AI work. Most recently, their AI driven Search results (AI Overviews) are telling customers to add Glue when making pizza.

Google’s response? YOU pressed generate, this is on you. And like any good mega-corp, they’re working on themselves. PLUS, they’re launching EVEN MORE AI driven ad tools. Gosh! You are too good to us.

🧪MarSci Corner🧪

Despite the accuracy of OOH measurement (in Australia) being comparable to determining if someone is a witch based on whether they weigh the same as a duck, incorporating granularity such as postcode into MMM can reveal a true result.

If you get the reference, we can be friends.Some excellent research in the UK by Nielsen and JCDecaux included location data in MMM to more accurately represent OOH ad exposure, rather than treating it as a national medium. The result? They found an impressive ROI increase of approximately 42%. Wanna prove this in Aus? Click here #shill

🤓Technology & Tracking🤓

Guess who’s back! Yeah, it’s another Google story. This time they fumbled the bag with 2,500 internal documents leaking in to the wild. This has sent SEO Ninjas & ‘Digital Marketing experts’ into overdrive…Here are the key takeaways:

1. Click Data Usage: Google uses click data in its ranking algorithms through systems like NavBoost, despite previous denials

2. Chrome Data: Data from Google’s Chrome browser is used in search rankings, which Google had publicly denied

3. Site Authority: Google uses a “siteAuthority” metric to evaluate the overall quality of a website, impacting its ranking

4. Content Freshness and Quality: Fresh content and originality are prioritized, with specific attention to “Your Money Your Life” content like health and news

5. Brand Importance: A strong, recognizable brand is crucial for improving organic search rankings

6. Penalties and Demotions: Various factors such as irrelevant anchor text and user dissatisfaction on SERPs can lead to content demotions

What does it matter to us mere n00bs not in SEO, well, it’s pretty much the opposite of what Google has always preached in public statements and internal practice. So, yeah not great.

📱Best of the Net📱

• Anybody else singing this nonstop😣

• Expenses & petty cash times❤️

• This French protest👌