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Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ MarketingShot.
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In today's MarketingShot:
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🤝 X just settled its war with advertisers 📱 Meta's AI is making Instagram harder to quit 💸 Squarespace just raised your bill up to 26% 🔒 FTC sues Hims & Hers over shared ad data 📉 Why Microsoft search ad growth is slowing Plus: 💡 6 strategies & tactics, 🎁 5 other news & articles you might like, and 🧰 6 trending marketing tools.
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🤝 X just settled its war with advertisers
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- X has ended its long-running legal fight with the World Federation of Advertisers, closing Elon Musk's push to hold brands legally responsible for cutting ad spending over concerns about content moderation on the platform.
- X sued the WFA in 2024, claiming a "systematic illegal boycott" after ad revenue fell following Musk's $44 billion takeover, naming companies like Mars, CVS Health, Shell, and Lego among those it accused.
- A federal court dismissed the suit in March, finding X showed no harm under competition laws, and the WFA confirmed it discontinued its Global Alliance for Responsible Media on August 9, 2024, and will not restart it.
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📱 Meta's AI is making Instagram harder to quit
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- Meta says its new AI recommendation systems are keeping people on Instagram longer, with time spent on the app growing by double digits compared with a year earlier.
- Every public Reel and Feed post on Instagram now runs through a large language model that reads its topic and tone, then pairs that with each user's viewing history to predict what they will watch next.
- Meta's largest single Reels ranking update so far drove a 15 basis point rise in sessions, with the biggest gains in reshares and time spent, and the company is now applying the same approach to the main Feed.
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💸 Squarespace just raised your bill up to 26%
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- Squarespace has raised subscription prices by as much as 26 percent, with Core plans moving from about $23 to $29 per month billed annually and Basic plans climbing 19 percent, from $16 to $19 monthly.
- The company added AI features and other tools once locked behind higher tiers or third-party add-ons to every plan, and many customers complained they now pay for AI generators and analytics suites they never asked for or use.
- Squarespace sent the changes through quiet automated emails with no formal announcement, later admitting a "pricing implementation error" gave some accounts inflated quotes, though the company says nobody paid the higher amount.
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🔒 FTC sues Hims & Hers over shared ad data
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- The Federal Trade Commission has sued Hims & Hers, claiming the telehealth company shared customers' medical and healthcare information with advertisers and tech giants like Meta and Snap while misleading people about its privacy practices.
- The complaint says Hims & Hers placed pixel-sized trackers from Meta, Snap, Microsoft, Pinterest, Reddit and X that captured and shared users' health information, going against the company's own privacy policy.
- The FTC also accused Hims & Hers of deceptive billing and making it hard to cancel, and the agency has taken similar action against Cerebral, Monument, GoodRx and BetterHelp for sharing patient data.
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📉 Why Microsoft search ad growth is slowing
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- Microsoft's search advertising revenue growth slowed to 10% year over year in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, or 9% in constant currency, down from 12% ex-TAC growth in the prior quarter.
- CFO Amy Hood said growth came from higher revenue per search and more volume across Edge and Bing, though third-party partnerships dragged on the total, reversing the boost those same deals gave over the full year.
- Full-year search advertising revenue reached $15.176 billion in fiscal 2026, up from $13.878 billion the year before, though the quarterly rate sits well below the 21% ex-TAC peak Microsoft posted throughout fiscal 2025.
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Strategies & Tactics
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> How to Grow on Instagram Without Reels: Grow on Instagram with educational carousels instead of Reels, since swiping and re-reading signals the algorithm to boost reach while sparing you from filming.
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Other
news & articles you might like
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AI Mode cuts Google Shopping listings 95%, Productrise finds
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Reddit’s Self-Serve Ad Tools Open New Front in Battle for Smaller Advertisers
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TikTok Gives Creators More Control Over Keyword Metadata: What It Means for Social Search
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OpenAI builds ads sales org while merchant feed role stays unfilled
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Spotify adds a ‘Campaign Lift’ metric for its Discovery Mode
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Trending Marketing Tools
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Honestly: collects and verifies authentic customer conversations from TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit and X into actionable insights, helping you spot market trends early.
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ClawTeams: lets teams upload raw data and get automated analysis, visualizations, and actionable reports without writing SQL or code.
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Fedica 2.0: a social media suite that schedules posts across 12+ networks, tracks audience engagement, and analyzes followers and competitors from one dashboard.
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AutoEdit: automates rough cuts in Premiere Pro by cutting silences, filler words, and bad takes while generating captions automatically.
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Mark by Airtop: an AI agent builder that logs into websites, extracts data, and completes tasks using plain English instructions instead of code.
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Awesome Marketing: A curated list of awesome marketing tools and resources
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Our AI Academy has 330+ step-by-step tutorials on ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and every tool that matters. No fluff — just practical workflows you can use at work. Try it free for 7 days.
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