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The Top Three 🏆

The industry’s most important stories today.

🥇 INSTAGRAM TAKES OVER META’S AD REVENUE

Instagram this year, for the first time ever, will make up more than half of Meta’s U.S. ad revenue. eMarketer forecasts the app will haul in more than $32 billion in U.S. ad revenue next year, a 25% boost from 2024.

And a looming TikTok ban could supercharge this growth, with analysts expecting Instagram to snag more than 20% of TikTok’s $12.34 billion ad spend. more

• Reels are leading the charge, steadily eating into Feed and Stories ad revenue.

• A driver of Instagram’s success lies in its ability to out-earn other platforms on a per-user basis—Instagram now brings in $223 per U.S. user, outpacing Facebook’s $191 and TikTok’s $109.

🥈 BREAKING: AMAZON WORKERS STRIKE

Amazon workers at seven U.S. facilities walked off the job today during the peak holiday shopping rush, protesting what they say is the company’s unfair treatment of employees.

Warehouse workers in New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco joined what Teamsters officials are calling Amazon's largest-ever strike, though it’s unlikely to significantly disrupt the company’s vast shipping operations. more

• Striking workers told media they want Amazon to come to the bargaining table and acknowledge the health toll of meeting demands.

• Still, this strike affects only a sliver of Amazon’s 800,000 U.S. employees across its network of fulfillment centers and delivery stations.

🥉 WHY GOOGLE DELETES YOUR BRAND’S REVIEWS

Ever wondered why your brand’s reviews are disappearing? A new study sheds light on how and why Google removes reviews from Google Business Profiles. more

Key findings include:

• Inauthentic Activity: Reviews flagged as fake or promotional, especially in 5-star ratings, appear more likely to be removed.

• Keyword-Based Detection: Repetitive or generic terms may trigger deletions.

• Content and Tone: Extreme ratings (very positive or negative) may face closer scrutiny.

Today’s Other News ☑︎

Everything else that matters.

Agencies 💼

• The proposed Omnicom-IPG deal is now caught up in American politics. Republican lawmaker Jim Jordan is investigating the deal over their ties to two organizations he views as anti-conservative: the World Federation of Advertisers and the now-defunct Global Alliance for Responsible Media. more

Advertising 📣

• Samsung Ads' 2025 predictions highlight key CTV trends shaping the advertising landscape in the coming year. more

  • Performance CTV will prove itself as a conversion platform

  • Interactive Ads will become essential across TV and mobile

  • Opportunities for small brands will increase

• Uber's ad business will scale up next year by focusing on expanding markets, ramping up programmatic ads, and adding new formats. more

  • Going strong: With a $1 billion annual revenue run rate, Uber's two-year-old ad business has already doubled its 2022 revenue.

Google Updates 🔍

• Reports are surfacing of broken Google Business Profile listings in Google Maps, with issues like missing business names, flickering maps, and incomplete contact info. Some listings only show photos and reviews. more

  • 🙃 It’s unclear what’s causing this or whether Google is aware and addressing the issue.

• The December 2024 search core update completed its rollout yesterday, wrapping up in just over six days after starting on December 12. This was the fourth core algorithm update of the year. more

  • 😞 Google no longer tells marketers what’s in the update, other than a generic statement about improving results.

• Following the core update, Google dropped a new search December 2024 spam update today, marking the 7th Google search algorithm update of 2024. It’s global, covers all languages, and may take up to a week to fully roll out. more

  • 🎯 It's not clear what type of spam this targets, but if you see ranking changes in the coming week, this could be the culprit.

• Merchant Center now lets sellers specify which payment methods and options they accept. more

• Google’s John Mueller says “It makes no sense” to block privacy, disclaimers, or other types of pages from your site, as they don't cause duplicate content issues. He reassured a Reddit user concerned about de-indexing these pages for Google AdSense approval, noting its not a major concern. more

Social Media 📱

• Are hashtags still relevant? The general consensus is that they don’t significantly boost reach anymore. Adam Mosseri of Instagram says hashtags may connect your posts to specific communities, but their reach benefits are virtually nonexistent. more

  • 📉 A LinkedIn expert also found hashtags no longer boost post reach on that platform either.

• Meta has updated how affiliate links are displayed in Facebook posts, making them more prominent across Reels, videos, photos, and text posts. Previously, affiliate links were limited to be shown as URLs in captions. more

• LinkedIn is testing a new, larger video display in the main feed, similar to TikTok's FYP. Video posts will appear in bigger panels between regular updates, and tapping on any video takes you to a TikTok-style immersive video feed. more

  • ⌛️ Honestly, I'm surprised it took them this long to jump on this trend.

• LinkedIn has added new elements to Campaign Manager, including an updated “Companies” report, an updated data-driven attribution report, as well as a new “Measurement Insights” tab. more

• Instagram is planning to launch a generative AI editing tool next year that will let brands and creators change just about anything in their videos. The teaser video shows early models that can swap out backgrounds, outfits, and overall appearance… at one point Mosseri is turned into a felt puppet (no one is asking for this 😭). more

• Bluesky is about to get link click metrics. They’re apparently coming “in the very near term.” more

Commerce & AI 🤖 

• It’s beginning to look like a Temu Christmas: Almost half of Gen Z shoppers are buying holiday gifts from Chinese marketplaces, with Temu leading the pack for 25% of U.S. shoppers, followed by Shein, TikTok Shop, and AliExpress. more

• ChatGPT for boomers: You can now talk to the robot overlords by calling 1-800-ChatGPT in the U.S. or by sending a WhatsApp message to the same number. more

Marketing Tool of the Day 🔨

Cool tools we thought you should know about.

So for the last month, I’ve been using Fathom (https://fathom.video), which is one of those AI notetakers that joins meetings and then does a summary of the meeting.

They have a completely free version that does a remarkably good job, and the Premium version generated very comprehensive notes. You can sync to Hubspot or Salesforce, and provide an (optional) link for attendees to also see the notes.

Worth a look — and, per the note above, we don’t make any affiliate commissions from this recommendation.

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Spotted on Social 🔍

The social web’s best posts in the last 24 hours.