Okay, we need to know: are you someone who works alongside music, silence, or something else? We’re pro-music or ambient sounds, but we’re always looking to try out something new.

🧠 Stat Of The Day 🧠

YouTube was the most-watched streaming option over the past 12 months, accounting for 8.6% of streaming usage in the U.S. in January. (Source: Nielsen)

🤖 Feeling behind the AI curve?

Wanna know how top Growth teams use AI? Like, today? Join the CEOs of two leading AI-powered companies live on Feb 22 (THIS THURSDAY) for a walk-through exploring the state of AI in creative and analytics. Sign up here:

⚡️Today’s Headlines⚡️

💰 Instagram is testing a new Stories sticker to receive product orders

💬 Adobe is adding generative AI to chat with Acrobat PDF software

📷 Canva is getting a new photo editor in March

 🎵 Apple Music is taking on Spotify with a monthly version of Replay

🖌️ Meta’s AI ad optimization will now generate image backgrounds

*Want to get in front of our audience of 100k Founders/Marketers? Start here…

🛠️ Things Worth Checking Out 🛠️

🧠 DTC CHANGES - Our friends over at DTC Daily just launched a high-value ebook to help DTC brands understand the crazy shifts happening in DTC marketing this year! It's 100% free so if you are in DTC, I highly recommend you grab your copy ASAP here.

🪲 GOOGLE ANALYTICS - A new bug in Google Analytics 4 is causing data before September 6 to be missing in User Acquisition and Traffic Acquisition reports. Don’t worry, the data’s not actually lost though.

🏷️ AI IMAGES - Are you making AI-generated images for your Google Merchant Center? They’re now requiring the preservation of metadata tags that show the image is created with AI. Don’t remove the tags!

✨ Today’s Insight ✨

Take TikTok’s creative strategy tips

📰 TL;DR - TikTok released a new 34-page guide on platform marketing strategy for creative success, including three key concepts: ideation, production, and optimization.

💡 Insight - Ideation starts with finding inspiration, brainstorming video ideas, and structuring content to capture attention. TikTok suggests to first identify and define your target audience – essentially, know who you want to reach to better understand what kind of content they want to see.

TikTok is all about the trends and authenticity. While you should make note of relevant trends to jump on, make sure you’re clear on your business’ unique personality. What makes your brand uniquely you?

Moving onto production, the first 3-6 seconds of your video are critical. Make sure to jump right into a compelling hook or risk getting scrolled past. Some ideas for a buzzy hook: highlight the popularity of your product, provide tips or hacks for a problem, call out the target audience, and highlight price and/or promotional info.

For optimization, lean into TikTok’s built-in tools to automate creative and expand your content into ad buys. Using their AI-powered Smart Creative automation tool you can increase the number of assets created and refresh assets that have shown early signs of creative fatigue.

*Want to get in front of 100,000+ Founders & Marketers? Click here…