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- What I'm Reading, Saving, and Rethinking - July 25th, 2025
What I'm Reading, Saving, and Rethinking - July 25th, 2025
Practical marketing insights from the trenches: summarized, questioned, and ready for action.
Adam Lasky
July 25, 2025
Happy Friday! Every week, I save dozens of posts, articles, and newsletters that challenge my thinking. Here's what stood out this week and why I think it's worth your time too.
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🔥 This Week's Saves
TL;DR: We're facing a technological transition, not unlike the proliferation of books with the advent of movable type and the printing press. Whenever a technology transition occurs, most of us object in some form or fashion. "The multitude of books is a great evil," wrote Martin Luther in 1569. But, we adapted and developed new ways to filter out the slop. Things like publishing houses, critical reviews, and libraries. We educated the youth on how to distinguish valuable content from worthless. And we'll do it again with AI generated content.
My Thoughts: While I understand the "we'll figure out how to filter the slop" mentality, I think it's important to pay attention to the nuance of this new shift. Content has historically been a human creation. This is the first time we will deal with non-human content creation. And while humans are great at creating slop (see: any social media platform) it's always been human slop. How do we filter non-human slop created at an exponential rate?
One Quote to Chew On:
"Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new, and exciting, and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."
TL;DR: AI agents (like ChatGPT with browsing or shopping capabilities) are rapidly collapsing traditional layers in the tech stack by automating decision-making and actions on behalf of users. This disintermediation threatens aggregators, marketplaces, and brands by inserting AI as the new gatekeeper of consumer intent. The winners will be companies that either own unique supply (verticalized or exclusive inventory), build trust and brand loyalty directly with users, or integrate deeply with the AI agents themselves to remain relevant in the user journey.
My Thoughts: I'm reminded of something I wrote internally for TeePublic way back in 2020 when Google came out with "shopping actions" and Facebook came out with "shop"...
“We are at risk of being turned into an undifferentiated commodity: Google, Facebook, and Amazon are fighting a war over who owns our customers, offering users the ability to never leave their site in order to purchase our products. The issue is compounded by the fact that marketing has operated as a commodity on these platforms and reinforced this problem. Google shopping actions allow a user to search for and purchase a product without leaving Google. We cannot re-market to these users, since we are only a "fulfiller" (a nameless, faceless Google seller). We run the risk of being "Amazoned" i.e. when people ask where they got their t-shirt they respond “I got it on Google."
What got us out from underneath Google/Facebook was a heavy investment in brand, product, and the post-click experience that gave people a reason to remember us.
One Quote to Chew On:
"Sure, the marketplace will take the additional transaction revenue, but it will no longer use payback period math, but unit economic math for a single transaction as it can no longer feel confident it's acquiring the ability to do future outreach, create brand preference, and increase the chances of direct purchases in the future."
TL;DR: Google Ads now tracks "branded searches" i.e. how often people search for your brand on Google or YouTube after seeing your video, pMax, or Demand Gen ads. This helps measure upper-funnel brand impact even if users don’t convert right away. The data shows up in reporting (not bidding) and is automatically available once brand mapping is enabled by your Google rep. It's a valuable signal of growing brand interest and early traction even before conversions show up, helping justify continued investment in awareness campaigns.
My Thoughts: There's always been a tension between brand and performance marketing. Top of funnel or brand campaigns are expected to behave like bottom of funnel demand capture campaigns. Marketers need to justify top of funnel spend even though its ROAS drags the account's ROAS down. Attributed brand searches are Google's attempt to migrate from a bottom of funnel conversion machine to a full funnel ad platform by offering concrete evidence that top of funnel ads are building brand awareness and recall.
One Quote to Chew On:
"Branded searches track the number of searches users make within 7 days of seeing eligible ads. Branded searches use last click, view-through conversion attribution, meaning that the last ad the user viewed will receive credit for the conversion."
This newsletter is for you. What marketing challenges are you facing in your marketing journey? Reply directly to this email with your questions or topics you'd like to see covered in future issues.
Until next week,
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