Selfstorming Blog
Insights on advertising, creativity, marketing science and AI in Marketing.
Consumers Started Paying for AI. Here Is What That Changes for Marketers
Menlo Ventures' 2026 consumer AI report: paying flipped from 3% to 55% of users in a year, the top 14% of spenders carry 60% of a $40B market, and AI-labelled content takes a 2:1 engagement penalty. What to do about each.
Your AI campaign looks like a campaign. That is the problem.
Jack Conte's SXSW 2026 talk gives slop a definition that is 130 years old, counts the jobs every new medium cost, and asks the question AI-curious marketers keep skipping: what can this medium do that a camera cannot?
OpenAI enters its ad era, and what it means for brand discovery
A strategic breakdown of OpenAI's sponsored agents, Meta One, and ElevenLabs' new creative integrations. What these updates actually mean for your brand's media mix and production budget.
The 80/20 of Surprise: Why Google Glass Failed and Aldi's Champagne Works
Surprise has a dosage. System1 data puts the sweet spot at roughly 80% happiness to 20% surprise, MAYA explains Google Glass vs Ray-Ban Meta, and Aldi shows what surprise looks like as a planned strategic discipline.
Meta's Muse, licensed remixes, and the week brand control went soft
Meta Muse, UMG's licensed AI remixes, and ChatGPT learning your tone. What happens to brand equity when the audience gets the same tools as the agency.
Marketing Wisdom: an evidence library that answers back
Marketing Wisdom is live: 800+ sourced findings - stats, laws, principles, quotes and trends - from Sharp, Ritson, Binet, Kantar, System1 and more. Ask Wisdom a question, get an answer with linked sources, export any finding to PowerPoint.
Creative Graduation: How Eucalyptus Turns a Meta Ad Into a TV Campaign
Test hundreds of angles on Meta, graduate the winner to YouTube, then commit the TV budget. Eucalyptus, HexClad and a $2,000 billboard show how the brand vs performance war ends: with one loop, running in both directions.
GPT-6 Astra and $1B ChatGPT Ads: The Week AI Claimed AGI and Sent the Invoice
A sober, strategy-first breakdown of this week's AI updates from OpenAI, Google, Runway, and Instagram. What AGI claims and conversational ad inventory mean for your media budget.
Agentic Browsing and 4K Video Drafts: The Week AI Took Over the Admin
A strategy-first breakdown of this week's AI updates from Midjourney, Meta, Google, and Anthropic, analyzed through a brand equity and creative production lens.
Brand Mentions Beat Backlinks in AI Search. Links Came Seventh.
Branded web mentions correlate 0.664 with AI Overview visibility. Backlinks: 0.218. Here are the five factors Ahrefs found, the robots.txt check that makes them moot, and why there is no single AI search strategy.
ChatGPT Ads in Europe, and What Claude's Drive Access Means for Your Briefs
A sober, strategy-first breakdown of this week's AI updates from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. What conversational ad inventory and automated file access mean for your brand.
Google's Ad Agents and Runway's Figma Link: The AI Shift in Ad Workflows
A strategy-first breakdown of this week's AI updates from Google, Runway, and OpenAI. What automated reporting and connected canvases actually mean for your media budget.
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