Google Must Change European Search Results; Ikea Turns Skyrim Into a Branded Mod

The useful part

Take, for example, the Accelerated Mobile Pages program, AMP for short, which strong-armed publishers into an experience that people largely hated. (AMP has since faded into irrelevancy.) Meanwhile, these days, " enshittification " might as well be a proper noun for Google Search. So, when Google says there's a "reduction in quality of service," it really just means Google earns less on average per query.

How it works

• Skyrim Is For The Nords Ads Brands are still trying to figure out how to advertise in video games without seeming out of place.
• For example, brands partner with creators precisely because they trust them to know how to talk to their own audiences.
• Will TikTok and Instagram follow YouTube's lead as a way to skirt government-imposed social media restrictions?
• [ WaPo ] Newton Research hires former LiveRamp exec Christine Grammier as chief customer officer.
• Roku's streaming-TV data into its homegrown intelligence platform to help advertisers act on viewing signals while campaigns are still in flight.

What to take from it

Now, a new downloadable game modification sponsored by Ikea lets you recruit a sentient version of the company's ubiquitous Kallax storage shelf. [ The Cut ] Elon Musk's America PAC is focusing its $100 million midterm spending blitz on anti-trans political ads, because of course it is. The problem is that social media has become "unfathomably segmented" to the point that even influencers with millions of followers aren't necessarily household names, as marketer Ben Goren writes on his Substack in a piece about Callaway's disastrous ad.

Example or evidence

• [ The Rebooting ] Leading AI scientists believe that the tools they're building could kill humanity.
• Publishers Chrome Has A New Way To Measure Ad Overload On The Web Chrome is introducing new metrics that give advertisers and publishers a more data-driven picture of what users actually experience on...
• Maybe the best bet is to lean into the incongruity of marketing to gamers while they slay dragons and devour souls.
• At least, that appears to be the idea behind Ikea's new integration with "The Elder Scrolls V:

Details worth keeping

say, Expedia or Booking.com for a hotel or flight query. before the sponsored placements that would normally top a page. Google tells Reuters that the changes "mark the largest reduction in quality of service at the world's most popular internet search engine in its 29-year search history.", however, that Google's barometer for "quality" is generally whether or not a feature is profitable to, well, Google.

Related coverage

• Gamespot: I am not enthusiastic about what feels like an inevitable future wherein games and gaming subscription services are inundated with advertisements.
• Hotair: Is Google Gemini Racist, Anti-Racist or Just Dumb?
• Adexchanger: Ad-cluttered websites are bad for users.