It feels good to be back on a regular writing schedule!

For new subscribers, every Friday, I share other great content (with some added context) to dive into over the weekend.

Without further ado…

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Creator Hierarchy of Needs

Have you ever considered being a “creator”? This post dives into how to move up the Creator Hierarchy of Needs as you go from building an audience to monetizing it.

I think everyone should take spend time creating something that is unique to them in public. Trust me, it’s not as scary as you think!

Learn how to move up the hierarchy here.

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DALL·E: Creating Images from Text

AI is taking over the world and the latest project of OpenAI is fascinating. Imagine being able to use AI to create specific images from text captions. Not find images like on Google search, but to literally create original images based your phrases using the new wunderkid on the AI block, GPT-3.

For example, researchers entered the text prompt:

the exact same cat on the top as a sketch on the bottom

The neural network created the following image:

Mind-blowing, right!?

See all of the cool things DALL-E can do here.

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Uber was swindled out of $100m in ad spend and no one is talking about it

Here’s a great Twitter thread that tells an amazing story of how Uber found out it was wasting a $100M on ad spend.

The online ad industry is multi-billion business. But is it worth it? Others are figuring out more and more that digital ads might not be yielding the returns they once were.

From the Hustle –

Up to 99% of programmatic ad spend is being wasted…… says digital marketer and independent fraud researcher, Dr. Augustine Fou.

Click farms generate billions of clicks per minute, and most marketing teams are slow to question what looks like excellent data. When they do, they’re often surprised by the findings:

• P&G cut $200m in digital ad spend and increased its reach
• Chasedropped 99% (395k websites) from its display ad network and saw no business change
• Ebaykilled paid search after finding that most of its spend went to existing users

Spotted via The Hustle.

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Leave today better than yesterday ✌️.

P.S.

I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with my niece over the holiday break watching way too many kid songs on YouTube. The worst of them is Baby Shark.

The best of them is the ABC’s sung by Usher with the help of the Sesame Street team.

This ranks right up there with DMX’s remix of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on my list of unexpectedly great kids songs.