The hottest Advertising Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics

Disking Banana

Computer Ads from the Past • 1024 implied HN points • 01 Aug 25
🕹 Technology Advertising
  1. In the 1980s, a guy named Roger Smith started selling floppy disks after running out for his business. He wanted to make it easy for people to buy more disks.
  2. He creatively named his floppy disks 'Banana' and promoted them with fun banana-themed items. This catchy name really helped attract attention.
  3. Disking still exists today as a local computer parts and repair shop in the UK, showing how some business ideas can stick around for a long time.

Storytelling is the new clickbait, can B2B capitalise?

Mehdeeka • 5 implied HN points • 03 Mar 26
💼 Business Advertising
  1. New short, personal story formats grab attention by using first-person hooks, cliffhangers, and subtle or late product mentions to drive clicks.
  2. B2B can use storytelling, but only if your customers are actually on those platforms; focus on building an owned, engaged audience and a distinctive brand using platform-native formats.
  3. Don’t chase every trend — audit channels, compare time and budget to results, cut underperformers, and reallocate resources to focused experiments or to hiring/outsourcing so you can do fewer channels well.

This Week in Marketing: Social Media Addiction vs. Human-Free Social Media and AI Layoffs

The Social Juice • 63 implied HN points • 01 Feb 26
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Social platforms are in flux as users, creators and advertisers react to trust, moderation and product changes — some people are ditching apps like TikTok while new, AI‑only social networks and 'desocialized' feeds emerge.
  2. AI is reshaping media and jobs: companies are pouring money into agentic tools and ad tech even as some firms cut roles and many new AI startups and features debut, with uneven product success.
  3. Safety, legal and privacy pressures are rising as regulators, courts and publishers push back — youth addiction trials, encryption and data investigations, deepfakes and mass breaches are driving demands for controls and opt‑outs.

Which brands are sponsoring newsletters?

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 199 implied HN points • 08 Dec 25
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Many brands are starting to sponsor newsletters, showing they see value in this advertising method.
  2. Tracking newsletter sponsorships can help publishers understand which brands are actively spending money on ads.
  3. It's helpful for anyone looking to sell sponsorships to know which brands have already advertised in other newsletters.

The European Commission slaps Elon Musk's X with a €120 million fine – the first ever under the Digital Services Act

eugyppius: a plague chronicle • 221 implied HN points • 09 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Advertising
  1. The European Commission fined X €120 million under the Digital Services Act for deceptive blue-check design, insufficient advertising transparency, and denying researchers access to public data.
  2. U.S. politicians and X's leadership publicly condemned the fine as regulatory overreach and an attack on American tech, prompting strong political backlash.
  3. X may challenge the decision in court, and critics say strict DSA enforcement could hurt innovation, make Europe less competitive, and complicate online speech and business for platforms.
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I'm looking for newsletters that monetize with ads

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 199 implied HN points • 03 Dec 25
💼 Business Advertising
  1. There is a new index for newsletters that want to find brands willing to advertise. It helps connect brands to various newsletters without taking a cut of the money.
  2. YouTube is becoming a popular choice for TV viewers, turning into a go-to place for casual watching. This is threatening traditional streaming services as people prefer YouTube for light viewing.
  3. NBC News is trying something new by offering a subscription that removes ads but doesn’t hide any content behind a paywall. This could change how media companies think about subscriptions.

Inside Big Cabal Media’s Ambitious Plan to Build Africa’s Next Great Media Company

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 224 implied HN points • 24 Nov 25
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Big Cabal Media started as two blogs and has grown into a big company with 100 employees across different countries. They now do events, research, and even movies.
  2. Tomiwa Aladekomo believes in diversifying revenue sources to help the company succeed in the changing media landscape.
  3. The company faces common challenges like social media traffic drops and AI trends, as well as unique issues specific to African media.

Why Most Online Advertising Benchmarks Are BS (And What To Do Instead)

Nail It and Scale It • 119 implied HN points • 22 Jul 24
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Many online advertising benchmarks are unreliable because they don't account for differences in pricing and offers. This means you might be comparing apples to oranges, leading to wrong conclusions.
  2. To get better benchmarks, focus on two key metrics: Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and Conversion Rate. These give you a clearer picture of how your ads are performing compared to others.
  3. Joining groups or talking to industry experts can help you find more accurate conversion rates for your products. Sharing data with peers is a good way to understand what's normal in your field.

A good analogy can sell boring

Creative Samba • 19 implied HN points • 04 Oct 24
💼 Business Advertising
  1. ETFs can be a smarter way to invest than buying individual stocks. They let you own a piece of many companies without the hassle of picking each one.
  2. ETFs are cheaper and accessible for everyday people, unlike traditional investing options that often favor big investors. This means anyone can get involved in the market.
  3. Using good analogies in marketing can make dull products exciting. For iShares, a clever ad strategy helped them reach a new audience when they were losing market share.

Brands are keeping celebrity culture alive, questioning role of politics, and the vibe shift

The Social Juice • 53 implied HN points • 31 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Advertising
  1. Celebrity culture is front and center — brands keep leaning on celebrities, creators, and star-powered stunts to grab attention across campaigns and big events.
  2. Brands are conflicted about politics and purpose. Some do real on-the-ground action, others post performatively, so know your customer and only speak up if your action will create real change.
  3. The vibe is shifting toward trend-chasing and AI 'slop' — lots of cheap engagement from memes and long Super Bowl teases, while the best work focuses on interactive OOH, clear storytelling, or meaningful use of AI.

We hate brands. We love marketing.

The Social Juice • 127 implied HN points • 27 Dec 25
🎭️ Culture Advertising
  1. People mostly passively scroll feeds and don’t come with intent, so every view forces creators and brands to re-earn permission through creative hooks and purposeful content, making social platforms exhausting but hard to leave.
  2. Old media is losing influence while creator-driven new media wins distribution but borrows traditional aesthetics to claim authority, which fuels layoffs, acquisitions, diluted standards, and more competition.
  3. Brands are widely mistrusted even as marketing becomes culturally loved; big agencies are consolidating and selling security with CRMs and AI, driving job churn, and brands often step into public roles without fixing the underlying problems.

Agentic e-commerce is a HUGE deal

Enterprise AI Trends • 189 implied HN points • 02 Dec 25
💼 Business Advertising
  1. AI shopping agents are driving a major shift in how people discover products and could become the dominant top-of-funnel for research-heavy purchases, with models like OpenAI’s positioned to aggregate many retailers’ catalogs.
  2. Agentic shopping will help most with high-price, research-intensive categories (electronics, furniture, hardlines) but won’t replace softlines or consumables, and it faces real conversion hurdles because users still compare prices, resist new merchant accounts, or prefer faster fulfillment.
  3. The market is splitting into an Amazon-controlled, closed experience and a Chatbot-led discovery layer, which benefits big platforms and OpenAI while threatening affiliate publishers and many startups, and forces retailers to partner or risk losing visibility.

The media industry is bigger than you think it is

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 224 implied HN points • 14 Nov 25
🎭️ Culture Advertising
  1. The media industry is growing, not dying. It's evolving with many new platforms and business models that combine media with other industries.
  2. Self-published authors are using TikTok Shop to sell their books, which can be great but comes with challenges in handling orders and fulfillment.
  3. Streaming services are raising prices significantly, but people continue to subscribe. Many are now canceling services after watching specific shows instead of keeping subscriptions active.

Notes not from Cannes

Thoughts on Writing • 179 implied HN points • 24 Jun 24
🎭️ Culture Advertising
  1. Purpose in marketing needs to be rigorously examined to ensure it genuinely makes a positive impact on society, beyond just emotional storytelling.
  2. Judges should be empowered to focus on creativity in awards, ensuring entries are judged based on creativity rather than personal criteria or biases.
  3. There is a concern that the focus on purpose and diversity in awards may be devaluing creativity and leading to work that is detached from what the public actually likes.

This Week in Marketing: TikTok changes policy, Meta pauses AI, and Elon opens X’s algorithm

The Social Juice • 56 implied HN points • 25 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Advertising
  1. AI features are exploding across platforms, with creators and companies adopting AI likenesses, tools, and agentic shopping. That growth is sparking safety, privacy, and regulatory concerns, especially around teens and deepfakes.
  2. TikTok’s U.S. joint venture and new tracking tools (precise location pixels and Shop logistics changes) are reshaping how user data and commerce are handled. Those moves are increasing privacy and age‑verification worries for regulators, advertisers, and parents.
  3. Major platforms are changing business models and opening up parts of their tech — for example X’s partial open‑source algorithm and new ad formats from Meta, YouTube, Apple and Google. This shift raises competition and transparency while putting pressure on creators and advertisers to adapt.

🔎 Alphabet: Cloud Rebounds

How They Make Money • 687 implied HN points • 02 Feb 24
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Alphabet reported strong financial performance with growth in Cloud, YouTube, and subscriptions
  2. Google Cloud showed significant growth and is ahead in the market competition
  3. Key insights from Alphabet's earnings call: AI advancements, Cloud growth, YouTube's revenue contribution

Vote for the August 2025 + Post Topic

Computer Ads from the Past • 512 implied HN points • 20 Aug 25
🕹 Technology Advertising
  1. It's time to vote on the topic for the next post. Everyone gets a say in what content should be covered.
  2. There are various historical computer ads up for discussion. These ads show how technology has changed over time.
  3. Free subscribers can try out the service for a week. This gives them a chance to see more content and consider a paid subscription.

The ads are coming

benn.substack • 920 implied HN points • 23 May 25
🕹 Technology Advertising
  1. Companies are great at tracking what we do online to learn what we like. They use that info to sell us things, often in sneaky ways.
  2. AI is getting better at understanding our conversations and wants. This could lead to new ways for companies to target us with ads while we interact with their services.
  3. As AI improves, we might willingly share more personal data because we value the services we get in return, making it easier for companies to sell us even better-targeted advertisements.

The Brand Savior Complex and the New Age of Self Censorship

The Social Juice • 31 implied HN points • 07 Feb 26
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Brands are trying to become media and 'save' communities by farming attention with events and content, but that’s a short-term patch that won’t build durable value and often replaces real public solutions.
  2. People are self-censoring and changing how they speak to avoid sounding like AI or performative, driven by algorithms and social policing, which undermines honest feedback and makes social listening less reliable.
  3. Real brand growth needs distribution, product experience, and meaningful actions rather than celebrity stunts, irony, or nostalgia — the flood of gambling ads shows how careless marketing can normalize harm.

Brand names are all nonsense now

Embedded • 1316 implied HN points • 31 May 23
🎭️ Culture Advertising
  1. Start-ups are using nonsensical words in brand names, creating gibberish.
  2. The tech industry is a major contributor to the trend of abandoning traditional words for syllables.
  3. This trend of nonsensical names extends beyond the online world to real-life aspects like advertising and social media.

Are Super Bowl Commercials Actually Worth The Price?

Huddle Up • 28 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
💼 Business Advertising
  1. A single Super Bowl spot can transform a brand overnight, driving massive sales and wide cultural attention even from just one airing.
  2. Ad rates and total campaign costs have exploded — a 30‑second spot costs millions and, with required network buys, production, talent, and digital amplification, top campaigns can reach $20–30M or more; because ad inventory is limited and demand is huge, networks earn hundreds of millions each year.
  3. Those price tags make Super Bowl ads practical mainly for very large marketers, and measuring success is complex, requiring companies to weigh immediate sales against brand lift, earned media, and long‑term ROI.

Notebook: Bad News Day

Book Post • 628 implied HN points • 28 Jan 24
📰 News Advertising
  1. Recent years have seen a significant decline in journalism, with many major news outlets facing layoffs and cutbacks.
  2. Local news has been especially hard-hit, with many newspapers closing down, leaving 'news deserts' in over 200 counties.
  3. The rise of artificial intelligence is also impacting journalism, with AI tools changing how news is consumed and altering the media landscape.

An inflection point for the Creator Economy

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 698 implied HN points • 11 Jun 25
💼 Business Advertising
  1. The Creator Economy is changing fast, with ads from creators expected to beat traditional media revenue soon. This means that creator-made content could start to look just like what we're used to from big media companies.
  2. There's a new trend in entertainment called microdramas, which are short, quick stories told in one-minute parts. They seem like silly fun, but they're drawing in big audiences and money.
  3. Publishers need to stop relying so much on Google for traffic because it's steadily decreasing. It's time for them to focus on building loyal audiences instead of chasing search engine rankings.

The Super Bowl to Valentine’s marketing pipeline is real, but who’s in it?

The Social Juice • 19 implied HN points • 14 Feb 26
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Super Bowl ads mostly replay the same playbook—nostalgia, celebrities, IP and safe emotional hooks—so they reflect where culture already is rather than show what’s next.
  2. Taika Waititi’s heavy ad output shows directors can add style and attention. The results are uneven and it raises questions about whether big-name filmmakers can rescue weak brand strategies.
  3. Marketing is a continuous pipeline from the Super Bowl into Valentine’s, the Winter Olympics and Lunar New Year, with brands using PR rollouts, creator-led work, stunts and partnerships to stay visible. That tactic can drive reach but also sparks backlash when campaigns touch hot topics like surveillance, AI or weight‑loss drugs.

Have purpose agencies forgotten how to do charity ads?

Thoughts on Writing • 379 implied HN points • 21 Mar 24
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Ad agencies may need to relearn how to create impactful charity advertising as commercial clients shift away from social causes.
  2. Charity ads must strike a balance between emotive storytelling and responsible representation of the cause to avoid misrepresentation.
  3. Creating purposeful campaigns for charities requires a different approach compared to commercial brands, involving sensitivity and skill.

Plus Post: Gemini Galaxy 1

Computer Ads from the Past • 512 implied HN points • 22 Jul 25
🕹 Technology Advertising
  1. Gemini Microcomputers offers a good computer solution for £1,450. It's important to find cost-effective options for tech needs.
  2. NASCOM Microcomputers was an early player in the UK tech scene, starting in 1977 with their NASCOM-1 system. Their journey shows both successes and challenges in the tech industry.
  3. Understanding the history of computer companies helps us appreciate how far technology has come. Learning from past successes and failures is key to innovation.

Only the best marketing campaigns of 2025

The Social Juice • 70 implied HN points • 03 Jan 26
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Brands leaned into bold, attention-grabbing creative across 2025, using pop-ups, OOH, stunts and viral social films to build real brand energy.
  2. Collaborations and celebrity partnerships powered many of the biggest campaigns, and the new COLLAB Index mixes consumer data with cultural scoring so marketers can choose partners that actually move people.
  3. AI and ethics emerged as major marketing issues, with debates about AI-generated content and trust alongside more brands taking public stances on social causes.

Should publishers trust Google Discover?

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 424 implied HN points • 08 Aug 25
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Many news publishers are becoming too reliant on Google Discover for traffic, which can be unpredictable and not as valuable as it seems. This can lead to a cycle of chasing trends without producing meaningful content.
  2. Writing and selling books can be tough for authors because the financial rewards are often not worth the effort put in. Many writers find that they make much less from book sales compared to what they earn in their regular jobs.
  3. For publishers to succeed today, focusing on building a loyal audience and diversifying their income streams is crucial. This can include prioritizing paid subscriptions, newsletters, and community engagement.

👑 5+ resources with the TOP creative ads

Business & Marketing with Nika • 39 implied HN points • 11 Aug 24
💼 Business Advertising
  1. You can find inspiring ads and creative work at places like Ad Creative Bank or the Ads of the World website. These resources showcase some of the best in advertising.
  2. The Cannes Lions Festival is a big deal for marketers, similar to the Oscars for movies. It's a great place to see top creative work and get inspired.
  3. If you're running online ads, check out the Meta Ads Library or Google's Ads Transparency Center to find creative examples in real-time.

☁️ Amazon: Ads Take the Cake

How They Make Money • 491 implied HN points • 06 Feb 24
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Amazon saw a significant increase in free cash flow due to its booming advertising business.
  2. Amazon stands out by reinvesting in growth and innovation instead of returning cash to shareholders.
  3. The company is focusing on Generative AI and its potential revenue impact.

The Future of Media

Growth Croissant • 982 implied HN points • 23 Jun 23
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Shift from large media companies to niche media led by individuals and small teams.
  2. Move from renting audiences on big tech platforms to owning audiences through platforms like Substack.
  3. Transition from an ads-based internet to subscription-based ecosystems for media companies.

Vote for the November 2025 + Post Topic

Computer Ads from the Past • 128 implied HN points • 22 Nov 25
🕹 Technology Advertising
  1. Vote on the topic for this month’s paid post; the poll is open for one week so act soon.
  2. The newsletter is running behind schedule, and last month’s paid post is expected to be published in a few days.
  3. The topic options are illustrated with vintage magazine images, and readers can continue reading for free or subscribe for paid access.

What Interviews Should I Look For?

Computer Ads from the Past • 384 implied HN points • 11 Aug 25
🕹 Technology Advertising
  1. The author is enjoying finding and sharing interesting interviews from old computer magazines. It's like digging for treasures from the past.
  2. The author is asking readers for suggestions on who they would like to see interviewed next. It’s a way to involve the audience in choosing future content.
  3. Readers are encouraged to share their thoughts in the comments. This helps create a community and shapes the direction of future posts.

What would a Substack ad product actually look like?

Simon Owens's Media Newsletter • 424 implied HN points • 17 Jul 25
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Substack is considering adding an advertising feature to help connect creators with brands. This could mean creators list their prices for ads, and Substack takes a cut.
  2. There's talk of tools that may automatically insert ads into newsletters. This could help creators, but they might lose some control over the ad content.
  3. More publishers are using mobile apps to keep subscribers engaged, showing that apps can help reduce subscription cancellations and drive user interaction.

This Week in Marketing: Google does Apple, OpenAI does ads, publishers do Google — What?

The Social Juice • 36 implied HN points • 19 Jan 26
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Big tech is folding AI into advertising and shopping so companies can monetize AI — OpenAI is testing ads in ChatGPT, and Google is adding personalized ads to its AI tools and shopping features.
  2. Publishers, regulators and advocacy groups are pushing back as platform ad practices and AI usage shift — major publishers are suing over ad-auction issues, traffic to news sites is dropping, and governments are challenging AI apps and policies.
  3. Social platforms and creator economics are in flux — algorithms, features and monetization keep changing, creators are valuing authenticity over AI-generated content, and new tools and payouts are reshaping how creators earn.

Lessons in persuasion from the Father of Advertising

A Bit Gamey • 13 implied HN points • 15 Feb 26
💼 Business Advertising
  1. Big ideas are usually simple and come from a well‑informed mind, so play with ideas, aim high, and look for one clear, memorable insight.
  2. Write plainly to real people — use the language they think, address them as individuals, and favour clarity over cleverness so your words change behaviour.
  3. Be disciplined: test relentlessly, edit your drafts ruthlessly, tell the truth, and repeat what works until it stops selling.