👉🏻 SUM NEWS: 7.30.25

July 30, 2025

From TikTok’s search play to YouTube’s age-estimating AI, this week’s stories span trends, tactics, and one marketer who literally ran the race of a lifetime. We also tip our hats to the em dash, unpack a legal win that could change how you source data, and track the podcast ad wave.

Let’s make your midweek smarter in four minutes or less.

IN THIS ISSUE

🔥 From The Ink Well
🌎 Around the Web
✍️ SUM Poll
📌 ICYMI: Bite-Sized Insights
😂 In the Meme Time

FROM THE INK WELL

Marketer Spotlight

This former middle school marketer built a viral podcast, scaled a SaaS YouTube channel to 200K subs, oh, and just won The Amazing Race.

Jack Dodge didn’t follow the usual marketing playbook, and that’s exactly what makes his content hit different. In this spotlight, he shares sharp takes on scaling content, staying creative, and why human-made work still stands out.

Interested in sharing your POV? Submit your pitch to get published in The Ink Well.

AROUND THE WEB

TikTok is making a major push into search advertising, with over 120 open roles tied to the effort including a new lead sales role. (Search Engine Land)
LinkedIn is testing trending video carousels in-feed. (Matt Navarra)
Instagram said it doesn’t restrict the reach of posts that include the term “link in bio.” (Social Media Today)
Study: People aged 18-24 are now using generative AI tools nearly as often as Google to search for info. (Marketing Profs)
LinkedIn won a lawsuit against Proxycurl, forcing the company to delete scraped data and stop unauthorized access—highlighting platforms’ power to restrict even publicly visible info. (Social Media Today)
YouTube is using AI to estimate users’ ages—regardless of what they enter—to flag teens and apply stricter protections like ad limits, content filters, and bedtime reminders. So, we all better act our age… or YouTube will send us to bed! (TechCrunch)
78% of marketers now advertise in podcasts, up from 59% last year. (The Current)

SUM POLL

Are you advertising in podcasts?

SUM POLL RESULTS

ICYMI: BITE-SIZED INSIGHTS

"I've often called brand the dark matter of the marketing universe because it's a very powerful force, but it's often really hard to measure and somewhat unseen… but you definitely feel the pull of it."

– Lindsay King

“Startups don’t have a budget problem—we have a time problem.”

– Jessica Foster Brandt

“I am the battered, coffee-stained backbone of writerly panic—the gasping pause where a thought should have ended but simply could not.”

– The Beleaguered Em Dash