6/27/25: Google's Offerwall & Hashtags Removed from Promoted Posts
- HK Digital
- Jun 27
- 2 min read
HK Digital Paid Media Industry News, Updates & More
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Welcome to the weekend.
One fun one: Our team learned that Spotify will provide your entire streaming history on a per track basis if you request it. This is a goldmine for anyone who likes playing around with data or taking a stroll down your musical memory lane. We've got a few fun visualizations, but would love to see any you come up with!
Google's Offerwall & Hashtags Removed from Promoted Posts
X Bans Hashtags in Promoted Posts This appears to be driven as much by Elon Musk's personal preference as anything, but there is an argument to be made that including hashtags could distract from the brand messaging itself. As to why advertisers can't decide for themselves? Who knows!
AI Unlocks Wild Creative Potential Kalshi's NBA Finals ad is a weird one, but is generating buzz in all the right ways. Given the bizarre and varying scenes, you'd expect production time to be well over the reported 2 days. Developing creative like this without a need for a single set (let alone many) will only get easier.
Offerwall is designed to give publishers more control over how users can access their content (think payment wall gating). While a new tool is always nice, adding more pop ups has drawbacks and still doesn't address fundamental threats to publishers business models as content consumption continues to evolve. |
In Other News
A random one to close things out: The feared Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is getting a refresh with a new black background. This is part of a broader push to make Windows more resilient in the wake of the widespread CrowdStrike outages. Maybe one day we will look back on BSOD with a sense of nostalgia.
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That's All Folks!
That’s it for this edition of First Impression, hopefully you found some valuable nuggets in here. Feel free to send any feedback and suggestions for future topics our way.
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