They live in your house, in your car, in your phone. They know your deepest desires. And they often speak unprompted.

They’re voice assistants. And these days, they’re owned by more than half of US adults, according to Edison Research and NPR’s 2022 Smart Audio Report.

Brands are catching on: They’re investing in everything from sonic logos to voice-enabled ads that talk back, and presumably, advertisers want these ads to be relevant.

• The voice medium certainly presents plenty of opportunities for personalization.
• “Voice is probably the second-most informative data source short of the human genome,” said Jon Stine, executive director of the Open Voice Network, a nonprofit that operates as part of the Linux Foundation to build trust in voice tech.
• Analysis conducted by the Open Voice Network found that just about 30 seconds’ worth of voice data can indicate everything from age to weight to ethnicity to education level, according to Oita Coleman, the nonprofit’s senior advisor leading its privacy, security, and ethical-use portfolio.

Big picture: Third-party voice apps on platforms like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are one of the most popular ways for brands to engage with consumers via voice, but for those looking to assuage potential concerns about tracking and privacy while still gathering data, there’s more legwork involved. Keep reading here.—AM

Instagram is hard at work trying to become TikTok, but all is not well with the ByteDance app.

Last week, TikTok doled out pink slips as part of a restructuring of TikTok’s ad sales business, according to reports from Insider and The Information.

• Employees working on brand strategy and operations were affected, Insider reported.
• The layoffs were part of a shift to a vertical-based model handling industry categories like fashion and beauty, according to Insider.
• At least 20 employees were let go, one laid-off TikTok employee told Insider. (TikTok would not confirm the figure to Insider.)

Why it matters: The layoffs suggest that TikTok, which has been lauded as the social media industry’s latest golden child, isn’t immune to economic uncertainty.

There’s a chance TikTok won’t hit its $12 billion ad revenue target in 2022, even after two years of an ad-employee hiring spree, per The Information. Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s head of ad sales, recently acknowledged in an internal memo that the revenue goal was “aggressive” and said that the team had a “harder year,” The Information reported.

Meanwhile: TikTok’s competitors are also undergoing layoffs and facing business headwinds. Last month, Meta—which has raced to build out features to better compete against TikTok—reported its first-ever decline in quarterly revenue, and some staff are bracing for cuts. On Tuesday, The Verge reported that Snap is planning to cut 20% of its workforce.—PB

Retail Brew recently chatted with Abigail Cook Stone, founder of digitally native candle Otherland, about how she’s selling scent online. Read an excerpt below or click here for the full story.

“We got our start, really, on Instagram,” Stone explained. Otherland’s unique art and rich scent descriptions made the brand ripe for the app’s visual-centric feed.

The advent of stories, polls, and other engagement features helped Otherland to connect directly with customers. Today, if you send Otherland a DM on Instagram, it’s always the in-house team responding, and there’s a good chance it’s Stone herself.

“Having a strong feedback loop with your customers is really critical, and I think [it’s the] basis of community formation,” Stone said.

Otherland’s First Flames, a community of around 100 of its most engaged customers, started out on Instagram’s “close friends” feature.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Election szn: Political advertisers, beware—clickbait could be eating into your budgets.

Brand integrations: How HQ Trivia managed to get a show hosted by The Rock.

Green light: How social media managers can build executives’ trust in their ideas and get content approved.

Learn: The better you know the business, the better marketer you’ll be. Do the inner workings of business intimidate you? Our Business Essentials Accelerator delivers fresh, relevant know-how without all the corporate jargon you hate. Apply today and save with code BTS150.

Trends and news help you stay in the know. But the best way to improve your marketing? Study what top marketers actually do.

Enter the Growth Newsletter. Each week, they interview experts to get actionable growth tactics, then share them with you. See examples and get the next one here.

Stat: Paramount+, Apple+, and Discovery+ grew subscriptions by a collective 7% in Q2, down from the 13% they saw in Q1, according to market data platform Antenna.

Quote: “Because of him, we have many things…like Pizza Hut!” I mean, c’mon, how could we not mention this twice? #AdvertisingIcon.

Read: “Would You Take Out a Loan to Buy This Week’s Groceries?” (the New York Times)

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• ‘The Office’ actor and podcast host Brian Baumgartner talks podcast advertising
• Franchises are turning to pop-up experiences to drum up fervor and FOMO
• Why Sephora’s $1.2 million settlement with California should be a wake-up call for companies