Thanks for all of the positive feedback last week for this brand new newsletter! Our first edition had a 54% open rate, wowzers!

In today's edition, you'll find the top marketing news, tools, and insights for the week, that will help you become the smartest marketer in the room.

— Nicholas

Google recently introduced a new ad format that is very similar to Facebook ads.

Called "Discovery campaigns," they run across YouTube's home feed, Gmail's social and promotions tabs, and the Google Discover feed.

According to Google, this new format gives you access to a combined audience of over 2.9 billion people, which is very close to Facebook's reported audience size of 2.99 billion monthly active people across their "family of apps."

Learn more about Discovery campaigns in this article from Search Engine Land.

I recently needed to create 200+ banners for my podcast, since I was updating the design. I mulled over several options for getting this done: do it myself in Canva one-by-one, hire someone on Upwork, or figure out a way to automate it.

Thankfully, I stumbled upon Bannerbear (which I never heard of before this) and was able to go the automation route. It took literally 30 minutes to set up a template, and make an Airtable sheet with the files and episode details that I already had. When it was time to generate the banners, it took just a few clicks.

Want to try it for yourself? Your first 100 images are free!

Alex Birkett is well-known in the growth marketing world, having worked at CXL, and now at HubSpot.

And he's the very first person to participate in my 3-question marketing interview series on the GrowthMarketer blog.

Find out what his ordinary workday looks like, which tools and resources he recommends, and the best piece of marketing advice he's ever received.

Read the full interview here.