Sony Music sues Kroger over 392 unlicensed ad songs

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In today's MarketingShot:

🎵 Sony Music sues Kroger over 392 unlicensed ad songs

🎬 Instagram will assemble your Reels automatically now

📊 TikTok gets you 42% more views than Reels

📅 Google lets 500 partners book leads from your Local Services Ads

🔍 Your brand is invisible on at least one AI platform

Plus: 💡 5 strategies & tactics, 🎁 5 other news you might like, and 🧰 6 tools.

🎵 Sony Music sues Kroger over 392 unlicensed ad songs LINK

Sony Music and nine affiliated labels sued Kroger and 18 related entities on August 21, 2026, claiming at least 392 unauthorized uses of recordings in social media advertising, and demanding a jury trial.

The suit names 84.51, the data subsidiary running Kroger Precision Marketing, arguing its approval process gave the parent authority to review all social content, with Mariano's carrying the most videos at 99 minimum.

Sony Music points to fourteen prior licences between 2017 and 2025, Kroger's roughly $1.18 billion in 2025 advertising costs, and recordings like Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" appearing at least twelve times, to argue willful infringement.

🎬 Instagram will assemble your Reels automatically now LINK

Instagram has rolled out a new Reels-editing feature called First Draft on its iPhone app that automatically trims video clips down to their highlights, giving users a starting point they can then edit further.

When a user selects multiple clips and taps the First Draft button, Instagram analyzes each clip, cuts out pauses to showcase the most important parts, and combines the snippets into a reel ready to share.

The feature works with multi-clip montages, talking-head videos, and day-in-the-life content, though Instagram did not say whether First Draft relies on AI, unlike Adobe's Quick Cut tool that combines clips from a prompt.

📊 TikTok gets you 42% more views than Reels LINK

A new 2026 report compares which short-form video platform delivers the most reach, examining how the same clip performs differently across Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.

The study analyzed 6,177,375 videos from 375,462 accounts and found TikTok generates up to 42% more views than Instagram Reels, and over six times more views than YouTube Shorts.

Instagram Reels lead in shares across every account size, and in comments for most account sizes, while YouTube Shorts trail behind the other two platforms.

📅 Google lets 500 partners book leads from your Local Services Ads LINK

Google has widened the number of Reserve with Google booking partners for Local Services Ads from about 20 to more than 500, letting customers book directly from ads shown on Search and Maps.

Advertisers whose Google Business Profile already has an active partner booking link will get that booking option turned on automatically for their Local Services Ads, with no extra manual linking needed.

Direct bookings from these ads flow into LSA lead reporting as paid leads, and advertisers can manage or disable specific partner links under Profile & Budget then Settings in the dashboard.

🔍 Your brand is invisible on at least one AI platform LINK

Brands may not show up on at least one AI platform because rankings can't reveal whether an AI engine found, understood, trusted, recommended, or acted on a brand, leaving a measurement gap as search shifts to recommending answers.

Cloudflare reported in June 2026 that bots made up 57.5% of HTML requests on its network, passing humans for the first time, as search crawlers, AI training systems, and AI agents now read and act on websites.

A three-layer framework covers eligibility, where AI can crawl and understand a brand, recommendation, driven by six signals like structured data and corroboration, and transaction, where agents act using live pricing, inventory, and booking APIs.

💡 Strategies & Tactics

> How to Build a Social Media AI Agent: A Step-by-Step Guide: Build narrow, single-task social media AI agents that draft and queue posts autonomously but leave final publishing to human approval, reducing brand risk.

> How We’d Market a $400 Skincare Device Before Black Friday: For expensive considered purchases, seed trustworthy answers and reviews across the sites, YouTubers, and AI tools buyers research months before Black Friday, so the sale itself only closes.

> Do Google Ads Work? Pros, Cons, & Tools to Decide: Google Ads pays off only when buyers actively search for your product, your profit margins cover the click cost, and someone actively manages the account.

> How to turn an SEO backlog into a roadmap: Turn your SEO task list into a roadmap by scoring each item for business impact, ownership, and effort, then sequencing quick wins alongside slower, higher-payoff bets.

> AI visibility has two jobs: Execute SEO and mobilize the organization: Getting AI to recommend your product, not just cite it, often requires fixing product, support, or policy gaps that SEO alone can't touch.

Other news you might like

• TikTok expands public placement opportunities for advertisersLINK

• Google brings Gemini Omni video creation to Google AdsLINK

• Brands draw firmer lines around customer-facing AI creativeLINK

• Google AI Mode Also Gains Link Carousels For Developing TopicsLINK

• Google Search Ranking Volatility Continues Post Spam UpdateLINK

🧰 Trending tools

ExploreYC: searches 5,773+ YC companies with maps, funding, and hiring data to validate startup ideas, research competitors, and find co-founders.LINK

Context.dev: converts web pages to clean markdown or HTML and extracts structured data via custom schemas, with typed SDKs for TypeScript, Python, and Ruby.LINK

Spira for Product Hunt Makers: automates content creation and publishing across TikTok, Instagram, and X, tracking trends and matching your brand voice so you save hours weekly.LINK

Goose Ads Remixer: analyzes winning ads in your niche and generates new ones using your logo, product images, and messaging in minutes.LINK

Artifacts by Databox: query your business metrics in plain language and get AI-generated summaries explaining what changed, why, and how to improve performance.LINK

Effects SDK: adds AI video effects like background blur, noise suppression, and lighting correction to your apps, processing client-side across web, mobile, and desktop.LINK

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