• Meta agrees to pay $725 million over Cambridge Analytica scandal. (LATIMES)
• Instagram Chief outlines key areas of focus for the app in 2023. (Social Media Today)
• TikTok faces US ban after discovery that Chinese 0fficials had used the app to spy on US journalists. (Social Media Today)
• Airbnb says its focus on brand marketing instead of search is working. (WSJ)
• YouTube wins new ad inventory with NFL's Sunday Ticket streaming rights. (AdAge)

We spent the final weeks of 2022 reflecting on some of the biggest marketing trends of the year. You can read our stories below or here.

🚨 Best ads of 2022

🤝 Best celebrity partnerships of 2022

🌱 Why more companies should become B Corps

🎁 Logitech Runs ‘12 Days of Deals’ Organic Campaign on BeReal

Twitter Blue is back, giving everyone the chance to buy the blue checkmark.

Yep. Brands should pay for Twitter Blue, if only for the verification.

If I'm going to chat with a company on Twitter, I want to know that it's the real thing. Verification aids in this. The $96/year fee is a small price to pay to ensure that your Twitter communications are professional.

Some extras features add some brand value as well:

• 1080p video uploads are unlocked when you buy Twitter Blue, uploading in full HD will make a difference if your brand is looking to always look best. 
• While it hasn’t launched yet, Twitter Blue also teases that tweets from verified users will be “prioritized” and “rocket to the top of replies, mentions and search”, that’s gonna be pretty helpful when a follower asks a question, and your company’s reply will theoretically show up first or be highlighted in some way. When a potential consumer searches a keyword your brand has tweeted, supposedly verified accounts will be prioritized in those searches.

We won't know exactly what that will look like until the feature is released, but those are unquestionably valuable benefits.

Here are the four biggest things on marketers' minds entering 2023.

• Concerns about a looming recession had been the top concern for marketers and others in the industry all year. Marketers are pricing all kinds of other raw materials costs through to consumers too, preparing in industries such as packaged goods for a second round of double-digit price hikes in some cases.
• Despite recession worries, marketing spending plans aren’t all headed south, in part because some marketers already pulled back in 2022 and are ready to rebound or face investor pressure to do so. Many marketers began pulling back on spending this year as they tried to preserve margins while raising prices slower than costs, including Procter & Gamble Co. and others.
• Marketing industry might have found a way to weave climate impact into one of its most cherished currencies: awards. Again, at the behest of the CMO Growth Council, the Cannes Lions will add sustainability criteria and carbon footprint accounting into all award entries and deliberations starting in 2023. Already, the growing interest from marketers in the carbon impact of their media plans had led measurement firms such as DoubleVerify to add such data to their dashboards.
• The impending demise of third-party cookies in Google’s Chrome browser and previous disappearance of other digital identifiers has placed a greater emphasis on first-party data, workarounds like contextual targeting and individually identifiable retail sales data. Regardless, the never-ending quest for better data and measurement becomes even more important as economic challenges increase.

• Furniture is still a hot item for influencers despite many leaning away from 'gifted' products. (Business Insider)
• How social platforms changed digital marketing in 2022. (Digiday)
• How reluctant executives can become LinkedIn influencers in 2023. (The Drum)