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In this newsletter, youâll find:
đŠ The Hours, the Wage and the Bonus: Staffing Math for Peak Season
đ Google and Microsoft introduce new controls for publishers to limit AI content use
đ Ad of the day
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Planning a ChatGPT ads test? Seeing what other brands are running gives you a clearer starting point for deciding whatâs worth your budget.
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Before your next campaign brief gets locked, see whatâs already out there.
đŠ The Hours, the Wage and the Bonus: Staffing Math for Peak Season
Amazon plans to hire more than 300,000 seasonal US workers at an average of about $20 an hour. If you share a labor market with a fulfillment center, thatâs the offer your pick-and-pack and support hires are weighing yours against.
Underpay and shifts sit empty in the one week you canât afford it. Overpay and you burn margin for nothing. The math below finds the line. All figures are illustrative.
The hours
Start with last yearâs peak week. You shipped 4,000 orders, and youâre up 15%, so plan for 4,600.
Time one order from pick to label. At 6 minutes, 4,600 orders need 460 hours. Add 20% for returns, restocking, and mistakes: about 550 hours.
Your current team covers 300. The gap is 250 hours, or six to seven seasonal workers at 40 hours a week.
The wage
Suppose you planned to offer $18 against a local benchmark near $20. Price the difference:
7 workers Ă 40 hours Ă 4 weeks Ă $2 = $2,240.
Now price one bad day. If a short-staffed day leaves 650 orders late, and refunds or shipping upgrades average $8 each, thatâs $5,200.
The higher wage costs less than a single missed day.
The bonus
A smaller employer can win on more than pay. Offer flexible shifts, a path to a permanent role and a $150 completion bonus paid on December 24. For seven workers, the bonus costs $1,050 and gives every one of them a reason to show up in the final week, when no-shows hurt most.
The ramp
Bring seasonal staff in two weeks before peak and pair each with an experienced team member. Write a one-page packing guide for your top 20 products. Two weeks of training wages cost far less than mispacked orders in December.
The support desk
Tickets climb with orders. If one agent handles 60 a day and you expect 300 a day at peak, you need five. Add temporary help or extend hours for existing staff.
The daily check
Track orders shipped per hour and tickets answered per agent. If shipping speed drops below your planning rate for two days in a row, add a shift before the backlog builds.
Before you post a job ad
Work out your hours gap. It tells you how many people to hire, and the wage math tells you what it will take to get them.
đ Google and Microsoft introduce new controls for publishers to limit AI content use
Google and Microsoft have announced new controls allowing website owners to decide how AI companies use their content, joining OpenAI and Anthropic in supporting industry-wide standards for AI training preferences.
The Breakdown:
Google will support a shared AI training control through robots.txt, allowing publishers to opt out of training across participating AI providers without configuring separate instructions for each company.
Microsoft is introducing three controls: AI Training, AI Grounding and Limited Grounding, letting publishers separately restrict model training, AI-generated answers and third-party grounding services.
Publishers can remain eligible for traditional Bing search results while restricting AI usage, with Microsoft also allowing individual pages to override website-wide training preferences.
Microsoft will begin honoring the new preferences on February 1, 2027, while Google plans support during 2027. Existing publisher-specific controls will continue working alongside the shared standard.
The changes give publishers more flexibility to protect their content without necessarily sacrificing traditional search visibility. Separating AI training from AI grounding is particularly important because publishers may want their content cited in AI-generated answers without allowing it to train models.
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