Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson

What’s Up THIS WEEK?! Instagram CHANGES! 😳 GMAIL Big Change? 🎁 34 Hallmark Movies? 📧 Your First 200 Characters Decide EVERYTHING | Ep. 567

September 22, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

What's Up This Week: Instagram's MetaWon, Gmail's AI Search Overhaul, and 34 Hallmark Movies

Meta launched a new paid tier called MetaWon this past week, and it's not just another subscription gimmick. For $15 a month, Meta will now automatically send follow invitations to people who engage with your content — no third-party tool required. It also places a bolder follow button directly on Reels. Jay Schwedelson argues this matters because Meta tends to "radically overdeliver" when they roll out new paid features, meaning they help circulate your content more if you participate. For business pages, company pages, or personal creator accounts, this could meaningfully accelerate follower growth.

Gmail Just Became Your Personal Search Engine — and It Changes Email Forever

The bigger news this week is in email. Gmail has now fully turned on AI overviews in its search bar for paid users, and other platforms like Outlook and Yahoo will follow. What this means: your inbox is now a search engine you can query in natural language. Instead of typing "Marriott Boston," you can ask "What hotel did I book for my Boston trip?" and get an AI-generated summary pulled from your entire email history — going back years.

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What you'll learn

1 What’s Up THIS WEEK?! Instagram CHANGES! 😳 GMAIL Big Change? 🎁 34 Hallmark Movies? 📧 Your First 200 Characters Decide EVERYTHING | Ep. 567
2 (00:00) **Episode Opening** - Host Jay Schwedelson introduces the news roundup format covering Instagram, email, and Google Ads updates
3 (00:30) **Meta Launches "MetaWon"** - Meta's new paid subscription tool allows automatic follow invitations and bold follow buttons on Reels
4 (01:43) **Gmail AI Overviews Go Global** - Google expands AI-powered search summaries into Gmail, making your inbox a personal search engine
5 (03:50) **The First 200 Characters Rule** - AI summaries prioritize the opening live text of emails, making the first 200 characters critical for engagement
6 (05:17) **Google Ads Spend Benchmarks** - A new feature rolling out in Google Ads accounts shows comparative spending data against similar businesses
7 (06:14) **Spotify Kids Music Filter** - Spotify now allows users to exclude kids and family listening from their taste profile

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Jay Schwedelson

Show Notes

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Your inbox quietly turned into a search engine this week, and almost nobody has updated their emails for it. Jay Schwedelson gets into what Gmail's AI summaries are actually scanning for, why the first 200 characters of live text now decide whether your campaign gets pulled in, and what that does to the shelf life of every send. There's also a new Meta subscription worth a look, a Google Ads report hiding in plain sight, and a Spotify setting that can save you from public embarrassment.

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Best Moments:

(00:30) Meta One lands, and it quietly changes how fast business pages pick up followers

(01:19) Why new paid platform tools tend to radically over-deliver in their first few months

(02:05) Gmail search goes natural language, and your inbox becomes your own personal search engine

(03:17) The long tail nobody planned for, and why old campaign links can no longer 404

(03:50) The action, product, deadline formula for your first 200 characters of live text

(05:1