Mary F. E. Ebeling knows that personal data is just that: personal. An associate professor of sociology at Drexel University and the author of the book Afterlives of Data: Life and Debt Under Capitalist Surveillance, released earlier this summer, Ebeling has researched big data, trying to link the various ways a Google search or even a medical test can make an imprint on our digital and physical lives.

Solidly neither a marketer nor a data scientist, Ebeling provides a look at the ways we can, at times unknowingly, share our data with those willing to monetize it in the healthcare industry.

And sometimes, that monetization can come at a personal cost:

• For example, Ebeling opens Afterlives with an anecdote in which she receives parenting-related marketing emails and mail nearly five years after a miscarriage.
• “Where my pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage, my data baby gestated for nine months and was born at term, with no complications and completely healthy. Over those years, my data baby grew from being a newborn, to a toddler, to a preschooler, and finally, the last time I heard from my data baby, it was getting ready to start kindergarten,” she wrote.
• It’s an experience she described as an “uncanny haunting” to Marketing Brew in an interview, where someone gets “advertising based on something that they’ve not talked about, or an experience with their data doppelgänger haunting them.”

Though it’s near impossible to audit a digital ad—how, why, or where it was served—Ebeling connects the experience to her research in the healthcare industry, where patients rarely know they’re feeding “massive databases maintained by healthcare providers and public and private insurers, or payers—often called data ‘lakes’ and ‘oceans.’”

Continue reading here.—RB

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a job posting indicating the future direction of a business’s revenue stream!

While enjoying the doldrums of summer, you might have missed that Apple—after taking a considerable whack to Facebook’s business model—is ramping up its advertising business.

• In August, Digiday reported that, per a job posting, Apple was building a “mobile-centric” demand-side platform, which would be used to allow advertisers to buy ads programmatically (automatically).
• Later, MarketWatch followed up with similar reporting that showed Apple was looking to hire two product managers for its ad-tech team with experience in “performance marketing, local ads, or enabling small businesses,” a crucial piece that could allow Apple to rely on many small advertisers instead of courting a few big budgets. That’s largely why advertiser boycotts can often barely affect companies like Facebook during bouts of bad publicity.
• Finally, this week the Financial Times reported that Apple was doubling the workforce of its ad business, which…checks out considering everything you’ve just read. Specifically, it is growing its ad platform team from about 250 to 466, according to LinkedIn postings and its careers site. They’ll all be tasked with growing Apple’s ad business to an expected $30 billion by 2026, according to the research group Evercore ISI.

Zoom out: Right now, Apple’s ad business primarily relies on display and search ads within its App Store and its own apps. It currently brings in around $4 billion in revenue per year, according to Bloomberg.

In other news: Apple’s iPhone beat Google’s Android in market share according to Counterpoint Research, surpassing more than 50% of all smartphones used in the US. —RB

Do you make HelloFresh meals, browse for jobs on ZipRecruiter, and wear MeUndies? If so, you probably listen to podcasts.

The podcasting world has its own recurring cast of advertisers that seem to make the rounds across popular shows. But that cast could grow as more and more ad budgets go toward podcasting: In the US, podcast ad revenue is expected to grow to more than $3 billion by 2023, up from over $2 billion this year, according to 2021 IAB projections.

This got us thinking: How many of you plan to spend more $$ on podcast ads next year? We surveyed Marketing Brew readers last week, and more than 1,000 answered.

Responses were pretty split:

• 27% are planning to spend more
• 19% are not planning to spend more
• 31% don’t do podcast advertising
• 23% were unsure

If you’re shifting more of your marketing budget into podcasting, whether for the company you work for or on behalf of clients, our audio reporter would like to hear from you. Reach Alyssa Meyers on Twitter or at alyssa@morningbrew.com.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

iNews: What to keep an eye out for at Apple’s iPhone 14 event today.

: Because pumpkin spice will soon give way to peppermint, here’s how some retailers are planning to tackle holiday shopping this year.

Round and round: A guide to telling stories with Instagram Carousels.

Grow smarter: To drive profitable growth with digital advertising, you need to understand which metrics, KPIs, and signals matter most. See how Northbeam’s AI-driven analytics platform can help you make sense of your ad performance data. Request a demo.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

::drumroll:: Introducing The Brief: A Summit Presented by Marketing Brew

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You’ll hear from a powerhouse panel of speakers who will spotlight innovations, highlight strategies, and provide solutions to the modern marketer’s biggest challenges. Sounds good, right? Dust off your work pants and join us.

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Stat: Sales for larger-sized women’s apparel grew 21.2% last year, reaching $34.3 billion, and are expected to rise another 7.6% in 2022, according to Coresight Research via an Axios story about retailers’ jumping on the inclusive-sizing trend.

Quote: “Against the backdrop of a pernicious global pandemic and an unjustified war, our Dentsu International team chose radical collaboration and instinctive generosity as the behaviors that would define and unite us as we sought to become the most integrated network in the world”—outgoing Dentsu International global CEO Wendy Clark addressing her departure in a LinkedIn post

Read: “Yeti Coolers Are Luxury Goods for Bros.” Finally, someone said it.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Media buyers’ eyes are on Thursday Night Football for signs of a shift
• FTC picks fight with data broker
• All we know about Netflix’s ad plans so far