Good morning. This is Patrick Coffee filling in for Nat Ives. Today, Zuckerberg testified as Meta prepared to spend big on elections. 

In what’s become a very familiar scene, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg donned a suit and tie yesterday to testify about his company’s child safety policies, Meghan Bobrowsky reports for the Journal.

This time he wasn’t giving sworn testimony in front of Congress, but in Los Angeles County Superior Court for one of the many lawsuits alleging that his company’s platforms intentionally try to get kids and teenagers hooked.

Meta’s lawyers insisted that the company values teen safety over growth. Zuckerberg did express some regret over decisions like letting teenagers use beauty filters on Instagram, but also positioned restricting access to such products as potential suppression of free speech.

There’s more: Zuckerberg’s testimony arrives more than a year after Meta began running a campaign promoting Instagram Teen Accounts. We can't say how much they've spent, but the ads still show up all over New York City’s public transit system. [Marketing Brew]

A lot more: The company may be a bit more focused on AI policy, as it plans to spend $65 million this year to help elect state-level politicians who oppose restrictions on artificial intelligence. [NYT]

Omnicom and the former IPG are together at last, and CEO John Wren offered an upbeat message on the new entity’s first earnings call.

Some key points:

• Omnicom plans to sell off about $2.5 billion worth of underperforming agencies and give up its majority ownership in others, with much of that action happening in certain unnamed smaller markets.
• The company doubled its predicted savings from the acquisition to $1.5 billion, some of which will stem from those ownership changes.

Other potential sources of savings include:

• More offshoring, outsourcing and automation
• $240 million in real estate consolidation

Omnicom also reported a loss of nearly $1 billion for the fourth quarter due to the costs of the deal, as well as $1.12 billion in expenses stemming from the 4,000-plus job cuts and associated restructuring moves it’s already made across the organization.

In terms of the business itself: Media will make up about half, and could grow 50% to 60% larger, according to Wren. Creative services, on the other hand, will account for under 20% of revenue. Sad face.

AI, of course, will play a big role in all aspects of the Omnicom organization. But Moffett Nathanson offered some very blunt commentary on that topic.

Gauging Omnicom's performance relative to that of its competitors will remain difficult since the company continues to report gross revenue, rather than net revenue, according to industry analyst Brian Wieser of Madison and Wall. 

He estimated net organic growth for the quarter at around 2%.

Apparently, big companies are growing more thoughtful about which AI software products they want to buy, thereby making the process of selling said products a bit more challenging, Isabelle Bousquette reports for the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute. 

Every CMO can now look at his or her inbox and give a sad sigh.

Enterprises spent an estimated total of more than $1.249 trillion on AI software last year, according to Gartner.

But corporate FOMO and irrationally optimistic rhetoric are no longer enough to ring up the numbers, because—get this—financial returns on AI tools are sometimes difficult to measure.

Who knew?

Don't feel too bad for the SaaS community. Gartner expects related software spending to grow 14.7% this year to about $1.434 trillion.

The community where marketing leaders drop the corporate speak and share what’s actually happening. The WSJ CMO Council unites leaders from the world’s most influential brands including Adobe, Audi, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, Taco Bell, P&G and Verizon.

Tap into the connections and WSJ intelligence that move careers forward and separate the prepared from the scrambling.

Request Information

Speaking of AI SaaS, Vibe ran billboards in San Francisco starring Marc Andreesen's forehead. [NYT]

At last, some new British pop stars to soundtrack ad campaigns. [WSJ]

Ring's CEO said the surveillance product that starred in its controversial Super Bowl ad could "zero out crime in neighborhoods.” [404 Media]

Blank Street released a puffer jacket for your coffee cup. [Vogue]

Crocs' new microdrama stars a young woman who falls hard for her neighbor's clogs. [Tubefilter]

That viral one-star review of a Phoenix tamale restaurant was, unfortunately, a marketing stunt. [KTAR News]

Taboola hired a former Amazon executive as its first chief business officer. [Adweek]