Monitoring Situations.

The only ad newsletter that's clicked on every AI YouTube get rich scheme this year.

Dear marketing fans and anyone who has spent this year “monitoring situations” and have bailed out of Dry January already.

I don't know about you, but my feed to start 2026 off is 79% (the other 21% of making money off global events on Polymarket) dudes promising me $10k, $90k, $120k a month if I just do this one thing. Niche AI faceless pages and content.

Everything is about YouTube automation. Toolkits with five apps I’ve never heard of to make content using AI. Screenshots of YouTube Studio revenue charts that may or may not be real.

They promise me that, “There is no luck involved” and how easy it is to “exactly copy me” and unlock incredible riches. Everyone’s got a thread. Everyone’s 20 years old and making more than your parents ever did churning out the sloppiest of slop content.

The tell is always that as they start making these unbelievable riches in some sort of YouTube slop gold rush, that the first thing you do is create a free course and then better, a paid course!

And I say that as being completely entertained how AI has been so front and center in every aspect of the biggest news story of the year, Trump invading Venezuela. I mean it’s not just AI, but you can’t not crack up over epic Trump dance numbers, Maduro sweat pants fashion memes, Maduro frozen in Carbonite and maybe my personal favourite the Emperor talking about the Monroe Doctrine.

It’s the new Minnesota Day Care fraud. The new drop shipping. The new crypto bro telling you he cracked the code while you were sleeping. Same energy, different decade. Just Retweet and Comment “YouTube” (must follow me to get it).

I don’t know if any of this is real. I actually don’t know if it even matters. What I know is that this is the gold rush pitch now—faceless, automated, algorithmic. No skill required. No luck involved. Just you, some AI tools and a revenue chart that goes up and to the right forever.

Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics

• It’s crazy to me that in the year 2026 this copy and paste joke about Adobe still cracks me up.

• Probably the greatest sketch between cows milk and oat milk.

• The letter that proposed the arrow that tells you which side of your car the fuel tank is on.

• The Airwolf x Star Wars mashup we needed.

• Good news, Meghan Markle has $1.2 million worth of “Flower Sprinkles” (80,391 units) available now. Don’t miss out.

Ad History: Mac’s (1986)

The Mac's run was ritual. This is pure nostalgia. I always felt that the Mac’s cat was a bit of a player. But that store, not far from our place, where you could pool a few quarters for a mixed slush cat, that unholy swirl of every flavour at once, brain freeze be damned.

And if you had a couple bucks left over, you'd hit the “Dial-A-Movie” rental store next door. You'd spend an hour in there. Pulling cases off the shelf, studying the back covers like sacred texts, debating with your buddies whether you should watch American Ninja or maybe Weird Science for the 17th time. Finally commit. Bring it to the counter. “Sorry, that one's out.”

So you'd start the whole thing over again, settling for your third choice, maybe fourth. The VHS case always promised more than the movie delivered, which feels very similar to what the average streaming movie promises you.

Ad History: Minnesota’s 93.7 The Edge (1994-1997)

I love this story about 93.7 The Edge. From 1994 to 1997 it was the highest-rated alt-rock station in the country. Then the Telecom Act let the suits buy everything and they killed it. On the last day they looped "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by R.E.M. for 24 hours straight—same song they launched with. Three years. That's all they got. But what a three years.

Great Moments in Pharma Ads.

I can’t stop thinking about this ad’s use of the 1969 song “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” from then-fictitious band Steam. It just gets right into it: “Hello neffy. Hello neffy. No needles. Goodbye.” You’re welcome.

Last call: The Passive Income

This one won’t make you $10k a month but it’ll make you stop caring about the guys who claim they do and the flood of content they are stuffing into your feed. Then again, you can read things like this and the “There’s no excuse to not be rich in 2026” and you can see why 2026 is going to be wild.

Passive Income is basically a Black Manhattan’s laid-back cousin. Bitter enough to match your timeline, smooth enough to get you through this first real week of the year.

• 2 oz bourbon

• 1 oz Amaro Montenegro

• 3-4 dashes orange bitters

• Stir over ice, strain into a rocks glass

Since this is the first “real” week of 2026, it felt important that we set the tone. The only person I would think of to set that, was the late, great Christopher Hitchens.

“Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing…”