Game fans and indie devs can’t get enough of Unreal Engine 5 game remakes at the moment. We’ve seen everything from an Unreal Engine Super Mario World to Sonic Adventure and Rayman 3 (and, of course, there are official projects too, like MGS Snake Eater)
Epic Games’ engine has proved to be a game changer for these kinds of projects. Firstly, because it’s free if you’re not making big bucks, and secondly because of its capabilities for photorealistic 3D, allowing devs to reimagine classic games with cutting-edge visuals(see our pick of the best game development software).
“Scuttling the U-529” | Medal of Honor Reimagined with Unreal Engine 5 – YouTube
You may like
Yesterday, I had hiking boots in my cart. Size selected, reviews read, I was even picturing myself on the trail. Then I hesitated. “Will these pinch my wide feet?” Three clicks later, I bounced.
These types of hesitations cost businesses millions.
We’ve gotten excellent at grabbing attention and driving traffic. But success comes down to attention coupled with intention.
The real challenge is optimizing for the micro-moments that determine conversions. Those moments where a finger hovers over “buy.” Eyes flick to the return policy. And then, that dreaded tab back to your competitor.
An essential skill for today’s marketers is conversion design, where we decode hesitation as a behavioral signal.
How do you guide attention toward action? How do you eliminate the friction that causes hesitation? AI can help us spot and solve for these in a way that we haven’t been able to previously.
78% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function according to McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI research, yet most aren’t applying it where it matters most: the critical seconds when attention converts to action.
Your visitors have done their research. They’re on your product page, comparing options, genuinely considering a purchase. Then doubt creeps in:
“Will this integration work with our current setup?”
“Is this jacket too warm for Seattle?”
“Can I trust this company with a project this important?”
These small but significant moments determine whether someone converts or walks away. Behavioral science calls this “ambiguity aversion,” our brain’s tendency to avoid uncertain outcomes.
AI is now giving us visibility into these hesitation patterns that were invisible before. Let’s look at how leading brands are responding.
A Fortune 100 retailer analyzed cart abandonment and discovered shoppers were lingering over size charts before dropping off.
Instead of simply displaying standard measurements, they built a system that detects hesitation patterns and immediately surfaces:
This resulted in 22% fewer returns and 37% higher conversion rates [Source: Anonymized client data].
Google’s recent case study on Lululemon shows how the activewear brand used AI to address hesitation at scale.
Instead of treating all visitors the same, Lululemon’s AI identifies where customers are in their decision journey and adjusts messaging accordingly.
Their approach included:
The results showed a substantial reduction in customer acquisition costs, increased new customer revenue from 6% to 15%, and an 8% boost in return on ad spend (ROAS). The strategy was so effective that it earned top honors at the Google Search Honours Awards in Canada.
In B2B, hesitation moments are different but no less critical. Enterprise buyers often get stuck on three key concerns:
Smart B2B companies use AI to detect these hesitation patterns:
Leading SaaS platforms can trigger personalized responses based on these signals, such as custom ROI calculators, implementation case studies from similar companies, or direct connection to technical specialists.
Microsoft’s data shows the power of AI in addressing customer hesitation in real-time. Their recent analysis reveals:
AI is well beyond automating existing processes to now anticipating uncertainty and responding in real time.
Here’s how to start optimizing for hesitation reduction:
Use tools like:
Address uncertainty directly:
Implement AI-powered responses:
Microsoft emphasizes the importance of continuous testing. 85% of marketers using generative AI report improved productivity across content and ad creation.
Start small:
Lululemon’s success came from implementing what they called a “measurement trifecta by blending marketing mix modeling (MMM), experiments, and attribution to gain a more holistic view of performance.”
This comprehensive approach revealed:
AI Overviews (AIO) are changing how content gets discovered. It’s important to anticipate doubts before they form, structure answers for AI extraction, and prove claims with third-party data.
Create content that addresses hesitation at different stages of the buying journey. Your product pages need to rank and convert uncertain visitors into confident customers.
Use AI to detect behavioral signals that indicate hesitation. Adjust landing pages, ad copy, and bidding strategies based on where users are in their decision process.
Track micro-conversions that indicate reduced hesitation, such as time spent with size charts, clicks on customer reviews, and interactions with chat.
Traffic is just the beginning.
For high impact, you need to earn trust in the seconds that matter most. AI gives us the power to see hesitation in real time and resolve it before it becomes regret.
Success often comes down to these micro-moments, these seconds when someone hovers between interest and action.
Master those micro-moments and everything else follows.
More Resources:
Featured Image: fizkes/Shutterstock
The Los Angeles metropolitan area became the focal point of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign over the weekend as protestors and law enforcement clashed.
Events on the ground led Trump to call in the National Guard, a move that inspired criticism—and now a lawsuit—from California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.
Broadcast and cable news networks quickly deployed reporters on the ground to cover the unrest and are making programming and reporting adjustments to keep pace with the rapidly developing situation.
[Note: This post will be updated as new events and coverage reports occur.]
ABC News
The network’s team in L.A. includes correspondents Matt Gutman, Trevor Ault, Alex Stone, and multiplatform reporter Melissa Adan.
CBS News
The streaming network CBS News 24/7 simulcasted its local affiliate station, CBS News Los Angeles, over the weekend. Maurice DuBois is reporting from Los Angeles for the CBS Evening News and other CBS News platforms, and the network says Jonathan Vigliotti, Elise Preston, Nidia Cavazos, and Camilo Montoya-Galvez are also reporting on the ground in Los Angeles.
CNN
Kyung Lah and Julia Vargas Jones reported from L.A. over the weekend and the network announced Erin Burnett will anchor her show, Erin Burnett OutFront, live on location beginning Monday at 7 p.m. ET. Additional reporters in the region include Josh Campbell, Jason Carroll, Marybell Gonzalez, as well as Michael Yoshida for CNN Newsource, and Gonzalo Alvarado for CNN en Español.
Fox News
Jonathan Hunt, Bill Melugin, William LaJeunesse, Steve Harrigan, Christina Coleman, and Fox Business Network’s Max Gorden are reporting on the situation for the network.
MSNBC
The network began its coverage on Saturday during the 3 p.m. ET edition of Alex Witt Reports. MSNBC continued its breaking news coverage into the evening and throughout the day on Sunday, including an interview with Newsom on Sunday with Jacob Soboroff. Coverage continued into Monday.
NBC News
Steve Patterson, Jacob Soboroff, and David Noriega provided reporting over the weekend. Additionally, NBC News Now simulcast coverage from the network’s flagship West Coast station KNBC from Sunday afternoon into the evening. NBC News added Liz Kreutz, Camila Bernal, Morgan Chesky, and Gadi Schwartz to its presence on Monday.
NewsNation
Nancy Loo, Mills Hayes, and Alex Caprariello are reporting live on the ground with coverage assistance from sister station, KTLA-TV. NewsNation’s border correspondent, Ali Bradley, is joining L.A. coverage as well.
PBS News
Reporting on the ground will be PBS News Hour special correspondent Marcia Biggs and producers Jackson Hudgins and Sam Lane.
Spectrum News and Spectrum Noticias
The network is utilizing L.A.-based affiliate Spectrum News 1 for ongoing coverage from the city. Over at Spectrum Noticias, reporters Annie Mapp and Tania Martin Carrillo have been providing updates and perspectives from protesters and officials.
Telemundo
The network’s chief anchor Julio Vaqueiro will anchor his Monday evening show out of Los Angeles.
Andrés process was very research-driven, and he took notice of Tulum’s coffee landscape; “Every brand had a very obvious aesthetic – brownish, neutral tones, with the coffee bean or cup incorporated into their logos,” he says. “I wanted to avoid being cliche and create a deeper brand with a strong story”.
The designer communicates Tulum’s beach and forest terrain through the colour palette of green and brown and he maintains a sense of dynamism with stickers for coffee bags and cups, assorted illustrations and unique positioning. The star of the show is Andrés’ Story Horse character, “a horse who is addicted to coffee, which is why he looks so electrifying,” Andrés says. He goes on to explain its applications: “I created different possible stories that one might experience in Tulum, like getting burned because you didn’t apply enough sunscreen” and “enjoying a delicious cup of coffee from Story Horse that you never want to end”.
In keeping with the fun and relatable tone, Story Horse is equally relaxed in its illustration style, which is “more doodle-like and naïve style”, as Andrés describes it. Drawing inspiration from illustrators like Braulio Amado, Psie Sucharki, and cartoons like BoJack Horseman, Story Horse’ brand identity balances cool and cartoon with its personal and playful character. Ultimately, his vision aims to transform Story Horse into a welcoming, laid back, and memorable environment. In Andrés’ words: “I want the new identity to communicate that Story Horse is not just a coffee shop, but a space for moments, conversations, and experiences that stay with you.”
Google’s John Mueller answered a question about a site that received millions of Googlebot requests for pages that don’t exist, with one non-existent URL receiving over two million hits, essentially DDoS-level page requests. The publisher’s concerns about crawl budget and rankings seemingly were realized, as the site subsequently experienced a drop in search visibility.
The 410 Gone server response code belongs to the family 400 response codes that indicate a page is not available. The 404 response means that a page is not available and makes no claims as to whether the URL will return in the future, it simply says the page is not available.
The 410 Gone status code means that the page is gone and likely will never return. Unlike the 404 status code, the 410 signals the browser or crawler that the missing status of the resource is intentional and that any links to the resource should be removed.
The person asking the question was following up on a question they posted three weeks ago on Reddit where they noted that they had about 11 million URLs that should not have been discoverable that they removed entirely and began serving a 410 response code. After a month and a half Googlebot continued to return looking for the missing pages. They shared their concern about crawl budget and subsequent impacts to their rankings as a result.
Mueller at the time forwarded them to a Google support page.
Three weeks later things have not improved and they posted a follow-up question noting they’ve received over five millions requests for pages that don’t exist. They posted an actual URL in their question but I anonymized it, otherwise it’s verbatim.
The person asked:
“Googlebot continues to aggressively crawl a single URL (with query strings), even though it’s been returning a 410 (Gone) status for about two months now.
In just the past 30 days, we’ve seen approximately 5.4 million requests from Googlebot. Of those, around 2.4 million were directed at this one URL:
https://example.net/software/virtual-dj/ with the ?feature query string.
We’ve also seen a significant drop in our visibility on Google during this period, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s a connection — something just feels off. The affected page is:
https://example.net/software/virtual-dj/?feature=…
The reason Google discovered all these URLs in the first place is that we unintentionally exposed them in a JSON payload generated by Next.js — they weren’t actual links on the site.
We have changed how our “multiple features” works (using ?mf querystring and that querystring is in robots.txt)
Would it be problematic to add something like this to our robots.txt?
Disallow: /software/virtual-dj/?feature=*
Main goal: to stop this excessive crawling from flooding our logs and potentially triggering unintended side effects.”
Google’s John Mueller confirmed that it’s Google’s normal behavior to keep returning to check if a page that is missing has returned. This is Google’s default behavior based on the experience that publishers can make mistakes and so they will periodically return to verify whether the page has been restored. This is meant to be a helpful feature for publishers who might unintentionally remove a web page.
Mueller responded:
“Google attempts to recrawl pages that once existed for a really long time, and if you have a lot of them, you’ll probably see more of them. This isn’t a problem – it’s fine to have pages be gone, even if it’s tons of them. That said, disallowing crawling with robots.txt is also fine, if the requests annoy you.”
This next part is where the SEO gets technical. Mueller cautions that the proposed solution of adding a robots.txt could inadvertently break rendering for pages that aren’t supposed to be missing.
He’s basically advising the person asking the question to:
John Mueller continued:
“The main thing I’d watch out for is that these are really all returning 404/410, and not that some of them are used by something like JavaScript on pages that you want to have indexed (since you mentioned JSON payload).
It’s really hard to recognize when you’re disallowing crawling of an embedded resource (be it directly embedded in the page, or loaded on demand) – sometimes the page that references it stops rendering and can’t be indexed at all.
If you have JavaScript client-side-rendered pages, I’d try to find out where the URLs used to be referenced (if you can) and block the URLs in Chrome dev tools to see what happens when you load the page.
If you can’t figure out where they were, I’d disallow a part of them, and monitor the Soft-404 errors in Search Console to see if anything visibly happens there.
If you’re not using JavaScript client-side-rendering, you can probably ignore this paragraph :-).”
Google’s John Mueller is right to suggest a deeper diagnostic to rule out errors on the part of the publisher. A publisher error started the chain of events that led to the indexing of pages against the publisher’s wishes. So it’s reasonable to ask the publisher to check if there may be a more plausible reason to account for a loss of search visibility. This is a classic situation where an obvious reason is not necessarily the correct reason. There’s a difference between being an obvious reason and being the actual cause. So Mueller’s suggestion to not give up on finding the cause is good advice.
Read the original discussion here.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/PlutusART
In B2B, complex buying decisions are rarely made on impulse. Yet, many marketing programs still focus almost exclusively on capturing short-term demand — a costly mistake. To build lasting momentum and drive future growth, you need a strategy that connects mental availability to buying triggers. A continuum approach does just that.
Buying cycles for complex solutions are lengthy, ranging from nine months to several years. They also tend to be longer-term purchases due to the heavy lifting and the disruption of switching. For example, you don’t replace your CRM very often.
This longer-term situation is one of the reasons for the recent focus on the 95/5 rule, which suggests that only 5% of your buyers are in the market at one time. B2B marketing strategies focused on only short-term demand capture programs sacrifice priming the 95% of the market for future buying situations.
One of the detrimental shifts in B2B marketing brought on by marketing technology and the growth-at-all costs mentality over the last decade is that we adopted a feeling of control over buyers. We failed to see the lie and took the bait for the promise of a way to tangibly measure marketing results in the short term, focused on revenue.
Ignoring the messy, complex journey that is difficult to measure allowed marketers to offer proof of ROI on marketing spend. But in the process, it downgraded the importance of brand and the need to build mental availability with prospects not currently in the market to buy.
I see discussions all the time focusing on either mental availability and branding or demand generation for performance marketing, as if they’re two separate things. But they’re not. Why?
Because you have no idea when that 5% of in-market buyers will shift. Your buyers can experience a trigger event or uncover a priority use case at any moment. Buyers who were in-market may shift out of the market for a variety of reasons.
The question is, will buyers think of your brand in relation to a situation or when they experience a trigger event? If not, they won’t invite you into the buying conversation.
Dig deeper: The problem with B2B marketing: Misaligned measurement is stifling innovation
A continuum approach differs significantly from a traditional campaign (which is explored further in my book “Digital Relevance”). Creating a continuum starts with personas that help marketers push their understanding of target markets to an extreme. This matters because a continuum doesn’t have an endpoint — it continues across the entire customer lifecycle, focusing on achieving relevant goals at each stage.
With a campaign, you’re working toward a fixed objective within a set timeframe. With a continuum, you’re managing multiple goals throughout the customer journey, with the flexibility to adjust and refine your efforts as new insights and buyer knowledge emerge. Rather than starting over with each campaign launch, you’re in a state of ongoing improvement — building and evolving the same wheel instead of constantly reinventing it.
Most B2B marketing programs start too late. They focus on the trigger event that puts buyers in-market. That set period of duration for a campaign doesn’t extend to the depth needed for a complex purchase controlled by buyers. And it fails to connect the dots between category entry points (CEPs) and buying triggers. Instead, it counts on trying to push buyers into buying on your timeline, not theirs. If you’re on the shortlist, this may work. If you’re not, it’s an uphill and often unwinnable battle.
With a continuum approach, you aim earlier to engage potential buyers while they’re still in status quo to build mental availability. With a continuous effort to connect the dots between CEPs, problems, triggers and your brand, you can build momentum with buyers who become in-market and those who will enter the market in the future.
Dig deeper: 7 steps to creating an audience-based B2B marketing plan
The framework below illustrates how to structure messaging across the buyer journey, connecting early-stage awareness with deeper consideration and validation.
Category entry point (CEP)Why care — ProblemWhy care – About usWhat to knowWill it work?Situational, not product-focused.Current problems and future trends. Not product.How we help you solve the problem and meet the future.Use cases, business cases,minimize risk, time to value.Customer stories, outcomes and perspectives.
Here’s a narrative example that crosses the continuum:
A continuum framework is easier to map out when you approach it as a narrative storyline. This allows you to see how the dots connect to build the story — and momentum — across the buying process. A storyline also makes it much easier to engage your buyers over time.
The example above is truncated. The actual client program consisted of four CEPs with multiple approaches for the other stages that strengthened the storyline.
The more CEP links buyers have, the higher the probability of buying, research from Ehrenberg-Bass found. The client executed this approach as a vertical ABM 1:few program, adding $5 million to the pipeline in just eight months.
Note: To address expansion and retention, apply a continuum framework based on your customers’ new status quo and related CEPs once they’ve solved the original problem that had them become your customer.
Continuum programs built on buyer-focused thought leadership tend to be evergreen. You can update content assets for market changes and reuse them for multiple years, remaining relevant.
Engagement data also lets you understand which topics are relevant to specific buyers. This insight informs a sales enablement program that helps your sales reps have more powerful, buyer-focused conversations.
Waiting to talk about your product until buyers are in-market means you’ve earned their attention voluntarily based on your brand’s POV and expertise. You’ve become a resource they trust through relevance, applicable information and insights they can use even before they become your customer.
Up to 63% of executives are looking for insights applicable over the next 3–12 months, the ITSMA Value of Thought Leadership 2025 report found. As such, a continuum approach has merit for building momentum.
It’s important to recognize that:
To stand out, your approach must be human, provocative and willing to challenge the status quo — exactly what 74% of executives are looking for.
Dig deeper: How to build a better buyer journey using customer behavioral data
Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.
Keeping up-to-date on industry Google Ads benchmarks is crucial to help answer questions you might get from clients or exec such as:
Questions like these come up all the time, especially when budgets are tight and performance dips even slightly.
But unless you’ve got fresh benchmark data on hand, these conversations are usually filled with guesswork, vague assurances, or worse, outdated reports that no longer reflect how competitive today’s ad landscape really is.
Wordstream by LocaliQ recently updated its Search Advertising benchmarks for 2025, compiling real data from thousands of Google and Microsoft Ads campaigns across 20 verticals.
The data consists of data points from thousands of campaigns in both Google and Microsoft Ads for some of the top industries. Some of the top industries include:
While these benchmarks are a starting point, it’s important to note that many factors go into setting benchmarks that are attainable for your business.
We hope this data is useful for you to help level-set expectations and goals for your business, and get a sense of how you stack up to the competition.
In this report, you’ll find benchmarks for Search campaigns in Google & Microsoft Ads for:
Let’s dig into the data.
Data from LocaliQ benchmark report, June 2025
The average click-through rate for Google & Microsoft Ads across all industries averaged out to 6.66% over the last 12 months.
Compared to when the company first started gathering data in 2015, the average CTR for search ads was minimal at 1.35%.
The business category that boasted the highest CTR was Arts & Entertainment, with an astounding 13.10% CTR.
At the other end of the spectrum was Dentists and Dental Services at a 5.44% CTR.
The CTR metric should be analyzed as only one indicator of performance, not the end-all-be-all when trying to determine if your ads are doing well.
The widespread in CTR performance is influenced by:
High CTR doesn’t always mean high performance, though. Sometimes it just means your ad is click-worthy, not necessarily that it’s converting. That’s why CTR should be viewed as one piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture.
If your CTR is low compared to your industry average, tools like Google’s Quality Score can help pinpoint the problem areas, from poor ad relevance to weak expected click-through rate.
Data from LocaliQ benchmark report, June 2025
The average cost-per-click for Google and Microsoft Ads across all industries over the past 12 months averaged $5.26.
While the Attorneys and Legal Services showcased one of the lowest CTR categories, it also boasted the highest average CPC. In 2025, the average CPC for this industry came in at $8.58.
This average is unsurprising, given the higher-than-average cost of acquiring a customer.
On the lower end of the spectrum, the Arts & Entertainment industry had the lowest average CPC at $1.60.
Similar to analyzing the CTR metric, average CPC is just one performance indicator.
For example, your ads may show a low average CPC and a low CTR. This could mean your bids aren’t high enough to be competitive in the market, and you may want to consider raising bids.
On the other hand, if you have a higher-than-average CPC, you’ll want to monitor these more closely to ensure you can prove your return on ad spend/investment.
Data from LocaliQ benchmark report, June 2025
The average conversion rate across all industries for Google and Microsoft Ads in the last twelve months was 7.52%.
The average conversion rate is calculated from the number of leads/sales you get divided by the number of clicks from your ad.
When looking at the data from 2025, the average conversion rate varied highly across industries.
On the high end of performance, Automotive had the highest conversion rate at 14.67%, followed by Animals and Pets at 13.07%.
The industries that had the lowest conversion rate included:
When looking at these industries and the products they sell, these conversion rates make sense.
Furniture is a high-ticket item for many customers. Users do a lot of research online before making a purchase. Not only that, but because of the price tag, many customers end up purchasing in stores instead of online.
While the conversion rate may be low in this particular industry, it’s more important than ever to be able to measure offline conversions, such as in-store visits or purchases.
In the apparel industry, new brands seem to pop up every day.
If you do a simple search for Nike sneakers, the number of sellers and resellers for these types of products has skyrocketed in recent years.
The amount of competition can directly contribute to a low (or high) conversion rate.
Data from LocaliQ benchmark report, June 2025
The average cost per lead across all industries for Google and Microsoft Ads in the last twelve months was $70.11.
The average cost per lead is a core KPI that advertisers should keep a pulse on when analyzing performance.
It remains one of the most scrutinized metrics by marketing and finance teams alike.
It’s no surprise that certain industries have a much higher CPL compared to other industries. Some of the factors that can influence CPL include:
On average, the CPL across all industries reported was $70.11.
The Attorneys and Legal Services industry had the highest CPL out of all industries at a whopping $131.63.
However, while the CPL may be high, many businesses in that industry find that well worth the investment, considering their return on each individual they represent.
Those industries with lower-priced products and services likely have a lower CPL goal.
The industries that showed the lowest CPL in 2025 were Automotive Repair, Services & Parts at $28.50, followed by Arts & Entertainment and Restaurants & Food at $30.27.
Compared to last year’s data, 13 out of the 23 industries reported an increase in CPL.
Data from LocaliQ benchmark report, June 2025
While the last few years have seen such a large fluctuation in CPL due to the record inflation and economic instability, the year-over-year changes in CPL have mellowed out a bit.
Benchmark reports are exactly that: benchmarks. They’re not scorecards, and they don’t account for your specific brand, audience, goals, or tech stack.
So, if your numbers don’t perfectly align with the averages, it doesn’t mean you’re underperforming.
If you’re looking to make progress in the second half of the year, try following the tips below:
Make sure to check out Wordstream by LocaliQ’s full report on benchmarks and tips to improve your campaigns.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
As expected, professional sports inventory is selling rapidly in this year’s upfront marketplace, notably the NFL, which as one media buyer said has become “mainstream,” and no longer the place to reach just sports fans.
The rest of the upfront marketplace, historically dominated by selling entertainment content rather than sports, is slow to build any momentum, making it feel like it’s going to be another buyer’s market. But this week should see some of the stronger content players — NBC Universal, Disney and major streamers including Netflix and Amazon, along with YouTube — sell some of that inventory before many CMOs and top media agency executives head off to Cannes Lions.
In the end, the upfront marketplace, which has now grown to include major sports content like the NFL, NBA, March Madness college basketball and even college football, won’t wrap for several more weeks.
“The partners that have a lot of sports and also have entertainment, they’re going to force the entertainment conversation as well. They’re using sports to their leverage,” said one holding company investment exec, who like all buyers reached for this story spoke on condition of anonymity. “For some of the networks where there is no sports, or there’s minimal amount of sports, those conversations are happening a little bit slower, which is not surprising. You start with the priority, which, in a lot of places is sports, and then you see the way the rest of the things fall out.”
A second buyer at another holding company said that the NFL is the hottest selling content in the upfront this year, followed by the NBA, which is being sold for the first time in decades by NBC Universal, as well as for the first time by Amazon. “I’ve told clients, if you want to add NFL, you’re not going to get it. It’s just not there,” said that buyer. “I paid a little more than I expected to pay, but I also saw it was a little bit of a runaway train.”
This buyer said even Netflix, which will carry two NFL games on Christmas Day this year, has been aggressive with its limited inventory. The buyer said they would hold off investing in NFL if pricing accommodations weren’t made in entertainment inventory, and the buyer said Netflix didn’t blink. That sounds very much like a seller’s market — at least when it comes to pro football.
NBCU has rights to the 2026 Super Bowl, and has largely reached sellout — or at least paused selling what’s left to evaluate the inventory remaining. Several buyers also noted that NBCU tied sales of Super Bowl inventory to purchasing avails in the Winter Olympics in 2026, which it also is selling in this upfront.
“There was an ask for an equal or around the same level of spending that they were getting within the game to be also made around the Winter Olympics,” said a third buyer, who said they declined the offer.
Still, the major sports events are hotter than ever. “Tentpoles have moved quicker than we’ve ever seen before,” said the third buyer. “Whether you’re talking about World Cup or you’re talking about Super Bowl or even the Olympics, all these properties are moving faster and selling out faster than they ever had before.”
The challenge for the NBA, said the third buyer, is that the abundance of games being carried means that content almost never reaches sellout, which makes it more of a buyers’ play.
World Cup is another tentpole whose inventory was selling aggressively even in the lead-up to the upfront marketplace. There’s been so much demand that its main sellers Fox (for English language coverage) and NBCU (Telemundo has Spanish-language rights) are no longer offering it to buyers, in order to maintain some amount of scatter inventory. “If you’re talking to Telemundo today for World Cup, you’re late to the game,” said the third buyer.
Women’s sports has retained the heat it’s developed over the last years since Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese made women’s March Madness ratings go through the roof. “The WNBA, March Madness, even the NWSL [National Women’s Soccer League] are all continuing to be in demand,” noted the third buyer.
What’s far less in demand is the entertainment side of the upfront offerings sellers are bringing to the marketplace. A fourth holding company buyer found it interesting that for the second year, sellers are pushing prime-time inventory as some sort of premium, which this buyer found almost comical.
And the push for flexibility means the sellers with mostly entertainment content (read, not sports) will have to offer even more flexibility to stay even with digital video alternatives. “If you think about the digital landscape, everything’s flexible — the IAB terms are, what, 14 day rolling options, right?” explained the fourth buyer. “Clients are starting to get used to that, and that’s the way of the future of how our business needs to operate. Of course, it’s unnerving to the linear sellers, those traditional partners, but that just means they’ve got to change their model too.”
Of all the major sellers — Disney, NBCU, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery — all the buyers agreed that Warner Bros. Discovery is in the least favorable position because it doesn’t have major sports of some sort to tie its entertainment offerings to, which are down in ratings for the most part anyway. The buyers did cite HBO Max (as it’s known this week and possibly from here on in) as the lone bright spot in that seller’s portfolio.
Finally, client budgets remain a confused mixed bag at this point, even as billions of dollars are being placed into sports and high-profile content. While one buyer said clients keep changing their upfront budgets day to day, another buyer said another major CPG client is opting to limit its upfront budgets from 10 media brands to six, as a means of keeping budget aside to either return to the bottom line or spend in scatter.
Economic uncertainty caused by the on-again off-again tariffs drama is already hitting the B2B market more seriously than the broader consumer landscape, according to research from Madison Logic, an account-based marketing platform. A survey of 300 marketers with Harris Poll revealed that nearly all respondents (96%) plan to change their marketing strategy due to the impact of tariffs. Other highlights:
“Even though all the talk is about the media side, I think the action and the stories are going to be around the creative side of the business. Because they will undoubtedly merge a lot of the creative brands, which will create a ton of conflicts and just a ton of uncertainty for clients.”
— Steve Boehler, founder of consultancy Mercer Island Group, talking about the endgame of Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG.
Adrian Hanft is an experimental artist who uses non-traditional equipment: junk, old televisions, cassette tapes, coffee stirrers, graffiti, bugs, Raspberry Pi and Lego. He also has “no secrets”. His Instagram has shot up to over 20,000 followers through the popularity of his animations created on receipt papers and shipping labels, all of which contain his name and address. “The subject matter I choose is simple, ordinary moments that are easy to ignore,” says Adrian. “Showing through the video is every mundane purchase I’ve ever made: junk food, deodorant, postage stamps, diapers, and blue jeans – every penny accounted for in explicit detail.”
It’s hard to ignore just how much rubbish accumulates in everyday life but Adrian creates an eccentric tribute to it with beautiful scenes, such as the flap of a bird’s wing, a dive into a pool, gymnastic flips and boxing matches. “When these moments loop they start to feel profound because they have no beginning or end. That runner is never gonna get a break. That woman will never be finished taking out the trash. The ballerina will be eternally spinning,” he explains. The Marxhausen idea of ‘beauty hides in plain sight’ crops up in these unpristine, crumpled canvases, connecting life and motion with the paper in the viewer’s pocket. Better yet, Adrian doubles as a virtual art teacher, showing the behind-the-scenes of nearly every work he publishes. His work prompts viewers to give the transformation of neglected materials a try, he shares: “I feel honoured when someone is inspired to try my odd activities.” When it comes to what is useful in the act of making, it should be no secret that nothing is out of bounds.
The WordPress Performance Team has released an experimental plugin that increases the perceived loading speed of web pages without the performance issues and accessibility tradeoffs associated with Single Page Applications (SPAs). The announcement was made by Felix Arntz, a member of the WordPress Performance Team and a Google software engineer.
Plugins released by the WordPress Performance Team are released so that users can play around and test with a new performance enhancement before the new feature is considered for inclusion into the WordPress core. Using these plugins provides a way to receive advanced performance improvements before a decision is made as to whether to integrate the improvements into WordPress itself.
The View Transitions plugin brings smooth, native browser-powered animations to WordPress page loads, mimicking the feel of Single Page Applications (SPAs) without requiring a full rebuild or custom JavaScript. Once the WordPress plugin is activated, it replaces the default hard reload between pages with a fluid animated transition effect, like a fade or slide, depending on how you configure it. This improves the visual flow of navigation across the site and increases the perceived loading speed for site visitors.
The plugin works out of the box with most themes, and users can customize the behavior through the admin user interface under Settings > Reading. Animations can be set using selectors and presets, with support for things like headers, post titles, and featured images to persist or animate across views.
According to the announcement:
“You can customize the default animation, and the selectors for the default view transition names for both global and post-specific elements. While this means the customization options are limited via the UI, it still allows you to play around with different configurations via UI, and likely for the majority of sites these are the most relevant parameters to customize anyways.
Keep in mind that this UI is only supplemental, and it only exists for easy exploration in the plugin. The recommended way to customize is via add_theme_support in your site’s WordPress theme.
…For the default-animation, a few animations are available by default. Additionally, the plugin provides an API to register additional animations, each of which encompasses a unique identifier, some configuration values, a CSS stylesheet, and optional aliases.”
The new WordPress plugin is optimized for block themes but designed to work broadly across all WordPress sites.
The page transitions are supported by all modern browsers, however it will degrade gracefully in older unsupported browsers by falling back to standard navigation without breaking anything.
The main point is that the plugin makes WordPress sites feel more modern and app-like—without the complexity or downsides of SPAs.
Read the announcement on Felix Arntz’s blog:
Introducing the View Transitions Plugin for WordPress
Download the experimental WordPress Performance Team plugin here:
View Transitions WordPress Plugin
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com
