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Who Won, Who Cut and What Comes Next in Advertising

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The GRADIENT

Who Won, Who Cut and What Comes Next in Advertising

AI gains influence with shoppers, but search still rules

MarTechCharts regularly highlights data of interest to marketers and marketing operations professionals. Source: “When AI Guides the Shopping Journey: Opportunities for Marketers in the Age of AI-Driven Commerce,” IAB & Talk Shoppe. AI is now the second most influential shopping source behind only search engines, according to a new report from IAB and Talk Shoppe.

Beneath review: a broken ’90s horror throwback I can’t stop playing

Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. Beneath (Image credit: Camel 101 / Wired Productions) Publisher: Wired Productions Developer: Camel 101 Release date: 27 October Format: PS5 (reviewed), PC (Steam),

Anthropic Research Shows How LLMs Perceive Text

Researchers from Anthropic investigated Claude 3.5 Haiku’s ability to decide when to break a line of text within a fixed width, a task that requires the model to track its position as it writes. The study yielded the surprising result that language models form internal patterns resembling the spatial awareness that humans use to track

The Marketing Week Christmas Blog 2025

1 November: Argos aims to be seen as more than just toys Many people will have fond childhood memories of leafing through the Argos catalogue and looking at toys to put on their Christmas list. However, the retailer is keen to emphasise it’s a gifting destination for more than just toys in its 2025 festive

Air’s masterclass returns to show how systems shape great ideas

Behind every great campaign is structure: the habits, tools and workflows that quietly keep creative chaos at bay. That’s the focus of Air’s Creative Ops Masterclass, the original video series exploring how real teams build systems that make creative work more powerful and less chaotic. “Creative Ops Masterclass is part documentary, part playbook,” says Clayton

8 LinkedIn Alternatives For Professional Networking

When it comes to thought leadership and great opportunities, professionals are missing out if they’re not on LinkedIn. It’s the world’s largest professional network with over 1.2 billion members in 200 countries and regions worldwide. LinkedIn’s popularity rose following a significant turn away from X (formerly Twitter), and users looked for continuation with their established

Future of Marketing Briefing: AI didn’t break agencies – the talent drain did

A senior marketer at a major WPP Media client told me recently they’re thinking about shopping around for a new agency. That, in itself, isn’t surprising, especially after WPP’s new CEO Cindy Rose, publicly admitted the company had “lost its way”. What stood out was why they’re considering the move. It’s not about chasing AI

Spitting Image vs Paddington Bear: the legal spat raises interesting questions

Britain’s most polite bear has found himself in the middle of an uncharacteristically grubby legal brawl. Spitting Image writer/comedians Al Murray and Matt Forde are being sued by StudioCanal – the company behind the recent Paddington films – over their portrayal of the beloved character as a foul-mouthed, drug-snorting co-host of a satirical podcast on

Discounted ChatGPT Go Is Now Available In 98 Countries

ChatGPT Go, OpenAI’s heavily discounted version of ChatGPT, is now available in 98 countries, including eight European countries and five Latin American countries. ChatGPT Go offers everything that’s included in the Free plan but more. So there’s more access to GPT-5, image generation, extended file upload capabilities, a larger context window, and collaboration features. ChatGPT Go

Amazon Ads Business Jumps 24% From Prior Year to $17.7 Billion

The numbers $33 billion: How much Amazon made in the third quarter from its cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services—up 20% year-over-year and beating analyst projections. AWS now has an annualized revenue run rate of $132 billion. $17.7 billion: How much Amazon made from advertising in the second quarter, an increase of 24% year-over-year. 13%: The

the Affinity rebrand blends personality and precision, relaunching with a bang

Its typeface, Affinity serif, was made in collaboration with Ohno, a bespoke adaptation of its typeface Swear, and comes in six weights. “When used light and small, it’s super precise and premium; in its big, fat, expressive italic form, it looks more bold and a bit weird,” Tom explains. Overall the tone of voice is

How To Manage Stakeholders When An Algorithm Update Hits

In this edition of Ask An SEO, we address a familiar challenge for marketers: How do you keep stakeholders from abandoning SEO when algorithm updates cause traffic drops? This is an all-too-common issue that SEOs will encounter. They have strong plans in place, the buy-in from their leadership, and are making great strides in their

Meta announces lead gen product upgrades for ‘Q5’ (yes, you read that right)

Meta introduced improvements to its suite of lead generation tools with a focus on the often-overlooked post-holiday period. Meta refers to the period from just after Christmas into January as “Q5.” While many advertisers pull back their spend during this time, Meta says advertisers who ran campaigns on its platform and used its instant form

Affinity just combined three apps into one free program for all creatives

Call me cynical, but when Canva said it had some news about Affinity, my heart dropped. For a decade, the three Affinity apps have been the best non-subscription alternatives to Adobe software that we’ve seen. There was Photoshop alternative Affinity Photo, Illustrator alt Affinity Designer, and Affinity Publisher for desktop publishing. The creative software company

How Agentic Browsers Will Change Digital Marketing

The footprint of large language models keeps expanding. You see it in productivity suites, CRM, ERP, and now in the browser itself. When the browser thinks and acts, the surface you optimize for changes. That has consequences for how people find, decide, and buy. Microsoft shows how quickly this footprint can spread across daily work.

Starbucks claims marketing ‘overhaul’ fuelling turnaround

Starbucks claims the decision to “overhaul” its marketing is driving stronger customer perception scores and market share growth. Speaking yesterday (29 October) on the publication of the firm’s full year results, CEO Brian Niccol described the fourth quarter as a “milestone” in the coffee chain’s turnaround, as the business delivered global comparative growth for the

Maxence Duterne ‘grows’ type by simulating movements of the natural world

Multidisciplinary artist and designer Maxence Duterne is inspired by a quote from the Swiss visual artist Silvie Defraoui: “A work is never created alone, but in conversation with the world.” In response to this idea, Maxence used behaviours of the natural world to inform his creation of the Physarum Type Tool; a software that simulates

Measuring Visibility When Rankings Disappear

Learn How to Track What Really Matters in AI Search Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode no longer deliver ranked results; they deliver answers. So what happens when traditional SEO metrics no longer apply? Join AJ Ghergich, Global VP of AI and Consulting Services at Botify, and Frank Vitovitch, VP of Solutions Consulting

AI agents are the ad industry’s current obsession. Do they deliver?

AI agents are the current focal point for agencies, marketers and publishers hoping to deploy the potential of generative AI to practical effect. Examples range from Coca-Cola’s Fizzion project, an agent embedded into the Adobe Creative Cloud, which enforces the brand’s visual style guidelines across its global creative output, to tabloid The Sun’s planned programmatic

Adobe’s AI assistant means Photoshop is no longer a passive tool

Adobe MAX 2025 is underway in LA, and the creative tech giant has announced a slew of new features coming to its software. There’s prompt-based image editing in the AI image generator Firefly with Image Model 5, AI upscaling from Topaz Labs in Photoshop, and Premiere gets a new Object Mask for video editing. Adobe’s

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