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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

“Our power has always been in the ability to curate”

Katie Cadwell, co-founder of branding studio Lucky Dip and The NDA Podcast: Automation isn’t detracting from design thinking. It’s taking away design time. It’s changing how design is delivered. Our power has always been in the ability to curate. We used to print everything in the studio, put it up on a wall and critique

AI Trust Signal Strategy & Boost Local SEO Reviews

This post was sponsored by Reviewly.ai. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Does keyword research still matter for SEO in 2026? Are Google reviews required for a local business to show up in AI results? How do I get my clients’ businesses recommended by AI like Gemini, Claude, and Google AI

An introvert’s guide to navigating Cannes Lions 2026

Afternoons at Cannes tend toward a particular kind of frenzy. The rosé is flowing, the diary is full and somewhere on the Croisette a panel is running 15 minutes over. Kelly Taylor has other plans. On at least one afternoon she intends to disappear — onto her balcony, alone, with a glass of wine and

New Adobe Creative Cloud updates will genuinely save you time

Adobe has just announced a sweeping set of updates across Creative Cloud, and if you’re a photographer, video editor, or designer, you’ll want to know about them. Rolling out this week, these innovations are squarely focused on cutting out the friction of editing, giving you more time to create. From AI-powered video generation inside Lightroom

Microsoft Advertising Launches Product Explorer

Microsoft Advertising has launched Product Explorer, a new Merchant Center feature designed to help advertisers better understand product status and performance. The tool provides a searchable view of product catalogs. Advertisers can quickly see which products are serving, which have issues, and which are driving results. Product Explorer is currently available to U.S. advertisers with

Salesforce acquires Fin, formerly known as Intercom

Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fin, a customer agent vendor formerly known as Intercom, for approximately $3.6 billion. The deal comes only one month after Intercom adopted the Fin name. The company’s core offering is an AI agent that specializes in end-to-end resolution of complex customer queries across channels, including live chat, email,

Finding Client Opportunities In Competitor Feedback

SEOs all know how important reviews are as a local SEO ranking factor and decision maker for users. But how many SEOs are actually using the review content to help with their roadmapping and content updates? Reviews are typically looked at as a reputation task, and the focus is on the quantitative data (number of

TikTok turns discovery into a performance pitch

Not too long ago, TikTok was postured as the future of search. Where Google returned links, TikTok served short-form videos showing people how to cook, where to eat and what the ingredients actually looked like. Then large language models (LLMs) arrived and rewrote the dynamics of search entirely. That doesn’t necessarily hurt TikTok, said Isobel

Meet the iconic printmakers that shaped half a century of the UK’s contemporary graphic art

Q&A with Steve Fachiri and Tracey Day of Harvey Lloyd Screens and Owen Gildersleeve, curator of 50 Years of Print. It’s Nice That (INT): To start – I’d love to hear a bit about your personal connections to Harvey Lloyd Studio, Owen? This isn’t the first show you’ve all worked on together – you previously

5 Strategic Insights For CMOs

Google revealed at I/O 2026 that AI Overviews now has more than 2.5 billion monthly active users. What it did not reveal is how those users actually behave once an Overview appears. New data from GWI, the consumer research firm whose surveys represent 3 billion individuals globally, fills that gap – and the findings challenge

6 Brands That Cheered for the New York Knicks’ Historic NBA Championship Win

Brands celebrated the New York Knicks’ improbable run to glory, after the team won their first NBA championship in 53 years on Saturday. As fans reveled on the streets of New York City, Nike captured the emotion of the historic moment with an ode to the Knicks and the New Yorkers who back them. Brands

How Fumito Ueda, Mirror’s Edge and Blame! influenced Motorslice’s surreal industrial world

For me, indie game Motorslice is one of the year’s sleeper success stories. It has a visual design that feels familiar, but with the confidence to do more than just replicate; it’s partly a love letter to brutalist megastructures, but also a nostalgic nod to some of the 3D action games, from Shadow of the

Google Extends Dynamic Search Ads Migration Deadline

Google is giving advertisers more time to prepare for the transition from Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) to AI Max for Search. In a LinkedIn post, Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin announced that the automatic transition deadline has moved from September 2026 to February 2027. According to Marvin, the change comes in response to advertiser feedback.

Your AI portfolio isn’t an AI strategy

If you’re reviewing a year of AI activity and still feel like nothing meaningful changed, you’re not alone. Many companies are measuring activity rather than building a strategy. That distinction matters because it is the difference between scattered experimentation and durable advantage. You can spend real money, create real internal excitement, and still be no

Stripe Projects Opens Cloud Infrastructure Buying To AI Agents

Stripe launched Projects on April 30, 2026, a commerce protocol that lets AI agents create accounts, buy domains, upgrade plans, and deploy infrastructure on behalf of human owners. Cloudflare, Vercel, and Netlify shipped as launch partners. The protocol runs in parallel to Stripe’s existing Agentic Commerce Protocol, which handles retail commerce. Together, the two protocols

Acccenture wants a stake when creator marketing gets complicated

Accenture’s acquisition of Whalar has triggered the usual speculation about consulting firms eyeing the agency business. But it’s only part of the story. The more interesting question is why now. Consulting firms have never particularly covered what agencies built — the margins are thin, the talent is expensive and the model is under pressure from

Priscilla Saada’s photo series Moons is a cheeky snapshot of modern motherhood

The series first started with Priscilla photographing some friends of hers, and she soon knew it had more potential. She showed the work to friend and fellow art director Valentine Etievant who was keen for Priscilla to expand on the project and for the pair to eventually collaborate on a photobook together. “From this point,

Google Rolls Out AI Mode Information Agents To Ultra Subscribers

Google has launched information agents in Search for AI Ultra subscribers, covering all AI Mode languages and markets. Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, announced the availability in a post on X and said access will expand to more people this summer. Information agents in Search are now available in all AI Mode

Absolut Gives Madonna the Icon Treatment For Her Dance Floor Comeback

As the undisputed Queen of Pop returns to the dance floor with her upcoming 15th studio album, Confessions II, Absolut has added Madonna to its long list of celebrated artistic collaborators. Inspired by Absolut Vodka’s long-running “Absolut Perfection” campaign, which reimagines its bottle silhouette, “Absolut Icon” reframes the brand’s signature design through the lens of

‘Show people you care if you want them to care about you’: 5 questions with Anna Öhrling

Anna Öhrling is the co-founder and CEO of Onward, an impact agency guided by sustainability. social impact and storytelling. With a background in advertising, Anna led sustainability strategy at Revolt, working with big brands including Mars, L’Oréal and Danone, before co-founding Onward in 2025. With a passion for balancing commercial creativity with genuine impact, Anna

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