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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

SEO For Paws Live Stream Conference: Free Tickets Out Now

The next SEO For Paws will be held on Sept. 25, 2025. The live stream features a stellar speaker list that includes some of the industry’s best SEO professionals and personalities, including Andrey Lipattsev, David Carrasco, Judith Lewis, and Jamie Indigo. SEO for Paws, is a live-streamed fundraiser founded by Anton Shulke, an expert at

Consultation opens on less healthy food ad ban

Brands can comment “in full” on all aspects of the proposals, which will prohibit ads for “identifiable” less healthy products being shown pre-watershed. Source

Foo Fighters embrace AI in wonderfully silly video

Foo Fighters have officially announced their new drummer in an unconventional debut. Featuring in a delightfully silly AI video, the band hinted that they’re “preparing something special” for fans while poking fun at the AI slop that has infiltrated the creative industries. While there are certainly ways to use AI properly, I’m always a fan

Google Introduces Three-Tier Store Widget Program For Retailers

Google is expanding its store widget program into three eligibility-based tiers that you can embed on your site to display ratings, policies, and reviews, helping customers make informed decisions. Google announces: “When shoppers are online, knowing which store to buy from can be a tough decision. The new store widget powered by Google brings valuable

The CMO gig has been an long excercise in survival

The Digiday+ Future of Marketing Briefing will be your guide to what it actually means to be in this business today. Sometimes that’ll mean talking to CMOs. Other times, it’ll mean exploring ad tech, agencies, creators, streaming, AI – whatever’s shaping the marketing class and those who operate in and around it. This is the first

Google Brings AI Mode To Chrome’s Address Bar

Google is rolling out AI Mode to the address bar in Chrome for U.S. users. This move is part of a series of AI updates, including Gemini in Chrome, page-aware question prompts, improved scam protection, and instant password changes. See Google’s launch video below: What’s New Google Chrome will enable you to access AI Mode

Shareholder Vote Secures Jeff Green’s 48% Control of The Trade Desk

The Trade Desk shareholders cemented CEO Jeff Green’s control of the demand-side platform in a vote on Sept. 16, according to an SEC filing. Investors pushed back a looming deadline by 10 years that would have automatically converted all Class B shares, which carry 10 votes each, into Class A shares, which carry a single

TikTok’s most-loved parents celebrate their 60th anniversary with an illustrated merch drop

If you’re a follower of James Barnett’s TikTok-famous parents Teresa and Michael, you’ll know that it’s been a busy two years for the iconic duo. Since we last caught up on their newfound internet fame, their youngest son and documentarian (James) got married, they were invited to the glitzy TikTok creator awards, and, in a

Directed Bias Attacks On Brands?

Before we dig in, some context. What follows is hypothetical. I don’t engage in black-hat tactics, I’m not a hacker, and this isn’t a guide for anyone to try. I’ve spent enough time with search, domain, and legal teams at Microsoft to know bad actors exist and to see how they operate. My goal here isn’t

GrowthLoop wants to help retailers capture more retail media dollars

Composable CDP vendor GrowthLoop entered the retail media network (RMN) space this week, launching a solution to help retailers organize their data and scale their media offerings. Retailers offering RMNs face many of the same challenges as the marketers they support, including legacy systems that create data silos and require time-consuming workarounds. GrowthLoop’s new product,

Gen Z’s obsession with quirky mirrors is a trend worth following

On one of my many TikTok scroll-athons, I was recently sucked down an unexpected rabbit hole that led me to the flamboyant world of mirrortok. Here, trendy Gen Z decor enthusiasts flex their selfie-ready room setups with increasingly extra mirror designs that are the envy of the internet. While I suspect they’re probably the interior

Google Is Hiring An Anti-Scraping Engineering Analyst

Google is hiring a new anti-scraping czar, whose job will be to analyze search traffic to identify the patterns of search scrapers, assess the impact, and work with engineering teams to develop new anti-scraping models for improving anti-scraping defenses. Search Results Scraping SEOs rely on SERP tracking companies to provide search results data for understanding

How EssentiallySports’ creator program benefits both sides of the equation

As creators rise, publishers are finding that they can partner with creators to produce original content and generate value for both sides of the equation. Over the past year, the sports news publication EssentiallySports has employed creators to make in-house video and editorial content around major tentpole sporting events — and thus far, the experiment has

Google Discover Adds Social Media Posts & Follow Buttons

Google is updating Discover with two changes that could change how your content finds readers. You can now follow publishers directly in Discover, and Google will start showing social posts from platforms like X, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts in the feed. Rollout begins today, with social integrations coming in the weeks ahead. Layla Amjadi, Senior

GMA and CBS Mornings Up Across the Board

A busy news week resulted in ABC News’ Good Morning America and CBS News’ CBS Mornings experiencing week-to-week growth in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 demo for the week of September 8. On the other hand, NBC News’ Today fell in both measured categories. Its lead over ABC News in the demo shrank to

Tickets now available for October’s Nicer Tuesdays!

After the sold-out success of our Nicer Tuesdays in September, with Anthony Burrill, An Chen, and Fieldwork Facility, we are doubling down with an exciting new line-up. Join us on 7 October at EartH Hackney for our next Nicer Tuesdays in London for another selection of brilliant creatives. At next month’s event, you can expect

How To Measure Brand Marketing Efforts (And Prove Their ROI)

Brand marketing is often the silent driver behind successful digital campaigns. People are far more likely to read, watch, click, and ultimately buy from a brand they already know and trust. That’s why doing the harder, slower work of building a strong brand pays dividends when it comes to performance marketing efforts like SEO and

Time for a ‘Welcome Back’ program for returning customers?

A good welcome email program can quickly introduce customers to your brand and start the relationship off right. But what about customers who come back after churning? Do they need to go through the same onboarding process, or would something that reflects their experience with your brand encourage them to stay longer? I started thinking

How to grow your business: Expert advice for creatives

There’s more to business success than just knowing how to create or how to network. For the most part, successful businesses emerge as an outcome of a thoroughly planned and well-executed strategy (crucial to getting more clients). But when designers set up a business, it’s usually because they want to design, not because they want

YouTube Adds Title A/B Testing And “Ask Studio” Analytics

YouTube announces A/B title testing availability, along with AI-powered conversational analytics for YouTube Studio. Title tests are coming to YouTube Studio ‘Ask Studio’ lets you query analytics in plain language to surface actionable insights. YouTube also teased Veo 3 Fast for Shorts.

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