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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

Nielsen and RealEyes offer outcomes-based measurement

Give Nielsen some credit — although its Big Data Plus Panel measurement initiative this year has been fraught with problems for agencies using it to determine their upfront investments, they are using it, and it does represent the measurement company’s efforts to move just beyond panels. In fact, it almost feels to some observers like

Meet Paul&Thomas, the playfully precise studio built on a chance encounter

Paul&Thomas is a dynamic studio hailing from Rennes, consisting of Paul Faure and Thomas Hanus. Both with a background in graphic design, the pair met while studying at the prestigious ENSBA Lyon, and their journeys merged again after meeting by chance: “We lost contact but ended up unintentionally sharing a workspace in Rennes,” Paul tells

2025 Core Web Vitals Challenge: WordPress Versus Everyone

The Core Web Vitals Technology Report shows the top-ranked content management systems by Core Web Vitals (CWV) for the month of June (July’s statistics aren’t out yet). The breakout star this year is an e-commerce platform, which is notable because shopping sites generally have poor performance due to the heavy JavaScript and image loads necessary

After Loss of Federal Funding, CPB to Shut Down Operations

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has indicated that it will soon shut down its operations after nearly 60 years due to the loss of federal funding. Nearly $1.1 billion in funding will be lost, which prompted the shutdown, affecting PBS and NPR’s local member stations. These broadcasters rely on federal support to fund their operations.

Trump Jr. flashes his daddy’s genes in Sydney Sweeney American Eagle parody

Trump Jr. has hopped on the American Eagle bandwagon, flexing a picture of his “great genes” in the form of an AI image of his father, Donald Trump. Mimicking Sydney Sweeney’s sultry side on pose, the bizarre parody doesn’t quite capture the same sexual allure as her controversial American Eagle ad, but you can’t deny

Merging SEO And Content Using Your Knowledge Graph To AI-Proof Content

New AI platforms, powered by generative technologies like Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, Grok, and countless specialized chatbots, are rapidly becoming the front door for digital discovery. We’ve entered an era of machine-led discovery, where AI systems aggregate, summarize, and contextualize content across multiple platforms. Users today no longer follow a linear journey from keyword to

4 CTV challenges for B2B and how to overcome them

CTV advertising introduces unique challenges in targeting, measurement and creative supply — and that’s just for B2C brands. Throw in B2B’s long sales cycle, the measurement nuances that come with it and the wrinkle of humanizing services or tech products through great creative. You can understand why B2B brands have been slow to integrate CTV

SuprOrdinary battles with batter to combat his inner creative critic

In the final episode of season one, SuprOrdinary sets out to master one of the most unruly artistic mediums known to mankind… pancake batter. Expect meltdowns (emotional, not butter-based), a life lesson on how to ignore your inner critic, and far too much whisking. SuprOrdinary is presented by It’s Nice That in association with BUCK.

OpenAI Is Pulling Shared ChatGPT Chats From Google Search

OpenAI has rolled back a feature that allowed ChatGPT conversations shared via link to appear in Google Search results. The company confirms it has disabled the toggle that enabled shared chats to be “discoverable” by search engines and is working to remove existing indexed links. Shared Chats Were “Short-Lived Experiment” When users shared a ChatGPT

Amid budget scrutiny, marketers are driving growth through programmatic CTV

Marketers are under increasing pressure to deliver better business outcomes, even as they face budget shortfalls and shrinking teams. These circumstances make it imperative for teams to maximize their spending. One way marketers are addressing these challenges is through programmatic CTV, which is emerging as an essential channel for achieving more efficient, targeted and measurable

Adobe wants you to edit its surreal AI video campaign

Leaps in AI creative tech come so thick and fast these days that it can be hard to make them sound exciting any more, but Adobe‘s found a clever approach to promote the latest updates to its Firefly AI Video Model and to try to get artists on board. It’s launched a campaign that invites

Bing Recommends lastmod Tags For AI Search Indexing

Bing has updated its sitemap guidance with a renewed focus on the lastmod tag, highlighting its role in AI-powered search to determine which pages need to be recrawled. While real-time tools like IndexNow offer faster updates, Bing says accurate lastmod values help keep content discoverable, especially on frequently updated or large-scale sites. Bing Prioritizes lastmod

Michael Kassan Says He ‘Feels Good’ After Reaching ‘Amicable’ Agreement With UTA

Nearly a year and a half after United Talent Agency accused one of media’s most heralded dealmakers, Michael Kassan, of misappropriating nearly $1 million in business funds for personal use, the two parties are putting an end to their legal drama. “UTA and Michael Kassan have agreed to amicably end their dispute,” a UTA spokesperson

Decoding the world through Charles Auguste’s artistic direction

Charles Auguste’s practice, initially fed by a focus on physical disciplines like parkour, brings together visual arts and direction alongside performance. “The essence of my work lies in a co-creative relationship between the body and space”, seeking to “de-automate systems and places that are fixed in their primary function”, in Charles’ words. In interface with

Should I Still Invest In SEO? (Yes, But Not In The Old Way)

How users are starting to interact with the internet has changed and soon will be unrecognizable from the internet we’ve grown comfortable with. With Google integrating AI-powered features into Search, and the rise of third-party large language models (LLMs), it’s a different search experience. Over the past few months, many CMOs I’ve spoken with, as

Email designer updates take center stage in Adobe Marketo July updates

Adobe Marketo Engage began rolling out its July 2025 product updates on July 11, 2025, and enhancements are rolling out to customers throughout the month. The July release brings major improvements to the email designer Marketo introduced at the start of 2025, the tool’s API infrastructure and administrative tools. There are also several important deprecation

Want back to school Apple deals? I think there are only 2 real options

If you’re a student that’s getting ready to go back to school, and you want a brand new Apple product for your studies, time was there was only one option: make the most of the Apple student discount directly from Apple. And that is still a great idea – you can get $100 off the

PPC Audience Strategy: Targeting Vs. Observation

If you’ve layered audiences into your Google Ads campaign and weren’t sure if you should select “targeting” or “observation,” you’re not alone. While the Google and Microsoft platforms give decent explanations of the two modes, picking the wrong option can quietly sabotage performance. This setting controls how your audience selections influence who sees your ads

Publishers try to keep AI out while letting reality in

More than 80 media executives huddled in New York last week under the IAB Tech Lab banner to tackle a problem that’s fast becoming existential: how to block AI companies scraping publisher content to train their models and capture attention — all without consent, let alone a check. The usual suspects showed up — publishers,

Tickets now available for September’s Nicer Tuesdays!

We’re finally back! We’ve spent the summer cooking up a corker line-up just for you. Come and complete your summer of creative inspiration at EartH Hackney for our September Nicer Tuesdays in London. At this month’s event, you can expect talks from An Chen, an artist and designer reflecting on the importance of staying true

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