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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

What CMOs Need To Prepare For Now

“What’s closing is the cheap part,” Shane Tepper told me. “The stretch where you can win position with work instead of budget.” Tepper is co-founder of Resonate Labs, and I’d asked him a pointed question. Everyone in SEO talks about a closing window on earned AI visibility, but the surface area of AI search keeps

Platforms’ AI dilemma: scale without sameness

Nearly every big platform at Cannes Lions said AI makes creativity faster. Some of them quietly acknowledged that might be the problem. As advertisers use the same AI tools to make ads at scale, platforms are seeing a new risk: automated content can begin to look and feel the same, destroying the authenticity that makes

Wowza, these runDisney shoes are over 40% off

The internet is going wild for another pop culture collab, and this one is surprisingly subtle. The runDisney X Brooks collection has a sale with a whopping 41% off right now, and was made for outdoor enthusiasts and Disney lovers alike. You’ll find kicks that sport iconic character designs like Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and

Google Business Profiles Showing Empty Review Dashboards

Google Business Profile owners are seeing a message in their review dashboards that reads “You have no reviews yet,” even when their public listings still show hundreds of reviews. Complaint threads began to rise in the Google Business Profile Community forum on July 9, as people reported that the reply panel shows zero reviews, while the

Uncertainty Grips CNN Ahead of Paramount Acquisition

Top of the Ticker: As Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery proceeds into extra time (to borrow a soccer phrase), staffers at CNN are reportedly approaching their potential new owners with extreme apprehension. This week, two features addressed the trepidation many CNNers are feeling, with Variety’s Brian Steinberg reporting that incoming executives from the

AI Visibility Rankings Aren’t Stable – New Research Shows It’s Mostly Statistical Noise

AI visibility tracking data isn’t entirely reliable. Because generative models often produce different responses, the citation shares and rankings on your dashboard are merely snapshots of a continuously changing target, not fixed facts. A difference between you and a competitor could be genuine or just fluctuation between measurements. A new IQRush paper due for release

AI adoption hits 90% as CX deployment paths diverge

Ninety percent of CX organizations are now piloting or deploying AI, according to Five9’s “2026 Business Leaders CX Report.” Overall, the report found that organizations are largely aligned on adopting AI, but sharply divided on governance, deployment strategies, and how to use it in customer service without creating new complexity or eroding customer trust. AI

The Weekend With Porto Rocha

Leo and Felipe let us in on what they are getting up to in their time off – from finding the best food spots in Rio to summer music festivals and the films on their watch list!

WordPress 7.0.1 Maintenance Release Contains 31 Bug Fixes

WordPress released a minor maintenance release, version 7.0.1, that addresses 31 bugs, including one that improves PHP 8.5 compatibility and another that fixes a security-related function. What is not found in this release: No security fixes. No new developer-facing APIs. No improvements to website performance. No changes to how WordPress works. Nothing of high importance

Why the next Mediapalooza will be unlike anything before it

Marvel has its Avengers movies. Advertising has mediapalooza. Every few years the biggest media budgets get thrown into review, agencies scramble to hold their accounts, and the trade press reaches for the same nickname. And every time, the industry convinces itself this cycle will be the one that actually changes things. It never quite does.

Audeze MM-500 headphone review: A microscope on vocals

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. The MM-500 headphone is the result of years of back and forth between 18-time Grammy-award-winning engineer Manny Marroquin and Californian audio company Audeze.

Google Says Canonical Re-Evaluation Can Take Up to Two Weeks

Google’s guide now sets expectations for how long clustered pages take to re-evaluate after a content fix. Pages generally leave a duplicate cluster faster when the content difference between them is clear. Request Indexing can ask Google to re-evaluate clustered pages, though Google advises saving it for your most important URLs. Google updated its canonicalization

Anthropic Confronts the Hard Questions About AI Responsibility

While AI can provide endless answers, Anthropic wants people to keep asking questions about it—specifically, its impact on humans. The AI company has launched a new film, “Hard Questions,” created by Mother and directed by Myles McAuliffe. The work is the latest in Anthropic’s Keep Thinking campaign, which launched in September 2025 and aims to

UNNI

Launched in 2015, Gangnam Unni has become an essential information platform that helps customers make informed decisions by addressing the information imbalance in the aesthetic medical market. Leveraging Korea’s overwhelming achievements in aesthetic medical technology and services, it has rapidly grown in Japan and is expanding to more countries, including Thailand and the United States,

Google Adds Social Reporting; Mueller Warns Against Markdown

Welcome to the week’s Pulse: updates change what you can measure in Search Console, how you describe products in markup, and what John Mueller thinks about building for AI agents. Here’s what matters for you and your work. Search Console Adds Reports For Social And Video Posts Google is rolling out a new Search Console

The secret to scaling vibe coding isn’t better prompts

With vibe coding growing in popularity, enterprise organizations need standards and workflows to scale it sustainably. Prompt logs are an essential part of that foundation. They document how AI-generated code came together, making audits, maintenance, and knowledge transfer much easier. Vibe coding uses natural language prompts to generate code. Maintaining a prompt log lets you

Janosch Abel challenges flashy sports photography by immortalising the repetitive labour that truly shapes an athlete

The images frame moments of pain, intensity and concentration that often go unseen – a runner squatting mid-trail to catch some air, a climber untaping their hands to nurse chalk covered calluses and sores. They purposefully dwell on the mundane, passing moments that are considered “visually unspectacular” in sports, says Janosch. But in deciding to turn

How To Optimize PPC Accounts With Less Search Term Visibility – Ask A PPC

This month’s Ask A PPC tackles a very real concern: Search term visibility keeps shrinking on some platforms while other platforms continue to maintain more transparency. Advertisers still need to understand, diagnose, and optimize campaigns even when they do not have full search term signals. “With search terms increasingly unavailable, what technical signals should advertisers

The Home Depot sees Hispanic market as a ‘huge growth opportunity’

While The Home Depot is not a sports equipment or sports apparel retailer, its consumer base has given it ample reason to develop a comprehensive retail media strategy around the World Cup. Customers often come to The Home Depot and other home improvement retailers to solve a problem or take on a project — especially

Koto’s new type foundry is redefining the rules of font design

Global creative studio Koto has launched CcType, a brand new type foundry built for the contemporary design world. Leveraging years of experience designing bespoke type systems for iconic brands, Koto’s latest venture is defined by versatility and high craft – a response to the ever-evolving demands of modern branding. Koto isn’t new to the game,

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