Blueprint | The Gradient

Who Won, Who Cut and What Comes Next in Advertising

Featured Stories

The GRADIENT

Who Won, Who Cut and What Comes Next in Advertising

How to build content your competitors cannot copy

Most AI content isn’t failing because it’s low quality. It fails because it’s disconnected from how your business works. That point came up repeatedly at SEO Week, especially in sessions focused on what happens after content is published. One line stuck with me. As Will Reynolds put it, “Visibility is just an opportunity.” What happens

Carts, Catalogs, And Loyalty In AI Shopping

Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol can now handle shopping carts, live catalog queries, and loyalty program benefits for AI agent transactions. On March 19, Google announced three new UCP capabilities and a simplified onboarding path through Merchant Center, two months after Google and Shopify unveiled UCP at the National Retail Federation conference in January 2026. The January launch had a

Wtf is a Unified Ad Platform

Ad tech’s shift from an industry littered with point solutions to one built around integrated stacks has been underway for a while. It was only a matter of time before the acronyms followed. Unified advertising platforms (UAP) is one such term. It hasn’t fully landed in the industry’s vocabulary yet, but give it time. It

Uncommon’s mouldy identity for Offf Barcelona is grown from biological traces of creatives

Combined with a colour approach drawn from nature’s most expansive palette, filled with leaf-spots, powdery mildews, constellations of rusts and blights, the mould is unpredictable and oddly beautiful. The quiet logic and bold textural imagery built within this design system includes Modernisme, Uncommon’s biologically-thriving typeface, inspired by experimental, biomorphic letterforms. As well as that, there’s

AI Companies Are Selling Heartwarming Ads – They’re Racing To Automate Your Job

OpenAI wants you to know that its technology helps you figure out what to cook for dinner. Google wants you to feel the warmth of a family settling into a new home with Gemini by their side. Anthropic would like you to see its Claude as the clean, trustworthy alternative to the ad-cluttered mess everyone

Numbers Tighten Between Today and GMA

The final week of April saw NBC News’ Today and ABC News’ Good Morning America continue to battle it out for first place in total viewers. Today’s lead over GMA shrank to just 56,000 total viewers, signifying the intense competitiveness between the two morning shows. Meanwhile, all three networks grew in total viewers, but they

These branding books will teach you everything you need to know

Learn branding from the greats, for less.

New AI Search Links, Core Update Winners And Losers

Welcome to the week’s Pulse: updates affect how links appear inside AI search results, which types of sites gained or lost visibility in the March core update, and how Google’s Preferred Sources feature works across new markets. Here’s what matters for you and your work. Google Adds More Links And Link Context To AI Search

AI use and fatigue growing among consumers

AI use is now commonplace among consumers. Prophet’s new “2026 AI-Powered Consumer Report” found that generative AI adoption has climbed to 73%, up sharply from 45% in 2024, showing how quickly these tools have become part of daily life. At the same time, enthusiasm around AI has started to cool. Consumer excitement declined by 7%,

Korea High School Textbook Illustration

I illustrated the cover artworks for a set of four Korean high school textbooks. ?? ???? ??? 4? ??? ?? ????? ???????????.

Google Expands AI Search Links Without New Click Data

Google has talked about AI search clicks several different ways since AI Overviews launched. This week, the company added new link surfaces instead of new click data. This article traces how Google’s public language about clicks has changed, what each phase revealed, and what this week’s five new link features add to the conversation. “No

Amazon is turning the upfront into a pitch for its ad tech

The upfront is no longer just a shop window for content Amazon owns, it’s now one for its ad tech too. That’s a shift from how this period usually works. The tech pitch used to come after the content deal was done — a separate conversation, often with different people. Not anymore. “There’s this big

Gary Grimes decodes the angsty cultural references within Romain Gavras’ Yung Lean-starring epic, Storm

Having said that, the video does culminate in a spectacular group performance of another kind. As the diptych transitions into Storm II, Yung Lean stands in a bloodied school shirt amidst his classmates gathered in a tiered formation, like that of a class photo. The star remains largely static, save for occasional puffs of his

The Agent Runtime Wars Started This Week

The agent runtime is the new browser layer, and your website is going to be evaluated against the runtime, not against any individual model. That’s a shift web professionals have not yet made. The conversation is still framed around models. Which model writes better? Which one cites more accurately? Which one’s API is cheaper this

Nightly News and CBS Evening News Grow

NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas and CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil will be happy with their individual performances as they finished the week of April 27 with gains in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 demo. Nightly News, in particular, will be encouraged by its showing in the prized A25-54 demo, as it

The KPop Demon Hunters comic is finally here, and you can order it today

KPop Demon Hunters has been on a ‘Golden’ run, picking up VFX Awards and the Oscars for best animated feature and best original song. If you’re one of those fans who’s felt that the movie’s vibrant stylised animation made it perfectly suited for a comic, you’re in luck: it’s finally here! Netflix has announced the

Community That Drives AI Visibility

AI search doesn’t pick brands at random. They cite brands with trust signals across multiple channels. Are you building brand proof in the places AI actually looks to validate mentions? Do you know which community conversations are shaping what AI says about your category? Reddit is one of the most powerful and least utilized of

Creating meaningful moments across the customer journey

At the May 2026 MarTech Conference, a panel of marketing leaders tackled a persistent industry friction: how brands can create personalized customer experiences without crossing the line into “creepy.” In the session, “Winning attention without losing trust: creating meaningful moments across the customer journey,” moderator Angela Vega, director of capabilities and operations at Expedia Group,

Gestures two: art collection by Pablo

This series explores organic synthesis, blending the fluid movements of marine life with the structural elegance of botanical forms. ‘Gestures’ captures the energy of hand-drawn lines within a refined digital environment. Each piece strikes a balance between vibrant colour palettes and flat colours, designed to evoke a sense of warmth and modernity. This collection celebrates

The Reddit Earnings Story Most Marketers Missed

I was walking over to take the stage at SMMW 2026 in Anaheim, California, last Thursday, listening intently to Steve Huffman, founder and CEO of Reddit, talk about the last quarter at Reddit, but more importantly, to get a sense of what the focus would be for the rest of the year. Question after question,

Join Our Newsletter

For more professional opportunities join our newsletter.