Blueprint — page 61 | The Gradient

Skydance Owns the Pipeline. What Happens to the People?

Featured Stories

The GRADIENT

Skydance Owns the Pipeline. What Happens to the People?

Marketers Report Highest Rates Of AI ‘Brain Fry,’ Report Finds

A new study reported an increase in mental fatigue tied to heavy AI use. Marketing workers were hit hardest at 26%. A Harvard Business Review article by researchers from Boston Consulting Group and the University of California, Riverside reports that 14% of 1,488 full-time U.S.-based workers surveyed experienced what the authors call “brain fry.” They

AI speeds up CX, but alignment still decides success

AI has quickly moved to the center of customer experience strategy. Many organizations now see predictive models, AI-driven personalization and unified data platforms as the long-awaited answer to persistent CX challenges. AI introduces real new capabilities. But before we assume it fundamentally changes customer experience, it helps to separate what’s truly new from what remains

M?t Mã Gift Set

A little sweet for the New Year. M?t Mã is a gift from B&A, carrying a quiet message to step into the year with a calm inner presence. We invite you to embrace “Ng?a C?m Hoa”?a proud horse strong enough for a thousand-mile journey, yet gentle enough to linger beside quiet flowers.

Google Updates AI Recipe Results To Send More Traffic

Robby Stein, VP of Product Google Search, posted that Google is updating AI Mode so that it surfaces more links to creators when users search for recipes. Google’s AI Mode has generated controversy by synthesizing multiple recipes into what some have taken to calling Frankenstein recipes. This new update aims to fix that by making

Challenges and solutions on AI integrations were hot topics

Another Media Buying Summit is in the books, having just wrapped last Wednesday in Nashville. And while some terrific speakers took the stage, once again it’s the Town Halls that reveal some of the greatest challenges that the people doing the real work at media agencies face day to day. Held under Chatham House rules,

Alex Ram’s blocky characters are an ode to spending quality time with yourself and others

Alex has worked with The New York Times on its massively popular Wordle series, so how does one begin to illustrate the simple grid of Wordle? “The brief was fairly open to begin with and things started with a few suggested concepts, which were then narrowed down to one which would run across five illustrations,”

If AI Can’t Read Your CMS, It Can’t Recommend Your Brand [Webinar]

A Practical Audit for Marketing Leaders Using Enterprise-Level Content Management Systems (CMS) AI-driven search is not a future consideration. It is already shaping how brands are discovered, evaluated, and chosen. Yet many CMS platforms were built for a different era of search, one focused on pages and rankings rather than structured content and machine interpretation.

Why So Many Brands Are Throwing Shade at Their Competitors Right Now

Fifteen years ago, McDonald’s delivered Burger King a gut punch in the form of a commercial. It featured a little boy frustrated by his school chums stealing his McDonald’s fries, so he comes up with an ingenious solution: Hide the fries in a Burger King bag. Nobody touched them. Though it was a McDonald’s affiliate

How to draw Marvel superheroes with attitude using a hybrid art approach

I had the chance to illustrate several Spider-Verse cards for Arachnid Anarchy, the new Marvel Snap season, and in this workshop I’ll walk you through one of my favourites: Spider-Punk. I’ll break down the key steps, as well as the challenges that come with creating a detailed, Marvel character-focused illustration. Because my workflow is a

Why Google Discover Is No Longer Just For Publishers

At Google Search Central Live in Zurich last December, Clara Soteras spoke about how brands and ecommerce sites can use Discover as a strategy. Discover is a dominant source of traffic for news publishers, and currently, is a potential channel that has resisted the encroachment of AI. So, I was interested to see how Discover

Why most marketers are still only experimenting with AI

If you listen to the hype, you’d think AI is already embedded in every marketing workflow. The reality is a lot messier. Research from Supermetric’s “2026 Marketing Data Report” shows that while leadership is pushing hard for AI adoption, most marketing teams are still figuring out how — or whether — to use it effectively.

Food Landscapes :: Behance

div:not(.PrimaryNav-siteSearch-yuO) :focus-visible{outline:1px solid var(–be-one-off-custom-outline-color, var(–be-accessibility-outline-color));outline-offset:3px}.PrimaryNav-hamburgerMenu-iBG :focus-visible{outline:1px solid var(–be-one-off-custom-outline-color, var(–be-accessibility-outline-color));outline-offset:3px}.PrimaryNav-transparentStrip-u4D :focus-visible{outline:1px solid #fff;outline-offset:3px}.PrimaryNav-transparentStrip-u4D .PrimaryNav-skipContent-y_5,.PrimaryNav-transparentStri

Google Says Disavow Links If You’re Conflicted And Need To Be Sure

Google’s John Mueller answered a question about the Disavow Tool where someone was worried about how a steady stream of links that he said were accruing to the site but redirecting to another site, saying that they don’t technically link to the site. The thing about that scenario is that there is no link from

WPP is no longer a holdco. What that means for advertisers

For all the headlines, LinkedIn posts and hot takes generated by WPP’s Elevate28 plan, the most consequential audience has been largely absent from the conversation: the CMOs and senior marketers at the world’s biggest advertisers. Most have no idea it’s even happened. They don’t read the trades. They hear about this stuff through consultants, or

Jakub Zasada’s geometric works are a thing of beauty

Jakub Zasada’s posters feel like they’re from a different era – specifically, the midcentury era of design that was ruled by the likes of Saul Bass and Paul Rand. But, what sets Jakub’s works apart, is the fact that they’re made digitally, with the humble mouse and keyboard. Jakub never learnt how to draw, and

Google’s Liz Reid Says LLMs Unlock Audio And Video Indexing

In a podcast interview, Google VP of Search Liz Reid described two ways LLMs are changing what Google can index and how it ranks results for individual users. Reid told the Access Podcast that multimodal AI models now allow Google to understand audio and video content at a deeper level than was previously possible. She

The Role of Purpose in Marketing Strategy with Yoobi’s Sarah Leinberger

Staying authentic and mission-driven while scaling aggressively may be the toughest problem in marketing to solve. But Sarah Leinberger, VP and head of marketing at educational supply brand Yoobi, has a pretty solid take on how to do it. In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, recorded during Brandweek in Atlanta, Sarah reveals how CMOs can

Hear me out, Comic Sans is actually perfect

Comic Sans was once the king of Y2K graphic design – a fun and characterful font among a sea of stuffy serifs. Today, it is the post-ironic child of a bygone era, but its origins spread far beyond its whimsical aura. Consider this my plea to think twice before you judge Comic Sans. While it’s

AI Max Brand Controls Expand, VRC Non-Skip Ads Go Global – PPC Pulse

Welcome to PPC Pulse: this week’s updates focus on creative controls and video delivery across Google Ads. Google expanded beta access to text guidelines in AI Max, allowing advertisers to set guardrails for AI-generated ad copy across Search and Performance Max campaigns. At the same time, VRC non-skip ads are now generally available globally, expanding

Why organic search is becoming a brand trust channel

If you’re an organic search marketer, you know the industry has been fundamentally disrupted over the last two years. As a community, we continue to debate short-term tactics rather than pivot toward a holistic strategy aligned with general marketing principles. Despite the frustrating landscape, we must stop focusing on outdated hacks and shift our thinking

Join Our Newsletter

For more professional opportunities join our newsletter.