Blueprint — page 10 | The Gradient

Paramount, Warner, and the Price of Consolidation

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Paramount, Warner, and the Price of Consolidation

Practical advice for scaling start-up marketing

Start-up marketing isn’t for the faint of heart, and if you want to learn how it’s done well, you can check out the highlight reels on LinkedIn, or you can spend time with someone who’s scaled marketing start up and discuss what they’ve learned. In this episode of Conversations with MarTech, Abby Strong, chief market

Photographer Da’Shaunae Marisa on the importance of grief and knowing your roots

Photographer and filmmaker Da’Shaunae Marisa took the Nicer Tuesdays stage in Los Angeles in the form of a flower to take us through her creative journey, from an early interest in photography to a stellar career in photojournalism centring the beauty of Black life in America, leading to a giant Rubik’s Cube installation and work

AI Agents Struggle To Read B2B Pricing

A Siteline report tested a Claude agent on 100 top B2B software products. It found access errors and hidden pricing caused the agent to visit third-party sites for info it couldn’t find on official pages. The report, by Siteline founder David Kaufman, involved running a simulated Claude agent through 534 attempts to discover monthly prices

OpenAI plans image, video and conversational ad formats

OpenAI has spent its first four months laying the groundwork for its ad business. Now it’s turning its attention to the various formats that will power it. Three job listings on OpenAI’s careers page point to text, image, video, native, conversational and interactive ad formats in the works. The company is looking for an ad

xTool has invented a new hardware category with the O1 Omni printer

XTool is a major player in the digital crafting space and has today announced the launch of yet another exciting innovation: the xTool O1 Omni desktop UV Printer. It’s available to pre-order right now from xTool’s website, in three editions: Single UV for £ 1,399, Dual-Head UV for £2,199, or UV + DTF Fabric Edition

ChatGPT Users Are Now Mostly Non-English

Over half of active ChatGPT users now predominantly use a language other than English, as reported in consumer usage data released by OpenAI. The most common non-English languages are Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic. The figures include individual ChatGPT plans, such as Free, Go, Plus, and Pro, but do not cover Codex, Enterprise, or education products.

MLB Hopes to Walk Off With More Fans Using Content Creators

What will fandom look like in the future? MLB and Jomboy Media may be giving us a glimpse. At ADWEEK House at Cannes Lions last week, senior reporter Mark Stenberg sat down with Courtney Hirsch, CEO at Jomboy Media; Dexter Fowler, former MLB All-Star and co-founder of 400 Ventures; and EJ Aguado, vice president, player

Inside the PESO Model® Certification

This year, I tore apart the thing with my name on it. The PESO Model® Certification has taught thousands of people for more than a decade, and I rebuilt it from the studs anyway—because the old version taught PESO as a framework to understand, and 2026 demands you run it as an operating system. Inside,

How ChatGPT Actually Picks Sources

I keep getting the same question from clients and SEOs (GEOs?). “How do we show up in ChatGPT?” The answer is always the same. Write good content, do listicles, comment on Reddit. The usual. But, how do we actually know any of that works? Most of it gets repeated on faith, one expert quoting the

AI made email marketing easier. It needs us to make it better.

Why is email marketing like being in a long-term relationship? Because when you ask your partner how they’re feeling, and they respond, “Fine,” you know that doesn’t always mean things are good. In the same vein, AI can produce campaigns that look fine. But on closer inspection, you might find it doesn’t have the juice

“Creatives have a mid-life crisis every five years”

The truth is the industry has changed since that narrative. We don’t have the opportunity to visit endless museums to get inspired, spend a day typesetting a poster, get the paints out and experiment. The industry moves faster. I’m hesitant to suggest side projects, because if you’re truly burnt out, then it’s not the best

Personalization Can Help Small Publishers

Google’s VP and Head of Search, Liz Reid, stated that personalized search and preferred sources can assist small publishers in gaining visibility, countering concerns that personalization makes them less accessible. Reid shared her perspective on the AI Inside podcast, during the same interview where she told publishers that the key to AI visibility lies in

Retailers believe shopper data can help prove TV ads lead to sales

Streaming is becoming an important part of many retail media networks’ growth strategies, as retailers believe that shopper data can help advertisers prove their TV ads lead to sales. On Tuesday, Walmart said it has agreed to acquire Vibe.co, a self-service connected TV advertising platform for small and mid-sized businesses and mid-market brands. The deal

Speed up your painting with issue 268 of ImagineFX

In this month’s ImagineFX we teach you how to turn your ideas into speed painting sessions, as well as show you how to level up your own art with tutorials, sketchbooks and more. Read on below to see all the major articles waiting for you this month. Get yours now! To bag your copy head

Google Defends AI Training As Fair Use In Governance Paper

Since AI Overviews launched, search and publishing professionals have been paying close attention to how AI companies should handle the content used to train their models. Google has now shared its stance. It emphasizes fair use and provides options for opting out, while also highlighting paid agreements for specific situations. In a policy paper published

NBCU Faces Major Merger Questions After Its Comcast Split

Comcast is spinning off NBCUniversal, and the TV industry has questions. The company’s tax-free spin-off of NBCU, announced on Monday and expected to take a year to complete, creates two separate companies: Comcast will continue to focus on its core technology businesses, while NBCU will focus on media and entertainment. In announcing the separation, Brian

The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Cover Illustrations

A curated selection of cover illustrations created for The Lancet Infectious Diseases, one of the world’s leading medical journals, covering the first half of 2026. Each illustration turns complex scientific research into clear, visual stories ? transforming clinical findings and global health topics into symbolic, easy-to-read imagery.

Selling AI As A Replacement Wins Attention & Kills Trust

Kevin Indig’s Growth Memo offers disciplined strategic analysis in the SEO and growth field, and his columns rarely veer from careful, evidence-grounded argument. So, when he stepped outside his usual lane in June 2026 to say, simply, “Stop trying to replace people with AI,” it was more diagnosis than vent. Indig calls the phenomenon “substitution

Where synthetic data fits into customer research

Marketing has always depended on customer insight, but traditional ways of gaining it are under strain. Surveys take time. Focus groups are expensive. Hard-to-reach audiences often remain underrepresented. Privacy requirements and consent limitations make granular customer data harder to access and use. At the same time, marketing teams are under pressure to move faster, personalize

Ana Terral’s illustrations perfectly capture pain – from heel blisters and sun burns to bite marks

Moldovan-born visual artist and illustrator Ana Terral understands your pain. Chapped lips, blisters on the back of heels, bite marks, pin-pricks, sun-burns (and those annoying tan lines). Using alcohol markers on very thin, slightly beige paper, her pink palettes look soft and watery, a delicate mix between felt-tip on wet paper and the ethereality of

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