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The GRADIENT: Why Taste Is the New Moat

It’s Nice That’s curated gift guide of shops and makers

Looking to buy a gift for the discerning designer in your life who has everything? Sick of the same old stuff being sold to you on social media? Us too! We hope this gift guide breaks the algorithm and offers some truly different, beautiful, unusual options for your present buying this year. There’s something for

Meta Projected $16B From Scam Ads, Internal Docs Show

Advertisers on Meta may be unknowingly competing against suspected scam ads that stay in auctions at higher “penalty bid” prices. Internal documents obtained by Reuters estimate that around 10% of Meta’s 2024 ad revenue, approximately $16 billion, would come from scam ads and banned goods. Although Meta disagrees with these estimates, the real impact for

What you need to know

Story updated with information on significant expansions to the Connecticut and Montana data protection laws. Data privacy regulation is an issue with broad, national bipartisan support. Red states like Texas and Tennessee and Blue states like California and Colorado are among the 12 states that now have laws about handling consumers’ personal information. Despite this,

Give the gift of comfort this Christmas.

Why an ergonomic chair? When it comes to thoughtful gifts, few things say “I care” like all-day comfort. Whether for a gamer, creative professional, or for the work from home hero, an ergonomic chair is more than just a seat, it’s a lifestyle upgrade. Designed to support natural posture and reduce strain, Boulies chairs help

A Step By Step Guide For Growing AI Engine Engagement

This post was sponsored by TAC Marketing. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. After years of trying to understand the black box that is Google search, SEO professionals have a seemingly even more opaque challenge these days – how to earn AI citations. While at first glance inclusion in AI answers

Diageo appoints former Tesco boss Dave Lewis as CEO

Don Julio tequila. Source: Diageo. Diageo has announced former Tesco boss and marketer Sir Dave Lewis as its incoming CEO, as the drinks giant looks to revive its fortunes. Lewis, who will take the helm of Diageo in January, led Tesco through a turnaround during his tenure as CEO between 2014 and 2020. The supermarket

Lena Manger and Patryk Kulig balance timeless elegance with accessibility and precision

Lena Manger, a graphic designer, art director and writer who is based between Berlin and Tokyo, centers her work on emotion that “creates sparks.” Along with her long-term collaborator Patryk Kulig, the duo have worked for the past two years to create stunning design together – a visual identity for Bianco Bianco, a Tokyo creative

Solving The Web Effectiveness Stalemate

In many organizations, a quiet but costly stalemate exists between two powerful forces: the chief marketing officer (CMO) and the chief technology officer (CTO). At the heart of this tension lies a fundamental misalignment. It is not of intent, but of incentives, timelines, and definitions of success. What should be a collaborative engine for digital

Inside Reuters’ agentic AI video experiment

Reuters is experimenting with using an AI agent to speed up its video production process. This week, Reuters hired its first AI video producer to, in part, help oversee the initiative. Typically, Reuters’ newsroom has used AI technology to accelerate its text-based workflows. But Rob Lang, newsroom AI editor at Reuters, said he saw an

8 artists reflect on a decade of unexpected career turns and surprise opportunities

A lot can happen over the course of 10 years. Unexpected opportunities can take you in a new direction that you’d never thought of, or personal circumstances can put constraints on your life. Sometimes your dreams don’t seem so appealing when you get close to them, and it turns out that something entirely different is

Google Deprecates Practice Problem Structured Data In Search

Google will deprecate practice problem structured data in January and clarifies Dataset markup is only for Dataset Search. Book actions remain supported. Practice problem markup is being deprecated from Google Search in January. Dataset structured data is for Dataset Search only; it isn’t used in Google Search. Book actions continue to

GMA Celebrates 50th Anniversary With On-Air Reunion

Top of the Ticker: On Monday, ABC News’ Good Morning America celebrated its 50th anniversary with an on-air reunion. Past and present GMA talent, along with Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger, congregated inside the morning broadcast’s new studio at 7 Hudson Square, which received a special studio dedication. Among the attendees, Lara Spencer, Sam Champion,

How travelling with nothing but pencils and a notepad helped Harriet Yakub tackle her fear of a blank page

This didn’t assuage all moments of uncertainty, however. Harriet recalls feeling tentative when starting the notebook, a mindset she believes you can see change as the notebook progresses. “I was quite nervous to start, cautious with strokes and colours and afraid I’d ruin a page. It didn’t have the energy of my digital work, but

OpenAI’s Sam Altman Raises Possibility Of Ads On ChatGPT

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman sat for an interview where he explained that his vision for the future of ChatGPT is as a trusted assistant that’s user-aligned, saying that booking hotels is not going to be the way to monetize “the world’s smartest model.” He pointed to Google as an example of what he doesn’t want

When shadow DAMs become the real system of record

As organizations generate more content than ever, digital asset management (DAM) now sits at the center of marketing and creative infrastructure. But as the technology matures, a quiet shift is challenging enterprise control and governance — the rise of shadow DAMs. These systems mimic core DAM functions yet operate outside official frameworks. This year, the

How Deadpool’s director went from drawing Playboy centrefolds to making hit movies and series

Tim Miller is best known for directing the original Deadpool movie and for creating the TV series Love, Death & Robots for Netflix and Secret Level for Amazon. But he had a long career in animation and VFX before that. Miller co-founded Blur Studio 30 years ago and has worked on everything from game trailers

A Playbook For Technology Leaders

Search is moving from queries typed into a box to conversations held with systems that understand intent, context, and outcomes. People no longer look for pages. They look for solutions, guidance, and confidence that they are making the right choice. Agentic AI pushes this shift further. Instead of waiting for instructions, agents act on goals.

ITV in talks with Sky to sell broadcast arm

The deal would see ITV sell its terrestrial channels and streaming business to Comcast, bringing together two of the UK’s biggest TV advertising platforms. ITV has confirmed it is in talks with Sky over the sale of its broadcasting arm to the company. Responding to press speculation on the matter, ITV said it is in

Inside Younguk Yi’s supremely weird paintings

It’s been found that the human brain detects faces 90-130 milliseconds after looking at an object that could slightly resemble a face – it’s called face pareidolia. Of course, our eyes are trained to recognise faces in unfamiliar environments because we look at faces all day long. But this is certainly not Younguk Yi’s goal,

Where SEO Meets AI Retrieval

Search isn’t ending. It’s evolving. Across the industry, the systems powering discovery are diverging. Traditional search runs on algorithms designed to crawl, index, and rank the web. AI-driven systems like Perplexity, Gemini, and ChatGPT interpret it through models that retrieve, reason, and respond. That quiet shift (from ranking pages to reasoning with content) is what’s breaking the optimization stack

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