Blueprint — page 32 | The Gradient

Paramount, Warner, and the Price of Consolidation

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Paramount, Warner, and the Price of Consolidation

Medallia survived, but the real story should worry marketers

If you’re a marketer or CX leader who relies on Medallia, you’ve likely been asking yourself: Is Medallia going out of business? Should I be worried? The short answer: no, Medallia is not going out of business. But something significant is happening, and the implications for users, evaluators, and anyone who buys enterprise software from a

How We Use AI To Run A 90-Day Growth Audit

Most growth audits are a performance. Someone shows up with a slide deck, interviews a few stakeholders, and delivers a 40-page PDF that lives in a drawer. The team feels busy for three weeks, and nothing changes. I’ve been on both sides of that transaction, and I got tired of it. At my growth consultancy,

CMOs strain to juggle media budgets, AI and high expectations

Marketing budgets are all but flat, but chief marketing officers are being tasked with juggling investments marked for media, creative and AI on the same departmental balance sheet, according to Gartner. Advertisers currently spend 7.8% of company revenue on marketing on average, a paltry increase of 0.1% compared with last year, according to the company’s

Jake Machen’s charming bubblegum comics transport us back to the anime magazines of yore

As David Lynch once said: “the film is the thing”. And for Hull-based comic book artist Jake Machen, it’s also an uncomplicated matter: “the comic is the comic”. That’s why he made a whole comic just to say it. His comic collection Verdant Dreams looks authentically retro, like alternative anime magazines or 90s Sonic The

WordPress 7.0 Will Ship Without Real-Time Collaboration

WordPress announced that the real-time collaboration feature will not ship in the upcoming 7.0 release, citing that the current approach is not yet “robust enough” to be included. The response from the WordPress community was a collective sigh of relief. A post by Matt Mullenweg in the official WordPress Make Slack workspace explained the reasons

Fox News Debuts New Promo Campaign Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday

Top of the Ticker: In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, Fox News launched a new promo campaign series honoring the people, sacrifices, and defining moments that shaped the nation. Helmed by various Fox News personalities, including primetime hosts like Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, and Laura Ingraham, these short, cinematic tributes showcase the American spirit and feature

How studying The Last of Us has helped this 3D artist perfect character design

There’s a certain kind of artist who can tell you exactly why a character works, not in some broad ‘good design’ sense, but down to the little things, the scar placement, the tired eyes, the colours chosen for a jacket, the way a face changes when a story gets darker, and that’s very much where

Google Drops FAQ Rich Results From Search

Google has removed FAQ rich results from Search after limiting them for most sites. Search Console reporting ends in June, followed by API support in August. FAQ schema can stay on your pages, but it no longer earns visible FAQ results in Google. Google deprecated FAQ rich results, completing a removal that started

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

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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

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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

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