IAB: Digital Ad Revenue Hit Nearly $300 Billion in 2025

📈 Digital ad revenue hit $294.6B in 2025, growing 13.9% even without major events, driven heavily by surges in social and digital video.

🤖 AI is becoming the industry’s infrastructure layer, reshaping creative, targeting, measurement, and laying the foundation for agentic, automated media buying.

📱 Consumer behavior is shifting toward video, creator‑led content, and performance environments, pushing brands toward always‑on creator programs and deeper commerce‑media integration.

‘Everything is coming down’: ChatGPT ads are getting cheaper

📉 ChatGPT ad prices are rapidly falling — CPMs have dropped from $60 at launch to as low as $25, with some reports citing dips to $15, signaling soft demand and a push toward broader accessibility.

🤖 OpenAI is racing to mature its ad product, lowering the minimum spend from $250K to $50K, rolling out a self‑serve ads manager, partnering with Criteo, and building attribution tools to prove performance in a conversational interface.

⚖️ The core tension is trust and value: advertisers are comparing ChatGPT’s high CPMs to established platforms, and until OpenAI can demonstrate measurable ROI, the long‑term viability of its projected $102B ad business remains uncertain.

Replenit raises $2.5M to bring real-time AI decision-making to retail

🧠 Replenit has raised $2.5M to build a real‑time AI reasoning layer for retail, turning customer signals into individualized, in‑the‑moment decisions rather than backward‑looking predictions .

⚙️ The system integrates with tools like Databricks, Salesforce, Braze, Bloomreach, and Klaviyo to deliver personalized actions at scale, driving major revenue lifts such as 235% post‑purchase growth for L’Occitane and 6.3% of total revenue for iBOOD .

🌍 The company is headquartered in Warsaw, backed by a diverse set of investors, and plans to expand product development, AI research, and U.S. operations while positioning itself as a new standard in retail intelligence tech.eu.

Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs

🎨 Anthropic is launching Claude Design, a new tool powered by Opus 4.7 that lets anyone create polished visual work—prototypes, decks, mockups, and full design explorations—through natural conversation and iterative refinement.

⚙️ It plugs into your brand system automatically, supports uploads, inline edits, granular controls, team collaboration, and exports to formats like Canva, PDF, PPTX, and HTML, while also handing off cleanly to Claude Code for production.

🚀 Early partners like Canva, Brilliant, and Datadog report dramatic speedups in prototyping and workflow, with teams going from rough ideas to interactive, on‑brand outputs in minutes instead of days.

Consumers Spend Through the Squeeze as Income Slips

💸 Spending > Income: Consumers keep spending even as personal income slips and real disposable income falls, forcing households to lean on savings erosion, fragmented income streams, and faster access to funds.

⚡ Cash‑Flow Engineering: Households increasingly rely on instant payouts, disbursements, and BNPL/installments to bridge timing gaps between earnings and expenses—turning liquidity tools into essential financial infrastructure.

🧩 Resilience With Limits: Spending holds up for now, but negative real income, 4% savings rate, and embedded inflation suggest consumers’ ability to sustain this behavior is narrowing.

Walmart to modernize Great Value private label design

⭐️ Walmart is overhauling Great Value’s look

Walmart is rolling out a major packaging redesign for its 30‑year‑old Great Value private label — the first in more than a decade. The refresh will span ~10,000 items over two years, starting with salty snacks. The goal: make products easier to see online/in‑store and create more consistent nutrition + product info.

🧺 The redesign responds to customer perception

Walmart’s VP of Creative told CNBC that many shoppers don’t like how Great Value looks in their pantries, prompting the modernization. The update is cosmetic only — Walmart stresses the products and prices remain unchanged.

📉 Private label value is becoming a battleground

Wells Fargo analysts note Walmart and Aldi dominate opening price point baskets, while Amazon and Dollar General’s private label prices run 30%+ higher. With consumers staying selective amid macro pressure, retailers are leaning harder into private label to win wallet share. Walmart’s refresh is part of that competitive push.

Google brings AI Max for Search out of beta, will deprecate legacy tools

🔧 Google is sunsetting legacy Search tools — AI Max exits beta and becomes the default; DSA and other formats deprecate by Sept 2026.

🤖 AI Max reflects new search behavior — blends landing‑page signals with real‑time intent to handle more complex, AI‑shaped queries.

📈 Advertisers get performance + controls — Google cites +7% conversions, improved creative, stronger brand controls, and deeper reporting.

Meta to shoot past Google in digital ad revenue for first time: Emarketer

🚀 Meta overtakes Google in global digital ad revenue

• Meta is forecast to generate $243.46B in 2026, edging out Google’s $239.54B for the first time — a 26.8% vs. 26.4% global share split.

• Meta’s acceleration is the story: 24.1% growth in 2026 vs. Google’s 11.9%, driven by automation, Reels performance, and full‑ecosystem lift.

🏗️ The Big Three tighten their grip

• Meta + Google + Amazon = 62.3% of all global digital ad spend.

• Amazon climbs to 9% share with revenue jumping from $68.6B → $82.1B.

• Forecasts suggest this consolidation only intensifies through 2028.

ANA Urges FTC To Avoid Mandating ‘Easy’ Cancellation Tools

🔧 ANA Pushes Back on “Easy Cancellation” Mandates

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) is urging the FTC not to revive parts of the 2024 “click‑to‑cancel” rules that would require subscription cancellations to be as easy as sign‑ups.

• ANA argues sign‑up and cancellation are inherently different processes, and consumers may want friction during cancellation to consider consequences (e.g., losing bundles, triggering higher rates).

⚖️ Legal Backdrop: Prior Rules Were Struck Down

A federal appeals court previously invalidated the FTC’s 2024 rules because the agency did not conduct sufficient economic analysis before issuing them.

• The court said the FTC needed a preliminary regulatory analysis with alternatives and cost‑benefit assessments.

📈 FTC & Consumer Advocates Say Hard‑to‑Cancel Tactics Are Widespread

The FTC is reconsidering whether to revive the rules, citing 100,000+ complaints about “negative option” practices in the last five years.

• Consumer groups argue businesses have shown little voluntary interest in making cancellations easy, so enforceable rules are needed.

🧩 ANA’s Additional Arguments

“Easy to use” is too vague—different consumers have different levels of platform familiarity.

MrBeast is so big, Beast Industries turns down eight-figure brand deals if they aren’t the right fit

🌍 MrBeast’s global scale is now so large that Beast Industries routinely rejects seven‑ and eight‑figure brand deals that don’t feel authentic to Jimmy or his Gen Z/Gen Alpha audience.

🏗️ Beast Industries has shifted to fewer, deeper, multi‑year partnerships, backed by a 25‑person commercial team and data-heavy pitch materials that flip the power dynamic—Fortune 1000 brands now come to them.

🎥 The company is expanding beyond Jimmy, with a Disney‑style vision: building new creators, leaning into livestreaming, TikTok, and long‑form YouTube (now ~28 minutes), and treating “MrBeast” as the Mickey Mouse of a broader entertainment empire.

OpenAI has quietly launched its ads manager as it races to build out its ads business

🚀 OpenAI quietly launched a self‑serve ads manager, giving advertisers real‑time performance controls for the first time — a foundational step toward becoming a true ad platform.

💸 Pilot entry dropped from $200–250K to $50K, signaling aggressive scale‑up ahead of a planned IPO and a push to onboard more advertisers despite limited performance volume.

🏗️ OpenAI is racing to build an ad‑tech stack, partnering with Criteo and Smartly, holding CPMs at $60 for calibration, and chasing revenue as it faces $14B in projected losses this year.

A group of seven-figure Amazon sellers is planning a one-day ad boycott as payment changes squeeze cash flow

💥 Amazon sellers are planning a one‑day ad boycott on April 15, protesting new payment rules that automatically deduct ad spend from their payouts.

💸 Cash‑flow strain is severe — many sellers say the combined policy changes could cut over $100K from available cash, with some estimating $250K+.

⚠️ Tension is rising between Amazon and small sellers, who feel squeezed by fees, surcharges, and shifting policies while still being dependent on the platform.

the $1.2 billion gummy bear

🧸 Grüns built a $1.2B brand in 32 months by solving the supplement industry’s biggest problem: people don’t stick with the habit — but 80% of Grüns customers take it daily.

🧪 Taste + format were the retention engine — individually packed gummies that people want to take, not need to remember. This single insight drove LTV, CAC efficiency, retail pull, and investor confidence.

🌍 Unilever acquired Grüns to anchor its global wellness portfolio, gaining a habit‑forming daily nutrition system that complements Olly, SmartyPants, Nutrafol, and Liquid I.V.

Shopify Expands Availability of B2B Tools to All Merchants

📦 Shopify unlocks B2B for everyone: Core wholesale features (company profiles, custom catalogs, tailored pricing, volume discounts) move from Plus to all plans, removing the biggest barrier to B2B adoption.

🔄 One operating system for DTC + B2B: Merchants can now run consumer and wholesale channels side‑by‑side natively, increasing platform stickiness and reducing reliance on external tools.

📈 GMV expansion strategy: By opening B2B beyond Plus, Shopify targets a “small but high‑potential” segment to drive GMV growth and onboard more wholesale‑native merchants while keeping advanced features as Plus upgrade levers.

the $20 product that’s #1 at Sephora, Amazon, and Erewhon

🚀 Salt & Stone premiumized a boring category — turning deodorant into “affordable prestige” through design, scent, and cultural positioning, becoming a top seller across Sephora, Amazon, and Erewhon.

🧩 The brand wins through discipline — narrow scent architecture, zero SKU sprawl, channel clarity (DTC + Sephora + Amazon), and streetwear‑style collabs that expand cultural reach without diluting identity.

💰 The economics + thesis are airtight — high-margin hero product, profitable from day one, and perfectly timed for the premiumization wave in body care; Advent bought in because Salt & Stone owns the upgrade moment.

Go Figure: 3 big marketing numbers from March

📉 Meta slowdown: Instagram ad growth projected to drop 10+ points in 2027; Facebook dips below 10% YoY as AI hype cools.

🍕 Papa Johns spends $22M: Rebuilding demand with localized co‑ops after 7 straight quarters of negative comps.

📊 Trade Desk decelerates: Q4 revenue $847M (+14% YoY) amid fee scrutiny and a board shakeup.

Top domains cited by AI search: Analysis based on 30M sources

🧱 AI search is built on a small set of “source-layer” domains Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, and review sites dominate citations across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. These are the platforms LLMs trust most when generating answers.

🎛️ Each AI platform has its own sourcing fingerprint Google’s AI surfaces more social content (Facebook, Yelp), ChatGPT leans editorial (Forbes, TechRadar), Perplexity pulls heavily from B2B review sites (G2), and Wikipedia remains a foundational training + retrieval source.

🧭 AI visibility ≠ SEO; it’s multi‑platform reputation management Brands need credible, consistent presence across the platforms AI actually cites. Industry‑specific domains (e.g., Booking.com, Airbnb) often outrank generic top‑10 lists, and maintaining diversified presence reduces risk if a major source (like Reddit) becomes restricted.

Albertsons on its ChatGPT ads test and push for retail media transparency

🧭 Albertsons is using NewFronts to assert scale + credibility emphasizing 2,200+ stores, top‑market coverage, and a push to educate brand marketers on its under-recognized media capabilities.

📊 Major transparency push in retail media new research with Ovative + Kellogg shows 83% of retail media campaigns flip from positive to negative IROAS depending on methodology, fueling Albertsons’ call for standardized, scrutinizable measurement.

🤖 Aggressive experimentation: in‑store media + ChatGPT ads expanding in‑store screens from 80 → 880 stores and leaning into agentic commerce via the ChatGPT ad pilot, framed as a test of “additive, shopper‑centric” experiences.

Allbirds is selling for $39 million. It raised nearly 10 times that amount in its IPO.

📉 Allbirds’ collapse is now complete: The once‑iconic Silicon Valley sneaker brand is selling all assets + IP for $39M, barely a tenth of the $348M it raised in its 2021 IPO and a microscopic fraction of its $4B+ debut valuation.

🧵 Strategic overreach killed the brand: Post‑IPO expansion into retail stores and non-core categories (leggings, jackets, performance shoes) diluted its identity. Even co‑founder Tim Brown admitted the push for growth cost Allbirds “some of our DNA.”

💸 A premium… on a tiny base: The sale price is technically a premium over its $24.5M market cap, and shares jumped 36% after hours — but the outcome underscores how far the brand fell from its hype-era peak.

The DTC-to-retail overexpansion pattern repeats: Allbirds followed the same arc as many pandemic-era darlings — rapid category sprawl, physical retail bets, and a loss of brand coherence.

The “Silicon Valley uniform” era is over: The brand’s cultural relevance evaporated as tech workers shifted away from the minimalist, eco‑casual aesthetic that once defined them.

American Exchange Group’s acquisition signals a shift: This is a classic brand‑management roll‑up move — buying distressed but recognizable names to extract value through licensing, not reinvention.

OpenAI Will Shut Down Sora Video App; Disney Drops Plans for $1 Billion Investment

🎬 OpenAI abruptly shuts down Sora, its generative video app, offering no explanation — a major reversal just months after launching Sora 2 and pushing deeper into Hollywood‑grade video generation.

💸 Disney immediately terminates its $1B investment plan and multi‑year licensing deal, walking away from a marquee partnership that would’ve enabled Sora to generate videos using 200+ Disney/Marvel/Pixar/Star Wars characters.

⚖️ IP pressure and legal heat intensify across the industry, with Disney, NBCU, WBD, and others escalating cease‑and‑desists and lawsuits against AI video platforms — signaling a broader crackdown on AI models trained on copyrighted content.

Reflections on the latest and greatest Death of the Metaverse

🪦 Meta’s $80B Metaverse shutdown isn’t Stephenson’s problem — but it revives the cycle of declaring the “Metaverse dead.” He distances himself from Meta’s project, noting he had zero involvement and no upside in its success or failure.

😶‍🌫️ Headsets were always the wrong bet: people hate wearing things on their faces, and developers won’t build for tiny markets that can vanish overnight. He argues there’s no business case for goggles, content dies when platforms shut down, and artists won’t invest in fragile ecosystems.

🎮 The real Metaverse already exists — Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft — and the future lies in structured, game‑driven worlds, not goggles or Snow Crash literalism. He sees the next wave coming from developers building on massive existing user bases, not from hardware moonshots.

Instagram and Facebook are letting influencers earn a commission

🛍️ Meta is re‑entering social commerce aggressively, adding affiliate commissions to Instagram Reels and Facebook posts, plus AI‑generated product info to make ads more shoppable.

🤖 AI becomes the shopping engine, surfacing richer product details (reviews, specs) and recommending optimal ad formats — pushing Meta deeper into retail media territory.

💸 Advertisers and creators both get new monetization levers, from one‑click checkout with PayPal/Stripe to granular product‑level ad targeting and expanded affiliate partnerships (Amazon, Shopee, more coming).

AD: Wear the manifesto. More than just gear, it’s a philosophy in motion.

Amazon overtakes USPS as top delivery provider by volume: report

📦 Amazon becomes the #1 U.S. parcel carrier: Amazon delivered 6.7B packages in 2025, narrowly surpassing USPS at 6.6B, with UPS (4.4B) and FedEx (3.6B) trailing. Growth came from rural expansion, online sales, and reduced reliance on UPS.

🏃‍♂️ Legacy carriers shift away from low‑value B2C: UPS and FedEx continue to pull back from low‑yield home deliveries, focusing instead on higher‑margin sectors like healthcare and data centers. They still lead by revenue share (UPS 29.8%, FedEx 26.4%).

🌱 Alternative carriers surge as the market fragments: Walmart, Target, and smaller parcel networks saw the largest YoY volume jump (13%), filling the gap left by UPS/FedEx. ShipMatrix forecasts 3.9% CAGR parcel growth over the next three years.

AD: Wear the manifesto. More than just gear, it’s a philosophy in motion.

Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

🛑 Agentic checkout underperformed—badly. Walmart says purchases completed inside ChatGPT converted 3× worse than when users clicked out to Walmart.com, calling the in‑chat flow “unsatisfying.”

🔄 Instant Checkout is dead; owned environments win. OpenAI is phasing out Instant Checkout entirely, and Walmart is shifting to a model where users authenticate with Walmart and complete purchases inside Walmart’s system—not ChatGPT’s.

🤖 Retailers reclaim the interface. Walmart will embed its own bot, Sparky, inside ChatGPT and soon Google Gemini, syncing carts and keeping checkout within Walmart’s ecosystem—signaling a pivot toward retailer‑controlled agentic commerce.

The VC-Backed Casino

🎰 Online casino is the real prize: DraftKings and peers see casino—not sports betting—as the core business, thanks to continuous gameplay, higher LTVs, no seasonality, and software‑like margins. Casino already drives ~25% of DKNG revenue and ~50% of EBITDA, despite being legal in only 8 states. Structural advantages: fixed edges → predictable margins; near‑zero marginal cost; no “sharps”; faster reinvestment loops.

💸 Why VCs ignored casinos — and why that’s flipping: Geographic mismatch: US VCs, European talent. Regulatory drag: high compliance + licensing complexity. Vice clauses: LPs historically banned gambling exposure. But the line between fintech and gambling has blurred (Robinhood, Coinbase, Kalshi, Polymarket), making casino mechanics more acceptable and obviously lucrative.

🚀 Where new billion‑dollar casino companies will emerge: New products such as AI‑powered experiences (e.g., AI blackjack dealers). Hyper‑personalized user journeys (ads → games → VIP rewards). User‑generated casino content (Stake Engine).

AD: Wear the manifesto. More than just gear, it’s a philosophy in motion.

AD: Wear the manifesto. More than just gear, it’s a philosophy in motion.

Is DTC Beverage Dead?

🧩 DTC beverage isn’t “broken”—most brands just misbuild it. The recurring “DTC is dead” narrative confuses bad architecture with a bad channel. Retail drives scale, but eCommerce plays a different role: margin capture, data collection, experimentation, and credibility for buyers/investors.

⚙️ Beverage has unique constraints—and most brands ignore them. Heavy products, real fulfillment costs, price‑parity pressures, and consumption cadence make copy‑pasted DTC playbooks (beauty/apparel) fail. Misaligned shipping logic, storytelling‑heavy sites, and unrealistic subscription mechanics tank performance.

🧠 DTC works when the site reflects actual beverage economics. Success comes from disciplined architecture: shipping thresholds tied to margin, bundles that make economic sense, subscription cadence that matches consumption, and retail‑aligned pricing. When margin, parity, and decision‑speed are aligned, DTC becomes a rational support channel—not a growth engine, not a liability.

AD: More than just gear, it’s a philosophy in motion. Wear the manifesto.

Marketing has a self-inflicted trust problem

📉 Personalization broke trust: Years of over‑targeting, opaque data practices, and automation‑driven optimization made marketing feel intrusive, not helpful—creating a widening gap between “relevance” and consumer trust.

⚠️ Performance metrics warped behavior: Short‑term dashboards pushed brands toward urgency, trend‑chasing, and hollow cultural signaling (e.g., Pepsi/Kendall Jenner), eroding credibility and emotional resonance.

🔁 Trust is rebuilt through values + real storytelling: Brands like Patagonia, Dove, Duolingo, and Airbnb show that consistency, cultural fluency, and human‑centered narratives outperform hyper‑optimized campaigns in the long run.

YouTube Launches Gemini-Powered Creator Partnerships With AI Matching

🚀 YouTube turns BrandConnect into an AI‑powered “Creator Partnerships” hub

• Rebrands its creator–brand marketplace and rebuilds it around Gemini to become a full operating system for creator marketing—not just a matchmaking tool.

• Centralizes YouTube Studio, Google Ads, and DV360 into one workflow for discovery, outreach, and deal management.

🤖 Gemini now matches brands to creators using natural‑language prompts

• Advertisers can type queries like “tech creators reviewing sports gear with high Gen Z retention,” and Gemini surfaces creators with channel insights, audience data, and sample videos.

• AI analyzes billions of signals (brand mentions, subscriber growth, etc.) to expand discovery beyond manual keyword searches.

📊 Unified measurement + API access raises stakes for third‑party platforms

• Paid + organic creator performance is merged into one deduped measurement layer.

• Agencies and SaaS platforms can plug into the Creator Partnerships API, giving them first‑party YouTube data.

• YouTube is positioning itself to displace external creator‑discovery platforms by owning the full stack.

AD: More than just gear, it’s a philosophy in motion. Wear the manifesto.

How Reviews Became Fashion’s Most Valuable Marketing Currency

🔍 User trust has shifted to peer reviews — Shoppers like the featured 24‑year‑old Tessa rely on TikTok and Reddit to validate purchases because traditional online marketing feels unreliable.

📉 Brand messaging alone no longer moves consumers — People want “humans with no vested interest,” making authentic reviews the new gatekeeper for fashion discovery and conversion.

💸 Reviews have become a core marketing currency — The article positions consumer reviews as the most influential driver of purchase decisions, surpassing ads and editorial, prompting brands to rethink how they earn trust.

The US consumer is hitting a rough patch

📉 Consumers are weakening faster than expected

• Rising credit card delinquencies, softening employment, and higher household costs are eroding spending power more than analysts anticipated.

• Even though January showed strong retail sales, underlying indicators point to a consumer who is stretched thin heading into 2026.

• NECG argues retailers are overestimating consumer strength “retail is dependent on people having money,” and people have less of it.

⛽ Oil shock adds pressure but isn’t the core threat

• The Iran war’s oil spike historically doesn’t crash consumer spending outright, but it acts like a tax that slows growth.

• Wells Fargo estimates a gas-price shock near $4/gal could hit discretionary spending by 180–240 bps over 3–9 months.

• Apparel and other softlines could see a 200–300 bps comp hit if the shock persists.

🧾 Inflation, energy demand, and weak refunds compound the squeeze

• Inflation progress has stalled; energy prices are rising not just from geopolitics but also from AI‑driven infrastructure demand.

• Tax refunds, a key seasonal tailwind, are smaller or arriving later than expected, disappointing economists.

• Unit demand for discretionary goods fell 3% YoY in February, reinforcing that volume is deteriorating even as prices stay high (“a volume mirage”).

America Now Has More Spas and Gyms Than Stores Selling Actual Stuff

🧖‍♀️ Services > Stuff: For the first time ever, U.S. landlords leased more retail space to service businesses (spas, salons, fitness studios) than to stores selling physical goods.

💪 Wellness Boom: Gyms, boutique fitness, and wellness centers are expanding fast as Americans work out more frequently — and more socially — than in the past.

🛍️ Retail Shift: When people go “shopping,” they’re increasingly buying experiences like Botox or boxing lessons rather than shoes or shampoo.

📌 The physical retail landscape is tilting toward experience-driven, high-frequency services — a structural shift that favors wellness, beauty, and fitness operators over traditional goods retailers. This is another data point in the broader “experience economy” trend reshaping commercial real estate.

AD: Running alone is meditation. Running together is revolution. Running Drafts is building more than a store; we’re building a resistance against isolation through shared miles and better gear.

AD: More than just gear, it’s a philosophy in motion. Wear the manifesto.

This Overlooked Instagram Feature Might Be the Most Powerful Tool in Your Marketing Stack

💚 Close Friends = micro‑CRM hiding in plain sight: Instagram’s Close Friends isn’t a “fun” feature — it’s a high‑intent channel where creators, editors, partners, and power users actually pay attention. The green ring signals exclusivity, which boosts open rates, replies, and forwards.

🤝 Shift from broadcast to proximity: Most brand channels talk at people. Close Friends lets you talk with the insiders who matter most. It creates a semi‑private backchannel where trust, affinity, and parasocial closeness grow — the stuff consumers increasingly crave.

🧪 Use it as an insider lab: Curate a list of tastemakers and give them early access: product names, pre‑seed ideas, UGC sourcing, co‑creation, partnerships, invites. In return, they get privileged visibility. It’s a low‑lift, high‑leverage way to build a real community, not a performative one.

YouTube’s 30-Second Unskippable Ads About To Hit Your TV Screen

📺 YouTube is turning TV into old-school cable: YouTube is rolling out 30‑second unskippable ads on TV apps, with 60‑second versions in beta. These replace the old double 15s and are chosen dynamically by Google’s AI depending on viewing context. The shift began in 2024 and is part of YouTube’s push to make TV viewing feel like traditional broadcast.

💰 The economics explain everything: YouTube now accounts for 10.4% of all TV viewing and 1B+ daily TV hours, giving it leverage. Marketers see unskippables as highly cost‑effective, with CPMs down ~88% since 2019. YouTube is projecting $62B in revenue by 2025, potentially overtaking Disney. YouTube cites that 79% of viewers “prefer” one longer break, though the survey didn’t include a “no ads” option.

🔮 The bigger story: streaming is reverting to TV: YouTube’s dominance on connected TVs (where 70% of YouTube Select impressions now occur) shows viewers tolerate longer ads for “free” content. The platform is actively reshaping expectations of what “free streaming” means—nudging the entire industry toward ad-heavy, cable-like models.

TV Meets Fruit Machine William Davies on Faragist TikTok

🎰 TikTok’s “For You” feed has reshaped the entire media ecosystem, shifting social platforms from friend‑based feeds to algorithmic slot‑machine loops that maximize attention and fragment the public into “clustered publics.”

📉 Faragist and anti‑establishment content thrives in this environment, not because TikTok is uniquely radicalizing, but because its structure amplifies grievance‑laden, suspicion‑driven, emotionally charged clips—especially around immigration, “scams,” and government distrust.

🧩 Economic precarity + algorithmic curation = a potent political feedback loop, where inflation, stagnating wages, and opaque markets fuel resentment that gets recycled into viral narratives—shaping mainstream politics despite being born in subterranean media spaces.

🧠 What Stands Out Strategically

TikTokisation = the collapse of shared context. People no longer see the same “public sphere”—they see personalized grievance feeds.

Farage/Reform succeed not through ideology but through ambient resentment. The vibe is exhaustion, suspicion, and “everything is a scam,” not coherent far‑right doctrine.

Economic confusion is the accelerant. When prices rise and wages stagnate, people search for culprits; TikTok supplies emotionally satisfying villains.

Left populism barely registers. Gary Stevenson is the lone example of someone breaking through with economic explanations, but TikTok’s format punishes nuance.

AD: Running alone is meditation. Running together is revolution. Running Drafts is building more than a store; we’re building a resistance against isolation through shared miles and better gear.

View the Collection

I Let AI Redesign a Landing Page. It Beat Our Human-Designed Version by 44%.

• Take Crazy Egg’s existing Web Analytics landing page(written and designed by an experienced human team) and build a competing version using AI.

• Problem: It opens with “Tired of analytics tools that create more confusion than clarity?” Agitation: This follows in the next section with three named pain points: Hours of Setup, Drowning in Data, and Too Technical.

• Even in the hero section, many of the elements above are neatly rolled into a single segment, including a product screenshot and benefits that address common objections that block initial conversions.

• While it was fun to test a different take on human vs AI, the more interesting question is whether this kind of AI-assisted workflow can consistently produce pages that outperform the status quo.

The in-house entertainment studio is having its social media team moment

• And David’s Bridal — yes, the wedding dress retailer — launched a documentary series last week in which real couples get married on active volcanoes and at Universal Studios theme parks.

• Brides spend around 10 hours a week watching and reading wedding content, most of it in the early stages of planning — long before they’re anywhere near a purchase decision with a company like David’s Bridal.

• “For the last 15 years marketing has been built around distribution really — i.e the buying of media and gaming algorithms, figuring out how to insert a message into feeds that people are already scrolling,” said James Kirkham, co-founder of brand consultancy Iconic.

• “What these hires now suggest is something slightly more ambitious that brands realize the real leverage sits upstream right in the creation of the shows, or stories, amongst the characters and formats that people actually gather around.”

You can now ask Google Maps ‘complex, real-world questions’ — and Gemini will answer

• In the past, Google Maps would struggle with hyper-specific questions like “where can I charge my phone without having to wait in line for coffee” or “where is the closest public bathroom that isn’t completely disgusting” (parents of kids with tiny bladders, I’m looking at you).

• Can you find us a spot between the office and Midtown East that’s vegetarian, has a cozy aesthetic, and a table for four at seven o’clock tonight?” (I’m not sure Google Maps cares that much about your evening plans, but I digress.)

• Using Gemini, Maps would then provide a number of examples, analyzing user-submitted reviews and photos to pull data about the aesthetics or general busyness of possible locations.

• The “camera” dynamically zooms in when necessary to highlight critical road information, adjusting its view along your route by presenting 3D perspectives that mirror the surrounding environment.

Why Dove turned Reddit product feedback into a real-world campaign

• Building on Dove’s “Real Beauty” brand platform, the effort rolled out across multiple channels, along with an in-person activation, in early February.

• EMILY BARFOOT: We relaunched our hair care portfolio last year and that meant new packaging, formulations, claims, pricing proposition — the whole works.

• So we thought, why not leverage an existing conversation within this platform and bring it to the world as a new way to show how confident we are in our products, that we're willing to just put it in the hands of Redditors.

• Social-first is a mantra of growth that we and Unilever are taking that is rooted in ensuring we are looking at communities and elevating what we call many-to-many, instead of one-to-many as a strategy.

How Celsius is building brands — not just beverages — as growth surges

• “With an evolved operating model and our brand integration firmly on track, we are entering 2026 with positive momentum, scale and confidence in our ability to deliver sustainable, long-term shareholder value,” said Chairman and CEO John Fieldly in a statement around the earnings.

• While Celsius previously relied on an internal creative team along with outside agencies and content creators, the new organization will step up the company’s capabilities.

• The effort kicked off last month around the Australian Grand Prix that gave consumers a chance to win Aston Martin gear and a year’s supply of Celsius.

• The brand also is continuing its “Fit Stop” activations, which bring together workouts, DJ sets and product sampling, and connecting with hyperlocal run clubs and wellness communities.

Quince Closes $500 Million Series E at $10.1 Billion Valuation

• The factory-direct luxury essentials player — which has offerings across apparel, accessories, home and beauty — closed on a $500 million series E funding round, valuing the company at $10.1 billion.

• The San Francisco-based company said the new money would “support the continued growth and global expansion of Quince’s proprietary manufacturer-to-consumer operating system.”

• Of course, promises of luxe looks at lower prices is nothing new in fashion, but Quince comes to the proposition from a very modern direction, using technology to help power a shorter supply chain and build what has quickly become a very large business.

• “By narrowing the distance between maker and customer, the company reduces excess inventory, shortens supply chains, and removes the financial and environmental inefficiencies historically built into retail pricing,” according to Quince.

ChatGPT has a Problem

Inside Tiktok’s sports playbook

⚽️📱 TikTok is becoming the second screen for sports: TikTok isn’t replacing live broadcasts it’s building a parallel, always‑on fan ecosystem around them. Fans now live in the culture before, during, and after the match through reactions, memes, creator commentary, and instant highlights.

🛒🔥 Commerce is being woven directly into the matchday moment: With TikTok Shop expanding, clubs can run live commerce streams during games, selling jerseys, limited drops, and match‑moment merch at the emotional peak — turning hype into conversion inside the same environment.

🤝🎥 Sponsors + creators = new commercial inventory: Sponsorship shifts from passive exposure to interactive participation through polls, giveaways, creator collabs, and moment‑based offers. TikTok becomes a 360° engagement layer that wraps around the broadcast.

🧠 Strategic takeaway for clubs & leagues: The broadcast delivers the game. TikTok delivers culture, conversation, and conversion — a full second ecosystem that expands reach, monetization, and fan participation.

Rhoda AI Exits Stealth with $450 Million Series A to Bring Robots Out of the Lab and Into the Real World

🚀 Rhoda AI emerges from stealth with a massive $450M Series A

New paradigm: Direct Video Action (DVA) Rhoda trains on hundreds of millions of internet videos to build a physics‑aware motion prior, then fine‑tunes on small robot datasets. This enables closed‑loop, real‑time control that adapts to messy, unpredictable environments.

FutureVision foundation model Their intelligence layer predicts future states as video, converts them into actions, executes, re‑observes, and repeats every few hundred milliseconds. The pitch: robots that actually work outside the lab, unlike many VLA‑based systems that break in the wild.

Industrial ambition + licensing model Rhoda plans to deploy across hardware partners, positioning FutureVision as a cross‑platform robotics intelligence layer, not just a single‑robot product.

🔍 What stands out strategically

• $450M Series A is enormous — signals investor conviction that robotics is entering its “foundation model moment,” similar to LLMs in 2022–23.

• Internet‑scale video as the new data moat — Rhoda is betting that motion understanding is the missing ingredient in robotics, not more teleop trajectories.

• Real‑world reliability as the differentiator

The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps — 6th Edition

🚀 1. The “Default AI” Race Intensifies

• ChatGPT still dominates — 2.7× Gemini on web, 2.5× on mobile — but Gemini and Claude are accelerating, especially in paid subs.

• Multi‑tenanting is rising — ~20% of weekly ChatGPT users also use Gemini.

• Platform lock‑in is the new battleground — connectors, apps, identity layers, and workflow integrations create OS‑level stickiness.

• Strategic split:

  • ChatGPT: consumer super‑app ambitions (travel, shopping, food, health).

  • Claude: pro‑user stack (finance terminals, dev infra, scientific tools).

🌍 2. Global AI Usage Is Splintering

• Three ecosystems are emerging: West, China, Russia — with DeepSeek uniquely bridging all three.

• Russia becomes a meaningful pole via Yandex + Sber.

• Per‑capita adoption flips expectations — Singapore, UAE, Hong Kong, South Korea lead; US ranks 20th.

🎨 3. Creative Tools Shift From Images → Video, Music, Voice

• Image generation is now bundled into ChatGPT/Gemini, compressing standalone traffic.

• Video is the breakout category — Kling, Hailuo, Pixverse, Veo 3 drive major movement.

• Sora had a viral spike but didn’t sustain app‑store momentum.

• Music/voice remain defensible — Suno and ElevenLabs keep strong positions.

🤖 4. Agents Are Here — and Growing Fast

• “Vibe coding” (Cursor, Lovable, Claude Code) remains sticky with technical users.

• Horizontal agents (OpenClaw, Manus, Genspark) are emerging as the next frontier — executing multi‑step tasks, not just generating content.

• OpenClaw’s trajectory: massive dev adoption → acquired by OpenAI → not yet mainstream due to setup complexity.

• Mobile interaction is text‑first, not app‑first — agents live in WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS.

🖥️ 5. AI Is Moving Beyond the Browser/App Paradigm

AI browsers (Atlas, Comet, Dia) are rising, though none show accelerating growth yet.

• Deep OS/workflow integrations are becoming the real usage drivers:

  • Gemini across Workspace

  • Claude in Excel/PowerPoint

  • ChatGPT for Excel

  • Personal Intelligence tying Gemini to Gmail, Photos, YouTube, Search

• Desktop-native AI (Claude Code, Codex app) is exploding — but invisible to web/mobile metrics.

• The list increasingly undercounts real AI usage as AI becomes a feature, not a destination.

We Got Hooked on Fast, Free Shipping. Now Retailers Are Taking It Away.

🚚 The era of “fast + free” is fading: Retailers are quietly pulling back from the Amazon‑era promise of rapid, no‑cost delivery as shipping carriers raise prices and margins get squeezed.

💸 Carriers are charging more: FedEx and UPS have increased rates, making it more expensive for retailers to subsidize fast shipping. That pressure is forcing companies to rethink the default of speed.

🐢 “Slow down” incentives are working: Amazon now offers discounts (like 7% off) if customers choose slower delivery. Gap offers up to five shipping options, including “no rush” choices that can take up to nine business days—and customers are opting in because they’re cheaper or free.

🛍️ Gen Z is bringing malls back

In‑person > online: Many Gen Z shoppers prefer the immediacy of brick‑and‑mortar retail. They want instant gratification and tactile decision‑making, not the lag and uncertainty of online shopping.

Shopping as content: Mall trips double as social‑media fodder. Young shoppers document purchases, try‑ons, and the overall experience, turning malls into backdrops for Instagram and TikTok. This behavior boosts foot traffic and cultural relevance.

A tailwind for retail recovery: Their renewed mall presence is helping fuel a broader rebound in physical retail, countering years of decline and giving stores a new youth‑driven momentum.

Larger Retailers Are Launching Their Own Beauty Brands, While the Luxury Fashion Market Gap Widens

🤖 AI is reshaping fashion & beauty from personalization to retail operations, artificial intelligence is positioned as a defining force in 2026 strategy and consumer engagement.

💎 Luxury market bifurcation is widening the “luxury gap” suggests high‑end brands continue to thrive while mid‑tier players struggle to keep pace with shifting consumer expectations.

🧘 Wellness & Gen Z values drive demand wellness, self‑care, and Gen Z’s preference for authenticity, affordability, and digital‑first experiences are shaping product development and retail behavior.

Has AI Ended Thought Leadership?

🧨 The author—an established “thought leader” argues the category is dying. He frames himself as someone who has long operated at the intersection of innovation and storytelling, but now sees the traditional model collapsing.

🤖 AI is accelerating the decline of conventional thought leadership. While the excerpt doesn’t yet detail how, the setup implies that generative AI is reshaping who gets to publish, how ideas spread, and what counts as expertise.

📉 The old signals of authority books, bylines, decades of experience—no longer guarantee relevance. The author hints that the ecosystem has shifted so dramatically that past credentials don’t carry the same weight.

Amazon Haul Has Over 3,000 Sellers

Amazon Haul crosses 3,000 sellers 🛒 — 3,287 sellers now participate, validating Amazon’s “low‑price, slow‑delivery” model despite tariff volatility. Most sellers are China‑based, and Haul generates an estimated $2B GMV annually.

Clear price‑tier segmentation + strong seller economics 📊 — Nearly 1,000 sellers average under $10 per item; those in the $15–$20 band average $1.3M in annual revenue, showing higher price tiers drive stronger economics.

Still tiny vs. Temu & Shein 🆚 — Temu does ~$30B U.S. GMV and Shein ~$18B, making Haul’s $2B a single‑digit share. Amazon is subsidizing aggressively (discounts up to 90%) to stay competitive while navigating a shifting tariff landscape.

Judge Orders Government to Begin Refunding More Than $130 Billion in Tariffs

🧾 A Court of International Trade judge (Richard Eaton) directed the Trump administration to begin refunding importers after a hearing involving a filtration company seeking repayment.

The order follows the Supreme Court’s invalidation of many second‑term Trump tariffs, which triggered 2,000+ lawsuits from companies trying to recover money they had paid.

The judge set a follow‑up hearing for Friday to get progress updates from the administration.

📉 Why it matters: $130B+ in refunds is a massive fiscal and political event, affecting importers across industries. The ruling forces the administration to unwind a major pillar of Trump’s trade policy, which he recently criticized as an “unfortunate ruling” in the State of the Union. Companies that have been tied up in litigation for years may finally see cash returned, potentially reshaping supply‑chain and pricing strategies.

E-commerce, advertising will be key to Target’s turnaround

🔧 Tech & AI as the Profit Engine

• Operating margin expansion is the core goal. Target expects its operating income margin to grow faster than sales, aiming to move from 4.6% toward its pre‑pandemic 6% level.

• AI and agentic commerce are central bets. Target is integrating shopping into ChatGPT and Google Gemini, enabling “ask → build basket → checkout” flows. The mantra is “click, boom, buy.”

• Hybrid build/partner strategy. Target will build AI tools in‑house while partnering with OpenAI and Google where it accelerates capability.

📣 Retail Media (Roundel) as a Growth Flywheel

• Roundel is expected to double in size in the next few years, driven by both on‑site and off‑site media. Off‑site already accounts for 35% of retail media revenue, a differentiator vs. peers.

• Circle loyalty data is the backbone, enabling better targeting, measurement, and advertiser value.

• Brand storytelling is a renewed focus, now that Target feels more confident in its retail identity and creative footing.

🛒 Marketplace (Target+) Moves From Startup to Scale

• Target+ aims to grow from $1B to $5B GMV within five years.

• Unlike Amazon/Walmart, Target keeps the marketplace invite‑only, emphasizing “curation at scale” to maintain brand consistency and quality.

• The marketplace will be deeply integrated into Target’s broader strategy rather than run as a side venture.

🏬 Stores as the Heart of Digital Growth

• Target plans to open 30+ new stores, remodel 130, and invest $1B+ more in capex in 2026.

OpenAI Scales Back Shopping Plans for ChatGPT

OpenAI Scales Back Shopping Plans for ChatGPT. This signals that OpenAI had been pursuing a commerce or shopping-related feature inside ChatGPT and is now reducing or rethinking that initiative.

OpenAI’s rapid revenue growth (“tops $25B annualized revenue”) and competitive pressure from Anthropic, suggesting the article likely situates the shopping pullback within broader strategic shifts.

🌱 We’re forgetting how to talk to strangers and it’s hurting us

• Everyday micro‑interactions (on trains, in shops, in queues) are disappearing due to phones, WFH, touchscreens, social anxiety, and post‑pandemic habits.

• This isn’t just introversion; psychologists call it a “global relational recession” — our social muscles are atrophying.

• Younger generations especially underestimate how enjoyable or connecting these conversations can be.

🧩 The fear is exaggerated; the stakes are tiny

• Research shows people overestimate the risk of awkwardness and underestimate how much they’ll enjoy or be liked in a casual chat.

• The key is to keep interactions small, humanizing acts — not deep, not performative, not a quest for meaning.

• If you don’t want to talk, a simple boundary (“I can’t talk right now”) is enough; if someone doesn’t respond, assume it’s not about you.

🤝 Small talk is a civic good; its absence has real consequences

• Talking to strangers reinforces shared humanity in a divided world; avoiding it accelerates isolation and mistrust.

• Social media “talking to strangers” trends are often performative, commodified, or exploitative — the opposite of genuine connection.

• Even a tiny exchange (“Cold today, isn’t it?”) can brighten someone’s day and keep society from drifting into disconnected silos.

Podcasts Lead AM/FM in Spoken-Word Listening, Marking a First

🎧 Podcasts now lead spoken‑word listening with 40% share, edging out AM/FM radio at 39% in Q4 2025 — a historic reversal from 2015, when radio dominated at 75% and podcasts held just 10%.

📉 AM/FM’s share has declined quarter after quarter, reflecting a long, steady migration toward on‑demand, personalized audio consumption.

🔀 Spoken‑word listening habits have transformed as consumers shift platforms, devices, and services — illustrating a broader, decade‑long reshaping of the audio landscape captured by Edison’s Share of Ear® dataset.

The Third-Largest Coffee Chain in the U.S. Actually Sells Very Little Hot Coffee

☕️ What Dutch Bros Actually Sells: The chain is now the third‑largest U.S. coffee chain by sales and locations, behind Starbucks and Dunkin’. Despite the “coffee” label, Dutch Bros sells very little hot coffee; its business is built on cold, customizable energy drinks that appeal to younger consumers.

🚀 Why It’s Growing So Fast: Its menu leans into sweet, colorful, highly personalized drinks, aligning with Gen Z preferences for novelty and customization. The brand’s drive‑thru‑only model and fast service fit modern convenience expectations (implied by its positioning and category). Dutch Bros’ marketing strategy led by executives like Tana Davila—focuses on youth culture and energy‑drink identity, not traditional coffee culture.

🥊 Competitive Pressure on Starbucks: Starbucks still holds ~48% of U.S. coffee‑chain sales, but Dutch Bros and other smaller chains are eroding its lead by capturing younger, more experimental drinkers. Dutch Bros’ growth shows that the “coffee chain” category is shifting toward beverage variety and energy‑drink culture, not just espresso.

'Boomcession': Why Americans feel so bad about a growing economy

Macro looks great, micro feels awful. 📈➡️😣 GDP, productivity, and the stock market are rising, but many households face record debt, high prices for essentials, and stagnant wage share. Most Americans believe the country is in recession even though it isn’t.

Inflation hits unequally. 💸🔥 Lower‑income households face much higher effective inflation, especially in groceries and shelter, which make up a bigger share of their budgets. Price disparities are amplified by market concentration and limited competition in poorer areas.

Labor market anxiety is rising. 🧑‍💼⚠️ Job openings have fallen to 2020 levels, layoffs are up sharply, and productivity gains (often attributed to AI) may be reducing hiring. High‑income Americans benefit from stock gains; everyone else feels exposed.

PepsiCo’s first creator-led product launch reimagines chips for Gen Z

🔥 Creator-led drops hit TikTok Shop first

PepsiCo teamed with Madison Beer, iShowSpeed, and Dude Perfect to debut mashup chip flavors directly on TikTok Shop—meeting Gen Z where they already browse and buy. A national rollout follows in March.

🍟 Iconic flavor mashups get remixed

Each creator “swaps” flavors across brands:

• Lay’s Sweet Southern Heat BBQ → Cheetos (Beer)

• Ruffles Cheddar & Sour Cream → Doritos (Speed)

• Doritos Cool Ranch → Ruffles (Dude Perfect)
  All tied to top-selling flavors and the ongoing swicy trend.

📱 A true social‑first marketing shift: This marks PepsiCo Foods’ first social‑first flavor debut and its first TikTok Shop product drop, aligning with data showing Gen Z’s strong appetite for buying directly on social platforms.

Meta Launches AI Driven Shopping/Discovery

🛍️ What Meta is testing

• AI shopping suggestions: Users can ask Meta AI for product recommendations, and the chatbot returns a carousel of product images with brand, website, and price details.

• Bullet‑point rationales: Each set of recommendations includes a short explanation of why the items were chosen.

• Limited rollout: Only some US-based users currently have access, and Meta hasn’t shared timelines or broader plans.

🤖 Why this matters

• Direct competition: Meta is clearly aiming to match or surpass the shopping‑assistant capabilities already offered by ChatGPT and Gemini.

• E-commerce ambitions: This feature strengthens Meta’s push into AI‑driven commerce, potentially increasing user engagement and ad relevance.

• Platform integration: Embedding this inside the Meta AI browser hints at a strategy to make Meta’s ecosystem a central hub for product discovery.

🔍 What stood out most: Meta is leaning into visual, shoppable AI outputs—a move that could reshape how consumers research products and how brands compete for visibility inside AI interfaces.

Meta Employee’s View on How AI Will Transform Advertising

⚙️ AI turns creatives into constraint‑setters, not just idea generators

• Human creativity still matters—taste, judgment, brand values, tone, and visual language become the differentiators that prevent “AI slop.”

• The creative role shifts toward defining the guardrails within which AI generates infinite variations.

• The best teams will be judged less on the ads they make and more on the constraints they set.

📡 Creative will evolve in real time based on three signal types

AI will generate and adapt ads dynamically using:

• Contextual signals — cultural trends, competitor activity, surrounding content; ads update instantly as the environment changes.

• Conversational signals — embedded AI assistants respond to individual user questions and objections inside the ad itself.

• Cumulative signals — decades of effectiveness data (emotion, structure, triggers) used to generate new ads that follow proven patterns.

🚀 The production bottleneck disappears—and the strategy gap widens

• With AI doing most of the execution, the distance between insight and output collapses.

• Advertisers who adopt signal‑driven creative systems will pull ahead; those who don’t will fall behind.

• The risk:

The Gredes Are Building the LVMH of Influencer Brands. And No One Is Talking About It.

🚀 Popular Culture = the LVMH of social‑media‑native brands a portfolio engineered not around celebrity, but around relevance as the core asset. The Gredes monetize cultural resonance the way LVMH monetizes heritage.

🔄 Celebrity is optional — Skims, Good American, Khy use celebrity efficiently, but Frame and Elder Statesman prove the model works without it. The unifying thread is mastery of what converts on social.

🧠 Their real moat is customer insight — a decade of studying the same woman across brands: how she discovers, what she trusts, what makes her buy, what makes her share. This knowledge compounds with each new brand added.

A New AI Influencer Marketing Agency Is Here for the Post-Follower Era

🚀 Influencer marketing has entered a post‑follower era where reach is no longer tied to follower count as TikTok/Instagram algorithms surface content from anyone. Brands must shift from 20–30 creators/month to 500–1,000+, making scale the new strategic advantage.

🤖 Devotion uses thousands of AI agents to identify, recruit, and manage micro/nano creators at massive volume, enabling psychographic tagging, personalized outreach, and “scaled intimacy.” This solves the industry bottleneck: brands want micro‑creator engagement but can’t manually manage thousands of relationships.

🔄 The model mirrors China’s creator explosion and TikTok Shop dynamics constant fresh content, broad creator networks, and community‑driven co‑creation. Devotion claims brands in stealth saw 3× more tagged content and seven‑figure revenue, positioning AI as the backend engine powering human‑generated content at scale.

Google's Ads Chief Details UCP Expansion, New AI Mode Ads

🔗 UCP becomes the backbone of agentic commerce: UCP now powers Etsy + Wayfair checkout inside AI Mode and Gemini, signaling real transaction volume—not just a pilot. Google says hundreds of tech, payments, and retail partners are exploring UCP, positioning it as the connective tissue for agentic shopping across categories.

🤖 AI Mode ads expand into new formats & categories: Google is testing new AI Mode ad formats that surface relevant retailers and clearly mark them as sponsored—essentially AI-native shopping ads. Direct Offers expands beyond price promos to loyalty perks and bundles, giving brands more levers inside AI Mode.

🎥 Creator–brand matching gets AI superpowers: Google positions YouTube creators as “trusted tastemakers”, backed by a Google/Kantar study.New AI tools match brands with creators based on content signals + audience analysis, building on the “open call” feature.This aligns with YouTube’s broader push to make creators a commerce engine, not just a media channel.

TikTok Shop Could Be a Top-3 Global Retailer by 2030, Report Shows

Top‑3 global retailer by 2030: Flywheel projects TikTok Shop (ByteDance) will capture 14.6% of global marketplace share, driving ~$1T in sales. Amazon still #1 with ~$1.1T projected; Pinduoduo #2; Walmart falls to #5, the only top‑five player still primarily in-store.

🌍 Global footprint & growth dynamics

TikTok Shop operates in 17 countries, including the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and most of Southeast Asia. Douyin (China) remains the engine of ByteDance’s commerce business, with $500B+ GMV in 2024, far ahead of TikTok Shop’s performance elsewhere. U.S. growth is accelerating: $15B+ in 2025 sales, making it the largest social commerce platform in the country.