Advertising & Media
Ad formats, monetisation and the publishing business.
Google Photos Unleashes AI Video Remix: Transform Clips with Cinematic Lighting and Artistic Filters
A new AI-powered tool in Google Photos lets users edit videos with cinematic relighting, background swaps, and artistic styles using Gemini Omni, available to subscribers in select countries.
Google's June Spam Sweep Targets AI Manipulation as Search Console Reveals How AI Impressions Are Counted
Google rolls out its June 2026 spam update — now explicitly covering efforts to manipulate generative AI responses like buying or altering citations — while John Mueller explains that Search Console's AI impressions only count links visible without expansion, and new AWR and Similarweb data show desktop CTR diverging from mobile and branded search capturing most AI-driven traffic.
Google Just Killed Its Own AMP Cache — Here’s What Publishers Should Do Now
Google Search no longer serves AMP pages through its cache or viewer. Clicking an AMP result now takes users straight to the publisher's own AMP host page, ending the era of google.com-hosted AMP URLs and signed exchanges.
OpenAI’s Ad Bet: Why Image, Video and Conversational Units Could Change ChatGPT Forever
OpenAI’s hiring spree for ad engineers signals a major expansion beyond the basic sponsored block—bringing image, video and conversational units to ChatGPT and raising urgent questions about attention, trust, and organic visibility.
When Clicks Stop Telling the Truth: Redefining Content Success in the AI Era
An analysis of why AI-integrated search has severed the correlation between traffic and content value, and how content teams should shift to influence-based metrics to prove impact.
The Silent Ad Killer: How Inaccurate Conversion Data Sabotages Google Ads Performance
An exploration of why conversion data is more than a reporting tool, detailing its critical role in fueling Google Ads' machine learning bidding, targeting algorithms, and budget allocation.
YouTube Just Gave Brand Advertisers Two New Ways to Prove Video Works
Google introduces new YouTube measurement capabilities that enable advertisers to attribute branded search lift directly to video brand campaigns, closing the loop between video exposure and downstream search behavior.
When Creative Does the Targeting Job: What Google, Meta, and TikTok's Broad Push Means for Advertisers
Performance Max, Advantage+ campaigns, and TikTok's automated audience expansion give algorithms more freedom — but creative now has to do the targeting work.
LLMs Hallucinate Web Domains for Legitimate Brands, Enabling Phantom Squatting Attacks
A detailed analysis of how large language models generate plausible but non-existent brand web domains that attackers register for phishing, credential harvesting, and supply chain compromise — a stealthy, AI-driven attack vector.
From Florida to the Frontlines: The Journalism Journey of WSJ Scholar-Reporter Dov Lieber
An in-depth biography tracing Dov Lieber's professional trajectory from local news editor to a leading Wall Street Journal Middle East correspondent.
When A$AP Rocky Bought Burberry's Most Iconic Piece — And Why It Matters for Luxury Reinvention
How A$AP Rocky's spontaneous Burberry scarf purchase revealed a critical brand strategy lesson for luxury houses trying to reinvent themselves.
We Finally Learned What Bad Press Looks Like in the Age of AI Ads
Analysis of consumer backlash against AI-generated advertising, examining the psychological, ethical, and economic dimensions of public distrust in synthetic ad content and its implications for brand trust and regulatory policy.