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Cannes Briefing: Creativity is moving beyond the agency model

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Cannes Briefing: Creativity is moving beyond the agency model

December Core Update, Preferred Sources & Social Data

The December 2025 core update is the main story this week. Google confirmed a new broad ranking update, clarified how often core changes happen, expanded Preferred Sources in Top Stories, and started testing social performance data in Search Console Insights. Here’s what matters for your work. Google Releases December 2025 Core Update Google has released

A talent paradox takes hold as AI rewrites how agencies operate

It’s been another busy week for big news but I wanted to use this week’s briefing to write about something that’s been sitting with me since the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit last week: AI is flattening the base of the talent pyramid before agencies have figured out how to rebuild it. Session after session, leaders

Google Updates Search Live With Gemini Model Upgrade

Google has updated Search Live with Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio, upgrading how voice functions inside Search while also extending the model’s use across translation and live voice agents. The update introduces more natural spoken responses in Search Live and reflects Google’s effort to improve natural voice queries, treating voice as a core interface as

Ashleigh Banfield to Lead NewsNation’s True Crime Vertical

Top of the Ticker: NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield will be vacating her 10 p.m. ET weeknight show, Banfield, to lead the news network’s new true crime digital vertical set to debut in 2026. This new partnership sees her long-running podcast, Drop Dead Serious with Ashleigh Banfield, available on NewsNation. Michael Corn, president of programming and specials,

Claire Marie Healy on the significance of music videos and the emotional potential of advertisements

Nearly everyone can recall an advertisement or music video that has touched them, or, at the very least, has stuck in their minds even decades later. My uncles will tell me about the famous music videos of the 80s whilst my grandparents will fondly remember certain advertisements with their jingles, needle drops and famous slogans.

How People Use Copilot Depends On Device, Microsoft Says

How people use Microsoft Copilot depends on whether they’re at a desk or on their phone. That is the core theme in the company’s analysis of 37.5 million Copilot conversations sampled between January and September. The research examines consumer Copilot usage patterns across device types and time of day. The authors say they used machine-based

Marketers are drowning in data but starving for insight

Source: The 2026 Marketing Intelligence Report Marketers have more data than ever and an expanding suite of tools to work with — yet many are still flying blind. According to “The 2026 Marketing Intelligence Report” (registration required) from marketing intelligence platform Funnel and Ravn Research, 72% of in-house marketers and 55% of agency marketers say they’re overwhelmed

The Nex Playground gaming console is back to its record low price of $199 – get it for New Year fun

It’s nearly Christmas, and if you’re a parent hoping to get a bit more involved with the kiddos, then let us introduce you to the Nex Playground. This gaming console is on sale for $199 right now (its lowest ever price) over at Amazon, and might remind you of the Nintendo Wii – but it’s

AI Agents Are Coming For You & What To Do No

I’m carefully watching the development of agentic SEO, as I believe over the next few years, as capabilities improve, agents will have a significant impact on the industry. I’m not suggesting this will be a seamless replacement of talent with a highly capable machine intelligence. There is going to be a lot of trial and

Marketers’ marketing moments of 2025

From Duolingo killing its mascot to Ikea opening a store on Oxford Street, here are the marketing moments of the year chosen by those in the industry. Source

Tendre Hiver :: Behance

Tendre Hiver — Serie of illustrations, inspired by winter in Korea, for my first solo show TENDRE HIVER in Seoul at the Alltid Coffee. The exhibition is presented by Current Brown and curated by Parisian Blue “Snow-covered Hyangwonjeong Pavilion at Gyeongbokgung Palace, a serene winter seen from inside a hanok, traditional fans adorned with floral

14 Things Executives And SEOs Need To Focus On In 2026

So many people spent 2025 arguing about whether SEO was dying. It was never dying. It was shifting into a new layer. Discovery continues to move from search boxes to AI systems. Answers now come from models that rewrite your work, summarize competitors, blend sources, and shape decisions before a browser window loads. In 2026,

Why programmatic buying alone isn’t enough to win on CTV

Connected TV ad spend is projected to reach $51 billion globally by 2029, accounting for nearly half of traditional broadcast TV advertising revenue. That shift reflects how quickly the marketplace is maturing and how aggressively advertisers are reallocating budgets to streaming environments. But as money moves, so do advertisers’ assumptions. Many brands are approaching CTV

Danae Gosset animates visuals for the tenth anniversary of Mac Miller’s Go:od AM

Danae founded the animation studio Pencil TV in 2021, the same year Miller McCormick, Mac Miller’s brother, reached out about a collaboration for the Mac Miller estate. Danae was already a fan, first encountering Miller’s back in 2010 with the release of his mixtape K.i.d.s. “His sensitivity and the emotion in his work really resonates

Google Releases December 2025 Core Update

Google has released the December 2025 core update, the company confirmed through its Search Status Dashboard. The rollout began at 9:25 a.m. Pacific Time on December 11, 2025. This marks Google’s third core update of 2025, following the March and June core updates earlier this year. What’s New Google lists the update as an “incident

Disney Invests $1B in OpenAI, Will Bring Its Characters to Sora

Disney is bringing storytelling to uncharted territory. The media giant announced Thursday that it will acquire a $1 billion stake in OpenAI and license its characters for Sora, OpenAI’s short-form video platform launched in September. As part of the three-year deal, some videos made with Sora will appear on the Disney+ platform, the companies said.

What Taylor Swift’s new Disney+ series teaches us about creative honesty

I’ll be honest: when I paid £12 at the cinema to watch Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl in October – essentially a three-minute music video shown twice, plus the equivalent of DVD extras – I didn’t expect to enjoy it all that much. But in the event, I actually loved every second

White-Labeled Tool For AI-Made Sites

This post was sponsored by 10Web. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Not long ago, building a website meant a discovery call, a proposal, a sitemap, and a few weeks of back and forth. Today, we go from “I need a website” to “Why isn’t it live yet?” People are getting

Why AI content strategies need to focus on tasks not transactions

AI chat assistants are not being used the way many marketers expect. Instead of acting as shopping tools or search engines, they function primarily as support systems for cognitive tasks — writing, planning, analyzing and learning, according to a report by AI SEO agency Dejan. In 2026, optimizing for AI means understanding how users actually

Year of the Horse :: Behance

Celebrate the vibrance of Tết with this special collection of money envelope illustrations. Each design features one of six majestic horses, illustrated in a Vietnamese traditional art style that symbolizes strength, progress, and good fortune. Complementing the horses are six iconic symbols of spring and fortune: peach blossom, golden apple, watermelon, starfruit, bamboo, and banana.

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