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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

Google Sued Over False AI Overview About Musician

Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac has filed a civil lawsuit against Google, alleging an AI Overview falsely identified him as a convicted sex offender. The lawsuit could test how courts treat liability for false AI-generated search summaries. The statement of claim, filed in February with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, seeks at least $1.5 million

AI drives a major industry reset

In 2026, the marketing technology landscape grew by just 0.7%, increasing from 15,384 to 15,505. At first glance, it appears to have stalled and reached its limits. But that headline number hides what’s really happening beneath the surface: nearly 1,500 tools were added, while more than 1,300 disappeared. This is not stagnation. It is renewal.

Casa Macui :: Behance

Casa Macui, Where Precision Meets Ancient Soul Casa Macui is an artisanal Mexican knife brand rooted in the country’s western heartland. Each blade is crafted with the passion of an artisan’s soul, meticulously refined through the exacting standards of high-precision engineering. The Origin of the Name The name “Macui” pays homage to the macuahuitl, the

The New PESO Model® Graphic Is Here. So Are the Rules.

TL;DR The PESO Model® has another graphic refresh. It’s outcome-based—organized around what each media type produces (Authority, Credibility, Discovery, Growth) and how those compound when the integrations run together. It’s free to download with attribution. Commercial uses—paid courses, books, software products, training, teaching, speaking that teach PESO(paid or unpaid), and branded reuse, require a license.

Google Says A New Wave Of AI Users Is Transforming Search

Google’s Martin Splitt and Nikola Todorovic discussed the impact of AI on search, revealing that there’s a new wave of people that are doing things with Google search that is markedly different than in the past and that this is an upward trend. Martin Splitt noted that AI in search is not new and that

WTF are brand health metrics?

Talk about a blast from the past. The phrase “brandformance” is becoming popular across the ad industry again as marketers push to once again marry brand and performance marketing. Call it a performance marketing correction. It’s not a new phenomenon, per se, as Tim Peterson, executive editor, video and audio at Digiday, and the reporter

London’s Ours! Celebrating the posters, billboards and publicity stunts that put two fingers up to Thatcherism

One of the most annoying things about Margaret Thatcher (there’s many), is how quotable she is. A classic of hers – ‘There’s no such thing as society’ – printed in a Woman’s Own interview in 1987, summarises her obsession with ‘individual responsibility’ and her incessant inability to see government as something that should be closely

Google On Keyword Fragmentation And User Needs In AI Search

Google’s Liz Reid explained on the Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast how AI Mode and AI Overviews are enabling detailed, need-based query patterns that create new challenges for Google. This points to a consequential change in search behavior that directly impacts how to approach SEO. Keyword Fragmentation In AI Search Liz Reid explained that users have

How Spirit Airlines’ Low-Cost Branding Contributed to Its Crash

In 2011, visitors to Las Vegas were treated to a colorful bit of marketing: a panel truck converted into a plexiglass fishbowl with female pole dancers gyrating inside. Lettered across the flank appeared the promise: “For $9, I’ll let you see my Vegas.” This roving cab of concupiscence wasn’t an ad for a strip club

Does the Oscars’ AI ban really mean anything?

There’s some good news for everyone who’s tired of AI slop: Tilly Norwood won’t be winning an Oscar any time soon. The Academy Awards has banned generative AI eligibility for certain categories, but how much impact with the move really have? As announced on Friday, several rules have been changed ahead of next year’s 99th

Optmyzr Report Finds Google Ads Engagement Rising While Efficiency Holds

Google Ads has gone through a steady wave of changes over the past year. Advancements in outputs like Demand Gen and AI Max, and shifts in how users interact with search have all changed how performance shows up in the data. A new Q1 2026 benchmark report from Optmyzr, based on more than 21,000 accounts,

How marketing leaders are succeeding in the AI era

AI is no longer a future disruptor for marketing. It is already changing discovery and buying decisions, and how organizations evaluate market opportunities and compete for growth. Despite this, many marketing leaders are still being evaluated primarily on campaign execution rather than their ability to guide enterprise transformation. Gartner research shows a striking disconnect. While

Google Advises Using AI In Best Possible Way For AI Search

Google’s Martin Splitt and Nikola Todorovic, Director of Software Engineering at Google Search, recently discussed how AI is changing Google and SEO. Todorovic encouraged SEOs and businesses to take advantage of AI to analyze data, research competition, and improve their ability to provide value. AI And The Web Ecosystem Google’s Martin Splitt asked a question

Inside the current state of generative AI in the creator economy

As generative AI floods the web with synthetic content, the creator economy was expected to offer something different: human-led, authentic alternatives. While there are wholly AI-generated influencers, and a report from Wondercraft said 80 percent of creators were using it at some point in their workflow, many believed brands would prefer the raw, human realness

AI will never replace human creativity

Air published Beautifully Illogical built on this fundamental idea; that creation relies on the human mind’s complexity and its need to debate. Highlighting 16 campaigns, the creative swipe file celebrates creative work that couldn’t have been “prompted into existence”, says Gutes Guterman, Air’s social strategist. Works such as Apple’s Spike Jonze-directed Welcome Home, Burberry’s Open

Google’s March Core Update Shifted Visibility Away From Aggregators

An analysis from Amsive found that aggregators and user-generated content platforms lost US search visibility after Google’s March core update, while first-party brand sites, government domains, and content originators gained. Lily Ray of Amsive examined over 2,000 domains using SISTRIX Visibility Index data and categorized them with Google Product Taxonomy tags via the DataForSEO API.

AI Is Bringing Retail Media Closer to the Sale

This post was created in partnership with CVS Media Exchange Retail media has become a bigger part of the growth plan for many brands; it has also become harder to manage. There are more channels, more shopper signals, and more pressure to show what is working. During an ADWEEK House Possible panel co-hosted with CVS

Your Website Is A Source, Not A Megaphone

There’s a lesson from the early days of social media that most brands eventually learned the hard way: Social media is not a megaphone. You couldn’t just broadcast your press releases into the feed and expect people to care. The channel had rules. It rewarded conversation, not announcements. The companies that figured this out early

The new marketing operations stack

Marketing operations teams have long carried the weight of the tech stack, keeping systems running and data flowing behind the scenes. But the reality of modern MOps is that “maintenance mode” often consumes the bandwidth needed for strategic contribution. At the May 6th MarTech Conference, the session “The art of doing more with less: The

AI Overviews Clicks Get Tested, Earnings Tell Two Stories

This week’s Pulse covers how AI Overviews affect click behavior, what independent research shows, and what earnings reports from Google and Microsoft reveal about search revenue. Here’s what matters for you and your work. Reid Repeats “Bounce Clicks” Argument On Bloomberg Google’s head of Search, Liz Reid, told Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast that AI Overviews

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