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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 Bans Back Button Hijacking, Agentic Search Grows

Welcome to the week’s Pulse: updates affect what Google considers spam, what happens when you report it, and what agentic search looks like in practice. Here’s what matters for you and your work. Google’s New Spam Policy Targets Back Button Hijacking Google added back button hijacking to its spam policies, with enforcement beginning June 15.

Synthetic research is a promise with a catch

\ We’re experiencing a conflict between the economic pressure to produce quick and cheap research results and the scientific demand for rigor. Hundreds, if not thousands, of lifelike personas can be generated within minutes by vendors promising strong results. But these often operate as methodological black boxes, producing outputs that can’t be validated, may contain

OFF – Bieannále Budapest – 2025 :: Behance

OFF – Biennále Budapest – 2025 – Poems of Unrest In 2025, the OFF-Biennale Budapest celebrated its tenth anniversary, with the 5th jubilee edition focusing on the concept of security. As multiple crises intensify and converge – fueled by far-right political agendas, wars, the cost-of-living and housing crises, and the anthropogenic climate crisis – we find

Gen Z Workers Pick Human-Only Output Over AI-Assisted

Surveyed Gen Z workers leaned toward human-only output. AI-assisted work remained a secondary choice. Workplace attitudes toward AI look more skeptical than last year. Gen Z workers surveyed by Gallup said they would trust work done without AI over AI-assisted output by more than 2-to-1, with the gap widening.

CPG’s CMO reset

For the better part of a decade, CPG companies hired marketers who could optimize a media plan. Now, they’re hiring ones who can save a brand. When Smuckers went looking for a new CMO earlier this year, it didn’t reach for a performance marketer. It hired Katie Williams, the former U.S. CMO of Haleon, a

The algorithm erodes the travel recommendation: what comes after?

Sam Blenkinsopp built Trippin a decade ago on exactly the premise that the best recommendations come from real people – “People actually creating culture on the ground like DJs, chefs, designers, artists.” The result of ignoring that, he says, is what urban theorists call AirSpace: a global monoculture of exposed brick and Edison bulbs, where

Google AI Mode in Chrome Gets Side-by-Side Browsing

Google is rolling out updates to AI Mode in Chrome. Clicking a link in AI Mode on Chrome desktop now opens the webpage in a side panel. The updates are live in the U.S. and will expand to more countries soon. Google is updating AI Mode in Chrome with side-by-side page viewing and a

Netflix Ad Revenue Set to Reach $3 Billion in 2026, New Ad Products Coming

The numbers $2.8 billion — Netflix’s payment received for Warner Bros. Discovery backing out of merger deal in favor of Paramount’s offer. 2X — Netflix ad revenue projected to double, reaching $3 billion in 2026. 16% — Netflix revenue growth in Q1 year over year, due to membership growth, price increase, and increased ad revenue.

Revealed: OFFF 2026’s visual identity was secretly harvested from actual people

While we already knew Uncommon created the striking visual identity for OFFF Festival 2026, today revealed a surprising secret about the way it was made. Introducing “Cultured” during his opening keynote this morning, Nils Leonard asked creatives if they’d been to any of the series of mixers held by Uncommon, supposedly designed to ask them

Why Brands Need a Strategy for Continuous Discovery

Audiences form opinions before they’re “ready.” Travis Claytor explains why continuous discovery—not campaigns—drives trust, visibility, and decisions. The post Why Brands Need a Strategy for Continuous Discovery first appeared on Spin Sucks.

ChatGPT Often Retrieves But Rarely Cites Reddit Pages, Data Shows

An Ahrefs analysis of 1.4 million ChatGPT prompts found that pages from a dedicated Reddit source were rarely cited in ChatGPT responses, even though they were often retrieved. Ahrefs highlights this pattern in a new report. What The Report Looked At Ahrefs examined 1.4 million ChatGPT 5.2 prompts, tracking which pages were retrieved and later

AI’s impact on early-career marketers is reaching a crisis point

A troubling trend is developing involving AI and early-career marketers, and I’m not the only one noticing it. Leading voices like Paul Roetzer highlighted attention-grabbing quotes from Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, who predicted AI could wipe out roughly 50 percent of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab

Google’s Patent On Autonomous Search Results

The United States Patent Office recently published Google’s continuation on a patent for a search system that detects when there is no satisfactory answer for a query and waits to automatically deliver the answer when it becomes available. Search And AI Assistant The patent, published in February 2026, is a continuation of an older patent,

Media agencies are competing for SEO talent

Organic search expertise is the latest in-demand skillset among ad agencies. Media agencies are competing with brands and each other to fill senior roles intended to burnish their capabilities in search engine optimization, AI discoverability and organic search. Digiday identified eight agencies, including both indie and holding company shops, currently advertising for director, assistant director

Graphic design schools are teaching tech, but are they teaching taste?

Talking about graphic design in this way sounds unusual but it isn’t a new hot take. The study of design as liberal art can be traced back to the 1920s with John Dewey’s The Quest for Uncertainty and Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus School. In 1994, design educator Gunnar Swanson wrote a 13-page essay on the state

How To Become An AI Search Authority In SEO [Webinar]

If you’re in an SEO role, there’s a good chance your job description quietly expanded over the last year. You’re now the de facto expert on how your company shows up in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Your SEO Expertise Is Already the Foundation for AI Search Authority Getting cited in AI outputs is table stakes.

Caliber Anticipated Vertical Video. Its Next Bet Is Even More Ambitious.

This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here. When the news media startup Caliber first launched in October 2022, I was initially skeptical. Originally called The News Movement, the brand embraced a commercial

Adobe is making bold claims about its new Firefly AI Assistant

Tech companies often (read: always) make bold claims when unveiling their latest innovations. But even in this context, Adobe‘s positing that its new Firefly AI Agent will mark a “fundamental shift in how creative work is done” is big talk. The brand is heralding a move towards “agentic creativity”, where creators can describe the desired

The AI Slop Loop

Last year, after spending a few days at a work summit in Austria, I asked Perplexity for the latest news related to SEO and AI search. It responded with details about a supposed “September 2025 ‘Perspective’ Core Algorithm Update” that Google had just rolled out, emphasizing “deeper expertise” and “completion of the user journey.” It

Salesforce redesigns platform for agent-driven automation

\ Salesforce today announced Headless 360, an API-first system designed to make its software easier for AI agents to use. At a high level, Headless 360 allows agents to access data, workflows and logic without relying on a traditional user interface. That lets AI agents execute tasks in the background, rather than requiring users to

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