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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

The HubSpot controversy asks why customers pay to improve AI products

On July 1, HubSpot announced new terms of service that allowed the company to take enrichment data from one company and use it to enrich or supplement another company’s records. Then it automatically opted in all of its customers. Their response was fast and quite furious. “What the hell is HubSpot thinking?” Gabe Larsen, CRO

Stanley Plowman’s Garble is machine-executed typography filled with human mess

With image-based media sinking a little bit further down the AI-slop slope every day, we find ourselves yearning for the analogue simplicity of our childhood drawings. Blow pens, which allows for randomness and freckles of felt tip spraying across the page, and multicoloured graphite pencils that allow you to draw in rainbow streaks. One particular

Google Answers Question About LLMs-Author.txt For SEO

Google’s John Mueller answered a question related to something a Redditor was using that’s called an llms-author.txt. The person who posted the question is having a hard time being found for their name because it is the same as two other more popular entities, making it more difficult for people to find them and discover

AI makes agencies optional, not obsolete

Dollar Shave Club already makes 90% of its advertising in-house. Its new brand boss wants AI to close the rest of the gap. “We are 90% in-house,” said Dollar Shave Club’s chief brand and innovation officer Laura Higgins, when asked how much of the brand’s advertising is done internally. Asked if that figure could climb

Video tutorial series shows how to make a 3D game in free Godot Engine

The free open-source platform Godot Engine was is widely rated as one of the best game engines. The Godot AI ban has won the software still more good will among indie devs. Fast and lightweight, the platform’s most known for creating 2D platformers, puzzle games and metroidvanias, but it’s also highly capable for 3D projects,

AI Content Didn’t Stop Working, Your Metrics Did

Everyone in the industry is going through the same thing right now. Your content team ships a solid asset, but traffic stays flat or declines. You pull up the analytics, see the line trending sideways, and conclude that AI content has stopped working. That verdict is often wrong. The data may be accurate, but the

LiveRamp Launches Brand Campaign on Netflix as Publicis Deal Fuels Scrutiny of its Neutrality

LiveRamp, which has for years helped brands, publishers, and platforms connect and activate customer data, is launching its first brand campaign on connected TV. The message, one of trust and flexibility, arrives amid a pending Publicis takeover that has the ad industry questioning whether the platform can remain neutral. The adtech company will air 15-

Build An OKF Brain Like Mine!

My last piece on Google’s Open Knowledge Format (OKF) was one of the most popular I’ve ever published. Since then, I have been heads down working on my own OKF structure. I’ve essentially built my own personal brain, and today, I want to show you how it works and why this standard is so incredibly

Turning marketing complexity into a competitive advantage

Marketing has never been more exciting — or more demanding. Today’s teams operate across a rich web of customer data platforms, AI-powered analytics, commerce channels, content engines, partner networks, and emerging digital experiences. The possibilities for personalization, agility, and growth are unprecedented. With that opportunity comes a new kind of challenge: ecosystems that are more

Ben Sanders on self-publishing, experimentation and giant bottle caps

Artist and designer Ben Sanders joined us on the Nicer Tuesdays stage in Los Angeles to talk about his absurdist airbrush paintings with frames made out of salt, pool noodles and art objects of enlarged metal bottle caps. Breaking from reality and travelling into a bizarro visual world for clients such as Nike, Louis Vuitton

Why Google’s DMCA Crisis Is Bad And Will Only Get Worse.

The online publishing community is experiencing a crisis driven by malicious entities that are filing fake DMCA notices in order to remove competitors from the search results. Many are asking Google to do something about it because publishers are trapped by a copyright protection law that has become weaponized against them. Disclaimer: This article is

Media Buying Briefing: It’s a world party at the World Cup, unless you’re looking to get in now

Happy 250th Birthday, America! As one of three host countries of the 2026 World Cup, you received a bit of a gift from the U.S. Men’s National Team, which is on to the round of 16 having beaten Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 1 to advance. Today the team faces Belgium in hopes of getting

This machine is magic: How I used the xTool F2 Ultra UV to engrave a dino

Laser engravers are pretty powerful tools, but never did I think one would be able to engrave INSIDE glass so easily. I’m new to using some of the best laser cutters and engravers on the market, and was thrilled (though a little anxious) when xTool offered to send me its F2 Ultra UV laser for

Safari’s New MCP Server Enables AI Debugging For SEO And CWV

Safari announced they are introducing a new MCP server that will enable web developers and SEOs to debug websites with an AI agent. The AI agent connects to the Safari browser window and collects data like network requests and the DOM which are helpful for debugging bottlenecks related to Core Web Vitals or anything else

Il Sole 24 Ore – Editorial illustrations 2026

During this year, I had the opportunity to work a series of illustrations for the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Here it is a selection of these editorial illustrations and covers for special issues.

Google Put AI Visibility Inside The SEO Tool On Purpose

Google added AI search visibility reporting to Search Console, and the place it chose to put it is the whole argument. It is not a new product, and it is not a separate “Generative Console.” The same tool you already open to see how you rank in search now also shows how often you turn

HubSpot’s Warmly deal points to the next generation of CRM

HubSpot’s acquisition of Warmly yesterday is another example of CRMs evolving into systems that identify buying opportunities, recommend the next step, and even take action on their own. Warmly is best known for identifying individual website visitors and using AI agents to help sales teams engage them. For HubSpot, this isn’t just another AI feature.

Silvana Trevale’s photographs of Venezuelan youth are a love letter to a generation growing up in uncertainty

The decision to focus on youth grew out of an earlier project, Nosotras, which celebrated the women of Venezuela and “how hard they worked to keep their families afloat”, Silvana says. Returning to Venezuela afterwards, she found herself thinking about beach days with friends as a child, and the realisation that the country’s youth –

Microsoft Just Proved A Point About Search Today

The company that owns a major web index just documented, in its own product, that ranking a page and citing a passage are different jobs. Web IQ arriving at Build on June 2, and AI citation data showing up inside Bing Webmaster Tools earlier this year, were not surprises. As I know well, having built

Nike’a 2026 Q4 growth margin increased 890 basis points

Nike says it’s in a better financial position as it awaits nearly $1 billion in refunds related to tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. On Tuesday, Nike shared that its growth margin for its fiscal fourth quarter of 2026 increased 890 basis points to 49.2%, “primarily due to the expected recovery of the IEEPA

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