In a strange move, the Google Merchandise store in the UK is offering up the outdated but still classic Bugdroid Android mascot despite being sold out elsewhere online.
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TikTok will now let songwriters highlight tracks they’ve written or co-written directly on their profiles. The list of songs will live within the “Music” tab on their profile, similar to the one TikTok already offers for artists on the platform. Users who register as songwriters will also get a “Songwriter” label beneath their account name.
These new features build upon some of TikTok’s existing tools for songwriters, including the “New” tag that appears on newly released music and the ability for users to save a song on a music streaming service. TikTok also rolled out a “BehindTheSong” hub in 2023, where songwriters, artists, and producers can share more about the making of their music, in addition to the more recently launched “Off the Record” series with artists like Shakira, Charli XCX, and Meghan Trainor.
Music is a huge part of TikTok, with the platform helping boost the popularity of songs and even drive TikTokers to stardom. It has also worked with artists like Taylor Swift to build hubs to promote their music, and added the ability for users to save songs to their SoundCloud accounts in May. In 2023, it launched a standalone music streaming app, but shut it down in 2024.
For now, TikTok is launching its new songwriter features in a closed beta with a “limited number” of publisher partners. Songwriters and publishers can sign up for a waitlist to gain access to these features in the future.
Back in March, cross-platform end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for RCS was announced, and Google Messages is beginning to test the new Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol.
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Gen Z — it’s a group that can feel like an elusive, rare species to today’s publishers. How do these young adults get their news? And are they even consuming news at all in the traditional sense?
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After protests from creators over a delay in the launch of Fortnite’s official “Squid Game” integrations, Epic Games has said it will better coordinate future IP rollouts to align with the original properties’ release dates.
“Squid Game” is Netflix’s most popular series of all time, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at Fortnite. The platform is currently devoid of any creator-made “Squid Game” experiences — and not due to any lack of interest on creators’ part. Creators on one of the top gaming platforms are currently unable to monetize what has become one of the world’s most prominent media properties during the hype period following its June 27 release.
Fortnite has long been home to fan-made “Squid Game” islands, with titles like “Octo Game 2” and “Squid Guys” building organic audiences on the platform since the first season dropped in September 2021. But after Epic Games announced an official “Squid Game” licensing agreement with Netflix last month, the company started to crack down on these unlicensed experiences, removing them from the platform entirely. So far, the only sanctioned integration is a “Squid Game” section within “Reload,” an experience created in-house, not by the creator community.
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Instagram is ramping up efforts to drive interest in its Creator Marketplace with a brand new, 26-page how-to document for marketers — aimed at making the whole process quick and painless. All they need is a business account and access to Meta’s business suite to get the ball rolling.
In July 2022, Instagram started testing its initial marketplace feature, but it was only available on an invite-only basis to select business and creator accounts. Three years later, the image-based platform has opened the doors to what the set-up guide describes as “the best place for brands to discover and evaluate creators for partnership ads”. As the guide states: “you will learn how to access creator marketplace, and discover, evaluate, and connect with creators for your next campaign.”
Having seen the importance of creators to Instagram, it’s no surprise that Meta wants to go one step further and make the collaboration between brands and creators as seamless as possible. And it probably helps that the feature helps keep Instagram in line with its main platform competitor TikTok and its own creator marketplace.
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This week’s Media Briefing looks at the rise of the AI browser war, and what this means for publishers who are already feeling the pressure of declining referral traffic due to AI search tools.
Some days, it feels like publishers are stuck inside a disintermediation hamster wheel.
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The 2025 upfront season is starting to wrap, with sources claiming digital is on the precipice of dominating spend, bringing a new paradigm to negotiations.
It’s one where sellers’ ability to offer granular measurement of ROAS, and decipher how CPMs are structured, matters as much as the stars of a primetime show when it comes to winning the lion’s share of advertiser budgets. As ad spend on streaming prepares to surpass media investment on linear TV at the upfront negotiations, this is especially the case.
Earlier this week, such debate dominated Digiday’s first-ever CTV Ad Strategies event, hosted in midtown Manhattan, where attendees voiced their frustrations about the fusion of these previously distinct worlds, as well as their successes.
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Apple is expanding its collection of Apple News+ Puzzles with yet another new game. This time, Apple is tapping into something we all know and love: emoji.
The new Emoji Game was initially announced as part of iOS 26 at WWDC. The game, however, is now rolling out to all iPhone users running iOS 18.4 and later as well as iPadOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4.
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