Unilever may be investing billions of dollars into influencer marketing, but marketers aren’t necessarily copying their playbook just yet.
When one of the world’s largest advertisers says it will now invest half of its ad budget (some $8.5 billion globally in 2023, per Statista) on social media with plans to work with 20 times more influencers, it can make waves — enough that small and medium-sized marketers rush to follow suit.
But before marketers consider doing so, they need to remember that the creator economy isn’t just another media channel but an ecosystem all its own with potential hazards along the way.
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Amazon Ads’s quest to become the first programmatic port of call for media buyers is intensifying.
It’s courting media agencies across the industry hoping that more will treat its demand-side platform (DSP) as their go-to programmatic provider. According to 11 media buyers who spoke to Digiday, its pitch to decision-makers emphasizes a refreshed user interface, CTV inventory, and, in select cases, financial incentives. Along the way, it hopes to expand its advertiser base to include more non-endemics.
While it’s far from winning over the industry, it’s gained media buyers’ attention — and likely that of market incumbents The Trade Desk and Google’s DV360.
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Uncertainty around TikTok’s future in the U.S. led many advertisers to slam the brakes on their advertising there. Others treated the turmoil as a green light.
Walmart, Coca-Cola, Comcast, PepsiCo, Warner Bros Discovery, Google and Amazon have increased their U.S. social media spend on the platform by two percentage points, on a year-over-year basis in the first quarter of 2025, according to Sensor Tower.
Those seven brands were also some of TikTok’s top spending U.S. advertisers in 2024, per the market intelligence firm. However, PepsiCo and Amazon declined to comment on this, while the other five companies did not respond to Digiday’s request for comment.
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This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how the programmatic guaranteed versus private marketplace debate is shaping up as programmatic becomes an upfront fixture.
Programmatic has firmly become part of the upfront. “There was a huge swing last year,” said one agency executive, referring to TV network and streaming services being more willing to allow advertisers’ programmatic spend to count toward their upfront commitments.
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With influencer marketing budgets steadily rising, more multinational brands are partnering with influencer agencies as the industry becomes more complex.
The World Federation of Advertisers released a report today showing that some 54% of multinational brand marketers plan to boost influencer marketing spend in 2025, with 61% agreeing that influencer marketing will become more important in the future. However, due to ongoing challenges navigating the space, like issues with disclosures and transparency on creator campaigns, more brands are employing the help of agencies that play a role in influencer marketing.
“Budgets will reflect this as will the increased usage of partners with expertise in influencer marketing,” said Will Gilroy, director of communications and strategy at WFA. “But this opportunity is a double-edged sword unless we get it right through responsible practices.”
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Being small and less data-dependent aren’t always selling points for attracting search advertisers. But in the case of one privacy-focused browser, both are core selling points.
Since introducing search ads in 2024, Brave has courted big brand budgets, pitching itself as the place to squeeze out incremental gains beyond Google’s well-trodden turf.
Part of its differentiation lies in how it matches ads to queries without using behavioral or personal data. Rather than relying on traditional keyword targeting — and the endless back-and-forth of asking marketers “what keywords do you want?” Using embeddings, Brave offers contextual ads with a system mapping queries and ads into the same semantic space, allowing it to match users with relevant results based on meaning and intent, not just exact phrasing.
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If you noticed something different after updating the “Google Gemini” app on Android, it’s the icon getting a little bit bigger and brighter.
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Honda's motorsport division must be doing some spring cleaning. Today, the Honda Racing Corporation announced that it's getting into the memorabilia business, offering up parts and even whole vehicles for fans and collectors. And to kick things off, it's going to auction some components from the RA100E V10 engines that powered the McLaren Honda MP4/5Bs of Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger to both F1 titles in 1990.
"We aim to make this a valuable business that allows fans who love F1, MotoGP and various other races to share in the history of Honda's challenges in racing since the 1950s," said Koi Watanabe, president of HRC, "including our fans to own a part of Honda's racing history is not intended to be a one-time endeavor, but rather a continuous business that we will nurture and grow."
The bits from Senna's and Berger's V10s will go up for auction at Monterey Car Week later this year, and the lots will include some of the parts seen in the photo above: cam covers, camshafts, pistons, and conrods, with a certificate of authenticity and a display case. And HRC is going through its collections to see what else it might part with, including "heritage machines and parts" from IndyCar, and "significant racing motorcycles."
© Honda Racing Corporation
At the start of March, Google discussed the latest in widgets, including what a high-quality design looks like. Google Keep is now redesigning and modernizing one of its Android widgets.
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, Apple’s item tracking device, was announced almost four years ago. Although the company has introduced new software features for AirTag owners since then, the accessory has never had a hardware upgrade since its launch. But according to the latest rumors, an AirTag 2 is on the way – and here’s everything we know about it so far.
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Visible, the budget wireless brand owned by Verizon, is offering a new premium plan that looks like a heck of a deal compared to its parent company’s offerings.
The new Visible Plus Pro plan (I didn’t say the name was good) costs $45 per month. For that price you get unlimited 5G Ultrawideband (UW) data, which is an awfully good deal when you consider that Verizon’s own entry-level unlimited plan, Unlimited Welcome, starts at $65 per month and doesn’t include 5G UW.
This new Plus Pro plan also comes without throttling. Many lower-cost carrier plans and MVNOs tend to offer a certain allotment of “premium” data. Once you exceed your allowance, you might see slowdowns at times when the network is busy. But Visible’s fine print states that both its Plus and Plus Pro plan are “not subject to any data prioritization limitations.” So that rules.
It gets better: the Plus Pro plan includes unlimited hotspot usage at up to 15 Mbps. Verizon’s basic plan doesn’t include any hotspot data, just the option to add it for an extra $10 per month. There’s also 4K video streaming and service for one cellular smartwatch included. You can probably guess what I’m going to say next, but just to reiterate, Verizon’s basic unlimited plan doesn’t include any of that.
This would all be less of a good deal if Verizon puts Visible traffic on a lower network tier than its own postpaid customers. Network operators commonly put different kinds of customers on certain service tiers called Quality of Service Class Indicators, or QCIs. This helps with overall traffic prioritization when there’s congestion, usually putting first responders on the fastest tier.
Verizon didn’t immediately respond to my question about Visible Plus Pro’s QCI, but Android Authority’s comprehensive comparison between Visible and Verizon suggests that Visible’s premium plan is actually assigned a higher-priority QCI than Verizon’s Unlimited Welcome — at least, that’s been the case in the past. We’ll update this article if Verizon responds to our request.
It’s all too rare to read about an ISP’s new plan and think “Huh, that sounds like a good deal, actually.” But that’s the case here, even after going through the fine print.
Sturdy.ai, a Portland-based startup that analyzes customer conversations using AI, has raised $6 million in seed funding to help companies catch churn signals early and improve retention. The round was led by Voyager Capital, with participation from Fortson VC and […]
The post Portland startup Sturdy.ai raises $6M to help companies reduce customer churn and boost retention with AI first appeared on Tech Startups.
The Washington Post reports that members of the White House's National Security Council have used personal Gmail accounts to conduct government business. National security advisor Michael Waltz and a senior aide of his both used their own accounts to discuss sensitive information with colleagues, according to the Post's review and interviews with government officials who spoke to the newspaper anonymously.
Email is not the best approach for sharing information meant to be kept private. That covers sensitive data for individuals such as social security numbers or passwords, much less confidential or classified government documents. It simply has too many potential paths for a bad actor to access information they shouldn't. Government departments typically use business-grade email services, rather than relying on consumer email services. The federal government also has its own internal communications systems with additional layers of security, making it all the more baffling that current officials are being so cavalier with how they handle important information.
“Unless you are using GPG, email is not end-to-end encrypted, and the contents of a message can be intercepted and read at many points, including on Google’s email servers," Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Post.
Additionally, there are regulations requiring that certain official government communications be preserved and archived. Using a personal account could allow some messages to slip through the cracks, accidentally or intentionally.
This latest instance of dubious software use from the executive branch follows the discovery that several high-ranking national security leaders used Signal to discuss planned military actions in Yemen, then added a journalist from The Atlantic to the group chat. And while Signal is a more secure option than a public email client, even the encrypted messaging platform can be exploited, as the Pentagon warned its own team last week.
As with last week's Signal debacle, there have been no repercussions thus far for any federal employees taking risky data privacy actions. NSC spokesman Brian Hughes told the Post he hasn't seen evidence of Waltz using a personal account for government correspondence.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/national-security-council-adds-gmail-to-its-list-of-bad-decisions-222648613.html?src=rss©
© REUTERS / Reuters
