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Tariffs, inflation and the ad market’s race for flexibility

President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs were supposed to take effect today (February 4), forcing marketers to once again rethink their budgets. But at the last minute, most of them were put on hold — a reminder that in this environment, nothing is certain until it actually happens.

For weeks, businesses had been bracing for higher costs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China, with marketers weighing the ripple effects on pricing, demand and strategy. Now, instead of adjusting to a new reality, they’re stuck in limbo, unsure if these tariffs will resurface next week, next month or disappear altogether.

It’s just the latest example of how unpredictable President Trump is.  Tariffs aren’t just an economic policy under his administration, they’re a bargaining chip, a political weapon, and, at times, a headline-grabbing threat. Marketers can’t afford to overreact every time one is announced, but they also can’t ignore the possibility that the next one might actually stick.

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How publishers pull YouTube viewers to shop on their sites, with Architectural Digest’s Amy Astley

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Last year Architectural Digest switched up its e-commerce strategy. Having added affiliate links to its “Open Door” YouTube series showcasing celebrities’ decked-out abodes in 2021, the Condé Nast-owned publication started redirecting viewers from the Google-owned video platform to its own site to shop the decor.

“It’s a much, much deeper, richer experience for the user to go to our site. It’s more fully shopped-out there, and it’s more visual. We can put photos of all the items,” sad Amy Astley, global editorial director at Architectural Digest, on the latest Digiday Podcast episode.

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Here’s what else a $7M, 30-second Super Bowl budget can purchase in 2025

The Super Bowl is a pricey party. But it’s not the only joint in town.

Shared moments like the big game — which last year was watched by an average of 123.4 million U.S. viewers, second only to the Apollo moon landing in July 1969 — are more valuable than ever.

Getting a brand in front of those viewers isn’t cheap. A 30-second spot during the big game carried a $7 million sticker price during Fox’s upfronts this year. Last-minute spots freed up by brands pulling their ads (some in response to the California wildfires) went for as much as $8 million, according to Adweek.

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Marketing Briefing: Why marketers are taking a ‘lighter approach’ to Super Bowl advertising this year

If you watch the teasers or already released ads for Super Bowl LXI, it’s obvious that brands are taking a light-hearted approach, playing it safe by leaning on humor and classic brand advertising iconography to avoid ruffling anyone’s feathers this year. 

There’s a sense brands are returning to their place in culture, using advertising as entertainment rather than a place to take a stand of some kind that could potentially alienate their consumer base.

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Ad tech hopes open-source AI like DeepSeek will level the playing field with walled garden rivals

The open web has spent years competing for crumbs against companies like Google and Meta. But now, some ad tech players say the Chinese startup DeepSeek creates a new chance to build their own AI offerings beyond the walled gardens.

Chris Vanderhook, COO and co-founder of Viant, still remembers when Google’s AdX crushed the ad network business model right out of the gate. “Once you were in it and were bidding into them, they had such scale, and at any moment, they could tilt the rules in their favor and have all the value,” he said. 

The jury’s still out on whether the Chinese startup’s open-source R1 model is safe for U.S. companies to use — or if it’s as cheap or as accurate as initially positioned. However, Vanderhook and others don’t think they’ll be able to benefit from its innovations if they’re able to soon replicate their own AI models thanks to open-source technology without relying on models like Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, or OpenAI’s GPT models.

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How creators are growing beyond the Super Bowl this year, from creator houses to fan festivals

Marketers are integrating creators into their Super Bowl plans not just during the Big Game but in the run-up and after this year. Last year, creators like Addison Rae and Charli D’Amelio, broke into the Super Bowl by appearing in Big Game ads. This year, creators are hosting live events, rallying fans online and staying at creator-only houses to make content and attract brand deals.

Super Bowl LIX is not only a competitive night for the teams — the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will face off Feb. 9 on Fox at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans — but for advertisers. A 30-second ad can now top some $8 million in 2025 — surpassing $7 million for the same type of spot in 2024.

Creators and brands have to find more ways to stand out in a period of content overload and ensure their investments still pay off. It’s a difficult task in a more fragmented digital landscape and an important moment for creators as the continuously-looming TikTok ban continues to change the creator economy.

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The definitive guide to what’s in and out (so far) in Trump’s second presidential term

President Donald Trump’s second presidential term — from the TikTok back-and-forth, to the placement of Big Tech execs both at his inauguration and in the Oval Office — has already been notable. Here’s where the ad industry stands with all of this (so far).

In
Big Tech engineering free speech with government support
Out 
Big Tech defending free speech amid government pressure

In
FTC going after Big Tech’s censorship cartel 
Out
FTC going after Big Tech’s surveillance capitalism

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AI Briefing: DeepSeek’s emergence from nowhere shows open-source is eating the world

In case you have been hiding under a rock for the past week, DeepSeek’s emergence (seemingly out of nowhere) has underlined the geopolitical aspect of one of the most disruptive forces in economic history.

Because AI adoption is so early, they [Google, Meta, Amazon, etc.] didn’t get their hooks and claws into everyone yet.
Chris Vanderhook, COO and co-founder, Viant

A key question facing the $225 billion-plus U.S. digital media sector is, how will its key players respond?

Developments last week hint at such players adopting an open-source approach in a rapidly evolving industry landscape. Meanwhile, Digiday’s ad tech sources noted that, while DeepSeek poses a credible alternative to Big Tech, clients are in a cautious mood, particularly around privacy.

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Boycotts and backlash reveal complications in changing DEI landscape

Target’s decision to retool its diversity, equity and inclusion measures has sparked backlash as activists are now calling for a nationwide boycott of the retailer. In response, Black-owned brands that the store carried or carries are asking consumers to reconsider, pointing out that the dismantling of DE&I measures is complicated.

Target is one of several companies that have recently retooled their DE&I policies in light of mounting pressure from conservative activists and most recently, the White House, where President Donald Trump signed an executive order taking aim at DE&I programs on a federal level. Others like Walmart, Amazon and McDonald’s have also rolled back their diversity initiatives. (Target did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.)

It’s a tricky issue for these large corporations to navigate, according to the six cultural marketing executives Digiday spoke with for this piece, and for the Black-owned brand founders themselves. Amidst the changes, Black-owned brands like The Lip Bar lipstick, The Honey Pot feminine care brand and Tabitha Brown, a social media personality with several brands at Target, are caught in the crosshairs — all of which have taken to social media to express disappointment with the changes to DEI policy while trying to convince shoppers that things aren’t as black and white as they seem. (The Lip Bar, The Honey Pot and Tabitha Brown all declined to make a spokesperson available for comment.)

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Media Buying Briefing: Mile Marker forms out of the union of two shops with similar goals but different skill sets

Consolidation may be happening at the holding company level, between Omnicom’s planned purchase of IPG, and Publicis’ latest acquisition wave (just last week it moved to buy Australian/New Zealand agency Atomic 212). But it’s also happening at a level that plans to take advantage of the thousands of midsized marketers that will be overlooked by the new class of media agency behemoths.

Digiday has learned that PlusMedia, a direct response agency, and Cage Point, an omnichannel media agency, are merging to form Mile Marker, a media agency that specializes in middle-market brands that are looking to grow. 

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In wake of Meta moderation shift, advertisers have accepted new status quo: brand safety is a myth

Advertisers have long told themselves that brand safety is something they control. But with Meta rolling back its content moderation rules — narrowing the gap between brands and whether chaos goes viral — it’s clear that control was always a myth.

Platforms make the rules, rewrite them at will, and expect advertisers to fall in line. Most do. Because in digital advertising, the game isn’t about eliminating risk. It’s about learning to live with it.

Meta’s changes technically don’t touch paid ads. But organic content still dictates the broader tone of the platform — and what users engage with inevitably influences the ad ecosystem. Brand safety tools can only do so much when the overall environment becomes more volatile. And yet, what choice do marketers really have? Pulling spend rarely moves the needle, and staying put means accepting that brand safety is less about control — and more about calculated risk.

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Digiday+ Research: Half of marketers say ad spend will grow this year

Interested in sharing your perspectives on the media and marketing industries? Join the Digiday research panel.

The theme of optimism in marketing continues: Marketers said they’re coming off a successful year in 2024, they expect to have bigger budgets to spend in 2025, and now they see advertisers spending more this year.

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Publishers want more control over programmatic. Some are finally making it happen

Publishers taking charge of programmatic has always been a mirage — enticing but elusive. In 2025, though, that mirage feels a little closer, a little more real.

While full control may still be a long shot, a growing number of publishers are starting to take a firmer grip on the programmatic reins — if they’re willing to confront a hard truth: Sometimes, the problem isn’t the system but themselves.

For too long, publishers assumed they were powerless to fix programmatic’s deep flaws. Instead, they leaned on ad tech vendors to mend a broken system.

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LinkedIn’s video push appears to be working in 2025

LinkedIn’s ongoing efforts to woo video creators paid off in the past few months, according to new figures shared by the company.

Short-form video is the fastest-growing content category on LinkedIn. As of this week, total video viewership on the platform has increased by 36 percent year-over-year for the period between Oct. 30, 2024, and Jan. 29, 2025, according to statistics shared by a LinkedIn representative, who said that video creation is growing at twice the rate of other post formats on the platform. (LinkedIn owner Microsoft runs its fiscal calendar between July 1 and June 30 and considers the period between Oct. 30, 2024, and Jan. 29, 2025 to be its fiscal second quarter of 2025.)

LinkedIn’s publisher program, which includes over 500 publishers and journalists, is also intended to amplify video content on the platform. Through the program, LinkedIn provides audience demographic data to news publishers, shares monthly newsletters with information about new tools, and operates workshops to educate members about the platform’s features. Weekly video creation from program members has grown by 67 percent year-over-year, per the company rep.

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Will a ‘rebrand’ of the CMO create a better balance between brand and performance marketing?

The pendulum is starting to swing back to brand and a rethink of the traditional CMO-based marketing model. 

Marketing organizations within major brands are recognizing the damage they can do to their brands if they focus too much on performance marketing and too little on brand marketing. Marketers, agency execs and consultants said there’s a noticeable shift when talking to brand marketers — not only CMOs but those with the various titles that have started to replace the CMO title — where it’s clear that care for brand as well as performance is more apparent. 

That overall shift may be part of the thinking for some companies as they reorganize their marketing departments. Last week, for example, Kimberly Clark announced a new addition to its roster of marketing professionals: Luis Sanches joined as the company’s first global chief creative and design officer working under the company’s chief growth officer, Patricia Corsi. The company has moved away from the traditional CMO model with Corsi replacing its previous CMO Alison Lewis last spring. 

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How publishers are choosing which LLMs to use

Publishers that want to experiment with using generative AI technology to build products and features like creating chatbots and analyzing data have to evaluate which large language models best fit the bill. 

And it turns out that one of the biggest factors in these evaluations is how easy it is to integrate an LLM into their companies’ tech systems — such as different product suites and content management platforms — according to conversations with three publishing execs. That often means choosing the LLMs owned by companies with which they already have enterprise technology or content licensing agreements.

For example, a spokesperson at one publisher – who asked to remain anonymous —  told Digiday their company isn’t experimenting with an array of different LLMs and is primarily using OpenAI’s models. Their company has a content licensing deal with OpenAI that followed a successful project to build a chatbot using OpenAI’s GPT model. The publisher has continued to use GPT for other needs, like productivity tools.

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Fragmentation comes to search advertising as marketers grapple with shifting search behavior

The search advertising landscape is poised to undergo a seismic shift this year, driven by the rise of AI-powered search platforms like Perplexity AI and search ads on social platforms like TikTok. And those are just the platforms with confirmed ad units. 

Meanwhile, the industry has been whispering about search ads cropping up on Reddit and Amazon’s generative AI-powered chatbot Rufus. All of this while search kingpin Google grapples with the fallout from its search trial, in which the Justice Department has tasked Google with selling its Chrome web browser to create a more equal playing field for search competitors. Google, of course, is expected to appeal this case.

The way people search for things online is changing, shifting from keyword-based searches to more conversational queries, in large part due to generative AI. And with Google’s dominance being challenged in court (also in the trial over its ad tech), competitors may soon start circling, hoping to capture any spoils from the fallout.

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Remote work is now the top requested workplace accommodation

This story was first published by Digiday sibling WorkLife

The ability to work remotely was the most requested workplace accommodation last year, according to a survey from AbsenceSoft, a platform for leave of absence and accommodations management, which included responses from 2,400 HR leaders and employees.

It comes as more major companies shift away from the hybrid arrangements they were in last year, and are requiring staff to work from offices five days a week. JP Morgan is one example, along with others in finance like Goldman Sachs, and some in tech like Amazon. Meanwhile, agency holding group WPP caused waves internally when it announced staff would have to be back in the office four days a week from April.

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How ad curation is maturing

The concept of ad curation may appear to be a nebulous one. Still, in the contemporary phase of the $750 billion digital advertising industry’s maturation, it has come to represent control: who owns the relationship, and who can command margin?

And with consolidation expected to represent much of the mergers and acquisitions in the space during 2025, the importance of this term is ramping up, as new players enter the space and audience signals become more scarce.

In its most basic concept, curation can be traced back to the earliest ad networks, with several industry figures laying claim to its invention, from high-profile pioneers to under-the-hood stalwarts.

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Media Briefing: The Financial Times’ AI paywall is improving subscriber metrics, but not lifting conversions yet

The Media Briefing this week features an interview with the Financial Times’ Fiona Spooner, managing director of the FT’s Consumer Revenue Group, on how their AI-powered paywall has led to an increase in key subscription metrics like average revenue per user and lifetime value — even though it hasn’t led to more conversions yet.

  • How the FT is using AI technology to boost its paywall and improve ARPU and LTV
  • The Wall Street Journal’s newsroom restructuring, ABC News’ union win protecting jobs against generative AI and more.

FT’s smarter, more automated paywall

The Financial Times’s months-old AI-powered paywall has helped improve key subscription business metrics, such as average revenue per user and lifetime value, according to Fiona Spooner, Managing Director of the FT’s Consumer Revenue Group.

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