In 2024, generative AI proved itself to be far more than just a buzzword. From the flurry of AI-powered gadgets to the potential regulations, the second year of a massive innovation race advanced alongside scrutiny, with questions about transparency, copyright, and ethical use.

As a follow-up to last year’s AI timeline for 2023, our recap for 2024 highlights some of the most important headlines with a sampling from every month of the year.

January

The year started off with a bevvy of AI-related announcements at CES 2024, where major tech companies and consumer brands touted new tech: AI chips for laptops and phones, smart TVs, voice assistants for cars, AI-enabled beauty products, and retailer activations. A few weeks later, AI took over NRF 2024 with nearly two dozen exhibitors touting AI.

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Judging from the reaction to the news of Omnicom’s planned acquisition of Interpublic Group near the end of 2024, there’s a strong expectation that 2025 will see the biggest of the agency groups get bigger. Size and scale will be vital for them to compete with each other.

But getting so large means seeking out the largest multi-national marketers that need that global heft to execute their media — the P&Gs, Coca-Cola’s and General Motors of the marketing world. Together they make up a large swath of media spend. 

And that leaves a whole world of smaller and mid-sized marketers left on the sidelines of the holdco game — the “Forgotten Middle,” as one independent media agency CEO coined it — and looking for agencies that will bring them their A teams and innovative solutions.

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About a decade ago, I loaded a couple of midsize suitcases, three large Ikea bags, a pair of 10-gallon Rubbermaid totes, a laundry basket, and two heavily sedated cats into a U-Haul and moved from Toronto to New York City. All my belongings fit neatly into my tiny new Brooklyn bedroom, with plenty of square footage to spare. Turns out, my relative lack of stuff was right on trend.

At the time, millennials like me were buying and owning less, purportedly breaking the mold of American consumerism. We Instagrammed our sparsely furnished, overly beige interiors. We eschewed car ownership and suburban McMansions in favor of bikes, car-share memberships, and big-city apartments with roommates. We were spending our money not on things but on experiences — and blogging about it, too.

"If the millennials are not quite a postdriving and postowning generation, they'll almost certainly be a less-­driving and less-­owning generation," declared a September 2012 article in The Atlantic titled "The Cheapest Generation." Our reputation quickly found a nifty shorthand: Millennials were a generation of minimalists.

As I write this from the same tiny Brooklyn bedroom, I can see my closet doors straining against the weight of a nearly bursting trash bag filled with cast-off clothing I keep meaning to recycle. The three Ikea bags are stacked full of dirty laundry, which my partner or I would probably get around to washing if we didn't have plenty of other stuff to wear. Our dresser top is strewn with impulse buys you'd find in a drugstore checkout line. I can think of a few descriptors for the state of my surroundings, but "minimalist" isn't one of them.

While my fellow 28- to 43-year-olds have yet to shake our association with less-is-more living, that old stereotype doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny anymore. Consumer-spending data suggests we have no trouble dropping our hard-earned cash on goods and services — experiences and things. As we've built careers and started families, our buying habits increasingly resemble those of Gen X and boomers when they were the age we are now.

Millennials haven't been minimalists in years. In fact, we may have never been minimalists at all.

The minimalist-millennial myth began in the early 2010s in the aftermath of the Great Recession. As the "next generation" of leaders, workers, and spenders, my contemporaries' behavior was of keen interest to marketers, business leaders, and economists. So when my generation, rattled by a catastrophic recession, wasn't buying as much as our predecessors, concern spread that our diminished purchasing power — or worse, our somehow radically different priorities and values — might signal the end of the consumer-spending spree that had powered the nation's economy since the end of World War II.

Throughout the decade, a breadcrumb trail of survey data seemed to back up these concerns. In a 2016 Harris Poll, 78% of millennials said they would rather pay for an experience than material goods, as opposed to 59% of baby boomers. A 2015 Nielsen survey similarly found that millennials went out to eat at nearly twice the rate of their parents — they would rather eat their riches than stockpile them. The 2014 English-language translation of Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" sold over 9 million copies, spawning a cottage industry of aspiring millennial declutterers.

The minimalist trend wasn't entirely bogus from a cultural standpoint. "The recession was a real force for people fetishizing simplicity and turning frugality into a virtue, making the best of what you have rather than prioritizing consuming more or consuming flashier things," said the writer Kyle Chayka, whose 2020 book "The Longing for Less" digs into the perennial appeal of a more pared-down way of living.

The postrecession era also saw the rise of smartphones, which ushered in digital sensory overload. Seemingly overnight, apartments and Instagram grids were awash in the clean lines and open spaces of midcentury-modern design (or, at least, Ikea's approximations of it). "There's so much chaos in our phones," Chayka said. "Why would you want more chaos in your physical surroundings?"

Millennials' minimalism became an economic-anxiety Rorschach test. Depending on the beholder, our perceived underconsumption might have signaled a virtuous departure from the poisoned cycle of production, purchase, and disposal. For others, it affirmed the widely held suspicion that we were a generation of coddled Peter Pans who refused to put down the avocado toast; buy some cars, houses, and house-sized volumes of stuff; and just grow up already. Though it was largely an aesthetic trend, the myth of millennial minimalism was so central to my cohort's cultural identity that it may as well have been real.

But in reality, this theory of arrested economic development was always a bit of a mirage. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, consumer spending accounted for roughly 60% of US GDP; since the early 2000s, despite millennials' purported lack of spending, it's held steady at just under 70%.

Take one of the most talked about large purchases that millennials were eschewing: cars. Automobile ownership has been a central tenet of the American dream since the '50s, when the health of the automobile industry became closely tied to the country's economic growth and prosperity. No longer needed for building tanks and munitions to ship overseas, factory assembly lines "newly renovated with Uncle Sam's dollars" were repurposed to build tens of thousands of new cars, which American consumers eagerly bought up, the Harvard historian Lizabeth Cohen wrote in her 2004 book, "A Consumers' Republic." Even now, demand for cars is looked at as a bellwether for consumer spending and the US economy more broadly.

It's no coincidence then that millennials' apparent resistance to car ownership, in particular, jumped out as evidence of our radically shifting consumer ethos. One widely circulated data point came from a 2010 CNW Group analysis, which reported that 21- to 34-year-olds in the US were responsible for just 27% of new-car purchases, down from a high of 38% in 1985. News outlets cited this data as proof that millennials, as a whole, were less interested in buying cars than their boomer parents or their older Gen X siblings. What they failed to consider was how present circumstances — such as the ripple effects of a then very recent economic crisis, especially among young adults just entering the workforce — might alter how people spent their money, especially on big-ticket items like brand-new cars.

In 2016, the Federal Reserve Board issued a report that sought to set the record straight by pointing out that the anti-car narrative about millennials didn't take the Great Recession into account. The report argued that the economic downturn almost certainly shaped people's spending as much or more than the technological and cultural changes that were happening at the same time. Proving the point, young adults were back to buying cars by the mid-2010s. Nowadays, millennials have fully caught up: Since 2020, we've accounted for almost 30% of the nation's new-vehicle registrations, a rate that's roughly on par with baby boomers and only slightly below that of Gen X, Experian research found. But by the time the Fed report was released, it was already too late. The truism of millennials as minimalists was entrenched.

So if millennials aren't minimalists, what exactly are we? Sociologists would likely tell you that's the wrong question to ask — people's behaviors and lifestyles change over time, as do societal norms and priorities. The question isn't how to best define millennials as consumers but whether millennials' young-adult spending was markedly different from that of prior generations.

For answers, we can turn to consumer-spending records. Since 1984, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been conducting its Consumer Expenditure Surveys to see how different American age cohorts spend money. Granted, the picture it paints is somewhat incomplete; by 1984, most boomers were well past their early 20s, making a direct comparison with millennials challenging. Still, it offers a useful baseline for comparing different age groups' spending over time. Sure enough, when adjusted for inflation, Americans under 25, between 25 and 34, and 35 to 44 have spent roughly similarly across most major consumer categories for the past four decades, with momentary dips overlaying periods of recession followed by bounce backs. While it's true that millennials are spending more of their budgets on airfare and vacation rentals than older generations did at the same age, the same can be said for Gen Zers, Gen Xers, and baby boomers — everyone is splurging on travel right now.

Because younger adults tend to have fewer family responsibilities and far less wealth than adults in their professional prime, they spend less overall. As their expenses and income accrue over time, they spend more — especially once kids enter the picture, bringing new mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, and hobbies to equip. Now that millennials have families of their own, they're even more overwhelmed by clutter than their boomer parents before them, buried under piles of ever-cheaper toys.

In other words, millennials' style of spending isn't special; it's cyclical.

To further the point, millennials now account for the largest share of homebuyers, making up 38% of the homebuying market, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors. Our tilt toward homeownership isn't new, either. We'd nearly caught up with our boomer parents way back in 2019, according to Freddie Mac; 43% of us owned homes, just shy of the 45% of baby boomers who were able to buy their first homes between 25 and 34. Whatever we weren't buying in our 20s, we are making up for in our 30s and 40s.

"There's the ongoing narrative that millennials can't afford housing or don't own houses, that they're renters, but when you look at the data, 25- to 34-year-olds are just as likely to be homeowners now as they were in 1993," said Bryan Rigg, a BLS economist who oversees Consumer Expenditure Survey microdata for public use. "Really, a lot of the expenditure patterns are similar." One major exception is that today's 20- and 30-somethings are a lot more comfortable taking on debt to buy things — like cars and homes — than in the past.

For better or worse, public memory is short. Many of today's young adults might not even be aware that the current crop of 30-somethings were ever considered minimalists in the first place. There's evidence that the rest of us are starting to forget, too. Maybe you've read about the new TikTok trend sweeping Gen Z: a mindful alternative to the "haul" culture that's grown around ultrafast fashion and ultracheap e-commerce platforms. It's a whole new approach to stuff. Some have said it might even slow down the economy. This time around, we're calling it "underconsumption core."

Kelli María Korducki is a journalist whose work focuses on work, tech, and culture. She's based in New York City.

This is a bonus behind-the-scenes look at our conversations with executives for Digiday’s 2024 Media Agency Report, which examined the current and future state of media agencies, from the perspective of total client spending and spending by media channel, and delved into the impact of retail media on the agency landscape.

Digiday hosted a focus group of eight senior media agency executives who oversee media investment at holding company-owned and independent media agencies to gather first-person accounts of client spending. Agencies and networks that participated in the focus group were:

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• Single women in the US are outpacing men in homebuying, the National Association of Realtors found.
• In 2024, single women represent 20% of all homebuyers, compared to 8% for single men.
• Three single women shared with BI their motivations for buying a home without a partner or a spouse.

Karla Cobreiro, 33, lived with her parents for nearly a decade after college, diligently saving to buy her own home.

"I didn't want to be house-poor or struggle financially," Cobreiro, a publicist, told Business Insider. "I waited for the right moment — when I had a higher-paying job, had saved up a large down payment, and had built a solid emergency fund.

In 2022, she purchased a 900-square-foot condo in Downtown Doral, a Miami suburb, for around $400,000. She was 31 and single.

"I didn't have a partner at the time, but I didn't think that should stop me," Cobreiro said. "So I went for it."

Cobreiro is one of many single women in the US who haven't let the absence of a relationship or marriage stop them from buying a home — an achievement long seen as a key milestone of wealth building and the American dream.

An analysis of data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) shows that single women have consistently outpaced single men in homebuying since the organization began tracking data in 1981.

The chart below shows that since 2020, the share of single women homebuyers has continued to increase steadily, while the share of single men has declined.

By 2024, the gap has reached its widest, with single women representing 20% of all homebuyers, compared to 8% for single men.

Single women find independence in homeownership

So why are single women statistically more likely to purchase homes than single men?

Brandi Snowden, NAR's director of member and consumer survey research, told BI that it largely comes down to lifestyle choices and women's unique societal roles.

Snowden explained that many single women purchase homes because they desire independence, have experienced divorce, and are responsible for raising children.

NAR found that female buyers are typically older than their male counterparts, with the median age for single women at 60, compared to 58 for single men.

"These buyers may be recently divorced or purchasing a home not just for themselves but also for their children and parents," Snowden said.

"It's just me and this mortgage."

Cobreiro said that buying a home without a spouse has its own challenges, such as settling for a smaller condo since she's not part of a DINK household — an acronym for "dual income, no kids."

Data from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances shows that DINKs have a median net worth of over $200,000. This financial advantage enables them to more easily afford housing or spend their disposable income on luxuries like boats and expensive cars.

Despite the financial benefits of a two-income household, many women have chosen to live independently in an era of increasing financial and social autonomy.

Cobreiro is responsible for a 30-year mortgage, which includes $2,500 in monthly payments and an additional $1,000 in HOA fees — all of which fall entirely on her.

"Though I live comfortably, If I get laid off, break a leg, or face an emergency, I'm on my own, she said. "I always joke to my friends, "It's just me and this mortgage."

Still, she believes the benefits of sole home ownership outweigh the risks of waiting to purchase with a boyfriend.

"I'm glad I didn't wait until I was in a relationship or married to buy a home," she said. "Owning a home with someone you're not committed to can get tricky, especially if you break up. There's no prenup; if you disagree about selling, that can get messy."

Some women say no prenup, no co-owning

New Yorker Jessica Chestler, 33, shares a similar perspective to Cobreiro.

In 2022, Chestler, a real-estate agent with Douglas Elliman and a business owner, purchased a three-bedroom condo in Williamsburg for $3.25 million.

She told BI that she viewed homeownership as an investment in her future, one she wasn't willing to risk with someone she wasn't fully committed to.

"When you're buying a home with someone else, there's obviously a lot more to consider, especially if you're not married," Chestler said. "There's always that uncertainty: What happens if you break up — how do you divide the assets?"

Chestler, who also renovated her home, said the greatest benefit of owning solo is the ability to rely on herself and the freedom to live on her own terms.

"I only had to consider myself," she said. "I didn't have to worry about anyone else's opinion. I loved the apartment, knew my numbers, and was confident I could make it work — That sense of comfort was really important to me."

Women say they don't need a knight in shining armor

Some single women who buy homes may have boyfriends but aren't waiting for a ring to start building wealth through home equity.

Take real-estate agent Ayriel Von Schert, who, in February, purchased a 2,280-square-foot townhouse for $365,000 in Mesa, Arizona, without a cosigner.

Although Von Schert, 30, is in a long-term committed relationship, she wanted to take control of her financial future.

"I think many women feel the same way: Why wait for someone else to help you achieve your goals?" she told BI.

Her decision to buy alone could pay off in the long run. Another unit in Von Schert's complex is on the market for $410,000. If it sells for that price, her home will have appreciated by about $35,000 in one year.

"In a few years, I might sell this place or keep it and rent it out while buying another property," she said. "My long-term goal is to build a real estate portfolio and earn residual income, and I feel like I'm definitely on the right path."

For now, she and her boyfriend are living like roommates, equally splitting the bills for the home, including utilities and the mortgage.

She said it's a win-win situation for both of them.

"I don't think he minds because we no longer have a landlord telling us what we can or can't do," she said.

Are you a single or unmarried woman who purchased a home? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

The American dream — like a beloved pair of pants you left in the dryer too long — is shrinking.

The idealized image of American life we know today was crystallized in the country's collective imagination in the 1930s. Since then, the idea that anyone can obtain a life that has the house with the white picket fence, 2.5 children, a lucrative career at an office that's a reasonable distance away, and the occasional trip to an enviable vacation spot has loomed large in nearly every facet of cultural and political life.

There's just one problem: The once expansive vision is getting smaller. Not only is it harder to grab a piece of it, like a bag of chips or a roll of toilet paper that has less substance every time you buy it, but even nominally achieving the dream is leaving people unsatisfied. Americans are having fewer kids, their houses are getting smaller, they're schlepping further to work, and they're spending less time on vacation.

Americans are taking notice of the diminishing returns. Among the 8,709 US adults surveyed by the Pew Research Center from April 8 to 14, 41% said that achieving the American dream was once possible but no longer. That's particularly true for younger Americans; 18- to 29-year-olds were the most likely to say that the American dream was never possible, and only 39% said that it's still possible. Their millennial counterparts felt similarly, though they were slightly more bullish on the possibility of the American dream.

At the same time, Americans are increasingly less satisfied with their personal lives, Gallup polling from January found. The share of Americans who are "very satisfied" with their personal lives has been plummeting, the poll found, and sits near record lows — other times it's gotten this bad were during the economic crisis of 2008 and its fallout in the following years. And even among those who might have achieved the American dream — higher earners with college degrees — life satisfaction has slipped.

Call it the shrinkflation of the American dream.

The central element of the American dream is owning a house. Having a roof over your head is the cornerstone of security and stability; research has found homeowners are less stressed than their renter counterparts, and beyond having a place that they can call their own, they have growing equity. But nowadays, the homes that many Americans live in rarely have enough room for a big dog — much less a picket fence.

In 2013, the median square footage of a new single-family housing unit was about 2,460. In 2015, new homes peaked at about 2,470 square feet — and then spent the next six years shrinking. In 2021, homes started to slowly get bigger again, and then they once again constricted. By 2023, the figure had fallen to about 2,180 square feet. An analysis by the National Association of Home Builders found that the share of single-family homes built with two bedrooms or fewer hit its highest level since 2012 — and the share of new homes built with four bedrooms fell to its lowest level since 2012.

Of course, homes getting a little smaller isn't necessarily a bad thing — many advocates for increasing the housing supply argue that the dedication to giant homes has made it tougher to build the number of new units that the country needs. But shrinking homes are coupled with another biting reality: Americans are paying more for less. In the same period that Americans have seen their homes shrink, home prices have grown by nearly $200,000. The median listing price per square foot was $127 in 2016; by 2024, that rose to $224 — meaning Americans were shelling out more per square foot, even as their square footage decreased. By one measure, Americans now need to work 110 hours a month to be able to afford their mortgages — meaning mortgages eat up the bulk of their earnings.

With those prices, it's no wonder first-time homebuyers are older than ever. The National Association of Realtors found that the median age of first-time homebuyers hit 38 in 2024, a record high. In 1981, the median age of a first-time buyer was 29; in 2014, it was 31.

It's not all peaches and rainbows for American renters, either. The median rent price in the US is $2,035, Zillow found. Rent.com, meanwhile, found that median rental asking prices hit about $1,619 in October. That's nearly a $300 increase from May 2019. So if renters are paying more, surely they're still at least getting some bang for their buck? Nope, apartments are getting smaller, too. In 2016, the median square footage of a new unit in a building that had two or more units was 1,105 square feet. Apartments have been shrinking since then: In 2023, new units were clocking in at a median of 1,020 square feet — and the measure reached its lowest recorded level in 2021 as housing prices and demand soared.

A house is just a house until there are people in it; only then, the saying goes, is it a home. But increasingly, American homes are occupied by fewer people. Not only is there a slight rise in single people buying a house, but also the pitter-patter of babies' feet is becoming less common in the hallways of American homes these days. The share of homebuyers without a child under 18 in the house rose to a new high of 73%. That comes as Americans are having fewer kids: The average number of births per woman in the US has fallen from nearly four in 1960 to 1.7 in 2022.

It should come as no surprise that Americans are having fewer children given the economic and social pressures working against them. If it's hard for anyone to break into the ranks of homeowners, it's even more difficult for parents. Housing costs aren't the only deterrent, young parents are also floundering amid rising childcare costs and the loss of the social connections that are critical to raising kids. At the same time, more Americans seem to be on board with choosing to go child-free. DINKs — double-income, no-kid couples — have been on the cultural rise. But just because it's harder for people with kids and more acceptable to forgo them doesn't mean that people are giving up on starting a family. Many Americans want to have children or have even more kids, but it's out of reach.

Karen Benjamin Guzzo, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who's researched the gap between the number of children Americans intend to have versus their ultimate childbearing, told me that having kids is often seen as the "last step" in accomplishing the American dream. You go to college, you line up a good job, you get married, you buy a house, and then you fill it with kids. There's a problem, though. "Every step along the way has become less and less predictable," she said.

Guzzo's research has found, in part, that Americans still expect to have children — they just don't actually have them. The way Guzzo describes it is many Americans want kids, but with an asterisk: They want kids if they can find a good partner, a good job with family leave and enough pay to afford childcare, and so on.

"People need to feel confident that the next 25 years of their lives and the world in which their children will be raised and growing and becoming adults on their own. They need to feel confident about those," Guzzo said. "And we do not do a good job right now in the United States of making people feel confident about their futures."

Part of the American dream is the ability to actually enjoy it. You can come home for dinner, spend a nice evening with your family, and maybe enjoy some ice cream in front of the TV before heading to bed at a reasonable hour.

Unfortunately, for many people, the free time is getting sapped by a mind-numbing commute. The average travel time to work in 1990 was 22.4 minutes one way. By 2023, it rose to 26.8 minutes. That may not sound like a lot, but that adds up to nearly 4.5 hours a week just commuting to work, or about 10 days a year, assuming they went in every workday. Even if they're going into the office three days a week, that's still nearly 2.7 hours a week commuting, or the equivalent of almost 6 full days a year. Meanwhile, in 1990, Americans spent just about 3.7 hours a week commuting — about 44 minutes less a week. That's a whole episode of "Real Housewives." Even on a small scale, research has found that every minute added to a commute can reduce one's satisfaction with both their job and their leisure time. Most Americans commuting are doing so by car, which can also weigh on workers' mental health — and how well they're sleeping.

And as more Americans have moved away from urban cores — perhaps in pursuit of buying a house in cheaper areas — they're living farther from work. Young families, in particular, have fled larger urban areas and are finding themselves in the farthest reaches of suburbia. If you want the American dream of that larger, cheaper house, you might be paying for it in minutes stuck behind the wheel.

Reveling in the American dream also includes unwinding away from that house and job. But even as more Americans have access to paid vacation, that doesn't mean they're taking it. In July 1980, over 10 million working Americans were on vacation. At the height of the pandemic, that number had halved. And even as more Americans went on vacation in July post-2020, the number of workers vacationing in July has essentially plateaued over the past few years.

As The Washington Post found in an extensive analysis of eroding vacation time, some of that might be chalked up to another form of shrinkflation: Workers saving their vacation days for when they're feeling sick. In a very Dickensian twist, Americans might not be going on vacation because they're too busy being sick or caring for their ill kids instead.

All of this is not to say that the American dream has gone extinct, but there's a marked shift from the idea that things will get better for each successive generation. In a country where growth, expansion, and constantly improving your lot — and your family's lot — are North Stars, a diminishing and sickly American dream is a bit of an existential downer.

After all, in a March 2023 survey of 1,019 American adults by The Wall Street Journal and NORC, 78% of respondents said they were not confident that life would be better for their kids' generation. The share not confident their kids' lives will be better has soared over the past few decades; in 2000 just 42% said the same. In short: Many Americans are feeling like the dream is slipping through their fingers.

Guzzo said that we're seeing a bifurcation of the American dream. For the ultrawealthy, the ability to accumulate the markers of the dream has never been easier. The top 1% holds just over 13% of all real estate by dollar value in the US, while the bottom 50% holds just about 10%. And, as the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta recounted in its December Beige Book round-up, lower- and middle-income consumers are scaling back their vacation plans; they're renting homes for multiple families and eating in rather than splashing out on hotels or fancy restaurants. Instead, the strength in tourism spending comes from those higher-income consumers exploring and going on cruises. For Americans in the middle, those who might have the college degree and career that could set them on that trajectory, the dream is still possible, though it may come later in life. But Guzzo said others, especially younger men without college degrees, feel the American dream has been pulled out from beneath them.

At the same time, there's a bittersweet parallel running alongside the shrinking of the American dream. For decades, things like homeownership or formal recognition of marriage were out of grasp — and, in some cases, expressly forbidden — for many marginalized groups. It's only in recent history that LGBTQ+ Americans and Americans of color have been able to somewhat catch up to their straight and white peers. But now that the American dream is within reach for these people, it's already shrinking.

Juliana Kaplan is a senior labor and inequality reporter on Business Insider's economy team.

What a month last week was, right? Omnicom’s proposed $30 billion stock acquisition of rival holding company Interpublic Group caught an entire industry by surprise when the news broke in a report in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Dec. 8, throwing the entire journalism world that covers media and advertising into paroxysms of endless coverage — despite the fact that this proposed mega-deal isn’t expected to close till Fall 2025. 

So today’s briefing is an attempt to take the long view, both of what’s happened, and what may yet happen, positive or negative. What seems clear from the 10,000-foot point of view is that there are two general schools of thought around the acquisition, which would vault Omnicom to the No. 1 position among the holdcos, from its current perch at No. 3. 

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The influx of AI agents is quickly creating new ways to autonomously browse the internet and shop online. However, the feature also poses potential challenges for publishers, advertisers, and e-commerce companies — including new problems with how to deal with bot traffic.

Last week, Google debuted a range of new features as part of its release of Gemini 2.0, including a preview of a new agent called Project Mariner that offers to help people with everything from researching and booking trips to shopping for a range of other products.

One demo developed in collaboration with Etsy showed Project Mariner helping to research and buy paint supplies based on the kind of art someone would want to create. Google also pointed out it wouldn’t purchase products without first getting human approval and that it can’t autonomously browse in the background. Although Mariner was designed as a Chrome browser feature, that could change depending on the outcome of its search antitrust trial. 

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• Karla Cobreiro, 33, lived with her parents for nearly 10 years to save up enough to buy a home.
• In 2022, she bought her first home in South Florida without the help of a partner or spouse.
• Cobreiro said solo homeownership can be challenging, but she likes not having to compromise.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Karla Cobreiro, a 33-year-old vice president at global PR firm Quinn who purchased a home on her own in 2022.

The National Association of Realtors found that from July 2023 to June 2024, single female buyers made up 20% of all homebuyers, outpacing single male buyers, who made up only 8%.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm originally from Cuba. My parents moved to the US when I was four, and I grew up in Miami.

I left at 18 for college, then moved back home after graduation to save money for my future. I'm grateful for that time, and I know many would love the chance to do the same.

Still, I didn't want to live with my parents forever.

Living at home meant sacrificing some privacy. There was commentary about what I was doing, why I was doing it, and how. It wasn't ill-intended, but it could feel like a lot at times.

By my 30s, the decision to move out really came to a head. I asked myself: "Does it make sense to keep living at home to save money, or should I take the leap and buy my own place?"

In the end, I decided to buy a home. I'd never truly lived alone, and I wanted my own space and control over my future. Most importantly, I was ready to start a new chapter.

I didn't have a partner then, but I didn't think that should stop me. So I went for it.

I was financially prepared to buy a home alone

For many immigrants, homeownership is a big part of the American dream. It was never a question of whether I would own a home, but when.

Knowing I'd be doing it all on my own, I approached homeownership with a methodical mindset.

I didn't want to be house-poor or struggle financially. I waited for the right moment — when I had a higher-paying job, had saved up a large down payment, and had built a solid emergency fund.

I lived with my parents for almost 10 years after college to save and set myself up for the expenses of homeownership: a down payment, mortgage, HOA fees, utilities, and insurance.

In November 2022, at 31, I bought a 900-square-foot condo in Downtown Doral, a suburb of Miami, for about $400,000.

Sometimes, I wish I hadn't overthought it or waited so long.

House hunting was a challenging experience

My homebuying journey started during the COVID-19 pandemic, when home prices and mortgage rates were much higher than before. By 2022, the South Florida real-estate market was incredibly hot.

Although I was financially ready, it was a tough time to be a buyer.

I found myself in bidding wars for homes, often walking away because properties were selling for $30,000 or more over the asking price, especially with so many cash offers.

I cried more about real estate than anything else. My twin sister, a real-estate attorney, helped me navigate the process. I would call her, frustrated, asking, "What's going on? This is insane! I didn't realize buying a house would be this hard."

I felt I had done everything right: I graduated from college, got a job, earned a master's degree, paid off my student loans and car, and saved 25% for a down payment. I had an 800 credit score and liquid assets — all on my own, without help from my parents.

I had checked the boxes and followed the appropriate steps in life. But despite all of that, I was met with rejection after rejection from sellers.

For a while, I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel and thought I would be stuck in my parents' house forever. But after a year of searching, my offer was finally accepted on the third home I bid on.

My condo is an investment in my future

I live in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom condo with a den, and my HOA fees are about $1,000 a month.

I have a 30-year mortgage with an interest rate of around 5%, and my mortgage payment is about $2,500.

The unit is smaller than if I were a DINK — someone in a dual-income household with no kids — but I think it's the perfect size for me.

The condo has a work-from-home space and enough room to entertain, plus a stunning, unobstructed sunset view.

I renovated everything except the floors, so I now have a brand-new bathroom and kitchen. My dad, who works in construction, helped with the renovations (and is always on speed dial for anything I can't handle myself).

I'm not sure how long I'll stay here, but I hope it's for a while. Maybe one day, I'll find a partner, and we'll buy a home together, and turn this place into an investment property.

I specifically wanted to live in a condo because didn't want to deal with yard work and, as a single woman, I felt it would be safer.

My building has concierge services, security, and a gated garage. The ground floor also has shops, cafés, gyms, and other stores.

When I lived with my parents, I was in a very suburban, family-oriented area where I had to drive everywhere — even just to get to the supermarket. There were no cafés or anything nearby. It wasn't the lifestyle I wanted.

Now, my place is very central, with easy highway access to anywhere I need to go in about 10 minutes. The neighborhood has a downtown vibe, is walkable, and offers plenty to do.

Buying a home alone was the right decision

Owning a home as a single woman is like a roller coaster — there are ups and downs.

Though I live comfortably, If I get laid off, break a leg, or face an emergency, I'm on my own. I always joke to my friends, "It's just me and this mortgage."

Still, I'm glad I didn't wait until I was in a relationship or married to buy a home. Owning a home with someone you're not committed to can get tricky, especially if you break up. There's no prenup and if you disagree about selling, that can get messy.

I enjoy owning alone because I can selfishly make decisions without having to compromise. I get to decorate my home however I like —and have the entire closet to myself.

Looking back, it was the right time for my parents and me to branch off and live our lives — me as a single woman in my 30s, and my parents as empty nesters.

We all have different paces and lifestyles now, but occasionally, I do miss living with them. It was nice hanging out, having my laundry done, or enjoying one of their home-cooked meals.

I love them to pieces, and I'm truly grateful for their support and encouragement.

There’s been a lot of speculation about Acxiom’s potential role in Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG, but an ongoing lawsuit could end up a wildcard, depending on its outcome.

In a case against IPG’s data warehouse Acxiom and performance marketing agency Kinesso, legal filings in recent weeks give a timely glimpse into allegations of the IPG companies allegedly misusing data to build their Real ID identity-resolution product. The lawsuit, filed in April by data firm Adstra, claims Kinesso and Acxiom breached a master data-supply agreement and used Adstra data to create a competing product. It also puts Acxiom’s offerings under a legal microscope, which could reveal strengths and weaknesses not spun by corporate statements or marketing materials.

The case has the potential to shape where Acxiom and Kinesso fit into IPG and Omnicom’s plans to bolster their combined adtech stack with new options for alternative IDs. Acxiom’s identity-resolution products are seen as a cornerstone of IPG’s data strategy that could help it compete with WPP and Publicis. However, a court ruling in favor of Adstra could bring potential financial, operational, and reputational risks.

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Ever since whispers surfaced about Omnicom making moves to snap up rival IPG Ryan Kangisser’s phone has been practically vibrating off his desk for clarity on what this means for the industry.

As chief strategy officer at Mediasense, the media advisory firm tasked with untangling this industry’s endless plot twists, he’s someone marketers call when they need answers. And right now, that’s in short supply. 

“We’ve had a few people reach out to us [since the news],” said Kangisser, playing coy about naming names.

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In what is likely to be one of the year’s biggest media stories, Omnicom Group has announced plans to acquire The Interpublic Group of Companies in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at approximately $13 billion.

This merger is set to create the world’s largest advertising conglomerate, combining renowned agencies such as BBDO, TBWA Worldwide, and McCann Worldgroup under one umbrella, after the two entities’ respective leadership teams decided that scale is the way forward on Madison Avenue.

According to official filings, the combined entity is projected to generate annual revenues exceeding $25 billion with an adjusted EBITA of $3.9 billion and free cash flow of $3.3 billion. Individually, Omnicom’s full-year revenue for 2023 was $14.69 billion, reflecting growth of 4.1%, while IPG’s was $10.89 billion, down from $10.93 billion in 2022.

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That’s one hell of a way for the agency holding companies to end the year.

Just as everyone was looking to slow down and take a holiday-induced break before what will be a turbulent 2025, along comes Omnicom with a proposed stock-driven acquisition of Interpublic Group. The two CEOs — Omnicom’s John Wren and IPG’s Philippe Krakowsky — shared on their conference call Monday morning to announce the deal that they have been discussing this combination for the better part of a year.

Suffice it to say that, should the deal clear regulatory and shareholder approvals — (those CEOs are hoping it will clear in the second half of 2025) — the combined $30 billion revenue will give the industry the equivalent of a megalodon shark in a sea of great whites and hammerheads.

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Omnicom’s plan to acquire Interpublic Group is a long way from being finalized. However, the combined company could help the holding companies make  — and benefit from — larger AI investments. 

On a Monday call with investors about the deal, executives from both companies mentioned ways the merged company could benefit from combining resources. Omnicom CEO John Wren said businesses need to continue investments to “stay on the cutting edge” adding both clients – and agency employees – will benefit from investing more into AI efforts.

“If Interpublic was three quarters of our size, yesterday I had $1 to invest in those efforts, now I have $1.67 to invest in those efforts,” Wren said. “It should make me more agile, it should make me take great investment risks in testing new technologies and platforms as they come along — all to benefit from better information, more accurate information, so our real knowledge workers and whatever craft they lie in are going to have the best tools to service those clients.”

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Fresh off an onstage appearance at last week’s Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit in Nashville, Mary Ann Pruitt, CEO and founder of independent media agency Mosaic Media expounded on what she sees as the growing strength of independents against their bigger and better-armed holding company competitors.

One singular reason she believes this shift is happening is due to the “great equalizer” in programmatic marketplaces, which to her have empowered independents to compete with holding companies on a level they never have before. It’s more than just programmatic access — it’s the broader tech abilities that are accessible to all agencies, holdco or otherwise that’s helped the fighting power for any that invest in those tools. It’s also the flexibility that independents can bring to clients, while holdco agencies are often locked into whatever their parent company has invested in.

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• A settlement earlier this year was expected to change the way Americans buy and sell homes.
• Some predicted more people would forego hiring traditional real-estate agents for their deals.
• Four people who sold or bought homes this year without a traditional broker shared how they did it.

A 2023 court ruling against the country's biggest association of real-estate agents was expected to transform how Americans buy and sell homes.

A jury found that the National Association of Realtors, or NAR, had colluded with large real-estate brokerages to keep its members' commissions high. A settlement earlier this year imposed new rules and requirements to prevent agents from unfairly siphoning more money from home sellers.

Real estate professionals have debated endlessly how the NAR settlement could affect the housing market. One prediction is that people might forego using an agent altogether; another is that homebuyers and sellers will bargain hard to pay brokers they do hire less in commissions.

The majority of Americans hire a traditional real-estate broker to facilitate their transactions. According to data from NAR itself, 86% of homebuyers in 2024 used an agent's services. A study by real-estate media company RISmedia found early indications of commissions falling, while Redfin found that commissions have remained almost unchanged since the new rules took effect in August.

Even if it's too early to see the full impact of the settlement, some insights can be gained from people who bought or sold homes without using traditional agents.

Four people told Business Insider that the NAR ruling didn't influence their decision not to hire a typical broker; rather, saving time and making the process more convenient were top priorities.

The sellers acknowledged that going to the open market represented by a classic sellers' agent could have fetched higher prices but added that they might need to pay the agent more or wait longer to close their deals.

"If I had time and I was really wanting to prioritize maximizing my profit, then I probably would utilize an agent to sell just because of the ability to get multiple offers and drive up that competition," said Chelsea Hutchison, who sold her home to a publicly traded real-estate tech company in April.

There are also other costs to transact on a home, including attorney fees.

Read on to hear from the four people who bought or sold homes this year via big companies or real-estate startups instead of a traditional agent. They break down what they paid in commission or fees, and what they felt the benefits were.

2 people sold their houses to a company that charges a lower commission

In April, Hutchison sold her house in Canby, Oregon, to property technology company Opendoor.

The publicly traded firm worth $1.5 billion that pays cash for homes and can close a deal in days, charging a 5% fee to the seller. That's a little less than the 5% to 6% sellers have paid traditional agents in the past, who then share the commission with the buyer's agent.

Hutchison said she did consider using a traditional agent and spoke with one who estimated she could sell her 2,000-square-foot, four-bedroom home for about $565,000.

She ultimately went with Opendoor, which offered her less money — $535,000 — for her home but more speed and convenience.

She was going through a divorce and relocating to a different state at the time, so flexibility was her top priority.

"It was very fast, but it could have been slower if I needed it," she said. "There was flexibility for choosing the closing date, which was really helpful to me."

She ended up paying $26,750 in service fees to Opendoor, rather than the $32,100 a typical seller's broker would have asked for to split with the buyer's broker.

Another seller, Melissa Gonzales-Szott, thought Opendoor offered a fair price for her 2,200-square-foot Las Vegas house: $448,500.

Gonzales-Szott, a 46-year-old who works in marketing, said she did her own research on the market value of her home and thought the amount was in line with what she had seen in her neighborhood.

Selling to Opendoor took 60 days, she added, compared to the six months it took the last time she sold a home.

"There were just so many factors that contributed to this being a more convenient type of process to go through," she told BI. "If there were going to be any type of losses financially for us, we were prepared — because who could put a price tag on convenience and on peace?"

Opendoor operates in more than 50 markets in 26 states.

A home seller had agents bid for his listing and picked one willing to take a lower commission

In June, real-estate agent and "Million Dollar Listing LA" star Josh Altman cofounded Redy, a marketplace where prospective home sellers post their properties and agents compete with each other for the opportunity to sell them.

Agents even give sellers a "cash bonus" after they are chosen by the seller.

According to Kenneth Bloom, who's already sold two properties with Redy, the savings are significant compared to using a traditional real-estate agent.

Bloom, 69, sold a three-bedroom rental property in Waterford, Michigan, for $245,000 and his late mother-in-law's 1,500-square-foot condo in West Bloomfield, Michigan, for $250,000.

Bloom, who said he's bought and sold at least a dozen properties in his life, said he used to look up real-estate agents in the area of the home and research their sales volumes. He would then contact the top candidates before hiring one.

He found that he preferred Redy because the agents reached out to him.

"I posted the house and a dozen Realtors responded," he told BI. "For me, it was really a time saver. It did all the research that I had to do, and they came to me versus me having to go and do it on my own."

Bloom said the commission was also lower than he had paid in the past. The agent he selected settled on a 4.5% commission, which was lower than the 6% He was used to paying as the seller.

The cash bonus the agent paid him — which Bloom said was $1,200 for the first house he sold and $1,040 for the second house — was also a large factor.

Bloom said he saved nearly $10,000 on broker commissions between the two transactions. Selling each home took less than a month, he added.

Redy, which has officially launched in markets including Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Phoenix, and San Diego, is continuing to expand to other parts of the country.

A California homebuyer paid a flat fee rather than a percent of the sales price

California-based real-estate investor Sergio Rodriguez used a new homebuying service to purchase a home from his neighbor.

Rodriguez, 38, and the seller wanted to keep their $600,000 transaction off-market, which means the property wouldn't be listed on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS).

The seller wanted to get as much money as possible for the home and get rid of it fast, Rodriguez said, while he wanted to save on commission costs, too.

They couldn't find an agent to help them complete the transaction because Rodriguez and his neighbor wanted to keep the commission under 4% of the total sale price, below the 6% standard.

"I even have family and friends who are Realtors, and they were like, 'Let me run it through my brokerage and see if they'll be willing to transact for you,' and they all said no," Rodriguez told BI. "It was really hard to find a Realtor to just simply transact on it. You can try to do it privately, but it's just too much paperwork."

To close the deal, Rodriguez turned to TurboHome, a homebuying service in California, Texas, and Washington. The company, which bills itself as a "real estate brokerage of the future," uses AI in addition to licensed agents. It pays its agents salaries, then has buyers pay a flat fee rather than a percent commission.

After TurboHome got involved, Rodriguez said, he and his neighbor were in contract in 24 hours.

Rodriguez said he ended up paying TurboHome about $1,000 in fees. (The company said the standard flat fee ranges from $5,000 to $10,000.)

He estimated he saved about $40,000 compared to using a traditional agent.

"That's a lot of money when you're buying a $600,000 house," he said.

As the movie business struggles to return to pre-pandemic box office attendance levels, a few of the cinema ad firms are collaborating to make their inventory available programmatically. 

Screenvision Media and Spotlight Cinema Networks have formed the Cinema Programmatic Alliance, which aims to make their inventory available to advertisers and agencies placing dollars through programmatic firms. The two have also included smaller cinema ad specialists to the alliance: Pecan Pie Productions and On the Wall, both of which focus more on local advertising.

Notably absent is the largest cinema ad firm, National CineMedia, which has its own programmatic offering in the market. Screenvision’s CEO John Partilla said the alliance offered NCM the chance to join the alliance, communicating via the Cinema Ad Council. NCM did not respond to requests for comment. 

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New lawsuits and deeper partnerships highlight the delicate balancing act between major publishers and AI companies.

Some of the first media companies to strike deals with OpenAI say they’re getting ready to release new AI-enabled features that aim to benefit readers, publishers and advertisers. One of the latest examples is Dotdash Meredith, which used AI to create a new way to target readers with contextual ads.

Using historical audience data and Amazon shopping data, the company trained a large language model to find correlations between content consumption and potential user behaviors. The new unit is expected to launch today with a major (undisclosed) retailer, Dotdash Meredith chief innovation officer Jonathan Roberts said yesterday while speaking at the AI Trailblazers marketing conference in New York. Other panelists included executives from Time, The New York Stock Exchange and The New York Times.

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• Andre Nader sold his Austin rental due to stress outweighing financial benefits.
• He and his wife, who moved to SF in 2014, have found renting to be more cost-effective than owning.
• Nader says he doesn't need to own real estate to hit his FIRE goals and focuses on index fund investing.

Andre Nader has been both a homeowner and a landlord — and neither are for him, at least at this moment in time.

Shortly after getting married in 2012, he and his wife bought a home in Austin. When they moved to San Francisco in 2014 for a job Nader landed with Facebook, they kept it as a rental rather than selling. Their original plan was to move back to Texas.

Nader decided to self-manage the rental from nearly 2,000 miles away, which he did for a year and a half. When his tenant gave notice to move out and Nader flew back to Austin to deal with the turnover, he was surprised with what he found.

"The place was just kind of trashed," he told Business Insider. "It needed all-new carpet. It needed a lot of work."

While the extra income had been nice — he said the property generated a cash flow of a couple of hundred dollars a month — ultimately, it wasn't worth it.

"The stress and the mental overhead were drastically outweighing any of the short-term financial benefits," said Nader, who decided to sell rather than find a new tenant. Plus, he and his wife, who had started working as a designer at Uber, were enjoying the Bay Area and found themselves pushing out their timeline. "I was never convinced we would stay in San Francisco for the long term, but I became more and more confident that we wouldn't be immediately back to Austin."

Choosing to rent to save on housing in SF and leaning into index fund investing

Nader, 37, has been pursuing FIRE (financial independence, retirement early) since his 20s. He and his wife have always lived below their means, and for years, they kept their expenses low enough so that just one of their tech incomes could cover all of their household expenses, allowing them to invest about half of their combined income.

When they moved to the Bay Area, renting made sense from a budget perspective: It was cheaper for them to rent in the pricey city — and it still is, said Nader: "Right now, San Francisco really favors renting. It's really hard from a pure numbers standpoint to make owning make sense."

There are exceptions, he noted: "Particularly in a place like San Francisco, a lot of the math can change with the appreciation of property values. If housing prices continue to increase, then maybe buying can come out, but if you take conservative approaches to any future increases in housing, renting just ends up making a lot more sense mathematically."

Plus, Nader was never convinced he and his family would stay in San Francisco long enough to make buying worth it.

"The Goldilocks timeline has historically been, five to seven years is when buying starts being more advantageous than renting," he said. "Now when I do the numbers, it's even longer — closer to the 10-year timeframe — and I'd never been confident that I would be in San Francisco that long."

While prudent real estate investing is a viable path to wealth, Nader doesn't believe he needs to own property to hit his financial goals.

His investment strategy revolves around low-cost index funds. He owns various Fidelity and Vanguard index funds, including Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF Shares (VTI) and Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund ETF Shares (VXUS).

Nader describes the strategy as "super boring," but it's effective: It's helped him build a seven-figure net worth, which BI verified by looking at a copy of his investment report.

It's not lost on him that bringing in two tech incomes was a major advantage.

"I won the income game by being in tech, by being a dual-income household. I didn't need to be taking these outsized risks by investing in extremely speculative ways. I could be boring in my portfolio," said Nader, who worked at Meta for nine years before he was affected by the company's 2023 layoffs.

He and his wife had enough between their savings and one tech income that he didn't have to find another job, but he says he'll consider himself "semi-FIRE'd" until his wife also walks away from her job.

Nader, who spends his days writing on Substack and doing one-on-one financial independence coaching, says his investment strategy has remained the same since the layoff. He likes the hands-off approach to index fund investing, especially after experiencing what it's like to own real estate.

When he was managing the Austin rental, "I kind of quickly realized that the promise of real estate being a clearly passive investment, even if you have property managers, wasn't something that, for me, proved to be true, so it further reinforced my view around focusing on super boring, low-fee index funds," he said. "I could have a few hundred thousand dollars in real estate and maybe a million dollars in index funds, but I would be thinking about the real estate three times as much, so it would be a disproportionate amount of mental exercise, at least for me."