McDonald’s wants to turn its restaurants, screens, app and customer relationships into a billion-dollar advertising business. The bigger story for marketers is that retail media is rapidly becoming something much larger than retail.
Gen Z’s willingness to question employers, challenge decisions and demand greater transparency is often framed as a workplace problem. For marketers, it may be something far more valuable: an early warning system for how expectations around brands, institutions and authority are changing.
Carl’s Jr. could have advertised its new burger with another close-up of melting cheese and a price splashed across the screen. Instead, Angus Maximus became the centerpiece of a Roman spectacle, demonstrating why the size of the creative idea doesn’t have to match the size of the marketing proposition.
LinkedIn, TikTok, Meta, Google, YouTube, Snapchat and Reddit are taking markedly different approaches to AI-generated content, but together they point toward a surprisingly consistent future for digital marketing.
Niles represents an attempt to turn nearly 25 years of accumulated brand weirdness into intellectual property of its own, and there may be few brands better suited to pulling it off.
Viral TikTok commerce works because it collapses discovery, demonstration, social proof and purchase into the same stream of attention. For marketers, understanding why people buy may now matter considerably more than understanding where they clicked.
The publishers that thrive over the next decade will not be the ones squeezing every possible impression out of every page. They will be the ones willing to sacrifice short-term inventory in exchange for long-term trust, stronger attention, and advertising that readers do not immediately want to avoid.
New research suggests consumers are ready to reward brands that recognize them, yet most marketing still feels generic. The loyalty gap may not be about points or perks, but about the growing disconnect between customer data and customer experience.
Taylor Swift’s wedding announcement started with one message in one physical place, then let the internet do the distribution. For marketers obsessed with reach, targeting and endless content, the real lesson may be that scarcity still creates attention.
Love Island USA has become far more than this summer’s breakout reality series. Its success demonstrates that in an era of infinite streaming choices and fragmented audiences, synchronized attention has become one of the rarest and most valuable currencies available to marketers.