Month: January 2025

Huione Guarantee, a gray market researchers believe is central to the online scam ecosystem, now includes a messaging app, stablecoin, and crypto exchange—while facilitating $24 billion in transactions.

Any flicker of hope that the ad industry would renew its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in 2025 may be getting dimmer just days into the New Year. Recently, Amazon, Meta, Publicis Groupe and McDonald’s joined the growing list of companies to revamp (or roll back, depending on who you ask) their DE&I policies.

Last Friday, it was announced that Amazon was seemingly halting its diversity programs, “winding down outdated programs and materials” as part of its broader business initiatives review process last year, according to a internal memo from Candi Castleberry, Amazon’s vp of inclusive experiences and technology, which Amazon provided to Digiday. Similarly, Meta was said to be terminating its major DE&I programs, including those geared toward hiring, training and picking suppliers, according to Axios.

Earlier in the week, Publicis Groupe reportedly cut its DE&I teams, including removing its chief diversity officer Geraldine White from her post of the past four years. Per AdAge’s reporting, White will continue to work with the holding company on a consultant basis as the company is in the process of hiring White’s successor. Meanwhile, McDonald’s is restructuring its approach to diversity by retiring its supplier diversity efforts, rebranding its diversity team as the “Global Inclusion Team” and sunsetting the concept of setting “aspirational representation goals” to instead focus on embedding inclusion practices into everyday operations. (Meta, McDonald’s and Publicis didn’t respond to Digiday’s requests for comment. When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Amazon provided Castleberry’s memo to Digiday.)

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify

Omnicom Group’s pending acquisition of Interpublic Group seems especially timely in the hindsight of last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

A major talking point among the brand and agency executives in attendance was the onset of the so-called agentic era of artificial intelligence, in which AI tools handle multi-step tasks for people like booking a full travel itinerary — or firing off a client brief. In this era, data will be at even more of a premium than it is today

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

By this time next week, we’ll likely know (though, anything could happen) whether TikTok has gone dark in the U.S. or if the app will continue to exist. So far, it’s not looking good. The likelihood of a ban has creators uneasy, preparing their audiences to follow them on other platforms and hoping to take brand deals elsewhere. Meanwhile marketers are questioning refunds, readying contingency plans and sorting out where they’ll move ad dollars.

It seems, all things considered, that marketers are prepared for the short-order effects of a TikTok ban should that come to fruition. What remains up in the air, however, are the long-term effects for brands should TikTok be rendered unusable in the U.S. Sure, there are other short-form video alternatives that stand to benefit (YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels) but short-form video wasn’t the only appeal of the platform. TikTok has been a cultural spigot of sorts for marketers in recent years — they’ve looked to the app not only for what’s trending and to tap into those trends but to understand potential audiences and various cultural niches. So what happens when that spigot is shut off?

This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. Continue reading it on digiday.com and subscribe to continue reading content like this.

Influencer agencies have embraced generative AI applications over the last year, as they seek to cut the time taken to arrange creator involvement in brand campaigns.

The client reaction to those solutions has been mixed. But in recent months, agencies operating in this space have found one area with clear application for AI tools — brand safety.

Creator vetting can consume up to “a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on the depth of analysis,” said James Clarke, senior director, digital and social at PepsiCo Foods U.S. AI solutions aim to cut that time down to a matter of minutes.

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

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

It’s barely halfway through January, but publishers are already kicking off a busy year as they prepare for the inauguration and what another “Trump bump” might mean for them. But before that, about 50 publisher professionals took some time to reflect on 2024. What they told Digiday+ Research in a fourth-quarter 2024 survey is that revenues were up last year and media companies had a successful 2024 — but that success didn’t extend to the media industry as a whole.

This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. Continue reading it on digiday.com and subscribe to continue reading content like this.

Booking.com is becoming a regular player in the Super Bowl, as the brand confirmed it will return to the game for the fourth straight year this February. The hotel booking site will run an ad during the fourth quarter of Fox’s broadcast of Super Bowl 59. Booking.com’s spot from last year is still running. It…

Meta is killing off its biggest DEI programs as part of a transformation embracing a far-right ideology as Donald Trump prepares to take office.

In a consumer culture replete with brand names, only a relative handful of companies can get away with the intrepid move of leaving out their names and relying on their logos alone. Nike’s swoosh and McDonald’s golden arches can stand on their own, for instance. So can Apple’s apple and Target’s target. And, at some…

A federal judge has rejected Google’s bid to dismiss claims that it violated children’s privacy by tracking children’s YouTube activity.