Blueprint — page 11 | The Gradient

Omnicom Shrinks. WPP Cuts. Publicis Grows.

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Omnicom Shrinks. WPP Cuts. Publicis Grows.

The Weekend With Ibeyi

Ibeyi are the coolest twin sister music duo filling everyone’s ears with an etherial fusion of alternative R&B sounds and Afro-Cuban jazz. The double act, Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Naomi Diaz, have released three albums to date Spell 31 (2022), Ash (2017) and Ibeyi (2015) and today the pair have just dropped their fourth: Offering. This

Bruce Clay, One of the Founding Figures of SEO, Has Died

Bruce Clay, one of the first generation of search engine optimization experts, has passed away. Much of the terminology that he coined and many of the concepts that he pioneered continue to be used today. Thirty Years Of SEO Clay was among the cohort of SEOs who were learning and applying the art of optimization

Inside the infrastructure behind Unilever’s creator force

Creators are no longer a media channel or transaction. It’s an entirely new marketing mode — at least that’s what the infrastructure behind Unilever’s creator strategy indicates. Call it a transformation. Back in 2025, Unilever put the industry on notice after announcing its plans to spend half of its media budget on social channels and increase

We gave this powerful editing controller a 9/10 rating – and now it’s $92 off for Prime Day

If you’re an editor of any kind, you need a TourBox Elite custom control pad. This creative tool can revolutionise your workflow and is essentially a cheat code for accessing software shortcuts to have every function at your fingertips. If you only cave into one deal this Prime Day, let it be this. TourBox is

Google Spam Update Rolls Out, AI Manipulation In Scope

Welcome to the week’s Pulse: updates affect how Google measures its AI surfaces, what its spam rules cover, and where AI recommendations send traffic next. Here’s what matters for you and your work. Google Rolls Out June 2026 Spam Update Google began rolling out the June spam update on June 24. Key facts: Google announced

Interstellar Arc | Part 01: Graphic Systems

Interstellar Arc is a large-scale immersive VR experience positioned between narrative cinema, interactive exhibition, and theme park ride. Set aboard a multi-generational starship traveling toward an exoplanet, the experience unfolds as a continuous environment shaped by systems, interfaces, and the accumulated history of the journey.

A Third Of Fintech Is Invisible To AI Agents

A third of the top fintech websites in the world deliver less than 80% of their homepage content in raw HTML. That is the version of the page an AI agent gets when it visits, before it decides whether to spend the compute on a full browser render. Most of them do not. The Structure

Why your top ranking no longer means you’re winning

Marketers spent years obsessing over rank reports wherever their products appeared. A higher position meant more visibility, more clicks, and more revenue. That mental model made sense when everyone saw roughly the same results for the same query. That world is disappearing. Between geography, shopping history, inventory, and platform-specific algorithms, two people can type the

Rapha’s brand identity is rebooted with six bespoke typefaces inspired by vintage cycling ephemera

This sentiment naturally led the team into typography as a focus for the project, and, consequentially a collaboration with UK-based foundry Frost, in order to build what would become six bespoke typefaces with 48 new styles for Rapha including Rapha Sans, Rapha Serif, Mono and Semi-Mono, in a type-led direction for the brand’s visual world.

How Do I Effectively Measure Campaign Success Across Multiple Platforms? – Ask A PPC

Ad platforms will advocate for their traffic, impressions, and the attributable value they generate. This data plays an important role in helping marketers defend budget investments while fueling conversion-based bidding strategies. However, your brand still needs a clear understanding of what is truly driving value, especially across platforms. This month’s question gets at the heart

Cannes Briefing: Creativity is moving beyond the agency model

Bose CMO Jim Mollica hasn’t used a creative agency in four or five years, he told Digiday. One CPG CMO, overheard at a dinner this week, said they no longer believe in agencies of record. They want ideas to come from anywhere — a creative agency, a creator, even AI. Creator-owned StudioB founder Olly Lewis

As a huge fan of the Arkham trilogy, I’m obsessed with these professional Batman gaming glasses

If you own a handheld console, like the Nintendo Switch 2, one of the best accessories you can get for it is a pair of smart gaming glasses. These wearable displays can be used for ultimate gaming immersion, with your own private cinema thanks to the 201-inch virtual screen and blackout peripherals. Psst – check

81.8% Of My ‘AI Assistant’ Traffic Was Fake. The Googlebot Number Was Worse

I launched CitationIQ.com recently. Over the last two weeks, my logs claimed 33 AI assistants visited, a little better than two a day. That number is a lie. The real number? Six. Googlebot looked worse. Of 799 requests carrying its name, only 107 were real, though we all know scammers love to spoof Googlebot. And

Creating Campaigns That Become Cultural Moments

This post was created in partnership with Adobe Capitalizing on cultural moments is a tried-and-true marketing strategy, but is it possible for brands to create their own moments? During an […]

The Beautiful Game. A World Cup illustration series

The World Cup as I see it: not the matches, but everything surrounding them. The trumpet that blooms into flowers. The cleats that wait. The flag with a dove. The musical note made of two soccer balls. The trophy. The hand. The kick. A personal series of vector and 3D illustrations celebrating soccer as a

The First Question Every Integrated Campaign Should Answer

TL;DR Many organizations approach integrated campaigns by starting with tactics. They debate social media, influencers, media relations, paid advertising, and AI before they’ve answered a more fundamental question: what do they want to be known for? The strongest integrated campaigns begin with owned media, audience questions, and a clear understanding of the expertise a brand

Google Desktop CTR Climbs While Mobile Dips, Report Finds

Click-through rates for desktop and mobile are moving in opposite directions, according to the new data from Advanced Web Ranking. The direction here, especially on desktop, runs counter to the recent narrative in recent CTR reporting. Organic clicks have been eroding overall as AI Overviews expanded, a pattern we’ve covered here using AWR’s data as

When AI runs the workflows, what happens to MOps?

The way you’ve used martech tools for years is being replaced. For the past decade, MOps made software useful. CRMs stored data but couldn’t act on it. Marketing automation platforms sent emails, but couldn’t think. You were the intelligence layer, building the workflows, scoring models, routing rules, and lifecycle logic that made the whole system

How&How’s colourful and collaged Bristol Dockyards rebrand makes nautical cliches walk the plank

Bringing a cohesive visual identity together for the entire area for the first time, Bristol Dockyards new branding from How&How uses a dynamic system of photo collage to look at the locations history anew. “Less about painting pretty pictures,” Cat says, the approach instead “merges timelines, textures, typography and Dockyard trinkets together in an immersive,

Google’s Mueller Explains How AI Search Impressions Get Counted

John Mueller, a Google Search Advocate, explained in a reply on Bluesky that Google’s new Search Console generative AI report counts impressions in response to a question about what’s recorded when a site appears in AI Overviews and AI Mode. This question is relevant for anyone reviewing the new report and questioning why their impression

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