Blueprint — page 12 | The Gradient

Omnicom Shrinks. WPP Cuts. Publicis Grows.

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Omnicom Shrinks. WPP Cuts. Publicis Grows.

Cannes Briefing: Creators didn’t come to Cannes for parties this year. They came for briefs.

MediaLink has spent years owning the art of wining and dining CMOs at Cannes. This year, it turned that same playbook on creators. UTA, its owner, hosted an invite-only dinner for more than 70 creators spanning sports, fashion, food, lifestyle and news. Expected guests included Olandria Carthen, Brittany Broski, David Dobrik, Keith Lee, LaurDIY, Colin

Pokéfans, get up to 60% off Switch games and goodies this Prime Day

Check out the top Pokémon deals starting from $12.

Microsoft Clarity Now Flags Bots That Ignore Robots.txt

Microsoft Clarity now surfaces bot requests that go against a website’s URL rules in the tool’s Bot Analytics dashboard, the company announced in a blog post. Clarity will calculate and display these requests as a percentage of total bot activity over a given time frame and add to existing AI Visibility tools in the dashboard,

Beyond QR Codes: Matty Beckerman on the Future of Interactive Media

Computer vision AI is replacing traditional QR codes, requiring a new way to connect with consumers.

Why International SEO Needs A Global Knowledge Integrity Strategy

For more than two decades, international SEO teams focused on ensuring the right page appeared in the right market by creating and optimizing localized content, using hreflang to ensure it was routed correctly even when it was nearly an exact match to another market. But now AI search is exposing a different challenge. As platforms

How Publicis Sapient transformed its marketing organization

MarTech is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc. Mike Pastore is the Head of Content & Media at Third Door Media, the publisher of the Martech and Search Engine

Secret 7” reveals sleeve designs for 2026’s auction, by Orlando Weeks, Joy Yamusangie, Murugiah and more

War Child UK’s famous Secret 7” record sale is back – and this year, it’s celebrating a whole decade of its renowned auction. Over 5,000 one-of-a-kind records, nearly a million pounds raised for charity, and hundreds of artists involved. It’s quite the feat and once again you are invited to be a part of it.

Anthropic’s @Claude Enters Workplace As A Slack Channel Coworker

Anthropic announced Claude Tag, a new feature that enables users to assign various levels of assignments to Claude from inside Slack channels. Anthropic says Claude can use memory, scheduled tasks, and tool access to work on tasks that continue long after a single prompt ends. @Claude Tagged Inside Slack Channels Users can now tag @Claude

Cannes Briefing: The AI search crisis everyone’s talking about at Cannes is actually about brand coherence

For two decades, Cannes Lions has been the advertising industry’s high church of the campaign — the ad, the stunt and the killer creative idea. This year, the conversations actually happening in the villas and the beach cabanas aren’t about creative execution at all. They’re about something closer to brand infrastructure: how brands get discovered,

Forget Prime Day, B&H Photo has $200 off the biggest portable SSD you could ever possibly need

The Amazon Prime Day members’ sale is in full swing, and we’ve highlighted some great savings, including several Prime Day laptop deals and iPad deals. But despite this being Amazon’s biggest annual sale, it isn’t beating other retailers on every deal. As a case in point, B&H Photo is running its own limited-time sale to

Google’s Limited Ad Serving Update Raises Questions About Advertiser Qualification

Google is expanding its Limited Ad Serving policy to cover additional scenarios on Google Search. According to an email sent to advertisers, implementation will begin gradually in June 2026 and continue through 2028. The update introduces new guidance around advertiser qualification, user reports, and advertiser identity. It also includes a recommendation for advertisers to pin

123 Smile?

These are some of the artworks that I created with JKR for KFC, as well as other recent works. They share common elements and style preferences, so I have grouped them together and shared them with you.

The PESO Model® Diagnostic: What Peppa Pig Can Teach You About the Difference Between a Campaign and a System

Gini Dietrich diagnoses the Peppa Pig pregnancy campaign through the PESO Model® Operating System lens—a masterclass in integration, and a lesson in why a campaign still isn’t a system. The post The PESO Model® Diagnostic: What Peppa Pig Can Teach You About the Difference Between a Campaign and a System first appeared on Spin Sucks.

This Tool Shows You Exactly What

When your customers ask ChatGPT or Gemini something, the model quietly fires a set of traditional web searches in the background, retrieves the ranking pages, and synthesizes the answer from those. The sites that rank for those hidden queries get cited. The ones that don’t, don’t. QueryFan generates persona-specific prompts, runs them through both models, and

The real AI opportunity is creating new value

A majority of organizations now use AI in at least one function — 88%, according to McKinsey — but only 6% report significant enterprise-wide impact. This isn’t a failure of AI adoption. It’s a reflection of how organizations use AI. To take an analogy from the past, the first cars used horse carriages and simply

What 1980s novelty Garfield phones tell us about our rampant consumerism

But, in this case, Zack found that, “the Brittany community was so refreshingly candid and generous that it gave me renewed hope for the power of true humanity in film,” he says. Brittany’s undeterred pursuit of environmental sustainability in the face of bigger foes was palpable. “I soon understood that for the Brittany community, protecting

Google Loses Two Top AI Researchers To OpenAI & Anthropic

Two senior Google AI researchers are leaving for OpenAI and Anthropic within a week. Reports point to internal concern over Google’s developer-facing AI coding products. The departures raises questions of whether Google can hold onto senior researchers. Two senior Google AI researchers, Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer and AlphaFold’s John Jumper, are leaving for OpenAI and

Amazon expands AI advertising with Alexa+ agentic ads

AI recommendations are becoming the new digital shelf as people search and shop within LLM chatbots. The change has left the ad industry scrambling to determine what an ad strategy looks like without clicks, landing pages or traditional search results. At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year, Amazon announced what it’s calling

VIDEO: I found three pre-Prime Day deals on Macs and a monitor so you won’t have to wait for Prime Day

If you’re a designer, editor or all‑round creative trying to upgrade your setup without setting your wallet on fire, three deals have landed today that are genuinely worth a look; one for the US crowd, one for the UK, and one very thrifty quality monitor pick for your desk setup. And all are recommended among

Google Says SEO Tools Lack Access To Its Internal Metrics

Google’s CMO-facing blog post presents AI Search optimization as standard SEO. Google says third-party SEO tools and vendors don’t have access to its internal metrics. The guidance restates Google’s position that AEO and GEO are part of SEO. Google’s new messaging to CMOs reiterates that GEO is still SEO and states that third-party tools have

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