Blueprint — page 26 | The Gradient

Paramount, Warner, and the Price of Consolidation

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Paramount, Warner, and the Price of Consolidation

Production and media squeeze lead brands to run longer campaigns

Campaign consistency has been a brand marketing best practice for decades. Changing media economics are turning it into a business necessity. Data from ad measurement firm Extreme Reach (XR) showed that 17.9% of Super Bowl ad campaigns ran for six months or more last year, triple the number that ran for the same amount of

Jeremy Liebman’s debut Apartamento book traces family life as language begins to disappear

What makes this observation striking is that it’s happening in parallel with his daughter’s emergence into language. While his father loses the ability to name things, they’re just starting to discover it. We’re witnessing three generations and three different relationships with meaning and interpretation, captured in photographs that were never shot with that in mind.

WordPress 7.0 Launches With Native AI Integration

After weeks of delay, WordPress 7.0, named Armstrong, is finally released. The centerpiece feature was supposed to be real-time collaboration (RTC) but what is shipping is bigger: Native AI integration, a watershed moment in the content management system’s history. Native AI integration is what will carry WordPress into the future and put more distance between

How Recurrent Ventures Rebuilt Itself

Three years ago, the digital media holding company Recurrent Ventures was struggling. A $300 million investment from the private equity firm Blackstone in 2022 had turned into an albatross, and the company spent the period that followed shedding titles, laying off staff, and cycling through three chief executives in three years. But since then, the

These 8 gorgeous house plants will brighten up your home office, and they don’t cost the earth

Adding some plants to your desk can really cheer things up and brighten up your space. They’re great for purifying the air, too. That’s why I’ve gathered some easy to care for house plants that will look great on your desk or in your office space. A lot of them come in packs of two

Microsoft Clarity Now Shows Grounding Queries Behind AI Citations

When Microsoft Clarity made AI citations available to all users, it opened up a new playground for SEOs to harvest AI visibility data. Finally, we can see the exact “grounding queries” an AI engine uses to pull our content. It raises a massive question because this is a Microsoft tool: Are the insights useless if

Consumers want AI ads with a human touch

Consumers are giving mixed signals about AI content in marketing. People like ads and content that feel useful and relevant, but many are still turned off by marketing that comes across as robotic, emotionally empty, or a little too invasive. Seventy percent of consumers said they can usually spot an AI-generated ad because it feels

All You Need To Know About Cloudflare’s Agent Readiness Score

Agent-readiness crossed from concept to measurable infrastructure this week. On April 17, as Cloudflare Agents Week extended into its sixth day, the company shipped isitagentready.com, a public scanner that scores any website on how prepared it is for AI agents. Paste a URL, get a score, see which checks passed and which failed, read AI-generated

Walmart warns it may have to raise prices due to fuel costs

Higher fuel prices due to the war with Iran are putting pressure on Walmart’s customers and supply chain, and could lead to higher price tags on the shelf. Consumers may face higher retail prices in the coming months due to higher-than-planned fuel costs in global distribution and fulfillment operations and the rising cost of food

The Click’s clever university branding puts the ‘I’ in identity, individual and Imperial College London

The work began as a conversation: “The primary objective was to create a brand for all – something everyone at Imperial would want to engage with and belong to, from students to academics to commercial partners, across every faculty,” says Bobby. “Just as important: portraying the cross-learning, collaboration and innovation at the heart of Imperial’s

Here’s What You Need To Know

WordPress released version 7.0, codenamed Armstrong, bringing changes that make it easier for users and developers to control the look and user experience of websites, and a refresh of the admin page that makes the entire CMS behave more like modern publishing software. WordPress 7.0’s AI integration may grab a significant amount of attention at

Stephen Colbert’s Late Show Finale Is His Biggest Weeknight Episode Ever

Stephen Colbert is saving the best for last. Historic numbers are in for the final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as it averaged 6.74 million total viewers on Thursday, according to Nielsen’s preliminary live fast national ratings. With those totals, Colbert delivered the most-watched weeknight episode in the show’s nearly 11-year history.

Rugrats is the retro game revival no one saw coming

Rugrats might not be the franchise you most think of when it comes to retro gaming, but Nickelodeon’s classic flagship show from the ’90s has had a broad incursion into video games. The intrepid toddlers appeared in 3D polygons in the original Search for Reptar and as 2D sprites in handheld titles. Now you can

When Marketing Leaders Can’t Explain Search Performance

Search marketing produces an enormous amount of performance data, but many marketing leaders still struggle to explain what those results mean for the business. SEO and paid search reports often focus on visibility, clicks, and conversion metrics. And, in many cases, data sources for that information don’t match up, as I explored in my previous

What Intuit’s layoffs mean for Mailchimp customers

Intuit’s announcement this week that it will cut approximately 3,000 jobs — 17% of its global workforce — landed hard across the tech industry. But for the 11 million businesses that use Mailchimp for email marketing, the real question is simpler: Should I stay or should I go? The answer, based on Mailchimp’s product releases,

apax architecture

From the Greek hapax, meaning ‘occurring only once’. apax is the new name for A+A architects, and a promise of architecture that never exists above ground.

Google I/O Didn’t End SEO. The Risk Is Somewhere Else

The loudest reactions after Google I/O 2026 were that Search had been replaced overnight. Google’s messaging went the other way, insisting that AI Search still depends on the web and existing SEO fundamentals. The reality sits between those two positions, and the risk most people are naming is the wrong one. TechCrunch claimed “Google Search

How loyalty programs power lifecycle marketing strategies

This Unpacked guide, sponsored by SheerID, explores how loyalty is no longer earned through rewards alone; it’s built through relevance, transparency and sustained commitment to understanding customers over time. Shifts in consumer behavior — specifically the desire for data privacy and instant, personalized recognition — and AI’s acceleration of the buying process are making traditional

Max Lancaster’s Bunny And I is a delicate documentary on schizophrenia that swaps spectacle for sensitivity

Firstly, Max photographed Bunny in a straight-forward fashion, but quietly, sensitively. Later on in the project, he decided to create patchworks out of the printed photos, representing the several versions and peculiarities of Bunny. The photos don’t veer into movie cliche depictions of split personalities or extreme mental instability. What Max found in his bloodline

WordPress 7.0 Could Trigger Rush To Steal AI API Keys

Oliver Sild, founder of Patchstack WordPress security company, shared concerns about the security of AI API keys in WordPress 7.0, sharing that there “will be an absolute rush by hackers to steal API keys.” To underline this point, an actual security bug was discovered in WordPress 7.0 that exposes API keys. AI API Keys Are

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