What’s Next is Everything: marketing with emerging tech
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Walmart’s “Ask Sparky” Is Ringing Up 35% Bigger Carts
Walmart says shoppers who use Sparky, its AI shopping assistant inside the Walmart app, rack up baskets about 35% larger than shoppers who don’t, according to newly appointed CEO John Furner on the company’s Q4 earnings call. Sparky lives behind the smiley-face “Ask Sparky” button and helps customers with product discovery (finding items, summarizing reviews)…
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Spaghetti Monsters, De-Aging, and AI Twins: This Week’s Top 5 Brand Plays
ByteDance’s Seedance (now in its second generation) is the new video model fueling equal parts creative glee and IP panic. Creators have been stress-testing it with the internet’s favorite benchmark—Will Smith + spaghetti—except the latest flex is Smith fighting a spaghetti monster, posted by Magnific AI founder Javi Lopez. AI producer Billy Boman summed up…
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3,000 Drones Light Up Hollywood for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
Apple TV celebrated the season-two return of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” by staging a 12-minute drone spectacle above Hollywood Forever Cemetery that basically said, “Why buy a billboard when you can rent the sky?” The show put Godzilla, Kong, and a new creature, Titan X, into the Los Angeles night—part premiere party, part public art…
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Samsung pushes Galaxy on social with with AI-generated material
Samsung is promoting its new Galaxy AI phone with a social-first video push that leans heavily on generative AI—sometimes subtly, sometimes not. One spot on X shows skateboarders cruising with groceries, with visuals that read a bit like polished stock footage; Samsung flags it at the end with: “This content was generated with the assistance…
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The AI Olympics Ad You Couldn’t Find (And That Was the Point)
Liquid Death ran a real, AI-generated Winter Olympics spot that looked so “is this even a real ad from the brand?” that viewers spiraled into Reddit and shaky TikTok replays trying to prove it existed. The ad features an AI figure skater pitching Liquid Death sparkling water as the less “artificial” choice—then promptly goes off…
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Carl’s Jr. Revives Iconic Ads with AI Twist and Nostalgic Appeal
Carl’s Jr. is leaning back into the “bikinis and burgers” era after previously trying to retire it. The reboot started back in 2025, with a Super Bowl-adjacent social push featuring influencer Alix Earle – which drove social engagement. The brand saw a 91% jump in Instagram followers per Metricool and 2.5 million TikTok views in…
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Claude as a Timeclock: What 100,000 Chats Say About Productivity
Anthropic ran a privacy-preserving analysis of 100,000 real Claude.ai conversations to estimate how long people’s tasks would take with vs. without AI help. Claude’s own scoring says the typical task would take about 90 minutes unassisted, and that using Claude cuts completion time by roughly 80% on average. They also mapped tasks to O*NET occupations…
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Stagwell Unveils Adtech, AI-Focused Incubator
Stagwell just set up an incubator fund aimed squarely at adtech and AI-powered marketing tools. The vehicle is called Quarter Creek Ventures, and the model is straightforward: Stagwell takes a minority stake in selected projects, then backs them with seed funding (amounts not disclosed) plus practical help getting products built and into market. Beyond the…
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Google’s Project Genie Lets You Build AI-Powered Worlds Without Leaving Your Desk
Google is offering AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. a sandbox full of pixels and possibilities with Project Genie—a web-based prototype that lets users create and navigate interactive, responsive worlds in real time. Built on Genie 3, Google’s most advanced “world model” to date, the system dynamically generates environments based on user input, predicting physical…
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Starbucks bets on robots to brew a turnaround and win customers
Starbucks is pouring hundreds of millions into AI tools and automation to fix lagging U.S. sales—and it might be working. A robot may now be taking your order in the drive-thru, while back-of-house scanning tech is keeping better tabs on inventory. Partnering baristas now have a virtual assistant to navigate scheduling or recipe details. After…
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Uber Eats Turns Its Super Bowl Ad Into a DIY Conspiracy Buffet
Uber Eats is cooking up more than just celebrity cameos in its latest Super Bowl campaign. In the brand’s second installment of its “Football Is for Food” saga, Matthew McConaughey reprises his role as a food-truthing theorist, this time roping in Bradley Cooper and Parker Posey for some sideline banter about how football only exists…
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AI in Shoulder Pads: NBCUniversal Tests AI Ad Agents During NFL Playoff
NBCUniversal just turned what’s arguably the most old-school corner of ad buying—live linear NFL TV—into a sandbox for AI experimentation. Partnering with RPA, Newton Research, and FreeWheel, NBCU successfully tested AI agents on both the buy and sell side to handle key parts of the sales process for a playoff game. This wasn’t about full…
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Bought the Spot, Built the Ad: Artlist’s 5-Day Super Bowl Flex
Artlist, an AI design platform, ran a regional Super Bowl spot that was generated entirely with its own tools—and the plot of the ad is basically “yes, we really did this with AI.” The 30-second narration positions the Super Bowl as advertising’s biggest creative stage, then pivots to the pitch: with Artlist’s generative video product,…
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When the Tables Turn: Pigs Farming People in AI-Powered PSA
British animal rights group Viva! decided to flip the factory farm narrative—literally. Their latest ad imagines a “Happy Human Farm” where pigs run the show, complete with free-range humans lounging in meadows before meeting their unfortunate end. Crafted entirely with AI tools by creative Christian Brandes, the spot positions itself as a cheerful promo for…
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From Billable Hours to AI-Driven Value in Advertising
The ad game is looking a lot less like Don Draper’s boardroom and a lot more like an API call. As AI reshapes the fundamentals of media buying, creative development, and performance optimization, agencies are building platforms instead of just campaigns. Stagwell’s The Machine, Omnicom’s Omni, and WPP’s Open Pro are just a few of…
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Fembots, Football & Funny: What Viewers Want From Super Bowl Ads
Turns out Super Bowl viewers mostly want to laugh—with or without the help of an algorithm. A recent Harris Poll for Ad Age found that 71% of consumers are craving funny ads during this year’s Big Game, and humor is also what sticks, with 46% saying they’re most likely to remember a funny spot. Agencies…
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WPP’s “Super Agents” Want to Work for You
Earlier this month, WPP showed its cards at CES with a new internal tool called Agent Hub, a collection of AI-powered “super agents” living inside its WPP Open platform. Think of it as a bespoke app store populated with digital brains trained on the company’s formidable roster of branding, strategy, creative, and behavioral science experts.…
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Mari-Knows It All: Topps Fakes the Best ’80s Ad Career That Never Was
Topps is revisiting a sports “what-if” with the help of AI and a heavy dose of nostalgia. In its latest Bowman Draft campaign, the trading card brand reimagines a young Dan Marino—who was actually drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 1979—in a parallel ad-world where he’s more than a football great. In an alternate…
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AI Drama with a Side of Stroganoff
Noodles & Company gave fans more than just comfort food —they served up an AI-powered ad that doubles as a soap opera for the tastebuds. After the company put the popular Steak Stroganoff dish on hiatus, consumers voiced their displeasure and the brand tapped generative AI to dramatize actual complaints via short, theatrical scenes. Picture…
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YouTube Tops Reddit in AI’s New Citation Economy
Turns out LLMs don’t care if you have followers—they just want your transcripts. YouTube has leapfrogged Reddit to become the leading social source cited in AI-generated search results, according to new data from Bluefish, Emberos, Goodie AI, and Profound. That’s a sharp contrast from just months ago, when Reddit was still dominating AI responses thanks…
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Almond Breeze Roasts AI Hype with Help from the Jonas Brothers
Almond Breeze is tired of AI marketing nonsense—and they’re not alone. Teaming up with the Jonas Brothers, the brand kicked off 2026 with a three-minute comic mini-movie that turns the mirror back on runaway generative AI gimmicks. The film, created with agency McKinney and production partner Cylndr Studios, runs through a series of hilariously overproduced,…
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Brands Trust AI More Than Gen Z Does—And It’s Showing
AI is now a staple in the ad toolkit, but don’t assume younger consumers are thrilled about it. According to new data from IAB and Sonata Insights, 82% of ad execs believe Gen Z and Millennials feel upbeat about AI-generated ads. In reality? Only 45% do—down from 2024—and negative sentiment among Gen Z has nearly…
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Study Reveals AI-Only Ads Boost Engagement Over Hybrid Approaches
This one is going to be maybe a little controversial, or at least news that humans don’t want to hear. A joint study from NYU and Emory University has delivered a sharp rebuke to the idea that humans and AI make better creatives together. After testing GenAI ads across more than 100,000 impressions, the researchers…
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Equinox Picks a Fight With AI Slop
Equinox’s latest New Year campaign isn’t selling six-pack abs; it’s selling reality. Launched amid the usual January fitness frenzy, “Question Everything But Yourself” drops AI disinformation into your scroll in order to make a case for authenticity. Before revealing the actual campaign, Equinox teased followers with absurd AI-generated content: think babies water skiing, balloon-clad runway…
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AdAge Top 5 AI activations
From AI-generated cruise ads to YouTube fan parodies, brands (and unofficial creators) are leaning hard into generative content. Recent hot examples include a parody video pitting Netflix against Paramount in a fictional “Streaming Bowl”—complete with Harry Potter, Superman, and a stadium’s worth of IP cameos. Posted by creator Muhannad Nassar, the spot has racked up…
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Code and Theory’s AI ‘Machine’ Wants to Run Your Entire Marketing Stack
At CES this year, Code and Theory quietly introduced The Machine—an agentic AI operating system designed to live inside the tools marketers already use, not replace them. Built to bridge creative, media, and data workflows, The Machine connects directly with familiar platforms like Adobe, Figma, and Workfront, enabling teams to scale content production, audience analysis,…
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Rob Riggle’s AI Clone Hosts the Strangest Super Bowl Party Yet—With Guac
Just in time for Super Bowl LX, Avocados From Mexico is launching a digital experience that fuses comedy, sports prediction, and your snack table. Enter the “Guac Guru,” an AI avatar of Rob Riggle decked out like a mystical football sage, dishing out both playoff predictions and guacamole recipes. Powered by SportsDataIO and built by…
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Secret Level’s AI Holiday Special Is What Happens When ChatGPT Meets Claymation
Secret Level is back with not one but two AI-powered holiday specials that double as a time capsule for generative tech’s warp-speed progress. “A Very AI Yule Log 2” builds on last year’s fireplace-with-a-twist, using 630 surreal, 10-second AI-generated scenes stitched into 105 minutes of what can best be described as merry chaos. Made in…
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Zara Embraces AI for Fast Fashion Imaging
Zara is leaning into AI-generated imagery to speed up its fashion shoot process—without ditching human models entirely. The fast-fashion giant is using artificial intelligence to digitally swap outfits on real-life models, saving time (and likely, travel budgets) on multiple costume changes and locations. Models still get paid as if they’d gone through the full shoot,…
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Smart Shelves and Smarter Spend: Retail’s AI Budget Boom
Retailers and CPG companies are no longer dabbling in AI—they’re bankrolling it. NVIDIA’s latest survey shows that 90% of industry leaders plan to hike their AI budgets in 2026, focusing heavily on open-source tools and agentic AI. Why? Because AI isn’t just handling analytics; it’s pulling serious weight in supply chain forecasting, customer personalization, and…
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Chalamet on the Sphere: A24 Goes Vertical With “Marty Supreme” Stunt
In perhaps the tallest marketing flex of the year, Timothée Chalamet turned heads by scaling the Las Vegas Sphere for A24’s latest campaign promoting the film “Marty Supreme.” Perched atop the glowing orb—yes, actually standing on it—the actor delivered a straight-faced teaser as the Sphere lit up like a Ping-Pong ball, soundtracked by the iconic…
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Slop and Scroll: AI Filler Takes Over YouTube’s First Impressions
A new study from video-editing company Kapwing shows just how aggressively low-effort AI content—dubbed “AI slop”—is worming its way into YouTube’s recommendation engine. More than one in five videos served to new users falls into this category, which includes content created purely to rake in views with low production values and zero narrative. Among 15,000…
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Behind Lexus’ Whimsical AI Holiday Ad Campaign
Lexus is taking its holiday ad game into dreamier terrain—literally—by using AI to power a surreal winter drive that feels like it came straight out of a snow globe. The spot, created by AKQA, blends generative visuals with traditional art direction to tell a story that winds through frosted lakes, alpine trails, and twinkly forests—all…
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Chatbot Success: JCPenney’s GiftBot Case Study
JCPenney and dentsu X took on holiday chaos headfirst with GiftBot, a chat-based shopping assistant that made gifting less stressful and more personal. Designed using dentsu’s Intelligent Messaging tech and deployed across Facebook and Instagram via click-to-message ads, GiftBot provided real-time, tailored product suggestions based on user preferences like price, rating, and category. It even…
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Perrier-Jouët’s Immersive Campaign: A Holiday Sensation
Perrier-Jouët uncorked an interesting new experiential campaign, partnering with Publicis and immersive tech specialists to turn its bubbly brand into a multisensory spectacle. Two prime flagship locations—one in New York, the other in Los Angeles—were transformed over the holiday season using projection mapping, interactive decals, animated visuals, and an AR mirror that invited passersby to…
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AI Hackathon Reinvents Digital Product Placement
A new generative AI experiment called Halftime cooked up a peculiar cameo for Coca-Cola inside an old episode of “Suits”—without ever rolling film. Created in just 24 hours at an xAI hackathon by three college students, Halftime inserts digital product placements into TV scenes by building entirely new AI-generated moments. Instead of a traditional cutaway…