This week’s TV upfronts are proof that media and the technology behind it are rapidly changing, removing siloed strategies from media choices – forcing marketers to get back to that core question.
It’s fascinating how technology has merged nearly all (or just all?) the media categories. While the marketing question has always centered on “What do you want to accomplish?” it’s also been closely aligned with “Where do you want to advertise?” The media choices were very distinct: TV, print, OOH, radio, mail and, very early in the digital era, web banners.
But technology’s evolution makes the platform less important since most platforms are not tied to just one strategy.
TV, with the growing capability of connected TV, is not just for awareness, it also can be for performance and commerce marketing, says analyst Andrew Lipsman in The Current.
Social media is no longer just top-of-funnel, as it also can be for short-term performance marketing, such as via affiliate marketing with creators and influencers.
But let’s get back to TV. This week’s TV upfronts are proof that technology is changing what “TV” is. While the WSJ has a story about streaming platforms overtaking traditional TV in ad spend, broadcasters have had streaming platforms for quite a while.
The broadcast TV giants of ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox now have to share center stage with not only Amazon and Netflix but also with the likes of Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast.
And, don’t even get me started talking about how TV has become a subset of video marketing (looking at you short-form video, microdramas, branded video content and even video games).
What this all boils down to is: As technology mashes up the capabilities and identities of online and offline media, marketers need to remain steadfast to that core question: What do you want to accomplish?
Feature image credit: 2026 NBCUniversal Upfront, with (L-R) Jennifer Garner, D’Arcy Carden, Gemma Chan, Chloe Sevigny, “The Five Star Weekend” on Peacock. (Credit: NBCUniversal/Getty Images)
Mike Driehorst is a SmartBrief senior editor, working on newsletters covering social media, advertising, agencies, interactive and multicultural marketing, as well as the mobility industry. After an early career in newspaper journalism, Mike worked in public relations, social media and digital marketing on both the agency and client side for 20 years before joining SmartBrief in early 2019.
Plastic Change highlights the dangers of microplastics.
While plastic pollution is an ongoing environmental concern, it can be difficult to raise awareness in fresh ways that engage general audiences. To tackle this, Danish NGO Plastic Change has released a provocative new campaign drawing attention to the dangers of microplastics in a wholly unconventional way.
The best adverts are built to spark conversation and stop us in our tracks, and Plastic Change’s new ad is no different. Appropriating the saucy visuals of underwear branding, the playful yet powerful campaign is a perfect example of how subverting expectations can make a huge visual impact that resonates with audiences for good.
Created by marketing agency Worth Your Whilein collaboration with Glue Society, the campaign centres around how microplastics are infiltrating everywhere (and I mean everywhere), including men’s genitals, in some cases leading to fertility issues. Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’, the ‘Are You Packing Microplastics?’ campaign is a strong call to action masked behind satirical subversion.
Shot by legendary photographer Derek Henderson, whose work has been featured in Vogue, Bottega Veneta and Louis Vuitton, the ads mimic the visuals of sleek black and white Calvin Klein campaigns. CK’s signature bulge has been replaced by PET plastic bottles, while the waistbands bear provocative messages like “4 out of 5 dicks are packing plastic” and “How toxic is your masculinity?”.
(Image credit: Plastic Change/Worth Your While/Glue Society)
“Environmental campaigns often fail to reach men,” says Anne Aittomaki, strategic director at Plastic Change. “Studies show that many men associate environmentally conscious behaviour with femininity and are therefore less influenced by the messages of environmental campaigns. The campaign aims to flip that script by reaching out to men. If saving the planet doesn’t feel urgent, maybe saving your sex life and ability to reproduce will. This isn’t scare-mongering – it’s science. And it’s time all men paid attention,” she adds.
(Image credit: Plastic Change/Worth Your While/Glue Society)
Natalie Fear is Creative Bloq’s staff writer. With an eye for trending topics and a passion for internet culture, she brings you the latest in art and design news. Natalie also runs Creative Bloq’s 5 Questions series, spotlighting diverse talent across the creative industries. Outside of work, she loves all things literature and music (although she’s partial to a spot of TikTok brain rot).
Coterie’s recently launched in-hospital gifting program is an example other businesses should follow to find new customers.
There is a version of modern marketing that most brand strategists are still running. It involves targeting, retargeting, optimizing, and allocating more budget to chase more eyeballs across more platforms, hoping that enough impressions eventually build enough trust to drive a purchase. It’s an approach that is getting more expensive, more crowded, and less effective every quarter.
The brands that are breaking through right now are not doing it by outspending. They are doing it by engineering a presence at the exact moment loyalty is most likely to form.
Coterie, a premium baby care brand, made that case last month when it announced its first in-hospital gifting program with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Every postpartum patient on the newly renovated fourth-floor maternity unit now receives a complimentary care package of Coterie diapers and wipes. The visitors’ lounge has been renamed the Coterie Visitors Lounge. The brand is not running an ad in this environment. It is woven into the experience itself.
The move is worth paying attention to, a great example of a marketing philosophy that is quietly separating the brands gaining ground from the ones fighting for the same digital real estate everyone else is already on.
Why advertising alone Isn’t enough anymore
The new parent space is one of the most competitive consumer categories in the country. Legacy giants have dominated shelf space and ad budgets for decades. Newer entrants compete on clean ingredients, sustainability credentials, and premium positioning, and most of them are doing it through the same channels, targeting the same overwhelmed new parents scrolling through the same feeds.
A brand that reaches a new parent through a digital ad is competing with dozens of other brands doing exactly the same thing, at a moment when that parent is distracted, sceptical, and already drowning in product recommendations. Attention is easy to buy. Trust is not something a media budget can manufacture.
“Hospitals are the most trusted environment to establish credibility and an emotional connection with new parents,” says Jess Jacobs, Coterie’s CEO. “Our clinically tested diapers and wipes help ensure continuity of care from hospital to home. It was important for us to work with a hospital that aligns with our health and safety standards.”
The principle behind the partnership
There is a principle at work here that extends well beyond baby products. Call it trust by proximity: the idea that a brand earns credibility not by outspending competitors in a crowded ad landscape, but by being present in an environment that already carries trust.
In this model, the institution is the context, not the channel. When a hospital that new parents rely on for one of the most consequential moments of their lives puts a brand’s products in their hands, that brand inherits a degree of institutional credibility that would take years to build through conventional advertising. The brand naturally steps into trust that already exists at the moment needed.
But the principle is not limited to hospitals. It applies anywhere a brand can be genuinely present, in a community, at a moment, through a person, in a way that feels earned rather than paid for. The brands executing this well are not asking where the audience is scrolling. They are asking when the audience is most open, and what it would mean to be there.
Jacobs frames it this way: “Our community is at the centre of everything we do. We invest heavily in our parent community, recognizing that a peer recommendation or a trusted source carries far more weight than paid advertising. The best marketing is the parents who love to use it; a glowing review is a core parental currency.”
That line, “a glowing review is a core parental currency,” is a useful shorthand for a broader truth about how trust-based marketing works at scale. The goal is not to reach more people with a message. The goal is to create an experience so precisely timed and genuinely useful that the audience becomes the distribution channel. Presence generates advocacy. Advocacy generates reach. Reach that comes from advocacy carries a weight that paid media cannot replicate.
Presence as a growth strategy
The instinct in modern marketing is to follow digital traffic and to be wherever the algorithm says the audience is. What Coterie is demonstrating is that the most valuable position goes beyond where they are scrolling online.
“A lot of our success is a result of having a direct relationship with our customers,” Jacobs says. “Keeping that closeness with them is top of mind when we decide where we want our presence to be. We’re meeting parents at a key moment, where trust-based referrals can happen organically. That is what makes it so valuable. We find that when parents try us out, they often convert to long-time customers.”
This is the insight that gets lost when brands evaluate a move like this through a traditional ROI lens. The gifting program works as a referral engine with an unusually favourable starting condition. A parent who encounters a brand at a moment of peak emotional attention, when they are exhausted, grateful, and holding a child they have been waiting months to meet, receives what they see as a free sample. But they are actually experiencing the brand at the exact moment when memory formation and loyalty are most likely to occur.
That is something that no digital ad budget can buy.
What comes after the first impression
What makes Coterie’s approach particularly sophisticated is the entry point to a relationship the brand is explicitly built to sustain.
“Once a customer turns into a subscriber, we use what we know about a parent’s experience to make their life easier, not to increase spending,” Jacobs says. “We want the Coterie experience to feel helpful rather than transactional.”
Helpful rather than transactional. That distinction is where most brands fail at retention. The instinct after acquiring a customer is to monetize, to upsell, cross-sell, and maximize lifetime value through extraction. What Coterie is describing is an entirely different orientation: use what you know about a customer to reduce friction in their life, and let loyalty be the outcome rather than the target.
This is presence in its fullest expression. Not a single well-timed touchpoint, but a sustained relationship built on the premise that the brand’s job is to be useful, before the sale, at the moment of first experience, and long after the initial conversion.
The broader lesson
The hospital-to-home model is specific to Coterie’s category, but the underlying logic applies across industries. Brands building durable market positions right now are not doing so through louder campaigns or bigger ad budgets. They are doing it by identifying the moments and environments where trust is already present and earning the right to be there.
“For consumer brands, growth channels don’t necessarily have to be restricted to retail,” Jacobs says. “It’s finding and meeting your customers where they are.”
Where your customers are is only half the question. The more useful question is when they are most open and whether your brand has done the work to deserve a presence in that moment.
Digital ads will always be part of the marketing budget. Genuine presence is harder to manufacture, slower to build, and worth considerably more when it lands.
In the Visibility Economy, the brands that win in the long term are not the ones with the biggest media budgets. They are the ones that figured out how to be in the right room, at the right moment, in a way that feels less like marketing and more like exactly what was needed.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Continuous advertising doesn’t always mean effective advertising.
Key Takeaways
Instead of spreading your budget thin every month, focus your marketing budget primarily on the times when your customers are ready to buy.
Pinpoint your busiest, most profitable months by reviewing your sales and tracking when people are searching for your services the most.
Your online presence is like a big, sparkling window to your store. Before anyone decides to buy, they’re searching for you online — so make sure it looks good.
Let’s have a real, best-friend chat about growing your business. We both know how hard you work every single day. You show up, give it your all and sometimes wonder why the results do not match your massive effort.
You do not have to work around the clock or pile more tasks onto your to-do list to grow your income. The biggest game-changer is simply doing the right things at the exact right time. Let me walk you through seven simple, fun steps to master seasonal advertising and see amazing results.
1. Stop advertising the same way all year
I used to think it was smart to keep my marketing running at the exact same level all year long. I wanted my business to always be on everyone’s mind. Experience taught me a different lesson. Continuous advertising does not always mean effective advertising.
I think of my business like the ocean. It is full of big, powerful waves of demand that come and go. Instead of spreading my budget thin every single month, I save my dollars for when customers are truly ready to say yes. When those high-demand times roll in, I go all in and catch that amazing momentum.
2. Find your money months
Every single year, I sit down with my favourite planner and look over my past sales. I pinpoint exactly when my busiest, most profitable months happen. I pay close attention to when phone calls and emails start rushing in.
I track when people search for what I offer the most. These are my “money months.”
I ask myself simple questions. When did the money really roll in? Which months brought the most client calls? By finding these patterns, I know exactly where to put my extra focus and energy. I build my budget around these peak times, and the results are always incredible.
3. Think like your customer
My biggest lightbulb moment happened when I stopped thinking like an owner and started acting like my customer. I realized I could not just focus on selling all day long. I had to step into their shoes and figure out what they actually wanted.
My clients have busy lives, wild schedules and specific reasons for needing my help. When I see my customers’ needs peaking, I make sure my business shows up everywhere they look. I time my visibility to match their highest interest. This way, I am always easy to find and ready to help.
4. The Rebel Wax strategy
Seeing a strategy play out in real life makes it so much easier to understand. I love finding great examples to showcase. Bree Mesquit, the founder of Rebel Wax, is doing it right.
She created a fantastic wax line that she sells directly to estheticians. She has an outstanding year round business, but spring, summer and holiday seasons are when the majority of the magic happens. People buy swimsuits, hit the beach and they want to look great, so demand shoots straight up.
Mesquit averages over seven million social media views a month. After seeing me talk on social media and through an article I wrote about how important it is to show up in online search, Mesquit actually reached out to thank me for sharing those tips. Now, things are coming full circle for her business because she understands that her customers and students are searching for her and her business on Google before they decide to buy. Everything has finally clicked into place for her brand to take her business to the next level.
5. Ensure your Google presence is up to speed
Let me share a fun little habit of mine. Whenever I see a catchy ad for a new company, the first thing I do is grab my phone. I search for them online immediately. Your customers do the exact same thing!
Before they ever decide to buy, they search to see what shows up about you. Even if my ads do a fantastic job of getting people excited, bad reviews can ruin everything. If my business info is outdated, I miss out on sales at the very last second.
Making sure your online presence is polished is the magic key. It turns curious visitors into happy, paying customers.
6. Optimize your digital footprint
Think of your digital footprint as a big, sparkling window to your store. Before anyone walks in or clicks the buy button, they peek through that window. They want to see what is waiting on the other side.
When people search for me, I make sure they see clear, fresh information. Strong, positive reviews prove that I am active and ready to help.
If that digital window is foggy or outdated, your ads have to work way harder. Treat your online footprint like a welcoming, trustworthy storefront. Make it work for you, not against you!
7. Prep before the rush hits
Waiting until my business was slammed to update my profiles used to be a huge mistake. I always ended up scrambling at the worst possible time. Now, I make it a strict rule to get ahead of the game.
I give my business a full check-up year-round. I update my Google profile and add beautiful new photos. I also send a quick note to happy clients asking for fresh reviews.
Then, right before the busy wave hits, I crank up my ads. Because I prepared ahead of time, I am fully ready to ride the wave of demand without any stress.
Keep showing up smarter
Showing up at the perfect moments is the real secret to success. Make sure your business looks trustworthy and bright when people finally find it.
When you get the timing right, everything shifts in a wonderful way. You will stop spinning your wheels and start seeing fantastic rewards. Focus on showing up at the right time, and let your business shine. Now, let’s get out there and ride that next big wave together!
The creator economy has matured well past the era of sponsored posts being a creator’s only income stream. As the industry grows, more brands are investing in influencers in a much bigger way, meaning that today’s top creators are turning into multi-hyphenate entrepreneurs building businesses with real staying power. Brand deals remain a part of the mix, but they’re no longer the whole story.
Creators are seeing the need to diversify their income streams because brand deals are inherently volatile. Between creator economy saturation, algorithm changes, budget cuts, and brand pivots, creators need multiple streams of income. From digital products to book deals, a new class of creator-entrepreneurs who use their audience as a launchpad is emerging.
Jacklyn Romano hosts in-person community fitness events.
Jacklyn Romano
1. In-Person Events
People using social media are craving community, so it’s no surprise that in-person events are something that more and more creators are investing their energy into. Events put the creator fully in control, and they allow online communities to meet in real life and fostering even stronger relationships.
Jacklyn Romano, a creator and the founder of Sweat & Sculpt by Jac, created her fitness pop-up business directly from her online community. It was a natural extension of her influencer background, giving her the perfect foundation to host these events. She already knew what her audience wanted before she ever asked them to buy a ticket.
“The events have become a significant and rapidly growing portion of my income,” says Romano, “It’s transformed my business from being solely dependent on brand deals to having a diversified and much more stable income model.”
2. Digital Services
Creators have professional skills that brands desperately want, which is why we’re seeing more and more of them packaging those skills as services.
Jayde Powell, a freelance social media creative, turned creating content online into a diverse business where she steps into agencies as a strategist, creative director, or producer depending on what the account needs.
“Because my perspective is social-first, I’m offering a very digital-native, social media-focused lens on the work, which most brands are looking for,” says Powell. Often, traditional agency staff can’t create deliverables in the same way a creator can.
Michael Lemus, a bisexual Latino content creator with almost 50,000 followers on Instagram, is another example of just that.
“My experience as a creator helps me offer real-world insights to clients navigating the digital space,” says Lemus. Both Powell and Lemus are great examples that creators aren’t just content machines. They’re deeply skilled professionals who are able to offer a unique perspective for brands on their marketing and social media projects.
3. Digital Products
Digital products are a natural next step for many creators who have built online communities around a certain topic. Courses, templates, guides and paid membership communities are all options that allow creators to monetize their expertise at scale without trading time for dollars.
Remi Ishizuka, a creator and the founder of HomeBodies, built and Instagram following of over 1 million by opening sharing her healthy lifestyle online.
“After a decade of openly sharing fitness and wellness with an engaged audience, launching HomeBodies felt like a natural evolution,” notes Ali Grant, CO-CEO of The Digital Dept. and Ishizuka’s manager. The program lets her community workout “alongside her” while generating reliable recurring revenue on top of brand deals.
Ishizuka shows that digital products work best when they’re a logical extension of what a creator has already been giving away for free on socials.
Jess Bruno had landed countless paid speaking gigs.
Jess Bruno
4. Speaking Gigs
Jess Bruno, a creator who brings major personality to her socials, recognized early that Instagram alone wasn’t a stable income strategy. She made it her mission to show up in spaces where her audience already existed.
After a year of laying the groundwork to be invited into rooms where she could share her knowledge, the bookings started flowing in.
“I’m now booking 1-2 paid speaking engagements every single month,” says Bruno, “The best part is they now reach out to me.”
Not only is she being paid rates starting at around $500 per gig, she’s also able to generate new leads for other income streams of hers, like digital products and services.
5. Authoring Books
Gigi Robinson’s path to becoming a published author was unconventional. She cold pitched A Kids Co., and when DK Books and Penguin Random House later acquired the series, she became a Penguin author overnight.
Not only has she been able to garner the credibility of being a published author at such a well-known publishing house, but the financial contribution of her book to her business goes beyond royalties. She’s been able to land more brand deals, get more consulting gigs and work with brands in other paid capacities.
“There’s a credibility shift that happens when you can hand someone a hardcover with your name on it from a publisher they recognize,” notes Robinson, “It opens doors I would have spent years trying to knock on otherwise.”
6. Commercial, TV & Film
For creators with performance backgrounds or specialized skills, the entertainment world has become a genuine income streams — especially for those with a significant social media following. In fact, many auditions and castings ask for information about your social media as a prerequisite.
While Alex Wong still auditions like any working dancer/actor, his social presence has opened a new lane. Wong has seen a ton of crossover, like booking a dancing role in a project, then later being separately contracted for the social media campaign for that same project.
“Sometimes the projects look for people with a social media following to boost it,” he says, “Generally the social media campaign pays more.”
Brianna Doe guest writes for multiple different blogs and brands.
Brianna Doe
7. Guest Writing & Editorial Contributions
While video content gets all the hype, written content can help creators build credibility in a different, often deeper way. Brianna Doe, a creator and founder of Verbatim, a marketing agency, leaned into writing on LinkedIn when everyone told her to pivot to video. This is exactly how brands and editors starting filling up her inbox with offers.
“It’s not the biggest line item in my revenue, but it helps a ton as a credibility and distribution play,” says Doe, “Every published piece sends people back to my own platforms.”
Those readers convert into brand partnerships, agency clients, and expanded reach, making guest writing a strategic investment, not just a side hustle.
8. Full-Time Employment
Contrary to popular belief, not all creators want to create full-time, and Carly Chamerlik is a prime example of this. After 18 months and growing to about 70,000 followers, Chamerlik got a DM brand a brand that she organically talked about on socials. Her content acted as her resume, and they offered her a full-time remote job.
“Without content creation, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get in front of the right people in order to have this opportunity become reality,” Chamerlik says.
She now balances the stability of a corporate salary and benefits with the creative freedom of continuing to make content, and she says that the company is actively supportive of both.
Bottom Line
These creators didn’t abandon their audiences to build businesses.. They built businesses because of their audience. Each income stream is proof that a creator’s most valuable asset isn’t their follower count, it’s the skills and trust that they’ve built.
The most successful creators are surrounding brand deals with income streams they now fully own and control. The creator economy’s next chapter is about going deep, building real businesses and becoming the kind of entrepreneur that doesn’t need to wait for a brand’s budget to get approved. The line between “influencer” and “entrepreneur” will continue to blur.
Terms like insight, disruption, and engagement are misunderstood, misleading, and misdirect your media spend.
When marketers talk about their “films,” as if they are producing minor Spielbergian classics, it doesn’t just sound pompous and self-absorbed. This kind of thinking is what leads to bad advertising.
We pay to watch films. We want to understand the story and relate to the characters. Ads, by contrast, are watched unwillingly—not only with an abject lack of interest, but with significant motivation to ignore the message.
There are two Cannes festivals: one for film, and one for advertising. The industry would do well to remember that.
So when the industry refers to ads as “films,” it’s a marketing misnomer of grand proportions: not just inappropriate but directionally false. And it’s far from the only one.
Ad breaks: These are not breaks for ads—they are breaks from them. The TV industry’s own behavioural data shows more than half of in-room viewers disengage entirely during commercial breaks. Yet media buyers price reach against an exposure that, for the majority of impressions, never actually happens. We value a room with two adults in it more highly than with one, even though the research shows a lone viewer is more than twice as likely to watch the ads.
Storytelling: Most modern advertising is structurally incapable of telling a story. A 6-second bumper has a logo and a prayer. Calling that “storytelling” is creative cowardice dressed up as craft.
Activation: Whether it’s a tent at SXSW, a sampling stall in Westfield, or a TikTok stunt, most don’t move consumers. First, “activation” lets a team confuse doing a thing with achieving a thing. Second, it eats brand budget to the tune of six figures of media money being spent on canapés and an Instagram influencer.
Engagement: The metric of choice for the strategically lost. A Like is not engagement. A comment is not engagement. A share, in most cases, is not engagement. In essence “engagement” does not actually mean engagement. The misnomer has redirected an entire generation of marketing investment toward the 0.5% of category buyers who interact with brand content—usually because their hand slipped—while the 99.5% who actually drive sales go un-served.
Brand loyalty: The oldest lie in marketing. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has spent 40 years demonstrating that loyalty—in the sense of exclusive, committed, repeat purchase—is fictional. Category buying is a polygamous, stochastic, wobbly thing driven by mental and physical availability, not anthropomorphic devotion.
Brand love: The phrase implies an emotional bond between human and brand that no behavioural dataset has ever supported at any meaningful scale. Yes, we all have one or two brands we actually love. But the other 2,984 in our current repertoire don’t make our heart skip even a little beat. The job isn’t to be cherished—it’s to come to mind at the moment of purchase. Less romantic. Far more profitable.
Insight: They exist. But a genuine insight—a non-obvious observation about consumer behaviour that, acted upon, unlocks enormous growth—is a career exception, not a process; 99% of what gets stamped “insight” meets none of that definition. “Moms are busy.” “Gen Z values authenticity.” “People want convenience.” These are not insights. They aren’t even accurate. They are observations a moderately attentive 12-year-old could supply while playing a video game.
Full funnel: Advertising’s core concept is bandied around in a shotgun manner to suggest that A. we extract the whole customer journey, and B. get a firehose out and soak that puppy from top to bottom. That’s not what it should mean. It’s crucial to take in the full funnel during any initial diagnosis. But then you activate data and strategic thinking to work out where you want to apply resources to unlock growth.
Disruption: Clayton Christensen’s theory was a precise, narrow account of how low-end entrants displace incumbents: It’s usually slow and initially ignored by incumbents who don’t see the threat. Yet the word now means literally anything. Every Series A deck describes a disruption play. Every challenger brand pitches itself as disruptive when it is, in fact, a slightly cheaper version of an existing thing. Real disruption—rare, hard, terrifying—gets buried under the marketing copy of a marginally cheaper razor delivered by mail.
Consumer: We call them that because consumption is the only part of their lives we are interested in. But consumption is, for almost every human alive, the least interesting thing they do. A “consumer portrait” is likely to be 900 words on what they think, feel, hope, and want from a brand’s product—which should be one sentence. The remaining 875 words should be about a human: their job, kids, fears, Saturday mornings. If we saw them as human first, ironically, we’d understand them better as consumers second.
Mark Ritson has a PhD in Marketing and spent 25 years working as a marketing professor, and has also worked as both a global brand consultant and as the in-house brand consultant for LVMH. His articles have appeared in the Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Advertising and the Journal of Consumer Research.
Netflix has once again made a controversial change to its Apple TV app. In recent weeks, the company has stopped using the native tvOS 26 video player in favour of a custom player similar to the one it uses on other TV platforms.
In practice, this makes the most common interactions more cumbersome and blocks users from using platform-specific Apple TV features.
Netflix’s Apple TV app is now very bad
The change began rolling out a few weeks ago, and user frustration is mounting. On Reddit, there’s a growing thread of Netflix subscribers saying they are cancelling their subscription because of this change to the Apple TV app.
In a separate thread on Reddit, one user explains the cumbersome process of simply rewinding or fast-forwarding by 10 seconds:
Did Netflix mess up the app? There are two extra clicks for a simple 10s rewind or fast forward. Instead of it going back 10s in one click, now it pauses and brings up the frame selector, and then you have to click again. Did they not do any research or usability testing before releasing this?
The change also means you lose access to full playback controls using the Apple TV Remote app on your iPhone. You can’t enable Enhance Dialogue from the video player. That clever Apple TV feature that automatically enables subtitles when you rewind? Gone.
One of my most-used tvOS video player features is the ability to tap the Siri Remote to see when what I’m currently watching will end. It’s great for trying to decide whether you have time for one more episode before bed. That feature is gone in Netflix as part of this change.
Netflix hasn’t given any public indication of why it made this change. According to “sources within the company” cited by Vulture, Netflix’s motivation was consistency across platforms. Netflix largely uses a custom video player across all of its platforms, so the Apple TV was an exception until now.
My guess is that it has something to do with advertising, and Netflix thinks it can use its own video player for better or more “immersive” advertising opportunities.
Netflix’s switch to a custom video only further exacerbates the company’s poor support for Apple TV in general. The company, for example, does not integrate with Apple’s TV and therefore does not support system tvOS features like the universal “Up Next” queue. Its use of the native Apple TV video player was really its only redeeming quality on the platform.
The core functionality and controls that this change ruined aren’t minor. They aren’t things you’ll only notice occasionally. Netflix’s video player botches even the most basic of tasks, such as requiring multiple button presses to rewind if you happened to miss a piece of dialogue. Netflix has fundamentally made its experience worse, and you’ll notice every time you use the app.
The timing is also pretty poetic: Netflix started rolling out this change at almost the exact same time it announced yet another price increase.
Switching to their own custom video player also broke Netflix’s integration with the iPhone. Until last week, playing video in the Netflix app on Apple TV would put a live activity widget on your iPhone lock screen with the name of the current program, scrub location, and player controls. Now that’s gone.
This regression dropping the same week that Netflix announced price hikes makes me so angry that I’m giving even more thought to downgrading my family’s Netflix account from the $27/month Premium plan to the $20/month Standard plan. Sending Netflix only $240 per year instead of $324 will show them.
I no longer subscribe to Netflix, except for the “Netflix on Us” ad-supported plan I get for “free” through T-Mobile. I find the service doesn’t have much content I want to watch, and changes like this mean I definitely don’t want to give the company $27 per month.
Hopefully, Netflix sees the growing frustration from users and walks back this change. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.
Chance is the editor-in-chief of 9to5Mac, overseeing the entire site’s operations. He also hosts the 9to5Mac Daily and 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcasts. You can send tips, questions, and typos to [email protected].
AI Max advertisers can now instruct the system in natural language instead of having to rely on previously selected keywords. (Google)
New Search advertising updates from Google show how the tech giant is continuing to shift away from keywords and toward capturing intent through deploying the reasoning skills of AI. Advertisers using AI Max, its automated platform for optimizing search ad campaigns, can now instruct the system in natural language instead of having to rely on previously selected keywords, Google announced today.
The new feature, dubbed AI Brief, is meant to give advertisers better control over how AI Max optimizes their Search campaigns, in much the same way that conversational AI helps consumers express more specific search queries.
AI Brief is just the latest example of Google deprioritizing a keyword-centric approach to search advertising in favour of AI automation. Earlier this month, the tech giant announced that it was retiring Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), which are meant to extend keyword-based strategies, and moving all DSA-powered campaigns to AI Max. More broadly, Google operates Performance Max (PMax), a platform that uses Gemini to effectively run a campaign across all Google channels based on goals outlined by the advertiser.
The rise of AI search platforms has changed how consumers use the internet, namely, opting for longer, more complex search queries over relying on a few impactful keywords. In turn, this behaviour has spurred tech companies such as Google and Meta to create new ways for advertisers to target ads on their platforms. The solution has largely focused on using AI to sniff out the intent behind consumers’ queries.
This shift is why Google launched AI Max roughly one year ago. AI Max offers PMax-like automation, but for advertisers who only want to run Search ads. Using its skills in reasoning, AI Max is able to extend the performance of Search ads by matching advertisers’ desired keywords to a broader range of search queries. Even though these queries might not have contained a targeted keyword, AI Max can understand the intent behind the query, and if it matches that of the keyword, then it will show an ad. The system can also slightly adjust the ad copy based on the perceived intent.
AI Brief enables advertisers to seek the same results without having to use a list of rigid pre-selected keywords to direct AI Max. They can simply explain, in natural language, the search queries they want to capture and avoid, and their guidelines around ad copy. The hope is that doing so makes it easier for advertisers to express their goals.
As part of today’s updates, Google is also expanding AI Max to Shopping ads. The system will seek to match retailers’ ads to shoppers merely showing intent, without the need for them to provide specific product details. Google is making AI Max available for Search campaigns for Travel, too.
Some iPhone users could be eligible to collect up to $95 per device as part of a settlement over allegations that Apple misled consumers about the abilities of its artificial intelligence-powered features.
This week, Apple said it reached a $250-million settlement to resolve class-action lawsuits filed against the Cupertino smartphone maker last year. The lawsuits alleged that Apple violated consumer protection laws by advertising that its iPhones included enhancements to its digital assistant Siri even though it didn’t exist yet. That allegedly enticed consumers to spend more to purchase the new devices.
Ryan Clarkson, founder and managing partner of Clarkson Law Firm, which represented consumers in the lawsuit, said they are “proud to secure a historic settlement on behalf of consumers who should feel confident and protected when deciding where to spend their hard-earned dollars.”
“We are at an inflection point with AI, and the choices companies and regulators make now will shape how this technology impacts everyday people,” he said in a statement.
Apple unveiled several AI tools, including an improved Siri assistant that was more conversational and capable, in 2024. The company touted how AI features will help people write, summarize messages, clean up photos and more.
As the race to advance AI heats up, some experts say that Apple has been lagging behind its rivals such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The settlement is the latest example of the hurdles Apple faces as it goes head-to-head with its competitors.
The settlement applies to U.S. iPhone users who bought an iPhone 16 and the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max between June 10, 2024, and March 29, 2025. Roughly 37 million devices purchased in the United States are eligible, according to a court filing.
A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California still needs to approve the settlement.
Consumers will be notified via email or mail about submitting a form to collect the funds. They’ll be eligible for payments of $25 per device but that amount may decrease or increase to $95 per device depending on the amount of claims received and other factors, according to a court filing about the settlement.
Apple said in a statement that its release of what’s known as “Apple Intelligence” included a variety of AI-powered features such as live translation and writing tools.
“Apple has reached a settlement to resolve claims related to the availability of two additional features. We resolved this matter to stay focused on doing what we do best, delivering the most innovative products and services to our users,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
Most folks have probably noticed that when they mention something out loud, like a holiday or a random gadget, its ads suddenly start appearing everywhere. It feels as if your phone is listening to you. However, there’s no strong evidence that your smartphone is secretly recording your conversations for advertising purposes. Now, you must be wondering if your phone isn’t listening, then how come these ads are so accurate every time? Well, that’s because advertisers don’t need your microphone to show up ads. They already have something more powerful: your data. That’s how advertisers always know exactly what you’re looking for.
Your search and browsing history tells a story
Every click and search builds your profile
Every search you make, every website you visit, and how long you linger on a page builds a behavioural profile. That’s because of the embedded trackers in websites and emails. Advertisers and ad networks quietly track your actions, such as your search queries, how long you stay on a page, and even how you click or scroll. These actions build a detailed picture of your intent and interests. And advertisers analyse this data to predict what you’re likely to want next.
If you follow fitness-related content and read articles about running events, advertisers may see you as someone likely to purchase sports gear, even if you never searched for it directly. Modern advertising technology can connect patterns across your activity to anticipate your future behaviour, and that too, with surprising accuracy.
Even Incognito mode won’t help. Advertisers can still create a unique digital fingerprint based on your IP address and browser settings.
How apps collect data behind the scenes
A lot happens in the background
Most of the data for targeted ads is collected quietly in the background. This happens with the help of tools you’ve agreed to without thinking twice. When you download an app, it asks for your permissions, like location, contacts, storage, and more. These can reveal a lot about your daily life, so make sure to review your app permissions regularly. Websites also use cookies and trackers to get an idea of what you do online. That’s how you look at something at once and see related ads later. Apps also track what you click, how you scroll, and how long you stay on a page.
On top of that, your phone’s GPS and Wi-Fi data provide a digital footprint. When your phone regularly shares location data, it allows advertisers to show you ads based on where you are or what places you’ve visited. None of this data stays in a single app. Cross-app tracking tools and advertising IDs allow companies to track your activity across different apps and devices. This helps them build a single, growing profile that gets more detailed over time. That’s how you see ads on your phone for a product that you searched for on your laptop.
Social media knows more than you think
One of the biggest data collectors
Social media platforms can track your likes, shares, and comments; who you follow; who you interact with and how often; and what you pause on while scrolling. Every time you interact (even for a second) with Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you give a data point. They can track how long you look at a post, rewatch a reel, or share a post in a DM.
If you pause on multiple travel videos or like some baby product posts, it can reveal your interests. This is enough to trigger targeted ads. The algorithm may tag you as ‘interested in travel’ or ‘interested in baby products’, even if you’ve never searched for them. This goes even further. Platforms can guess things like your personality, interests, and even your mood, to target you more precisely. All of this is based on how to interact with social media content.
Your purchasing history and data brokers
The hidden network
We all have our shopping habits. For example, some of us might be into impulsive buying, while others stick to the same brand. We might feel these personal choices, but they are part of a much larger system. Behind the scenes, data brokers collect and sell information about you, including your purchase history, income estimates, your lifestyle, and general interests. This information is compiled from public records and commercial sources, such as your credit card purchases and loyalty card data.
Data brokers combine this information and create a detailed overview of your life. Then, they group you into categories like “budget shopper,” “frequent traveller,” or “likely a new parent.” After all, advertisers don’t need to know your name. Rather, they just need to know your type and interests. Once you’ve been grouped, you start to see ads that feel less random and more personal.
The power of predictive AI
When AI predicts what you want before you do
Credit: Tashreef Shareef / MakeUseOf
This is where ads begin to feel as if they are in complete sync with your thoughts. Modern advertising uses sophisticated AI algorithms to predict what you might want next, and not just what you’ve searched for. They can guess what you might buy next and spot your needs even before you realize them. They also find patterns among millions of other users with similar interests and habits, like yours.
For instance, if a person with similar behaviour to yours often buys a certain product, you’re also likely to see ads for it, no matter if you’ve never looked for it. That’s why ads can feel as if they are always listening to your thoughts. In reality, they are predicting based on signals you don’t realize you’ve given them. With advanced AI, they are getting better at doing so.
How to improve your privacy
The harsh reality is that you might not be able to fully escape data collection. Fortunately, there are some ways to significantly reduce it. You can start by reviewing your app permissions. You should allow access to only what’s truly needed by a genuine app. Second, you can turn off personalized ads and delete your Advertising ID to reduce creepy targeted ads. The next thing you can do is clear or block cookies to maintain your online privacy. You can also switch to privacy-focused browsers. They block third-party trackers to prevent data collection.
I would also recommend taking a closer look at your social media settings. You must restrict data sharing and ad personalization. These are some effective ways to regain control and limit how much of your information is collected.
Kanika began writing about consumer technology in 2019 and has contributed to tech websites like Beebom and The Mac Observer. During her journey, she covered a wide range of topics, including Android, Windows, AI, and everything Apple. She has been a loyal iPhone user since 2014,
