Sourced from Forbes

AI is transforming nearly every aspect of public relations, from media monitoring and content creation to reputation management and crisis response. As this technology continues to evolve over time, so too will the tools, workflows and expectations that define success in the industry.

While some PR professionals embrace AI’s efficiency and speed, others are cautiously weighing its ethical and creative implications. To explore both the opportunities and challenges this tech presents, 17 Forbes Communications Council members explain how AI is impacting PR at their organizations and across the field.

1. Helps Extract Insights From Datasets

AI accelerates how comms teams extract insights from vast datasets—boosting speed, not always accuracy. Without human checks, small errors can go big. Always audit before anything goes public. – Marie O’Riordan, The Croí Initiative, including Croí Impact and Croí Capital

2. Supports, Not Replaces, Human Insight

While AI has made its mark in our industry, the heart of what we do—building trust, navigating nuance and creating compelling narratives—still relies on human insight. Technology can support work, but it can’t replace the creativity, judgment and empathy that define impactful public relations. – Johanna Herrmann, Merck

3. Transforms Reactive Storytelling To Proactive Signal Detection

AI is transforming PR from reactive storytelling to proactive signal detection. Teams can now spot narrative shifts, media sentiment trends and emerging voices in real time with tools like Similarweb. This allows communicators to lead the conversation instead of chasing it. The result is PR that is more data-informed and agile, while still requiring sharp human oversight to preserve authenticity. – Yael Klass, Similarweb Ltd.

4. Speeds Up Media Monitoring

AI is speeding up media monitoring and sentiment analysis, giving teams real-time insight into how their brand is being perceived. This helps PR professionals react faster and with more precision, but it also raises the bar for staying ahead of issues before they escalate. – Cody Gillund, Grounded Growth Studio

5. Creates Faster Responses To Support The Human Side

I started in PR, and that mindset never left me. It’s a great addition that AI brings speed in evaluating, drafting responses and suggesting solutions to challenges, but PR is still about trust and instinct. The human side matters. AI can help guide the work, but it shouldn’t lead it. In a field built on relationships, it’s still about reading the moment and often following your instinct. – Rich Bornstein, Bornstein Media

6. Enables Real-Time Sentiment Analysis

AI is revolutionizing public relations by enabling real-time sentiment analysis and automated media monitoring. It helps companies respond faster to public opinion and proactively manage their reputation. This shift has made PR more data-driven, with a focus on timely, targeted communication. As a result, PR professionals can emphasize strategy and engagement over routine tasks. – Antony Robinson, Novalnet AG

7. Allows For Faster Crisis Management

AI is speeding up how companies monitor media and craft responses, turning what used to take hours into minutes. The upside is faster crisis management and real-time sentiment tracking. But it also risks tone-deaf automation. In PR, human judgment still matters—AI should support it, not replace it. – Maria Alonso, Fortune 206

8. Fuels Media Illiteracy And Distrust

AI’s mass content output is fuelling media illiteracy and public distrust, blurring the line between fact and fabrication. PR must now lead with credibility and emotional intelligence. AI is a powerful tool—but just one in a broader arsenal that must include human judgment and ethical strategy. – Lyric Mandell, PhD, MOXY Company

9. Can Refine Messaging

AI has become a powerful tool for PR professionals, making it easier to quickly rephrase, summarize and tighten messaging. Those who embrace it understand that it’s not about replacing creativity and individual ideas—instead, it’s about refining the language and speeding up the delivery. In fast-paced environments where time is limited, this kind of efficiency can be incredibly valuable. – Victoria Zelefsky, Anne Arundel Economic Development Corp.

10. Demands Professionals Elevate Their Strategies

AI is forcing a critical reckoning in PR. While it offers tempting efficiencies in tasks like media monitoring and drafting basic content, AI can’t build trust, navigate complex ethical landscapes or truly understand human emotion. This shift demands that PR professionals elevate their strategy, crisis management skills and ability to forge human connections—the very things AI can’t replicate. – Patrick Ward, NanoGlobals

11. Brings Immediacy To Workflows

AI has brought a powerful immediacy to PR, making sentiment analysis, trend spotting and personalized outreach accessible in real-time. Yet, with all this amplified noise, the true craft of telling authentic, resonant stories has never mattered more. Data sharpens strategy, but human nuance and emotional insight still drive the deepest connections. – Joshua Stratton, Against The Current

12. Rewrites Narrative Control

AI’s real disruption in PR isn’t just faster press releases—it’s how it quietly rewires narrative control. Brands are now training AI on their own voice and history, making it the ghost-writer of their reputation. That subtly shifts PR from persuasion to orchestration, where the machine becomes the curator of a brand’s ongoing myth. – Cade Collister, Metova

13. Democratizes Access To Information

AI has democratized access to information needed for sentiment and trends analysis, share of voice monitoring and rapid generation of first drafts. Ironically, this is making it harder for PR agencies and teams to “earn” attention for their companies. It’s no longer enough to be newsworthy, relevant and impactful to stand out. Stories have to be unique to break through the increased media noise. – Rekha Thomas, Path Forward Marketing

14. Lets Teams Stay Ahead Of Reputation Issues

A major advantage of using AI in public relations is staying ahead of reputation issues. With constant sentiment tracking, AI picks up on both positive and negative trends early on. This gives PR teams a head start to respond quickly, handle potential problems before they grow and shape public perception more effectively. – Lauren Parr, RepuGen

15. Highlights A Need To Ensure AI Governance

As AI transforms every layer of corporate communications from real-time sentiment detection to content creation and audience targeting, it becomes both a brand and reputation risk hiding in plain sight without strong governance. Boards must treat AI as both an asset and a risk, and ensure an effective AI governance framework and review process is in place for the enterprise and brands. – Toby Wong, Toby Wong Consulting

16. Drives Anticipatory Storytelling

AI co-pilots now sweep crypto-social channels, threat feeds and code repositories every few seconds to spot breach chatter or hostile narratives long before they trend. They triage alerts, draft factual posts and model sentiment curves so communications teams can choose the perfect moment, medium and tone, resulting in a shift from frantic damage control to data-driven, anticipatory storytelling. – Jamie Elkaleh, Bitget Wallet

17. Streamlines Real-Time Sentiment And Trend Tracking

AI is changing PR by making it easier to track what people are saying in real time. My team uses tools that flag sentiment shifts or trends before they blow up—super helpful for staying ahead. But what really makes the difference is the person managing the tool, making smart judgment calls and keeping me in the loop. Tech helps, but people drive the strategy. – Luciana Cemerka, TP

Feature Image Credit: Antoni Shkraba Studio

Sourced from Forbes

Sourced from The Drum

From digital twins to virtual influencers, here’s how brands are testing synthetic media and where the ethical lines are being drawn in the era of AI-generated talent.

Virtual presenters, AI-generated spokespeople, hyper-realistic avatars that never break script. It sounds like science fiction, but in 2025, synthetic media has officially entered the marketing mainstream.

Feature Image Credit: Fernand De Canne on Unsplash

Sourced from The Drum

By Christianna Silva

YouTube sparked a digital revolution, but what comes next in an age dominated by AI and short-form content?

Did you go to the zoo 20 years ago? Over 364 million people did.

On April 23, 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim stood in front of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo, recorded some light commentary, and posted it to YouTube. It was the first ever video uploaded to the platform. Originally conceived as a dating site, YouTube instead ushered in a new digital world: one of abundant content, influencers and creators, algorithmic obsession, the viral spread of disinformation, and a society increasingly shaped by metrics — likes, shares, and views.

Its impact is so vast that it’s difficult to measure. Last year alone, the video-sharing platform brought in $36.15 billion in ad revenue, according to Variety. At VidCon 2025, YouTube’s VP of Creator Products, Amjad Hanif, shared that roughly 20 million videos are uploaded to the platform every day.

YouTube wasn’t the first social media site. Platforms like GeoCities, Classmates.com, SixDegrees.com, Friendster, and MySpace all predate it. But those sites functioned like static digital places for users to present personal information or to find people they already knew in real life. There was no algorithm, and certainly no “content” in the way we understand it today. YouTube, in its early days, was similar. Yet somehow it not only endured but flourished, shifted the fabric of our communication, and democratized the ability for documentary filmmakers, comedians, and artists to make their work. What was once a place designed for dating has become a mass of monetization and the home of the $250 billion creator economy.

How did we get here? And, 20 years later, what comes next?

The first creator economy

YouTube didn’t just host videos; it created the first true creator economy, giving rise to a generation of influencers who could actually make a living from their work. Yes, people were making videos before YouTube, but traditional media had high walls. Hollywood gatekeepers controlled who got to be seen, heard, and paid. YouTube blew that model wide open.

“The reason YouTube has outlasted almost every other platform, or stayed the distance, is that when it comes to longform video, it’s very simple — it’s not just a content platform, it’s a creator economy backbone,” Matt Navarra, a social media expert, told Mashable. “While other platforms were following trends, YouTube built infrastructure.”

Google acquired YouTube in 2006, and, once YouTube became part of the largest and most powerful search engine in the world, it had a pretty spectacular amount of resources, traffic, and money at its disposal — and it gave some of those resources, traffic, and money to its users.

In 2007, YouTube launched the YouTube Partner Program, introducing creator pay outs, which Mark Bergen, a journalist and author of Like, Comment, Subscribe: How YouTube Drives Google’s Dominance and Controls Our Culture, argues effectively invented the idea of the content creator as a profession. Users began relying on the platform to make an income, and that financial incentive made creators loyal; few were eager to abandon a platform that paid them, especially when rivals couldn’t offer the same. More than that, new creators began flooding the YouTube system, hoping to experience the same freedom and fame available to them only on the platform.

But long before the pay checks and polished production came the passion. Early creators like John and Hank Green weren’t chasing clout or a pay check — because neither really existed yet. “When we started, there was no way to make money and there was also no status tied to it,” Hank Green later recalled during VidCon 2025’s “YouTube Legends” panel. That was part of the appeal. “Nobody [was] getting paid well, but everybody’s together, loving it, and community, it turns out, is more important for happiness than money. I miss those days when I was making $20,000 a year with a bunch of nerds who didn’t expect that it would ever become a cultural force or phenomenon,” he said. “But I’m also very happy that there is an opportunity for really talented people who would never be able to have creative careers, to have those careers now.”

YouTube has “figured out the creator economy and has had a lock on that for nearly 20 years. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, everyone’s tried and failed to come anywhere close to that,” Bergen told Mashable. He said none of the other platforms “have built out just this size and scale of an actual digital economy and a workforce.”

Navarra pointed out that the early YouTubers — creators like John and Hank Green, Rhett & Link, Grace Helbig, and Tyler Oakley, many of whom were inducted into the inaugural VidCon Hall of Fame this year — didn’t only create content, but they built empires, aided by YouTube’s global reach and monetization tools. Navarra said it set the “gold standard” for creator sustainability.

 Videos don’t just trend, they rank — and that’s a superpower that no one else has quite matched in the same way.

A big part of this success is due to discoverability, which didn’t happen independently.

“That’s a major reason why you have all these incentives for people to keep posting, to keep upping the production value, to keep trying to become an influencer and creator, because you can make a living or aspire to make a living. And you can’t discount the fact that it’s been part of Google,” Bergen said.

That integration gave YouTube a unique edge. As Navarra put it, “Videos don’t just trend, they rank — and that’s a superpower that no one else has quite matched in the same way.”

Of course, being the first had its drawbacks. YouTube had to confront the growing pains of content creation before anyone else, especially when it came to moderation. Its policies evolved over time, and other platforms often followed its lead, though not without controversy.

“YouTube has been the canary in the coal mine for content moderation at scale because it faced existential threats earlier than most platforms,” Navarra said. And it’s true. In the early days, YouTube focused on removing videos that violated its guidelines related to nudity, graphic violence, and hate speech. But as the platform matured, so did its approach. It had to make room for content with educational, documentary, or artistic value, and later, make calls on videos in the public interest, like campaign content from electoral candidates that violated its own policies.

“YouTube has become one of the most brand-safe video or social platforms, which is why advertisers still spend big there despite their size and complexity,” Navarra said, adding that while they “haven’t been without their failures,” they have still fared “better than most platforms across the longer time frame.”

What’s next? Short-form vs. long-form, AI, and TV

YouTube was a pioneer in online video, but it seemed caught off guard when TikTok made short-form vertical video the dominant format. TikTok entered the U.S. market in 2018, prompting YouTube to respond with Shorts in 2019. Instagram quickly followed with Reels in 2020.

YouTube Shorts now averages over 200 billion daily views, Hanif said during a YouTube Keynote at VidCon 2025, intended to celebrate its 20th anniversary. That’s a huge number, but it isn’t necessarily representative culturally. It’s more of a “functional tool that hasn’t found its soul or character or purpose as much as other platforms have in terms of short-form video,” Navarra said.

“It works on paper: the views are huge, the monetization has improved, but culturally, TikTok owns the vibe. The issue is more perception… YouTube’s DNA is in storytelling and depth… If YouTube can crack cultural relevance with Shorts and not just scale, then it becomes fairly unbeatable,” Navarra said.

And while plenty of people watch YouTube Shorts, viewers are leaning more towards long-form video on YouTube — and they’re watching it on their TVs.

“More and more when people say they’re watching TV, they’re watching YouTube,” Hanif said at VidCon.

Gwen Miller, the senior director of growth at Mythical Entertainment, noted during a VidCon panel that this trend bodes well for creators. Longer watch times on TVs mean viewers are more likely to sit through ads, which leads to greater earnings for creators.

Content isn’t the only thing changing on YouTube, and AI is quickly becoming a driving force behind where the platform is headed next.

“In terms of AI and YouTube’s future, if you look where YouTube is heading, AI is central,” Navarra said. “It’s not a gimmick but as a growth engine. The platform’s big advantage isn’t just the size and age, it’s the way it quietly builds the most advanced tools for creators anywhere else on the internet.”

And YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced last week at the Cannes Lions 2025 Festival of Creativity that Veo 3, the latest model of Google DeepMind’s video generation model, which allows you to create AI-generated backgrounds and video clips, is coming to YouTube Shorts later this summer.

Autodubbing, an AI tool that allows creators to dub their videos in other languages, is currently available in nine languages and will soon be available in 20 languages, Hanif said. Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s global director of culture and trends, said at VidCon that 52 percent of 14 to 24-year-olds in the U.S. have watched content or creators that have been translated from another language. For instance, MrBeast dubs his videos in 16 different languages, including Japanese, French, Hindi, and Spanish, which have garnered him massive followings internationally.

The idea that AI is central to the future of creation isn’t something YouTube is alone in predicting. In 2023, Ollie Forsyth, the founder of New Economies, found that 33 percent of creators used AI. That number has jumped to 80 percent in 2025, in large part due to the importance of language dubbing. During Forsyth’s talk “Mapping the Modern Creator Economy: Trends, Tensions, and What Comes Next” at VidCon this year, he argued that every creator is going to have to be AI-focused because AI agents will be able to allow creators to be truly flexible and more efficient. It’ll help them free up the time they spend on admin, finances, brand partnerships, marketing, and more as startups use AI to solve these problems.

If history is any indication of the future, it might be more helpful to look at this from a different perspective — it isn’t necessarily guessing what the future of YouTube will look like, but more knowing that whatever future is chosen will be mirrored across every other social media platform.

 By Christianna Silva

Christianna Silva is a senior culture reporter covering social platforms and the creator economy, with a focus on the intersection of social media, politics, and the economic systems that govern us. Since joining Mashable in 2021, they have reported extensively on meme creators, content moderation, and the nature of online creation under capitalism.

Before joining Mashable, they worked as an editor at NPR and MTV News, a reporter at Teen Vogue and VICE News, and as a stablehand at a mini-horse farm. You can follow her on Bluesky @christiannaj.bsky.social and Instagram @christianna_j.

Sourced from Mashable

By Khamosh Pathak

AI audio podcasts, right in Google Search.

For Google, AI-generated podcasts are turning into quite a key feature. You can now generate a two-person AI podcast from a Deep Research report, or get a Daily Listen podcast that’s generated from your Discover feed. Now, Google is planning to expand this feature to Google Search as well.

Available as an experimental feature from Google Labs, this new option will help generate a short, 5-minute AI podcast based on your Google Search results.

How to turn on Audio Overviews in Google Search

Credit: Jake Peterson

To access the new feature, head over to your Google Labs page using this link and find the Audio Overviews section. There, you can either enable this feature or join a waitlist, depending on where you’re located. Unfortunately, while this is a global rollout, it’s not happening all at once, as is the case with many new Google AI features.

How Audio Overviews in Google Search work

This new search feature is lifted almost straight from Gemini, which itself got it from NotebookLM. Called Audio Overviews, the original incarnation of this feature let you generate a 10-minute AI podcast episode on any topic, although the new version has a few additional limitations.

When the feature is enabled in Google Search, you’ll see a little prompt to “Generate Audio Overview” while you scroll through compatible search results. Which results are compatible is a bit vague at this point—that’s one of the limitations. You won’t see it for simple questions like “what are some nearby cafés?” but it also won’t work for overly complex topics, like researching investment trends across Asia (where you might be better off using Deep Research tools).

Instead, Audio Overviews will kick in for queries that are somewhere in the middle. Let’s say you want a quick refresher on a Lord of the Rings character, or to know which Japanese knives to get started with when upgrading your kitchen. Just make an appropriate Google search, click the Generate Audio Overview button, and search will kick into Gemini mode. After a wait of about 30-40 seconds, which is considerably less than Gemini’s 2–5 minute wait time, you’ll see your audio overview. It will be about five minutes, tops, so you’ll get less detail than Gemini would give you, but it might be enough for a bird’s-eye view on whatever you’re searching for.

The audio player for your AI podcast will stay put as you browse the results page, and it will show links to its sources as well. And if it’s gotten something really wrong, you can give it a Thumbs Down. As is the case with any AI tool, it’s important to point out that these are based on Large Language Models, which can sometimes hallucinate. So make sure to check the sources that the Audio Overviews feature provides you before repeating what it says elsewhere.

Feature Image Credit: Google

By Khamosh Pathak

Khamosh Pathak is freelancer tech journalist with over 13 years of experience writing online. Read Full Bio

Sourced from LifeHacker

By Steven Wolfe Pereira

Marc Andreessen’s 2011 prediction that “software is eating the world” has proven prophetic, but nowhere has the transformation been more complete than in marketing.

At this year’s Cannes Lions — advertising’s equivalent of the Oscars — the technology takeover that’s been building for years is now complete.

Walking down the Croisette, the traditional advertising agencies that once dominated have been replaced by tech giants: Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, Pinterest, Reddit, Spotify and Salesforce now command the iconic boulevard. But this shift represents just the beginning of a far more fundamental transformation.

We’re witnessing the death of marketing as we know it, replaced by an AI-driven paradigm that’s rewriting every rule in the playbook.

IDC predicts that by 2028, three out of five marketing functions will be handled by AI workers, while businesses will spend up to three times more on optimizing for AI systems than traditional search engines by 2029. This isn’t a gradual evolution but rather a complete reimagining of how brands and their marketing teams will connect with customers.

The Demise of the Search Paradigm

For two decades, search engine optimization anchored digital strategy. Companies invested billions in the $90 billion SEO industry, obsessing over Google rankings and keyword strategies. That playbook is becoming obsolete.

Search is rapidly migrating from traditional browsers to AI platforms. Apple’s integration of AI-powered tools like Perplexity directly into Safari represents just the beginning of Google’s declining monopoly on discovery. What’s emerging is what venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz calls generative engine optimization — optimizing for AI-driven answers instead of clickable links.

As AI use soars and companies shift from SEO to GEO, the implications are staggering. Instead of ranking high on search results pages, brands now need to be featured directly in AI responses. Traditional SEO tactics become worthless when AI models synthesize answers from multiple sources while maintaining context across conversations.

“How you’re encoded into the AI layer is the new competitive advantage,” explains Zach Cohen from a16z. Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch recently noted that ChatGPT was already referring 10% of his company’s new customers simply by mentioning it in AI responses. This organic referral power represents a glimpse of AI’s customer acquisition potential.

Success metrics are fundamentally changing. Page views matter less than “reference rates” — how often AI systems cite your brand when answering customer queries. Companies are already deploying specialized tools to track AI mentions and optimize content accordingly such as Brandrank.ai, Peec.ai and Quni.ai.

The Rise of AI-to-AI Commerce

The next wave is even more disruptive: autonomous AI agents that act on behalf of both consumers and businesses. Every major tech company is focused on bringing agents to life — from global giants like Google, Microsoft and Salesforce and frontier models like Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI to AI-native startups like Glean, Sierra and Writer. They are racing to deploy agents that can make decisions, execute transactions and interact with other agents with minimal human oversight.

A recent PwC survey reveals 35% of companies are broadly adopting AI agents, with another 17% implementing them across nearly all workflows. While still early days, this isn’t experimental technology — it’s becoming operational reality.

Consider the customer journey transformation: Your customer’s personal AI assistant might research products, negotiate prices and complete purchases without the customer ever visiting your website. Meanwhile, your company’s AI agent handles inquiries, provides recommendations and closes deals 24/7. The entire transaction could happen between two AI systems.

“Previously, marketers would target campaigns directly at customers, but now the shortlisting and decisions are made by the AI,” notes a recent IDC report. This represents a fundamental shift in where influence occurs — companies must now market to algorithms as much as humans.

The speed of this transition is remarkable. What took decades with previous technology shifts is happening in months with AI. Companies that don’t adapt risk becoming invisible in an AI-mediated marketplace.

The Convergence of Marketing, Sales and Customer Service

AI agents are erasing traditional boundaries between marketing, sales and customer service. When a customer’s AI communicates with your company’s AI, it doesn’t matter whether the inquiry is about product features, pricing or technical support — it’s all one continuous conversation.

This convergence creates unprecedented opportunities for customer experience optimization. A well-designed AI agent can greet customers by name, recall purchase history, answer technical questions, process returns and suggest upgrades within a single interaction. The result is more efficient operations and significantly improved customer satisfaction.

However, it also demands organizational restructuring. Companies can no longer operate with siloed departments when AI systems need unified customer data and consistent messaging across all touchpoints. Early adopters are already reorganizing around integrated AI platforms rather than functional divisions.

The Workforce Reality

The employment implications are substantial and immediate. A 2024 industry survey found 78% of marketers expect at least a quarter of their tasks to be automated within three years, with over one-third anticipating more than half their work becoming AI-automated.

Meta’s public roadmap discusses fully automating advertising campaigns, where humans only set budgets and high-level objectives. Google, Amazon and Microsoft are developing systems that handle targeting, creative generation and optimization without human intervention.

But this disruption creates new opportunities for professionals who adapt. As AI handles routine tasks, human expertise shifts toward strategy, creativity, ethics and managing hybrid human-AI teams. Tomorrow’s marketing leaders will be part creative director, part technologist, part data scientist — orchestrating AI systems rather than managing manual processes.

What Assets Matter Now

In this AI-driven landscape, two assets become disproportionately valuable: brand strength and first-party data.

Strong brands gain significant advantages in AI-mediated interactions. When AI systems trained on billions of data points make recommendations, they naturally favour well-known, trusted brands. This creates a compounding effect where established brands become even more prominent in AI responses.

First-party customer data becomes the fuel for competitive AI systems. Companies with rich, consent-based customer information can train more sophisticated AI agents that deliver superior personalized experiences. In an era of privacy regulations and disappearing third-party cookies, this data represents a crucial competitive moat.

The Strategic Imperative

AI is growing exponentially, like a snowball gaining size and speed. In tasks like language and image generation, performance is doubling roughly every six months, driven by massive computing power, huge datasets and smarter algorithms. Companies that wait for certainty will find themselves permanently behind.

The strategic response requires three parallel efforts:

1. Experimenting with AI tools and agents
2. Retraining teams for hybrid human-AI collaboration
3. Rebuilding systems around unified customer data and experiences

Most importantly, leaders must recognize this isn’t about adopting new tools. It’s about reimagining customer relationships in an AI-mediated world. The companies that thrive will be those that ensure their AI agents deliver genuine value, maintain trust and enhance rather than replace human connection.

We’re entering a world where billions of people will have trillions of AI agents. The question isn’t whether AI will transform customer engagement — it’s whether your company will lead or follow in that transformation. The rules of marketing are being rewritten by AI. The winners will be those who write the new playbook.

Feature Image Credit: NurPhoto via Getty Images

By Steven Wolfe Pereira

Find Steven Wolfe Pereira on LinkedIn and X.

Sourced from Forbes

By Emmy Liederman

Key stat: US brands will spend $13.7 billion on influencer marketing by 2027, up from $10.5 billion this year, according to a March EMARKETER forecast.

Beyond the chart:

• 54.7% of US brand marketers and agencies say proven higher ROI compared with other channels would be the top factor that would warrant an increased creator marketing budget, per a February survey by EMARKETER and Spotter.
• Marketers use influencer marketing to support business goals throughout the funnel, including brand awareness (66%) and revenue growth (55%), per a January Sprout Social survey.

Use this chart: Marketers can use this chart to justify bigger budgets for influencer partnerships and tools, while holding firm on high measurement standards that prove their ROI.

Note: An influencer is an individual who can sway the brand preferences, buying decisions, and loyalty of a broader population, regardless of follower count. Creators are people or entities that develop original content primarily for digital properties with the purpose of building and monetizing their audience. Examples include celebrities, public figures, YouTube/Instagram/TikTok creators, and subject matter thought leaders/experts

Methodology: Estimates are based on the analysis of survey and tracking data from various research firms and industry-specific adoption trends of digital marketing tools.

By Emmy Liederman

Sourced from EMARKETER

By Angus Whitley

Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s moved closer to implementation after a key trial found that checking a user’s age is technologically possible and can be integrated into existing services.

The conclusions are a blow to Facebook-owner Meta Platforms Inc., TikTok and Snap Inc., which opposed the controversial legislation. Some platform operators had questioned whether a user’s age could be reliably established using current technology.

The results of the government-backed trial clear the way for the law to come into force by the end of the year. The findings also potentially allow other jurisdictions to follow Australia’s lead as countries around the world grapple with ways to protect children from harmful content online.

“Age assurance can be done in Australia and can be private, robust and effective,” the government-commissioned Age Assurance Technology Trial said in a statement Friday announcing its preliminary findings.

The trial’s project director, Tony Allen, said there were “no significant technological barriers” to stopping under-16s gaining social media accounts. “These solutions are technically feasible, can be integrated flexibly into existing services and can support the safety and rights of children online,” he said.

Under the new law, digital platforms including Snapchat, Meta-owned Instagram, and X will be responsible for enforcing the age limit, with penalties of as much as A$50 million ($32 million) for breaches.

The trial tested a range of methods and technologies, including facial scans, inferring a user’s age based on their behaviour, age verification, as well as parental controls. The tests also took into account the ways teenagers might try to circumvent age checks.

“We found a plethora of approaches that fit different use cases in different ways, but we didn’t find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases,” the trial said in its statement.

More than 50 companies participated in the trial, while Apple Inc. and Google, developers of the most popular mobile-phone operating systems, are also contributing, Allen said on a video conference call on Friday.

The trial didn’t assess public acceptance for any particular technology or the costs involved. The accuracy of the different methods, for example the margin of error for facial analysis, wasn’t made available.

By Angus Whitley

Sourced from Bloomberg

By Gizmodo Deals

Tired of ads and don’t want to subscribe to YouTube Premium? Here’s a foolproof way to never see a single ad again.

Without YouTube Premium, you’re doomed to watch ads every few minutes, sometimes more often. If you’re exhausted by head-spinning ads, consider purchasing a YouTube Premium subscription. Sensible, right?

Well, not for everyone.

YouTube Premium’s recent price increases made it unaffordable for many. People online have found a simpler way to block YouTube ads. You wouldn’t believe it, but these two VPNs make YouTube ads vanish in seconds!

Ditch YouTube Ads With These VPNs

NordVPN and Surfshark are renowned for their reliability. They provide exceptional privacy, streaming prowess, and compatibility with all devices.

While both VPNs include ad blockers, they’ve become ineffective in blocking YouTube ads. Well, that’s what most people thought.

Namely, when you use NordVPN or Surfshark and connect to a server in Albania, YouTube ads suddenly disappear. Having tested the trick, we realised it’s true. You may be wondering how this works.

Avoid YouTube Ads With NordVPN

As many people there have reported, YouTube doesn’t display ads in Albania. Simultaneously, NordVPN and Surfshark work like all other VPNs. They allow you to connect to a remote server and use its IP address.

Given these VPNs’ strong presence in Albania, connecting to an associated server is a breeze. With the Albanian IP address, users can overcome YouTube ads and enjoy an experience similar to what YouTube Premium provides.

Things like adding videos to the queue and playing videos with the screen off aren’t there. At least, you won’t notice any ads, allowing for uninterrupted entertainment on all devices.

Other Reasons to Use a VPN

While YouTube is a big part of our lives, splurging on a VPN gives you much more. Watching YouTube without ads is just a speck in the universe of possibilities. One of them is very popular, and it’s bypassing geo-blocks.

NordVPN and Surfshark are particularly effective at streaming and unblocking many websites. They offer over 100 locations globally, with modern 10 Gbps servers and fast protocols to enable industry-leading speeds.

Many people latch onto torrenting as a perk. Both VPNs are equipped with optimised servers for P2P. In addition, they provide MultiHop (Double VPN) capabilities for double the encryption and more security and privacy.

All-around VPNs like these are fantastic for gaming, and you can even enable them on public WiFi networks for added protection. If you’re an avid traveller, more privacy and ad-free YouTube enjoyment sounds exciting.

No bandwidth limits mean endless possibilities, but more importantly, you don’t need wealth to get them. NordVPN and Surfshark cost pennies these days, so you don’t have to ditch your summer vacation for their subscriptions.

By Gizmodo Deals

Sourced from GIZMODO

By Kate O’Flaherty,

“No ads, no games, no gimmicks.” This was the ethos of WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum. Yet 11 years after its acquisition by Meta, WhatsApp is finally doing what it said it’d never do — adverts inside the app.

The new move by WhatsApp’s owner Meta has been criticised by NOYB – European Centre for Digital Rights, a non-profit organization based in Vienna.

“This further integrates WhatsApp into other Meta services — an originally independent app, which initially was available for just $1 per year without ads or data usage,” the organization said.

WhatsApp has already been under fire for its blue circle AI, something users did not want or ask for.

So what’s going on with ads in WhatsApp, what does it mean for your privacy and should you switch to Signal instead?

I Thought WhatsApp Promised No Ads?

WhatsApp did promise no ads, but the Meta-owned app offers its services for free, which is why it has decided to start showing some limited advertising in certain sections.

And the ads in WhatsApp won’t appear in your messages or chats. Instead of appearing in the Chats tab, they will appear in a section at the bottom of the messaging app in a new section called “Updates.”

Businesses can promote ads in this space in a bid to gain followers for their channels or subscriber content. They can also advertise via a status update that looks similar to an Instagram story, according to the BBC.

WhatsApp Owner Meta Speaks Out

WhatsApp owner Meta has been advertising the privacy credentials of its messaging platform, and it reiterates this on a page explaining its ads decision. Using Meta ad preferences to show ads on WhatsApp is completely optional and off by default, it says. If users don’t add their WhatsApp account to Account Centre, Meta is using limited information to show ads on the Updates tab.

That includes info like your country or city, language, the Channels you’re following, and how you interact with the ads you see — which all comes from WhatsApp.

However, if you link your WhatsApp account to facebook or Instagram, the ads are personalized using your data.

WhatsApp owner Meta says it doesn’t use the content of your personal messages, calls, and status, location shared in chats, your device contacts or your membership in groups with friends and family to show you ads. It does not sell or share your phone number with advertisers.

Meanwhile, it stresses that it does not keep logs of who everyone is messaging, and your personal messages, calls and status remain end-to-end encrypted, the gold standard of security that ensures no one can see your messages, including WhatsApp.

WhatsApp says it has “no plans” to put ads in people’s personal chats.

What Do WhatsApp Ads Mean For Privacy?

Meta is not known for its privacy credentials. After all, it runs Facebook, which is free but involves you sharing a lot of data.

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product,” says Alan Jones, CEO, YEO Messaging, which is a competitor of WhatsApp. He says the new WhatsApp advertising model will “use behaviour, language, location and channel-following data to deliver targeted ads.”

Meta claims personal chats will remain ad-free, but that’s a “red herring,” Jones says. “The real value lies in the metadata — what users read, follow, or click.”

Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, says WhatsApp’s new move looks fine on the surface, but users should be cautious all the same. “The ads look set to be neatly confined and encrypted chats will stay untouched, plus user experience looks set to remain unaffected for most.”

However, he questions: “How exactly will the limited data targeting look like in practice? “And could we see gradual expansion of those data sources?” Moore asks. “We know that micro targeted advertising is where the money really is.”

With this in mind, Moore advises WhatsApp users to “keep an eye on consent settings and as they change or update in the future.”

While WhatsApp claims the new ads will be minimal and focused on just one tab, it raises several privacy concerns, according to ad blocking app AdGuard. “Specifically, the potential for increased data collection and tracking, combined with the lack of any opt-out option, could significantly impact user privacy.”

While WhatsApp assures users that it won’t target ads based on private messages, calls, or group activity, if you’ve integrated WhatsApp with Meta’s Accounts Centre (e.g., by linking it to Facebook or Instagram), the company can use your ad preferences and behaviour across its entire ecosystem to deliver more targeted ads, Adguard warns.

WhatsApp Ads — Should You Switch To Signal?

Meta’s move to add ads in WhatsApp is certainly a concern for privacy-conscious users, mainly because of the precedent it could set for the future. WhatsApp says it won’t ever use your chats for adverts, but remember, it is owned by a firm whose business model is based on advertising.

Privacy-focused messaging app Signal is a viable alternative — it is also end-to-end encrypted, just not owned by Meta. However, it doesn’t have WhatsApp’s 1.5 billion user share.

I use Signal as much as possible, but many of my contacts aren’t signed up. If you’re in a similar position, then for now, it might make sense to use it for your most private chats and for general messaging, stick to WhatsApp.

Feature Image Credit: dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

By Kate O’Flaherty,

Cybersecurity and privacy journalist. Find Kate O’Flaherty on LinkedIn and X.

Sourced from Forbes

By David Crowther

WPP’s CEO is stepping down as artificial intelligence threatens some of the core functions of the agency model.

The world of advertising feels like one that we all know intimately, with each of us faced with an almost overwhelming bombardment of logos, promos, and ads every single day.

But how many advertising firms can you actually name? If the answer is “not many,” you’re not alone.

That’s because there are thousands of advertising agencies, each bursting with creative individuals looking to nudge our collective consciousness to be a little bit more sympathetic to the brands they’re tasked with representing on billboards, screens, and in print. Many of those agencies are owned by one of six major players that dominate the landscape — each one is having a tough 2025.

The “big six,” the parent companies of dozens of smaller outlets, have all seen shares drop this year, but the largest — UK-based WPP — is hurting the most, with CEO Mark Read announcing his departure this morning, as the company’s stock has slumped by more than one-third so far this year.

Winter is coming

In the competitive world of advertising, industry execs are comfortable campaigning against each other for mandates to run all things advertising for major brands like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Nike. With the advent and popularization of AI, however, a new threat has emerged.

Just last week, Meta rocked the big six after The Wall Street Journal reported that the social media giant was planning to launch tools that would completely automate ad creation and targeting. That could mean the same product being shown in completely different settings to different users. For instance, an ad for a watch might show one user the timepiece on the wrist of a climber ascending to great heights, while someone else might see the same model on someone stepping out of a beautiful car, at a concert, playing a sport, or reading a newsletter on their phone.

With many other parts of the agency-brand relationship, like project management and media planning, already susceptible to AI tools, the creative part of the job was perhaps seen as one aspect that might be harder to replace. I’m not sure I’m ready for the ads on my Instagram to get any worse, but here we are.

Feature Image Credit: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

By David Crowther

Sourced from Sherwood