There’s something off about the concept to me as a creative.
I would assume that in 2025, most creatives should already have some kind of professional online presence established by now, whether it’s a basic LinkedIn profile, branded social media accounts, or a digital portfolio website.
But website builders are getting much craftier lately, and Wix has just announced an advanced new AI-powered adaptive content feature, which is intended to personalise the web experience for any visitors coming across your site. Is anyone else a bit freaked out by that concept?
If you’ve ever made or designed your own website using one of the best website builders, you’ll know that it can take a lot of work (and sometimes even coding) to perfectly tailor every asset, page, link, blog post, and media for your site to look and perform as you want it to.
Wix’s new feature, however, has the power toadapt your website in real-time to offer unique messaging and content that has been tailored to each individual site visitor based on their characteristics – which I think is both incredibly cool and a little creepy.
Wix says that its new AI-powered adaptive content application can be used to ensure a seamless visitor experience, without performance issues like increased load times getting in the way. I guess in this case it does make sense to optimise a website for whoever is looking at it, but something about having this kind of AI in the driver’s seat just seems off to me. It’s not necessarily the AI I have an issue with, but more the thought of every individual coming to a website seeing something different.
As a photographer, I use my Squarespace portfolio site (one of the best website builders for photographers) to share my work, get my name out there, and offer a way for anyone to contact me about potential opportunities. I know that if I were looking to hire a photographer or graphic designer to help me with a project, then I’d be hoping for a website with a lot of authenticity and not one showing me exactly what I want to see or trying to sell me something based on AI-gathered data.
(Image credit: Wix)
According to Muly Gelman, Senior Product Manager at Wix Personalise “Website personalisation is now essential for delivering the relevant, engaging experiences today’s consumers expect. This application highlights how we can move beyond using AI to generate website content but leverage AI to dynamically adapt and personalise the live website experience for each visitor in real-time, empowering businesses to connect more effectively with their customers.”
Maybe it’s because I’m thinking of this application more from the perspective of a creative individual as opposed to a larger corporation or business, but either way, I’m not quite sold on this feature. Perhaps it could be great for creative agencies, for example, if it showed people the most relevant work to their location or displayed the correct currency for their region.
Wix seems to be expanding more with AI-infused assets, including Astro, its latest all-in-one site and business management tool. For current Wix users, you can access this new adaptive content feature right now through Wix Editor and Wix Studio, or by searching for “adaptive” in the App Market.
Beth is Creative Bloq’s Ecommerce Writer and has the fun job of finding you the very best prices and deals on creative tech. Beth kicked off her journalistic career writing for Digital Camera World, and has since earned bylines on TechRadar too. With a Masters degree in Photography, Beth loves getting to tinker with new cameras, especially camera phones, as the resident Samsung fan on the team. Her background working as a tester for CeX let her play around with all kinds of weird and wonderful products, including robots, and she’s recently gotten into 3D printing too. Outside of CB, you’ll find her gaming on her PS5, photographing local shows under the alias Bethshootsbands, and making TikToks of her dog, Tilly. 21
Social media platforms once thrived on their ability to connect people, allow users to follow friends, family and creators, and nurture real-time conversations.
However, in recent years, the shift to algorithm-based feeds has drastically changed how users interact with content online. Platforms such as Instagram and TikTok now prioritize promoting popular or sponsored content over posts from the people users intentionally chose to follow, altering the “social” essence of these networks.
This strategic pivot, driven by the quest for engagement and advertising dollars, has started to backfire. With curated feeds limiting organic exposure and authentic interactions, users increasingly feel disconnected. Social Insider analysed 125 million social media posts from 2023 to 2024 to understand the future of social media and audience interactions, and found engagement rates by post were down YOY on TikTok from 2.65% to 2.5% and on Instagram from 0.70% to 0.50%.
A recent national consumer study conducted by our company, where we surveyed nearly 2,000 U.S. consumers, found that a significant 74% of adults believe social media is no longer “social.” Similarly, half of Gen Z and Millennials, two of the most active demographics on these platforms, are now turning to alternative online spaces to foster genuine connections.
Advertisers, once eager to tap into social media’s expansive reach, are also feeling the pinch. Returns on social ads have declined, partly due to algorithmic content posing challenges in directly targeting and engaging the right audiences. In February 2025, Admetrics reported that Meta properties had a 47.86% share of online ad spend, despite an increase of 3.38% in CPM and a decrease in conversion rates of 4.92%, indicating marketers were overly relying on the platform.
The overemphasis on short-form, trend-driven and sponsored posts has led to diminishing authenticity, which brands and users alike thrive on.
Amid this upheaval, platforms such as Discord, Quora, Reddit and others are carving out a unique position in the digital space. By eschewing traditional social media algorithms, these platforms emphasize niche communities, personalized content and creator-driven engagement. (Our own creator platform also falls into this bucket.)
Discord exemplifies this shift toward more intimate, community-driven digital interaction. In its early days, the platform gained popularity with gamers, but it has since evolved into a space for diverse interest groups, ranging from education and productivity to hobbies and fandoms. The platform prioritizes meaningful engagement among members of a shared interest in a movement toward more personal and organic digital interactions that encourage loyalty and deeper connections.
Quora addresses social community by fostering a platform dedicated to knowledge sharing, allowing users to ask questions and receive answers from experts, enthusiasts or individuals with first-hand experience on a wide variety of topics. This structure helps build a sense of community around shared interests and curiosity.
Reddit communities, known as subreddits, are dedicated to specific topics, hobbies or interests, enabling users to connect with like-minded individuals on an array of subjects. With an upvote and downvote system, Reddit prioritizes content deemed valuable or relevant by its community, fostering active participation and discussions.
Duolingo, a language learning platform that uses a gamified approach to help users learn and practice a language, offers a variety of courses and creates community by sharing progress and team challenges with people the users know.
Next-doorconnects over 200,000 neighborhoods, sharing local updates, buying and selling items, and finding services local to its weekly active users. The platform’s user base is comprised of a mix of age groups, and the app includes advertising and sponsorship opportunities, allowing advertisers to target down to specific communities.
Our app, LTK, is a creator-recommended community where consumers can follow and discover creators and friends near them and around the world, putting the users back in control of their feed.
The migration by consumers to more intentional, community-focused platforms signals a deeper shift in how users value their time online and their desire for platforms to prioritize authentic interactions over scrolling strangers.
Social media’s transformation may have distanced some of the largest social properties from their foundational promise, but emerging alternatives are reshaping the digital landscape, offering more meaningful online community experiences.
Marketers, like the consumers disillusioned with the diminishing social aspects of traditional social media, can connect with consumers in social communities like the ones mentioned in this article.
By supporting these communities, brands can not only increase awareness with coveted audiences but also support and build highly engaged communities during an important transformational moment for consumers. This should go a long way in building loyalty you won’t find in a typical social media paid sponsorship.
Rodney Mason is Head of Marketing Brand Partnerships at LTK with extensive creator, marketing and research experience for leading brands. Read Rodney Mason’s full executive profile here.
Dearbhla Boyle, strategy director and company director at Big&Bold, explores how the ad world can thrive with machine-led collaboration, and whether it’s time to retire the Don Draper model of advertising.
at can I help with? That default prompt of AI assistants is reassuring to many… but perhaps not for those working in advertising.
For decades, the archetypal ad man (typified by Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men) embodied creativity through instinct, cultural insight and human persuasion. Today, though, that image is evolving—or rather, dissolving—as creative processes become increasingly dictated by data-led, decision making algorithms.
Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), often called the “father of media”, once suggested that the way we communicate fundamentally shapes our human experience more than the content itself. The shift from print to TV, from analogue to digital, not only changed what we consumed but it rewired how we think, act and show up in the world. AI is now the next great medium in this lineage.
If we apply McLuhan’s logic to AI specifically, his comment that “we shape tools and thereafter, our tools shape us” is unsettling. In this light, AI is not just another creative instrument, but is restructuring the entire architecture of advertising itself.
In other words, it’s not just automating processes, it’s dictating them. It’s not just generating ads, it’s deciding what’s worth advertising. It’s not assisting human creativity, it’s redirecting it.
This shift marks a radical departure from the Mad Men era, where human intuition, gut instinct and storytelling drove brand identity. Now algorithms are determining what’s relevant, prioritising efficiency and data, whilst completely absent of any emotional resonance.
This raises fundamental questions about the future of creativity. If AI dictates it, does creativity and originality simply become reduced to an equation?
Is it really goodbye, Don?
An emerging narrative in our profession seems to suggest it’s okay to side-line creativity, storytelling and human insight in favour of data-driven logic. Creative seems a non-essential, an afterthought or an optional ‘add on’ in the world of data.
Sounds dramatic right? Perhaps a little, and history tells us otherwise. This fear that AI will take over advertising is strikingly similar to every past technological revolution.
Remember when we waved goodbye to print because digital was born? Yet advertising didn’t die, it just evolved. And AI is no different, if used correctly. What it will afford us is time; time that allows creatives to do what we are actually good at. Creating.
Even the assumption that advertising in itself is simply an assembly line of automation and optimisation is flawed. The industry thrives at the intersection of psychology, culture and storytelling. Can AI do the same? Can it build a brand people love? Think about some of the most iconic campaigns:
Volkswagen’s ‘Think Small’, 1959: Created by humans, it broke every advertising rule at the time
Nike’s ‘Just Do It’*, 1980: Created by humans, this campaign wasn’t data-led and is still recognised today as a cultural movement
Always #LikeAGirl, 2014: Created by humans and helping to reshape gender norms
Sure, AI is capable of optimising these campaigns after the fact. But it could never have created them. To think that AI could replace human ingenuity, strategic depth and cultural intuition—everything that defines great branding—is wrong.
Yes, AI can process how humans react, feel, behave. But it’s us who fundamentally experience it.
AI as an accelerant
The real power of advertising cannot be automated. The real power is that spark of human creativity, the soul that will always belong to use, and something AI cannot replicate. AI isn’t the enemy. However, it is an accelerant and whilst Don Draper will arguably keep his job, AI is going to force us to evolve. If our role involves optimisation, AI can (and will) do it better.
As a BCorp, we at Big+Bold believe the technology we use should serve others. We reject the idea that AI should be adopted as a knee-jerk reaction to what is happening at pace, in our wider industry. In fact, the best agencies won’t be those who integrate AI passively, but instead, view AI as a collaborator and apply it deliberately with intent, not indulgence, inertia or impulse.
For us, this means:
Intentional application: Employing AI deliberately to support our human insight, rather than using it as a shortcut or lazy option for creative processes.
Balanced collaboration: Combining the analytical powers of AI with our own strategic and cultural insights.
Preserving the core: Keeping our focus on storytelling and emotional connection to ensure that data and automation serve to elevate our work, not erode.
Conclusion
It’s safe to say Don Draper has weathered many a challenge. However, AI won’t be one of them. In the end, AI is not the end of the creative soul. It is an opportunity for the ad industry to free up its creative to create.
At the start of this article, I questioned whether AI was coming for us. Now my question is whether we are prepared to shape how AI fits into our creative world? I believe the key lies in ensuring that technology serves us, not the other way around.
As we navigate our AI-enhanced world, we must recognise that while the medium may evolve, the message, and the human ingenuity behind it, will endure.
Customer experience isn’t just about feedback — it’s your biggest growth lever in 2025. Discover how turning customers into advocates can double revenue growth, boost conversions and maximize customer lifetime value.
Key Takeaways
A mere 12% increase in customer advocacy can potentially double a company’s revenue growth, showcasing its immense impact.
Real-world cases confirm that businesses prioritizing customer experience and advocacy see higher sales growth, NPS and customer loyalty.
The future of customer experience hinges on proactive engagement, with a focus on personalization, predictive analytics and aligning customer and employee experiences.
Customer advocacy is emerging as one of the most powerful and underutilized growth drivers for businesses today. So what is “customer advocacy” and why does it matter? A simple definition is when customers actively promote your brand, product or service to others. It’s where you build a relationship with loyal customers and encourage them to share positive experiences. It matters because it builds trust, increases loyalty and repeat business, improves your reputation, gives you insights on how to keep improving and powers growth.
Traditional marketing is becoming less effective and customer expectations keep rising so companies that harness the power of advocacyare seeinghigher conversion rates, increased loyalty and exponential revenue growth.
Why advocacy is the new competitive advantage
Recent research underscores the profound impact on business performance:
When a friend or family member makes a recommendation, it is 50 times more likely to trigger a purchase.
But statistics alone don’t tell the full story. The real power of advocacy is revealed through real-world business results.
Real-world impact: Turning advocacy into growth
At Feedback ASAP, we work with brands across industries to help them unlock the true power of advocacy. Each of the case studies that follow — from auto service, fashion retail and telco retail — is from current national clients operating in highly competitive markets. We survey their customers daily, and these case studies are based on results over the last 12 months. Each survey response averages around 40 words, so the volume of actionable feedback and verbatim comments is substantial.
Here are some real-world examples of how CX-driven advocacy is transforming businesses:
Australian car servicing client case study:
The top 20% of stores generated 78% of their new customers from advocacy — referrals and reviews — compared to just 32% in the bottom 20% of stores.
As a result, the top-performing stores achieved a 24% year-on-year higher sales growth.
The difference? Stores that actively measured and improved customer experience saw a direct impact on their revenue growth.
Australian fashion retailer client case study:
When all customer experience standards were met, NPS was at an impressive 99, meaning nearly every customer became an advocate.
However, when just two CX standards were missed, NPS dropped 20% and Average Transaction Value (ATV) plummeted by 16%.
This proves that consistency in customer experience is critical to driving advocacy and sales.
New Zealand telecommunications client case study:
A leading telco brand leveraged CX advocacy strategies and achieved 18% growth in NPS in 12 months and 31% increase in add-on rates, demonstrating that advocacy isn’t just about reputation — it directly impacts revenue.
In short, businesses that focus on advocacy can achieve more growth with less effort by leveraging customers as active promoters rather than relying solely on traditional paid acquisition.
From passive feedback to proactive advocacy
Too many businesses treat customer experience (CX) as a measurement exercise rather than a growth strategy. Simply collecting NPS scores or customer feedback is no longer enough — companies must turn passive customers into vocal brand advocates by embedding advocacy into every touchpoint of the customer journey.
The brands that are excelling at advocacy today are those that:
Identify and track their best advocates. Successful businesses proactively measure and engage with customers who are already promoting their brand.
Leverage customer feedback to drive action. Feedback should lead to real, front-line improvements that inspire advocacy rather than just sitting in a report.
Empower teams to deliver exceptional experiences. Employees who feel accountable for CX improvement create stronger customer relationships, which fuels advocacy.
Integrate advocacy across departments. Advocacy isn’t just a marketing function — it should be a company-wide initiative spanning operations, customer service and HR.
Winning on action: The future of CX is proactive
Fred Reichheld, creator of NPS, highlights in Winning on Purpose that the companies achieving the fastest growth aren’t those collecting the most feedback but those taking deliberate, strategic action based on customer-led improvements.
With over 25 years of experience in 74 countries, leading CX programs for Apple and McDonald’s, we’ve seen first-hand that the future of CX is about more than just measuring loyalty — it’s about engineering advocacy into the DNA of a business.
The new formula for CX growth
Winning brands are moving beyond traditional CX metrics to an end-to-end improvement system that integrates:
Customer centricity and advocacy: Prioritizing customer success to create loyalty advocates.
Accountability and motivation: Ensuring teams take ownership of CX-driven growth.
Action practices and skill development: Empowering teams with real-world behaviours that drive engagement and revenue.
Embedding best practices and consistency: Aligning operations, marketing and HR to eliminate guesswork and enable continuous improvement.
The evolution of CX: What’s next?
Several key trends are shaping the future of CX:
Hyper-personalization in CX: Brands are moving away from generic interactions and leveraging AI-driven insights to personalize customer interactions at scale.
Predictive CX analytics: Companies are using advanced analytics to anticipate customer needs before issues arise, shifting from reactive service to proactive engagement.
Seamless omnichannel experiences: Customers expect consistent, high-quality interactions across in-store, online and mobile platforms.
The integration of CX and employee experience (EX): Companies that invest in employee engagement see higher customer satisfaction, reinforcing that happy employees create happy customers.
The rise of CX-driven revenue models: More businesses are tying CX improvements directly to financial metrics, proving that advocacy and loyalty are key revenue drivers.
Final thoughts
CX is no longer about simply measuring satisfaction — it’s about building advocacy as a strategic asset. Companies that understand this shift and invest in advocacy-driven CX will see higher-value customers, more referrals and organic growth that outpaces competitors. The key to success? Acting on feedback, embedding advocacy into business operations and ensuring every team member is accountable for delivering remarkable customer experiences.
As companies shift their mindset from customer measurement to customer action, those who lead the charge in advocacy will set the new standard for growth in the experience economy.
Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor. CEO of Feedback ASAP.
Phil Prosser has over 25 years of global success in over 74 countries in customer experience-management and net-promoter score, turning feedback into action to boost results. He works with leading brands such as McDonald’s, YUM, Shell, AT&T, Apple, UPS, RadioShack and Starbucks.
A new future is coming, and many workers won’t like it.
Ever since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 kicked off the current artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, many people have considered one question: how afraid should we be of this technology?
For decades, the hypothetical dangers of AI have served as a trope for science fiction literature and film, which often depicted a robot uprising. But recent advances in the technology have led to speculation that this dystopian future may not actually be so far away.
When people discuss fears regarding AI, though, it is commonly within the context of chatbots replacing human workers, a trend that continues to spread throughout certain industries. When companies lay off workers, it is often with plans to streamline production by further implementing AI tools.
For some, though, these AI fears may be about to get extremely real. Microsoft (MSFT) has announced something that threatens to usher in a future many people have been dreading.
Microsoft has made a chilling announcement regarding its AI plans
As AI has evolved in recent years, many experts have speculated as to how it will shape the modern workplace. With the jobs previously done by humans being automated away and AI tools changing the way other tasks are conducted, most industries are changing rapidly.
However, Microsoft is eyeing a future in which AI does more than tasks such as data organization and customer service. The tech leader recently released a report in which it lays out a detailed vision for how it sees AI shaping the future of work, specifically within its own ranks.
In the three-part report based on surveys from 31,000 workers across more than 30 countries, Microsoft predicts what it describes as “the rise of the agent boss,” something that office workers have likely joked about for years. Essentially, this refers to a future in which many jobs have been replaced by AI and humans manage teams of these bots.
Microsoft makes it clear throughout the report that it believes AI agents — software systems designed to closely mimic human behaviour and assist humans with daily tasks — will usher in a fundamental shift in how the modern office is constructed and how companies deliver services.
“To maximize the impact of these human-agent teams, organizations need a new metric: the human-agent ratio,” the report states. “Leaders must ask two critical questions: How many agents are needed for which roles and tasks? And how many humans are needed to guide them?”
Citing a study from Harvard University, it notes that an individual worker using AI typically outperforms a colleague working without it by a significant margin. The study found something that may be even more alarming to the modern worker, though: a team with all AI workers tends to produce the highest-quality work.
These results likely aren’t surprising to experts who are following the evolution of agentic AI and watching its progress as a supplement to modern offices. But for workers in many industries, they may seem like the beginning of the end, as they are forced to either pivot to managing AI agents or be phased out of their field.
The future of work is shifting quickly, but some mysteries remain
The fact that Microsoft, a company that has opted for multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, is publishing a report like this suggests that other tech companies have similar visions for their futures. If that happens, these changes could overtake entire industries in a relatively short period.
Microsoft indeed claims that embracing the human-agent ratio will create some new jobs while eliminating others. It is unclear if the number of new positions created will outweigh the number eliminated, likely a question on the minds of many who read the report.
“The vision reflects a larger bet by the company — and other tech giants — on the emerging world of AI agents,” reports GeekWire. “Unlike basic chatbots, AI agents can reason, plan, and act with a degree of autonomy, completing tasks with limited human input.”
The ultimate takeaway is that Microsoft is fully committed to helping usher in the rise of AI agents, creating a world in which they are no longer simply a tool. What remains unknown is how long it will take for companies to start fully trusting AI with important tasks that have previously only been done by human workers.
We take a closer look at how AppsFlyer is implemented
VPNs are a vital tool for protecting our privacy online. They encrypt our data, protect it from dangerous third-parties, and often come with a host of additional cybersecurity features.
But recently there has been some concern surrounding the best VPNs and the implementation of the marketing analytics software, AppsFlyer.
AppsFlyer is a mobile marketing analytics and attribution platform, describing itself as a “global leader in marketing measurement, analytics, and engagement.”
NordVPN and Surfshark both actively use AppsFlyer, and ExpressVPN has just trialled it – although it is now in the process of removing it.
These VPN providers are some of the very best on the market and all have proven no-logs policies – so potential third-party data sharing raises eyebrows.
Tom’s Guide wanted to investigate the use of AppsFlyer to determine how it is used, what this means for users, and whether there’s any risk to your data.
Tom’s Guide searched the privacy policies of 12 leading VPN providers for mentions of AppsFlyer and found it mentioned in four of them – NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN, and CyberGhost.
VPN providers with no mention of AppsFlyer in their privacy policies
Hide.me
IPVanish
Mullvad
PrivadoVPN
Private Internet Access
Proton VPN
PureVPN
Windscribe
The latter only appeared to use AppsFlyer on its website. However, the other three utilised AppsFlyer within their mobile apps.
CyberGhost claims it is “used to track and measure usage of the Site so that we can continue to provide engaging content.” But it added that only “non-personal data” was collected.
Within most VPN app settings, you can opt-out of sharing anonymous data. This includes marketing performance as well as crash reports or feature usage data.
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN had the most information on AppsFlyer. It says in its privacy policy that “we use AppsFlyer in our mobile apps to optimize our marketing.”
ExpressVPN states AppsFlyer collects device information, including device model and OS, installation and in-app purchase data, and device identifiers.
The policy details that the data collected is not used to personally identify users, although AppsFlyer can see a user’s IP address. ExpressVPN’s policy follows this up by saying this information is “accessed only once” and “cannot be connected to any particular person” due to being irreversibly stored as an anonymized hash.
(Image credit: Future)
ExpressVPN’s privacy policy says that neither it nor AppsFlyer stores a user’s original IP address, and it cannot be released to anyone.
You have the opportunity to opt-out of data collection by AppsFlyer and can do so by adjusting your device settings or following AppsFlyer’s opt-out instructions.
NordVPN & Surfshark
NordVPN and Surfshark are owned by Nord Security and both make little mention of AppsFlyer in their privacy policies.
Under the “Sharing Your Personal Data” section of its privacy policy, NordVPN says: “In some cases, we may need to share personal data with certain third parties, such as trusted service providers, partners, and other Nord group companies.”
NordVPN’s privacy policy states it uses third-party service providers to help with “various operations” and “as a result, some providers may process personal data.”
NordVPN lists AppsFlyer as a “main long-term service provider” for “marketing, application analytics, and diagnostics.”
(Image credit: Future)
Surfshark’s mention of AppsFlyer in its privacy policy is also limited. It lists AppsFlyer as an “information recipient” for marketing services. Alongside other services, it states AppsFlyer is used to manage contacts and automate marketing.
Neither NordVPN or Surfshark explicitly state what type of data AppsFlyer is collecting and this formed a large part of our questioning when we contacted the providers.
(Image credit: Future)
The VPNs’ response
We contacted all three providers for comment on their use of AppsFlyer.
Questions included how AppsFlyer was implemented into VPN services, what information AppsFlyer collected, what data protections were put in place, and whether AppsFlyer was hosted server-side or in-app.
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN shared that AppsFlyer was only introduced on a trial basis and there are no plans to reintroduce the software.
ExpressVPN said: “We used AppsFlyer in a limited way to assess purchase attribution – this helped us better understand conversion rates for free trial redemptions and in-app purchases. As you have observed, we’ve explicitly outlined this in our privacy policy to ensure transparency.”
“AppsFlyer operates in the same way as most other analytics platforms, and is a standard tool for attribution.”
“ExpressVPN used AppsFlyer with our iOS app on a trial basis. Specifically, only iOS makes any use of AppsFlyer in the app itself.”
“This trial has now ended, and we are in the process of removing this attribution tool from the iOS app. This will be finalized as part of our next scheduled release.”
(Image credit: Future)
“Our Privacy Policy states that ‘We do not collect logs of your online activity while you are connected to our Services, including no logging of browsing history, traffic destination, data content, or DNS queries. We also never store connection logs, meaning no logs of your IP address, your outgoing VPN IP address, connection timestamp, or session duration.'”
“Our use of AppsFlyer is fully compliant with our privacy policy. We are absolutely committed to the privacy of our users and have considered the core principles of our privacy commitment at every step.”
“We have no plans to re-add the AppsFlyer integration we referred to below, nor any other similar tool.”
“As to whether the trial was a success or not – our core aim was to more accurately validate purchase conversions; we did not see a meaningful difference.”
NordVPN
(Image credit: NordVPN)
NordVPN said that AppsFlyer’s data collection is limited to technical information and no identifiable data is collected. It confirmed that AppsFlyer’s Software Development Kit (SDK) was built in-app, users could turn off analytics, and it had Data Protection Agreements in place.
NordVPN said: “We use AppsFlyer strictly for analytical purposes related to the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and conversion attribution. The information collected through AppsFlyer is limited to technical data, such as device model, operating system, app installation information, anonymized performance metrics and similar.”
“AppsFlyer does not collect any information that directly identifies an individual, such as names, usernames, addresses, or any other type of sensitive personal information, including browsing activities, VPN usage data, passwords, or financial details.”
“Additionally, we have Data Protection Agreements in place to ensure that the data remains confidential, is safeguarded with appropriate technical and organisational security measures, is used solely for purposes related to the services provided, and is not disclosed to any third parties without our authorisation.”
“AppsFlyer SDK is in-built in Nord’s apps. Customers can also turn off analytics from the app settings menu or by rejecting a consent prompt upon install.”
Surfshark
(Image credit: Future)
Surfshark also confirmed the collection of limited technical information and the presence of Data Protection Agreements. It stated that AppsFlyer’s SDK was in-built into the Surfshark app but integration also took place server-side.
Surfshark said: “Surfshark uses the AppsFlyer tool for mobile channel sales monitoring; for example, it allows us to see sales split between organic traffic and Apple search ads.”
“AppsFlyer collects limited information (e.g. ad engagement information, technical and device information, app installation information) used for our mobile channel sales monitoring and attributing app installations and in-app purchases to advertising sources.”
“This data is only used for purposes related to the AppsFlyer services provided to Surfshark. To guarantee that the data stays confidential, we have Data Protection Agreements in place, and this data is protected with suitable technical and organizational security measures. Users also have a possibility to manage the use of analytic data in-app.”
“There is AppsFlyer SDK in-built in Surfshark’s app and integration is also implemented on server-side.”
Is your data at risk?
All three VPNs stated that AppsFlyer’s integration complies with their privacy policies and no personally identifiable information on users is collected or stored.
As mentioned earlier, all the providers have undergone independent security and no-logs audits. We have no reason to believe there is foul play occurring, and they’re still some of the best VPNs available.
When comparing the three privacy policies, ExpressVPN is the most transparent, and we would like to see NordVPN and Surfshark share more details about AppsFlyer’s use. Despite this, no provider hides its presence.
Despite no immediate risk, it is disappointing to see these providers allowing third-party access to data of any kind and we would challenge its necessity.
If you’re using one of these providers as a streaming VPN or simply value the extra cybersecurity features, then you may not be concerned.
However, if you’re more privacy conscious and want a VPN that collects as little information as possible, you may want to explore alternatives. Proton VPN and Mullvad are two of the most private VPNs out there.
Disclaimer
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
George is a Staff Writer at Tom’s Guide, covering VPN, privacy, and cybersecurity news. He is especially interested in digital rights and censorship, and its interplay with politics. Outside of work, George is passionate about music, Star Wars, and Karate.
Predictions that prompt engineering would be the hot new career never panned out, in part because generative AI is easy to prompt.
Prompt engineering, once hailed as the next big career path in tech, is now “basically obsolete,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Rather than hiring prompt engineers, companies are looking for other types of AI specialists and training employees across all job titles to use AI tools effectively.
The rise and fall of prompt engineers as a job title
Two years ago, the job title of prompt engineer was expected to be the most coveted in tech; and, courses on how to become a prompt engineer promised quick routes to high-paying jobs. Prompt engineers were seen as the humans who most deeply understood generative AI and could make the AI perform revolutionary tasks.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, whose company has benefited immensely from the AI boom, said in March 2024 that all programmers could become prompt engineers. However, in 2025, vibe coding has shown its limits, and companies no longer need people whose entire job is to translate for AI.
Plenty of sceptics were speaking out in 2023, too. After all, tech is a field crowded with the next big things, from crypto to quantum. Real breakthroughs often appeal only to niche use cases. Investors ride the booms and busts, while potential users find their tech has only shifted their lives laterally, not vastly improved them.
SEE: Applications are open for Google’s AI academy for startups, which provides mentorship, workshops, and more for selected businesses.
Generative A, however, has maintained a foothold in the mainstream. Companies, educators, and laypeople now often use AI by default, as the equivalent of a search engine. And they haven’t needed prompt engineers to intercede.
According to The Wall Street Journal and Microsoft, prompt engineering has faded because generative AI can, essentially, prompt itself. It can ask follow-up questions or ask for feedback, said Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer of AI at Work at Microsoft. Plus, companies are playing it safe with hiring in 2025 amid economic uncertainty.
The hottest AI job titles now
AI trainer, AI data specialist, and AI security specialist are the AI job titles to look for now, according to The Wall Street Journal, quoting research from Microsoft into new roles companies are considering adding to their workforce.
Other top AI jobs picks include AI consultant, AI researcher, AI trainer, and AI product manager. These roles were selected based on a review of AI job openings and growth trends in 2024. AI engineering remains a hot job; according to CNBC’s data gathered from Indeed and ZipRecruiter, AI engineers can make a median salary of $106,386.
Megan Crouse has a decade of experience in business-to-business news and feature writing, including as first a writer and then the editor of Manufacturing.net. Her news and feature stories have appeared in Military & Aerospace Electronics, Fierce Wireless, TechRepublic, and eWeek. She copyedited cybersecurity news and features at Security Intelligence. She holds a degree in English Literature and minored in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Blender has done a lot to open up access to 3D modelling, animation and VFX. The free open-source software has enabled a generation of young talent to hone their skills in a way that might never have been possible otherwise (see our guide to the best 3D modelling software).
One result of this has been the rise of Blender VFX breakdowns on social media, where users recreate effects from big budget productions, sometimes making it look almost easy. But a meme doing the rounds on Reddit has sparked a big debate about these.
If Blender’s free, and a bedroom YouTuber can build the effect in a few hours, why did it cost so much to produce?
The Reddit post above has already picked up 1.6K likes and over 200 comments. There are opinions coming from all sides. Some people suggest the reason Hollywood VFX is so expensive is due to procrastination and perfectionism from the client, leading to hours of re-dos on details many people may not see.
“The real reason these shots cost so much is because the director is pixel fucking the motion blur of a distant shadow on version 875 four months after the due date,” one person suggests.
One pro suggests that people sometimes forget VFX artists work for someone else. “YouTubers and their audiences think that VFX artists ‘fucked all kinds of shit up and made it stupid and wrong’. The reality is that we made exactly what the client wanted, because that’s how we get paid. I’m making an M-4 fire rainbow unicorn fart muzzle flashes if that’s what the client asks for, because that’s how I get a pay cheque,” they say.
But there may be something more fundamental at play. Recreations can give the impression that something is quick to achieve, and perhaps it is when you’re reverse engineering it. But you need to have the idea in the first place.
In that sense, it’s like modern art, one person suggests: you could have done that… but you didn’t.
“Anytime I see ‘we recreated X in one day’, I always think. Yeah: IF you have an exact reference for exactly the end result requested AND there are no notes on the small differences between your result and the reference…then yes, you could pull some things off in a single day. It never works like that,” one artist writes.
“Recreation is always faster,” another comment agrees. “Think about that one time your software crashed and you had to rebuild the comp from scratch, and it took 10 minutes instead of 6 hours. The hard part was figuring out the process.”
Others are pointing out that creating something for social media isn’t the same as doing it for a cinema screen. “People seem to forget that shots made for large displays like IMAX need way more attention to detail,” one person notes. “Let alone working with film scans, set scans, multiple cameras, humans treated like chatGPT for revisions and etc.”
I’m hoping nobody really thinks VFX artists have an easy job or charge too much. That’s very much not the case. Breaking down others’ work and recreating effects can be a great way of learning and finding your way around software, but it can’t be compared to creating the magic from scratch with a director breathing down your neck.
Meanwhile, Blender’s increasingly being considered for professional productions – it was used to make the Oscar-winning animation Flow, for example. If you’re getting started in the software yourself, you might want to check out our roundup of Blender tutorials.
Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.
We chatted with Alexandru Costin about the new innovations coming to Firefly
There was no getting away from Firefly at this year’s Adobe Max London. Already infused across the Creative Cloud suite, the AI image and video generator has been massively upgraded with new tools and features.
Ahead of the events, we sat down with Alexandru Costin, Vice President, Generative AI and Sensei at Adobe, to explore what’s new with Firefly, why stories matter when using the best AI tools, and how professionals can use it to enhance creativity across the board.
What can users expect from AI at Adobe Max?
At Max, we have the next generation of our image model, two versions of it. We have a vector model, we have the video model. So, a lot of progress on the model from Adobe, commercially safe, high quality, amazing human rendering. A lot of control and a great style engine, et cetera. We are also introducing third-party model integrations.
Our customers told us that they want to stay in our tools, in our workflows. They are still using other models for ideation purposes, or for different personalities. So, we’re announcing OpenAI’s GPT image integration and Google’s Imagen and Veo 2 in Firefly, and Flux integration in Firefly Boards.
The third big announcement is Firefly Boards, a new capability in the Firefly web application. We look at it as an all-in-one platform for next generation creatives to ideate, create and produce production content. Firefly Boards is an infinite canvas that enables team collaboration, real-time collaboration, commenting, but also deep Gen AI features stepping in, into all of these first-party and third-party models, new capabilities for remixing images.
How easy is it to deliver something like that?
It’s not easy. We’ve been working on the project concept for like, a year. Actually, that underlying technology, we’ve been working on for many years, like real-time collaboration with deep integration, with storage, and innovation in Gen AI user experiences, remixing, auto-describing images to create the prompts for you. There’s a lot of deep technology that went into it. It looks like magic, and is very easy [to use]. We hope it’s so easy. Our goal is to build a complex layer. So for customers, it’s like magic, and everything just works.
What’s your favourite new feature?
My favourite feature is integration between image, video, and the rest of the Adobe products. We’re trying to build workflows where customers that have an intent in mind, and they want to paint the picture that’s in their mind, can use these tools in a really connected way without having to jump through so many hoops to tell their story. Firefly Image 4 offers amazing photo realism, human rendering quality, prompt understanding. You iterate fast.
With Image 4 Ultra, which is our premium model, you can render your image with additional details, and we can take them into the Firefly video model as a keyframe, and create a video from that whole image. Then you can take that video into Adobe Express and make it like an animated banner, add text, add fonts. In Creative Cloud, we have a lot of capabilities that exist already. We’re bringing Gen AI inside those workflows, either in Firefly on the web, or directly as an API integration.
But for me, I think the magic is having all of this accessible in an easy way. The Photoshop team is also working on an agentic interface. They call it a new Actions panel. You type in what you want. We have 1000 high-quality actions we’ve curated for you. There are all these tools in Photoshop that are sometimes hard to discover if you’re not an expert, but we’re gonna just bring them and apply them for you. I mean, you will learn along the way, but you don’t need to know everything before you start. Not only we’re helping you achieve your goal, we’re also teaching you the ins and outs of Photoshop as we go through this.
That must be one of the biggest barriers to entry for a lot of users
It is. It’s too powerful to some extent. It has so many controls, it might be intimidating, but with the new Actions panel, we want to take a big chunk of that entry barrier away.
(Image credit: Adobe // Future)
How important is it for you when it comes to lowering those barriers to entry?
Everybody will benefit from this technology in different ways. For creative professionals, it will basically remove some of the tedium, so they can focus on creativity. But with things like Firefly Boards, they will be able to work with teams and clients much better. The client can upload in boards some stylistic ideas, and then you can take it and integrate it very fast in your professional workload.
For consumers, with people that want to spend seconds to create something, with Firefly, you just type in the prompt and we do it for you. It’s a great capability.
In the middle, there are the folks learning in their careers, aspiring creative professionals, next generation creatives. And for them, we want to give them both Gen AI capabilities, but also a bridge towards the existing pixel-perfect tools that we have at Adobe. Because we think a mix of those two worlds is the best mix that next generation creatives need to be armed with.
Where can further improvements be made in that area, making it more accessible?
For me, a big opportunity is better understanding of humans, like prompt understanding, agentic, having a creative partner to bounce ideas off of. Another thing we’re announcing is the [upcoming] Firefly mobile app. This is a companion app that can use many of the Firefly app capabilities, generate text, generate video, et cetera. But also, because it’s on mobile, you have access to the camera, you have a microphone, there are many new opportunities to make these interactions easier. So, we’re looking into that. We do think next generation creatives are a big target market for us because we want to give them the tools of the trade.
What’s the motivation behind these new additions in Firefly?
For us, customers are why we get up in the morning every day, they are telling us what they need, and they told us they want more quality, better humans, more control, better stylization. That’s what’s behind the image model updates. We just want to make them more usable in more workflows for actual production use-cases. Because our model is uniquely positioned to be safe for commercial use, we want customers to use it everywhere.
For video, video is also growing, and many of our customer-base doesn’t know how to use the video product. So, making video creation more accessible is another great accelerant for creativity. We want to offer a larger population of people the tools to tap into video and be able to start achieving their goals there. While, of course, inside products like Premiere Pro, we’re continuing to integrate deeper, more advanced features, like a couple of weeks ago at NAB, we launched Generative Extend. It won one of the awards. Gen Extend is a 4K extension, enabling professional videographers to basically extend clips so they don’t have to reshoot.
What motivates us is helping our customers tell stories, better stories, more diverse stories, and be successful in their careers.
When everyone is using AI, how do artists and businesses differentiate themselves from rivals?
I think through human creativity and engineering, how do they differentiate today? They’re all using Photoshop. They do find ways to differentiate because, in reality, Gen AI is a tool designed, at least from an Adobe perspective, to be of service to the creative community, and we want to give them a more powerful tool that should help them level-up their craft.
They’re describing it as going from the person editing to a creative director. All of our customers can become directors of these Gen AI tools to help them tell better stories, tell stories faster, et cetera. So, we think the differentiation will still be in the creativity of the human using the tool. And we’re seeing so much innovation. We’re seeing people using these technologies in ways we haven’t even thought about, which is very exciting, always. Mixing them in novel ways. Because that’s how you differentiate. And we do think there will always be many ways to express somebody’s creativity.
We think creativity comes in a variety of ways, and there are different tools creative people will use and mix together to tell better stories and change culture.
Integrated into almost every Adobe app, Firefly is tailor-made for creatives at every level – from professionals to consumers. Want to see how Adobe’s generative AI can help you iterate your designs faster? Try out Firefly’s tools by clicking here.
Steve is B2B Editor for Creative & Hardware at TechRadar Pro. He began in tech journalism reviewing photo editors and video editing software at Web User magazine, and covered technology news, features, and how-to guides. Today, he and his team of expert reviewers test out a range of creative software, hardware, and office furniture. Once upon a time, he wrote TV commercials and movie trailers. Relentless champion of the Oxford comma.
There are many fields where generative AI is proving to have truly transformative potential, and some of the most interesting use cases are around mental health and wellbeing.
While it can’t provide the human connection and intuition of a trained therapist, research has shown that many people are comfortable sharing their worries and concerns with relatively faceless and anonymous AI bots.
Whether this is always a good idea or not, given the black-box nature of many AI platforms, is up for debate. But it’s becoming clear that in specific use cases, AI has a role to play in guiding, advising and understanding us.
So here I will look at some of the most interesting and innovative generative AI tools that are reshaping the way we think about mental health and wellbeing today.
Headspace is a hugely popular app that provides calming mindfulness and guided meditation sessions. Recently, it’s expanded to become a full digital mental healthcare platform, including access to therapists and psychiatric services, as well as generative AI tools.
Their first tool is Ebb, designed to take users on reflective meditation experiences. Headspace focused heavily on the ethical implications of introducing AI to mental healthcare scenarios when creating the tool. This is all part of their mission to make digital mindfulness and wellness accessible to as many people as possible through dynamic content and interactive experiences.
This is another very popular tool that’s widely used by corporate customers to provide digital mental health services to employees, but of course, anyone can use it. Its AI chatbot provides anonymous support and is trained in cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness and dialectical behavioural therapy and mindfulness. Wysa’s AI is built from the ground up by psychologists and tailored to work as part of a structured package of support, which includes interventions from human wellbeing professionals. Another standout is the selection of features tailored to helping young people. Wysa is one of the few mental health and wellbeing AI platforms that holds the distinction of being validated clinically in peer-reviewed studies.
This platform is billed as an emotional health assistant and uses generative AI to deliver conversational, personalized support. It blends natural language chatbot functionality with clinically validated methods including CBT. According to its website, its effectiveness at treating six mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression, has been confirmed by Stanford University researchers, and users can expect benefits in as little as two weeks.
This is an AI-powered journaling app designed to help users manage their mental health by providing insights and emotional analytics based on their writing. It provides users with a number of journaling frameworks as well as guidance from AI personas in the guise of historical figures. It aims to help users get to the bottom of the emotional drivers behind their thought processes and explore these through the process of writing and structuring their thoughts. Chatbot functionality means that journaling becomes a two-way process, with the AI guiding the user towards different pathways for exploring their mental wellbeing, depending on how and what they write about. Mindsera can even create images and artwork based on users’ journaling, to give new perspectives on their mental health and wellbeing.
Woebot is a “mental health” ally chatbot that helps users deal with symptoms of depression and anxiety. It aims to build a long-term, ongoing relationship through regular chats, listening and asking questions in the same way as a human therapist. Woebot mixes natural-language-generated questions and advice with crafted content and therapy created by clinical psychologists. It is also trained to detect “concerning” language from users and immediately provides information about external sources where emergency help or interventions may be available. Woebot seems to be available only to Apple device users.
The Best Of The Rest
The choice of tools and platforms dedicated to mental health and wellbeing is growing all the time. Here are some of the other top choices out there:
Alongside Headspace (see above), Calm is one of the leading meditation and sleep apps. It now uses generative AI to provide personalized recommendations.
Although this is not a dedicated mental health app, therapists and psychologists are among the AI characters this platform offers, and both are available free of charge 24/7.
This is an all-in-one AI planning and scheduling tool that includes functions for tracking habits and behaviours in order to develop healthy and mindful routines.
AI-powered journaling tool developed by MIT, which is designed to work with users’ memories to suggest future paths and activities.
Talking therapies like CBT have long been understood to be effective methods of looking after our mental health, and AI chatbots offer a combination of accessibility and anonymity. As AI becomes more capable and deeply interwoven with our lives, I predict many more will explore its potential in this field. Of course, it won’t replace the need for trained human therapists any time soon. However, AI will become another tool in their box that they can use to help patients take control of their mental wellbeing.
