Curated Guide to Research
MediaPost's comprehensive guide to current research in the marketplace.
- Kantar's BrandZ ranking reveals that food, personal care and alcohol brands are all losing ground.
- An analyst has made two predictions related to AI - that Google AI Mode will replace traditional search, and Apple will continue to use Google's engine as its default.
- One year after Google released AI Overviews, BrightEdge published data showing total search impressions rose more than 49%, highlighting a dramatic shift in how people seek and find information.
- Pullem is based in Tokyo and brings 30 years of global media management experience at agencies and marketers to the role.
- Fifty-nine percent of CMOs say their budgets remain insufficient to fully execute their strategies.
- Reports from Deloitte and Gartner show that inflation, tech disruption, and AI-driven restructuring are squeezing marketing teams.
- Influencer marketing platform Captiv8 has announced a partnership with AI-powered search engine Perplexity AI to help brands save time while vetting creators, planning campaigns, asking data-driven questions and more.
- When Presearch couldn't guarantee user privacy with known ad units, the decentralized engine designed a takeover ad to give advertisers insights on impressions, clickthrough rates, device types and geography.
- Amazon and Walmart remain the juggernauts of retail media, forecast to command a combined 84.2% of total U.S. retail media ad spend by 2025.
- A Pew report shows that over half of Republicans trust at least some information coming from national news organizations.
- Ford's "Committed to America" ad drove record-setting purchase intent, performing 13 percentage points above the MarketCast norm.
- Many AI companies still fail to implement proper safeguards to prevent their systems from reproducing or competing with professional media content.
- Consumers care more about patriotism this year, with 85% (+5) rating patriotism as "extremely" (45%) or "very" (40%) important, per Brand Keys.
- Research from Stagwell's Harris Poll and Eyeo finds that three quarters or more of those surveyed feel frustrated with intrusive online advertising.
- AI's real value, the report finds, lies in its ability to automate routine tasks, freeing up teams for higher-value, strategic work.
- Winning the AI race could come down to learning how to play the data game. Microsoft President Brad Smith recommends that the U.S. ensure public data remains open and accessible because data fuels powerful AI.
- BrightEdge identifies patterns marketers should consider when developing content strategies and ad campaigns, and key factors that impact brand presence in AI prompts and commerce.
- Advertising remains the primary source of revenue, with smaller contributions coming from subscriptions.
- About three quarters of journalists say press releases remain the most useful asset PR teams can provide.
- Data accuracy is the biggest hurdle in using GenAI, a study by The Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network in partnership with EncompaaS and the Growth Officer Council finds.
- AI, online ad serving, media buying, and search require a substantial amount of energy that companies have been trying to figure out how to support. Google's agreement with nuclear developer Elementl Power will help to develop three project sites for advanced reactors.
- Reference points line up everything. It is impossible to assess our situations in the world in the absolute. We need reference points: something against which we can compare our situations to see if they're good or bad, worse or better, proper or improper.
- Nearly half of consumers report an email as spam if they never gave explicit permission to receive it.
- Is AI the solution to all consumer insight problems, or a semi-reliable "direct report" that can only take on a few basic tasks? Or is it a merchant in "snake oil" that should be approached with caution and perhaps avoided completely?
- Not a big surprise: Netflix's "Emily In Paris" sparked a 200% spike in interest in the titular city.
- Most executives today rely on dashboards and rarely question the data they are sent, according to a study conducted by Sapio Research, from journey management platform TheyDo.
- Digital video's trajectory signals a "renewed confidence" in the channel's long-term viability, infrastructure and appeal.
- Analysis from Aimclear reveals "a new cohort of crawlers associated with large language model (LLM) based applications - representing "services such as Google's own AI features, Anthropic's Claude, Microsoft's Copilot integrated with Bing, and Perplexity AI, among others," Aimclear founder Marty Weintraub wrote.
- Consumers are looking for brands that feel human, respond quickly, and offer content that informs, entertains or benefits them directly.
- Marketers and agencies often see eye-to-eye on strategic direction and creative output, while procurement professionals tend to focus on cost control, efficiency and performance metrics.
