Alongside Meta’s debut of its new AI model Llama 3, the company yesterday released a new version of its AI assistant, Meta AI, which arrived for apps across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. The company also added Meta AI to its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and made its rival to ChatGPT accessible through a new standalone website. Meta AI, which first debuted in September, also rolled out a number of updates including ways to search for real-time information through integrations with Google and Bing. According to Meta, the chatbot can be used for everything from planning meals and st ..read more

If you work in the marketing or media industry, “#POSSIBLE2024” almost inevitably populated your social media feed on LinkedIn or X, during the past week. The accompanying images of your professional peers, or vaguely familiar faces at least, resemble a dress rehearsal for the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity–the bougie-zenith of the ad industry’s annual calendar, which takes place in June each year. However, what exactly drew thousands of the ad industry’s finest to Miami’s Fontainebleau, where they got to rub shoulders with their professional peers plus stars such as Ashanti, Janelle Mona ..read more

If you think you’re seeing more ads for productivity apps or technology brands while binge watching your favorite shows, you are. At least that’s the case according to agency execs, who say B2B marketers are more willing to take a page out of B2C marketers’ playbook over the last year, showing up in consumer-facing spaces like TikTok and streaming ads with emotive and sometimes humorous spots. Today’s marketing landscape is more fragmented than ever. Like consumer brands, business brands are looking to stand out in a crowded and competitive marketplace. “All of those things, the best B2C brand ..read more

The New York Times has had such notable traffic to its games that some observers have speculated that the newspaper is on its way to becoming a gaming company. While this isn’t quite the case, the Times is clearly building out its games section as part of its audience diversification strategy. Games have been part of the New York Times’ portfolio ever since the newspaper published its first crossword in 1942. In 2022, the company acquired Wordle to bolster its gaming section, integrating the wildly popular word-guessing game into the NYT Games app alongside other puzzles such as Spelling ..read more

Q1 advertising recap Despite the hope that 2024 would be a turning point for publishers’ advertising businesses, the first quarter of the year proved to be a mixed bag, according to three publishers. While programmatic CPMs on average trended up as the first three months of the year progressed, the direct-sold side of publishers’ advertising businesses fell into some of the same patterns as previous years with advertisers delaying campaigns into Q2 or later, rendering Q1 as just “fine.” This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. and subscribe to continue reading content like this ..read more

Interested in sharing your perspectives on the media and marketing industries? Join the Digiday research panel. In this week’s Digiday+ Research Briefing, we examine BuzzFeed’s plans to pivot the business to an AI-driven tech and media company, how marketers’ use of X and ad spending has dropped dramatically, and how agency executives are fed up with Meta’s ad platform bugs and overcharges, as seen in recent data from Digiday+ Research. This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. and subscribe to continue reading content like this ..read more

It’s shaping up to be a banner year for the mobile esports industry, with an unprecedented amount of activity in the space in 2024. The secret to all this growth? A healthy amount of investment from Saudi Arabia. Mobile esports activity has been picking up gradually since 2021, but 2024 could be one of the most lucrative years yet for the esports teams and players participating in popular mobile games such as “PUBG Mobile” and “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang” (MLBB). Last month, for example, the Snapdragon Pro Series (SPS), a global mobile esports league, signed an official partnership with “MLBB ..read more

Walmart rolled out a new insights offering on April 17 at the Possible conference in Miami that involves its Walmart Connect and Walmart Luminate products. Seth Dallaire, Walmart U.S.’ chief revenue officer, explained some of the news when he sat for an interview at the Digiday Studio at Possible, at which Digiday was a media partner. With some 144 million customers shopping via in-store and online, the retail giant has connected its Walmart Luminate insights unit with its sales network Walmart Connect to help the company’s suppliers better plan for accommodating customers’ needs. Called Walma ..read more

Marketers get ready: ads are coming to Threads a lot sooner than expected.  The tech platform recently told ad execs that they will be able to buy ads on its X-rival, text-based platform as early as the second half of this year, industry sources have told Digiday. It would be Meta’s latest bit of ad real estate just over a year after the launch of Threads. Though details on how these ads will be integrated remain unclear. Meta’s discussions have largely centered on the rollout timeline rather than the detailed logistics of the ad placements, according to Digiday’s interviews with four adv ..read more

Brave, a privacy-focused browser, is rolling out a new generative AI tool to give users enter a single query to get real-time information from multiple sources. “AI Answer Engine,” which debuted today, provides a synthesized summary with source citations alongside traditional search results. But instead of using Google or Bing, the tool uses Brave’s independent search index, which the startup claims is “curated and cleansed of SEO spam and junk content.” Platforms like Google and Bing are also expanding capabilities for AI search, but Brave aims to put its privacy-preserving features at the fo ..read more