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ICE Asks Companies About ‘Ad Tech and Big Data’ Tools It Could Use in Investigations
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is asking companies to provide information about “commercial Big Data and Ad Tech” products that would “directly support investigations activities,” according to a request for information posted on Friday in the Federal Register, the US government’s official journal for agency notices, rulemaking, and other public filings.The posting says that ICE is “working with increasing volumes…
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Behind Instacart’s ‘bananas’ Super Bowl ad
Sometimes the obvious answer is the right answer. Case in point: If you’re making an ad about bananas, that ad should probably be, well, bananas.That’s what the team behind Instacart’s second consecutive Super Bowl ad…
No Phone, No Social Safety Net: Welcome to the ‘Offline Club’
On cue, the room fell silent. A man seated to my left at a long wooden table began to scratch at a piece of paper with a coloring pencil. To my right, another guy picked…
Some ad-tech companies are pivoting amid open web ‘contraction’
Is ad-tech still committed to the open web, or anticipating its so-called demise? It all depends on who you ask.As AI tools continue to drive declines in search traffic to brand and publisher sites, ad-tech…
Moltbot Is Taking Over Silicon Valley
Dan Peguine, a tech entrepreneur and marketing consultant based in Lisbon, lets a precocious, lobster-themed AI assistant called Moltbot run much of his life.Peguine, a self-professed early adopter and trendspotter, discovered Moltbot several weeks ago—back…
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New York Road Runners rebrands amid a swelling interest in running
New York Road Runners, the nonprofit that puts on the TCS New York City Marathon and dozens of other races…
How Claude Code Is Reshaping Software—and Anthropic
Engineers in Silicon Valley have been raving about Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude Code, for months. But recently, the buzz…
Netflix crosses 325 million paid subscribers as it closes in on Warner Bros.
Hollywood has been in a frenzy about the potential demise of the theatrical business if Netflix acquires Warner Bros. Discovery,…
As Sundance takes its last bow in Utah, marketer interest in the festival continues to grow
Sundance is taking over Park City, Utah, for the last time.The film festival, which kicked off Thursday and runs until…
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Chinese EV Batteries Are Eating the World
THE symbolism was clear last June when Emmanuel Macron, surrounded by factory workers, held up a sleek lithium battery in his right hand and a mining lamp in his left. He was in Douai, a northern French city with a coal mining history dating back to the 1700s. The city…
TikTok’s US operations sale is official
After a yearslong saga, TikTok’s US operations are now under new management.The $14 billion deal that was signed last month to form the TikTok USDS Joint Venture was finalized late Thursday night after the US and Chinese governments gave it the green light. Moving forward, Oracle, Silver Lake investing, and…
How China’s ‘Crystal Capital’ Cornered the Market on a Western Obsession
Villages looked for niches they could fill in the global market. The town of Xuchang, for instance, capitalized on its legacy of making hairpieces for opera performers—and on the willingness of rural women to sell their black ponytails—and turned itself into a hub for wigs. Zhuangzhai became the largest supplier…
As hockey fandom heats up, Florida Panthers ink deal with hair care brand
Hair has always been a big deal in men’s hockey, if the timeless “hockey flow” style of many players’ tresses is any indication. But beauty and hair brand sponsorships haven’t always been common in men’s professional sports.That tide is starting to turn, including in South Florida, where back-to-back Stanley Cup…
Elon Musk’s Grok ‘Undressing’ Problem Isn’t Fixed
Elon Musk’s X has introduced new restrictions stopping people from editing and generating images of real people in bikinis or other “revealing clothing.” The change in policy on Wednesday night follows global outrage at Grok being used to generate thousands of harmful nonconsensual “undressing” photos of women and sexualized images…
Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary is a celebration of human knowledge
Wikipedia is, in many ways, the backbone of the internet. The free encyclopedia boasts more than 66 million articles in 342 languages on just about every topic under the sun; the English articles alone would take more than 38 years to get through. On an average day, the site receives…
Former USDS Leaders Launch Tech Reform Project to Fix What DOGE Broke
The past year has been traumatic for many of the volunteer tech warriors of what was once called the United States Digital Service (USDS). The team’s former coders, designers, and UX experts have watched in horror as Donald Trump rebranded the service as DOGE, effectively forced out its staff, and…
Why brands are hitting the slopes for the 2026 Winter Games
Nothing beats the feeling of taking off ski boots after a day on the slopes. But ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Milan and ski resort town Cortina d’Ampezzo, some marketers are preparing to be in their mountain gear for a little longer.While the Winter Games have…
Thousands of Companies Are Driving China’s AI Boom. A Government Registry Tracks Them All
When DeepSeek burst onto the global stage in January 2025, it seemed to appear out of nowhere. But the large language model was just one of the thousands of generative AI tools that have been released in China since 2023—and there’s a public archive of every single one of them.The…
For some impacted by layoffs, content creation is a new safety net
Paul Butler had long dreamed of moving to New York City. So when he finally had the chance to move for work, only to find out a week later that his social marketing position at Amazon was being eliminated, he said it felt like a “rug was pulled out from…
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After 10 years in retirement, Dos Equis’s Most Interesting Man is back
He’s baaaaccckkk.After 10 years in retirement, Dos Equis’s iconic character, the Most Interesting Man, is…
Inside OpenAI’s Raid on Thinking Machines Lab
If someone ever makes an HBO Max series about the AI industry, the events of…
Coworking with Shereen Ladha
Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to…
The biggest agentic AI announcements from CES and NRF
January always starts off with a bang for marketers and brand execs getting back into…
Tech Workers Are Condemning ICE Even as Their CEOs Stay Quiet
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House last January, the biggest names in tech…