Author: Geek Planet

The so-called culture wars have reached a fever pitch as of late as the polarization of the country continues. And as the lines between politics and pop culture continue to blur, brand marketers are tasked with showing up authentically and culturally relevant with the specter of political backlash looming large in the background.  With that backdrop in mind, brand marketers have seemingly been walking a tightrope–eager to have watercooler moments that are authentically part of culture, but careful to avoid being caught in the fray of politics and alienating customers. Marketers point to brands like Nike and Estée Lauder who…

Samsung‘s next foldable might actually give you a smaller main screen in exchange for something more useful. The Galaxy Wide Fold will reportedly pack a 7.6-inch inner display when it arrives, according to a new leak by Digital Chat Station on Weibo. That puts it slightly under the upcoming Z Fold 7, which is expected to measure 8 inches when you unfold it. The device reportedly adopts a 4:3 aspect ratio, moving away from the tall and narrow design of current book-style foldables. The phone is also said to pack a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and a dual-cell…

Despite previously stating it’s an ad-free zone, Substack — like many other platforms before it — is no longer ruling out advertising.“For us, advertising is an interesting business,” Hamish McKenzie, Substack’s co-founder and chief writing officer, told Digiday. “Maybe some way off in the distant future.” Call it a reality check — a realization that growing a platform is an expensive business, even one that takes a 10% cut of the money subscribers pay their favorite writers. There’s only so much growth that can come from reader revenue. Whereas ads, when done right, promise scale, margins and the kind of…

You love the magic of AI photo editing but hate handing your unaltered face to some cloud server. A new privacy technology from Purdue University researchers might give you the best of both worlds. The patent-pending method masks sensitive parts of an image on your device before the photo ever reaches an AI platform. Only the masked version gets uploaded, which means the tool sees the background and your clothes but never your actual face. After the edit comes back, the technology seamlessly blends the original masked region back in. The result is a fully edited photo that looks completely…

President Trump’s latest tariff proposal is creating headaches for automotive marketers and media buyers, but they’re not slamming the brakes on media spend just yet.The uncertainty created by the mere threat of tariffs can often lead to marketplace confusion, consumer hesitancy and unnecessary pullbacks in media spend. But Honda offshoot Acura is sticking to its plan. The brand’s team has been working towards the debut of its latest compact SUV model, the Acura ADX, this month with a full funnel media approach planned out by media agency RPA. “We’re at the green light [to] go forward,” Todd Knepp, assistant manager,…

That stutter in your favorite mobile game might not be your phone’s fault. It could be how the game was built. Google and Samsung just teamed up to help Android studios catch those performance problems before you ever hit download. The result is Sokatoa, a GPU profiler announced March 10 by Samsung’s Austin Research and Development Center and Advanced Computing Lab. But Samsung didn’t build it alone. The tool was developed in collaboration with Google and LunarG, a company deeply involved in Vulkan graphics development. The tool is aimed at Android game developers, though anyone building graphics-heavy apps for the…

Despite there being a sea of more than 250 retail media networks, the reality is that it works out to be Amazon, Walmart and everybody else. Everybody else — in other words, the smaller players like Best Buy Ads and DoorDash — has spent Q1 of this year working to step out of Amazon and Walmart’s shadows and take in more ad spend.While media buyers and retail media agency executives say there’s a chance for these smaller competitors to achieve their goal and actually take in more ad spend, it’s unclear if their efforts, which include third-party partnerships and new…

So, you have either purchased one of the Galaxy S26 phones or are planning to do so, and you’re on the lookout for the right accessories; that’s great. Getting the basic accessories right — including the protective cases, chargers, power banks, and the external storage drives — is almost as important as picking the right smartphone. But with hundreds of options in the market, choosing the right one can get very tricky. That’s exactly what we’re addressing with this roundup. Presenting before you some of the best Galaxy S26 accessories, each with its unique advantage, all from reputable brands. Best…

As if the retail media boom isn’t under enough scrutiny, new tariffs and talk of a potential economic recession have sparked more questions about the negotiation process that is known as joint business planning (JBP).Already, some advertisers have started to walk away from the negotiation table with retailers, citing concerns over transparency, standardization and measurement. Now, as economic headwinds threaten consumer spending, and in turn marketing budgets, agency execs say brand clients are more hesitant than ever to sign JBP commitments. “If I was a brand, I’d be cautious about signing anything this year unless there’s extreme outs and all…

A new study from the University of Southern California warns that AI programs can now run propaganda campaigns without human involvement. The study asks us to imagine a scenario where two weeks before a major election, thousands of posts flood X, Reddit, and Facebook, all pushing the same narrative and amplifying each other. It might seem like an organic movement created by humans. Instead, it’s a bunch of AI agents running the entire campaign.  That’s not a hypothetical. It’s the central finding of a new paper accepted for publication at The Web Conference 2026, written by researchers at USC’s Information…