Author: Geek Planet

Meta’s Superintelligence Group has started turning up in marketer pitches. So far, its generating curiosity — and confusion. As Chris Matheson, media director at Markacy pointed out, marketers and investors will be looking for proof of return on investment. “With $64 to $72 billion in 2025 capex, brands expect tools that lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) or raise conversion rate (CVR), not just research headlines,” he said. Officially launched last month (July 1), Superintelligence Labs consolidates Meta’s core AI teams — FAIR, foundational models and product — all under one roof. And while there are tons of ideas on a typical…

Yvonne Jackson said that before February, making a Target run was more than just a simple errand — it was a part of her lifestyle.  Jackson, who lives on the outskirts of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, said her daughter’s daycare was across the street from a Target, so she estimated that she went to Target multiple times a week. She would grab a coffee from Starbucks and walk around the store to see what was on clearance. She would check the Facebook groups she was a part of for Black women who love Target to see if there were any…

Consolidation among media agencies large and small has been widely expected since Omnicom proposed acquiring Interpublic Group last December. To a large extent, the industry hasn’t disappointed, with Indies merging to form bigger Indies, and holdcos continuing to acquire different specialty shops to grow even bigger.The latest merger comes in a massive corner of the marketing world, of e-commerce and retail and full-funnel strategy that goes beyond media investment — they’re known as “marketplace” agencies. They serve brands that are plying their sales on Amazon, Walmart, eBay, TikTok Shop and other commerce sites, which collective represent some $525 billion in…

What’s happened? While Apple and Intel had cut ties a long while ago, things might look different in the near future. A fresh leak from Ming-Chi Kuo suggests that Intel may return to the Apple world. Not as the CPU designer, but as a chip foundry for Apple’s lower-end M-series silicon. This isn’t a throwback to Intel-powered MacBooks; instead, Intel would simply manufacture chips that Apple designs. In fact, if things go right, Intel could start supplying these chips by mid-2027. The plan involves using Intel’s 18AP process node to fabricate Apple’s entry-level M-series chips (likely for MacBook Air/base iPads).…

The industry has moved functions in-house, establishing playbooks from everything from social to programmatic media buying. But brands are not using the same in-housing play for AI.Some brands, like U.S. Bank, are taking a hybrid approach, while others, like Adobe, are more fluid, using AI tools both internally and in partnership with external partners. Mostly, brands are still testing and learning where AI can be leveraged in the marketing funnel, and what costs and where time can be saved. “Over time, AI will likely shake up many brands’ attitudes about in-housing different parts of their advertising and marketing operations. But…

Kellanova — the owner of Kellogg’s, Pringles and Pop-Tarts — is the latest firm to turn to AI tech to tune up its creative marketing efforts, Digiday has learned.Kellanova has been working with creative technology firm Vidmob and industry association MMA Global to measure the effectiveness of creative deployed on Meta ad units, using an AI-enabled solution to better understand which of its creative assets caught the eyes of consumers and which went under the radar. It’s now using the findings to tighten up its creative production — and alter its commercial relationships with creative agencies. The project is the latest example…

What’s happened? Microsoft rolled out a background-preloading update for File Explorer in Windows 11 Insider builds, hoping to make it open faster and feel smoother. The idea here was to keep parts of Explorer loaded in memory, so it pops up instantly when you click it. While that sounds smart, the reality is quite the opposite. As revealed in testing by Windows Latest, Explorer still lags compared to Windows 10, and preloading ends up using more system RAM. In side-by-side tests, Windows 11’s “preloaded” File Explorer opened slower than Windows 10’s regular Explorer, even on lightweight hardware. The new version…

Heineken is betting on special limited-edition tennis-themed cans to drive more sales of its non-alcoholic beer during the U.S. Open tennis tournament. Last year, the limited-edition cans — called Heineken’s 0.0 L0ve.L0ve cans — sold out during the first week of the U.S. Open, where they were sold exclusively. In turn, on-site NA sales at the tournament for Heineken grew 25% over 2023. Now the beer giant wants to bring that buzz outside the stadium and onto retail shelves for at-home tennis fans — the limited-edition can will be sold at retail nationwide over the coming weeks. It will also…

Sony’s upcoming smartphone lineup has made its first not-so-subtle appearance in the GSMA IMEI database, and its digital footprint tells us quite a bit, even if the company isn’t revealing anything. The Japanese outlet S-Max has spotted two Sony Xperia handsets on the GSMA IMEI database: the Xperia 1 VIII and the Xperia 10 VIII, each with its unique allocation code. Don’t hold your breath for a launch in the U.S. The model numbers for the Xperia 1 VIII (flagship) are listed below. PM-1520-BV – XQ-GE54 PM-1521-BV – XQ-GE74 PM-1525-BV – XQ-GE44 On the other hand, the model numbers for…

It looks like Microsoft has hit a massive wall. People just aren’t switching to Windows 11 as fast as the company hoped. In fact, the move is happening way slower than the shift from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Dell’s COO, Jeffrey Clarke, just dropped some eye-opening numbers during an earnings call. He revealed that about 500 million PCs out there are perfectly capable of running Windows 11 but are still stuck on Windows 10. That’s half a billion people just… waiting. And here’s the other half of the problem: Clarke says there are another 500 million computers that are…