Author: Geek Planet

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…

As consumers shift the way they seek out information on the web thanks to AI, marketers and media agencies are beginning to rethink the role paid search plays in their media plans. With that rethinking, they’re monitoring a small set of dashboard indicators for signs that ad performance is slipping, or that their competitors are getting ahead. It’s not always a high-resolution picture.Most marketers’ experience suggests that web traffic is likely to be down this year — but that conversion rates from web visitors that actually buy something (or take another action, such as signing up to a newsletter) are…

Well, the cat is officially out of the bag – not that it was ever really in the bag to begin with. In what has become a classic Google move, the tech giant seemingly got tired of the endless stream of leaks and just decided to post the phone itself. After weeks of blurry photos and spec sheet rumors, Google dropped a teaser video confirming that the Pixel 10A is real, it comes in a lovely powder blue, and preorders open on February 18. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? Visually, if you blinked, you might think you were…

“Chicago sidewalks are for people, not delivery robots,” so says a petition that seeks to rid the city’s streets of the wheel-based contraptions. Two robot companies — Coco and Serve — are operating the diminutive robots on Chicago sidewalks, transporting meals to customers. Launched in November, the online petition currently has more than 1,200 signatures from people throughout the city who want the robots banished.   Josh Robertson, the guy behind the petition, told CBS News that when the robots first arrived, he actually felt some excitement at seeing them trundling along the sidewalk because it looked like a glimpse…

Fiddelke, Target’s chief operating officer, has been with the company for more than two decades in many different departments and leadership positions. For most of 2024, he served as CFO and COO concurrently, and in May, the company said Fiddelke would lead an “enterprise acceleration office” to drive speed and agility across the company by simplifying cross-company processes and using technology and data in new ways. The company made the announcement before its second-quarter earnings call Wednesday morning. Fiddelke will take the role in February 2026, with current CEO Brian Cornell becoming executive chair of the board of directors. This comes after several underwhelming…