Author: Geek Planet

In the age of synthetic social, it’s getting harder to tell the difference between AI and human-generated content. Despite the AI hype, the influx of synthetic social (and mounting backlash to so-called AI slop) isn’t resulting in more, lucrative brand deals for creators according to the five influencer agency execs Digiday spoke with for this piece. Over the past year, AI-powered video apps like OpenAI’s Sora or Meta’s Vibes have developed further into the uncanny valley with machine-made, personalized social media content. Marketers are interested but largely hesitant to make synthetic social part of their marketing toolkit mainstays. “It’s (synthetic…

AppLovin and The Trade Desk emerged as the clear attention-grabbers in this ad tech earnings window — but for very different reasons, and with very different signals about how investors are reading the sector’s future. AppLovin’s third-quarter numbers were the kind that usually end an argument. Revenue jumped 68% year over year to $1.4 billion, with net income and adjusted EBITDA growing even faster as the company leans into its AXON-driven advertising platform and shrinks its legacy gaming footprint. The market’s reaction was briskly positive, as the company’s stock popped (see table below). However, what makes that reaction stand out…

OpenAI has shipped a security update to ChatGPT Atlas aimed at prompt injection in AI browsers, attacks that hide malicious instructions inside everyday content an agent might read while it works. Atlas’s agent mode is built to act in your browser the way you would: it can view pages, click, and type to complete tasks in the same space and context you use. That also makes it a higher-value target, because the agent can encounter untrusted text across email, shared documents, forums, social posts, and any webpage it opens. The company’s core warning is simple. Hackers can trick the agent’s…

What began as sponsored product placements tied closely to its retail marketplace has grown into a full-scale media network spanning streaming TV, audio, display and third-party publisher inventory. Now, the company is reorganizing how advertisers access and operate across that ecosystem.  At this year’s unBoxed conference, Amazon introduced a unified Campaign Manager that collapses the Amazon DSP and the Ads Console into a single buying tool. It also rolled out agentic AI tools that can generate creative, build campaigns, recommend targeting and write complex Amazon Marketing Cloud queries using natural language.  Together, the changes are meant to make full-funnel advertising…

Amazon is following the same playbook Google and Meta have refined for years: automate more of the planning and buying that agencies once handled. But this isn’t an overt bid to push them aside. It’s to capture the long tail — the thousands of advertisers who were never going to hire a shop in the first place.That’s the way Amazon ad execs are pitching a major overhaul to the way its ads business works this week: the DSP and Sponsored Ads console are being unified into a single Campaign Manager. Agentic tools — Ads Agent for planning, targeting and data analysis…

The team behind the close-friends photo-sharing app Retro, has built a side project called Splat that turns your photos into AI coloring pages for kids. Start with a new shot or something from your Camera Roll, pick a visual style, then generate a clean line-art page your child can color on-screen or print. Parents can already find endless printable pages online, but the hunt is often the annoying part. Many sites are ad-heavy, cluttered, or push small fees when you just want a quick sheet for a bored kid. Splat’s workflow is built around quick choices. Pick a photo, choose…

This article by David Klinghoffer is republished from Science and Culture. My Substack essay on the passing of James D. Watson is up now: No scientist, no human being, could leave a more tortured and contradictory legacy than geneticist James D. Watson, co-discoverer in 1953 of the elegant structure of the DNA molecule. He died this month at age 97. A noxious atheist, Watson unwittingly pointed the way toward scientific evidence of a creator. A noxious racist, citing supposed genetic evidence of African racial inferiority, Watson’s work with DNA suggests that human beings can’t in fact be reduced to “genes.”…

At a time when media careers are often measured in months rather than years, Joanna Saltz is something of an anomaly.This year marks a double milestone: the 10th anniversary of Delish, the Hearst food brand that’s become famous for its approachable, no-stress cooking philosophy, and editorial director Saltz’s own 10-year anniversary at its helm. When Delish launched in 2015, it was akin to a scrappy startup. Today, it’s a multimedia force, launching its first app (sponsored by DoorDash), and boasting a wildly loyal audience (34 million unique monthly visitors) and massive social media presence (3.2 million Instagram followers). The timing of the…

Lenovo’s leaked Copilot+ Legion laptops sound less like a raw power grab and more like an attempt to make gaming laptops easier to live with. According to a Windows Latest report, Lenovo is preparing new Legion 7a and Legion 5a models for a CES 2026 reveal, built around unannounced AMD Ryzen AI 400 series processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series Laptop GPUs. The idea is Lenovo AI Engine+ working with Legion Space to adjust power, fan speed, and efficiency in real time. The pitch, as described in the leak, is that you would spend less time tweaking profiles when you…

Job cuts made at Brandtech group media agency Jellyfish may be the latest symptom of a contracting advertising and marketing job market. The company cut as many as 50 roles at the end of October, following a slowdown in client spending, Digiday has learned.“Our existing clients were spending less money, some of those were retracting  the projects that they had planned, and that obviously led to a revenue hit,” said one exec whose role was cut in the layoffs and who spoke on condition of anonymity. Jellyfish confirmed the cuts. “Like everyone in marketing, our business is dynamic and we…