Mentos won a silver and a bronze Lions at Cannes this year for its Fizooka campaign on Fortnite. This is how the brand combined global and local influencers to boost engagement. mediacat.uk/combining-glob…

'The CMO is under real pressure right now. We’ve had requests from chief marketing officers who’ve been told they need to cut marketing spend by anything from 20% to 40%.' EY Studio+ global managing partner Laurence Buchanan talks to MediaCat at Cannes. mediacat.uk/the-cmo-needs-…

YouTube is by far the top destination for users following links shared by AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity, according to new data from Similarweb. It received 37.1 million visits sent from LLMs last month. mediacat.uk/youtube-domina…

Posting sponsored content damages influencers’ relationship with followers but transparency can neutralise this effect, says a new study. mediacat.uk/study-ads-erod…

'A lot of the big creative trends discussed at Cannes Lions last week felt familiar, but then, so did a lot of the winning campaigns...' says MediaCat UK's editor, James Swift mediac.at/45QhuHJ

Gen Z's much-discussed sobriety was shaped mostly by circumstances, not by a fundamental rejection of alcohol, says IWSR study. mediacat.uk/the-sober-gene…

Research from Amazon Ads suggests generational targeting is not enough to meaningfully connect with audiences. Campaigns that combine age-based targeting with audience signals like values, behaviours and communities deliver dramatically better results. mediacat.uk/amazon-convers…

'The most frequent stain is sweat, followed by period stains and then food stains. The fact that a lot of people don't know how to remove stains is quite a remarkable insight.' mediacat.uk/cleaning-gener…

In June, global programmatic media partner MiQ launched MiQ Sigma — an AI-powered tool that the company believes is the solution to the fragmentation of the programmatic ecosystem. MiQ's Zuzanna Gierlinska talks to MediaCat about the launch of the tool. mediacat.uk/programmatic-i…

Ad Formats (July): Lyft and Disney+ are increasingly converting user behaviour into bookable surfaces, LinkedIn is breaking out of the desktop, TikTok in the US may have to carry on without its algorithm, and height now matters on X. mediacat.uk/ad-formats-jul…

'The value of planners isn't micro-optimisation, its imagination and strategic thinking. As AI transforms the industry, planners must play to these strengths. Not by doubling down on invasive data collection but by embracing geographic intelligence.' mediacat.uk/geographic-dat…

‘If you think that our clients are ready to give up and basically, as Meta said, give their credit card to one platform, you’re wrong.’ mediacat.uk/arthur-sadoun-…

The proportion of marketers who said they were planning to cut spend increased for seven of the 10 media channels included in Mediaocean's H2 Marketer Report survey. mediacat.uk/search-suffers…

The in-car environment is 'one of the largest untapped frontiers in digital media', according to the driver interaction platform 4screen. And last week, Brand Metrics and LeadStory also found that in-car ads can have a significant impact on brand uplift. mediacat.uk/in-car-ads-del…

The ads business of Spotify is the ‘one area that hasn’t yet met expectations,’ according to the company’s founder and CEO, Daniel Ek. mediacat.uk/spotify-ceo-un…

'Yes, search still works. But it’s capturing intent as opposed to creating it. If you’re only showing up when someone knows what they want, you’re competing for the narrowest slice of demand — often at the highest cost.' mediacat.uk/search-spend-i…

'As AI agents increasingly consume content on our behalf, will we start designing more and more content not just with AI but for AI?' mediacat.uk/the-algorithmi…

Do you have a question about media, marketing or your career that you’d like answered? Ask Faris Yakob. He has a world of experience within agencies and as a consultant, and he wrote the book on Paid Attention. Just email your question to [email protected].

WPP released its H1 results this morning. Shares hit a 16-year low following the release, down around 40% over the past 12 months. mediacat.uk/wpp-pins-hopes…

Airbnb announced that it is shifting its advertising from TV to social media in its earnings call. Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, attributed the shift to changing consumer habits. mediacat.uk/airbnb-ceo-the…