Affirm’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) increased 42% YoY to $10.8 billion during its fiscal Q1 2026 (ended September 30, 2025). Healthy performance across its POS integrations and its debit card is key to why we forecast Affirm will remain the dominant US BNPL player against its chief competitor, Klarna, by a margin of $4.7 billion in US volume. While Affirm notched its second quarter of profitability at $81 million in net income, it’s going to need to widen its margins to compete with the rewards PayPal can offer consumers, such as 5% cash back on Pay Monthly loans.
Block’s gross profit increased 18% YoY to $2.66 billion, per its Q3 2025 earnings release. Expanding buy now, pay later solutions can help payment platforms grow volume heading into the holiday season as consumers grapple with economic uncertainty and the pressure of gift buying. Providers who can leverage rewards like cash back and/or interest-free options serve to secure consumer loyalty during a time of economic stress.
Adyen launched two point-of-sale (POS) terminals ahead of the holiday season, per a press release.As SMBs approach the critical holiday season, POS providers need to offer value to court cash-strapped vendors, reminding them the importance of a reliable, durable terminal system. Add-ons like AI-powered software can help convince vendors the value of their hardware with high-powered tools to boost conversions and payment volume.
Hims & Hers said on its recent earnings call that it’s in active talks with Novo Nordisk to make Wegovy available on Hims’ platforms. Hims and Novo both have an incentive to reignite their partnership. Hims’ pricing edge in the GLP-1 market is fading, while Novo could use GLP-1 sales from Hims’ sticky customer base to make up some of the market share it has recently lost to Lilly.
Consumers without experience using digital health tools—like wearables, health apps, or devices to manage a condition—say they’d try one if recommended by a doctor or insurer, according to a recent report from Merge. Direct-to-consumer marketing isn’t the only effective way to drive digital health tool adoption. When it comes to their health, many consumers trust medical professionals over brands—giving health tech players a chance to further prove to insurers, employers, and doctors that their tools deliver real value.
Healthcare and pharma social media ad spending will surpass linear TV this year, growing 18.1% year over year to reach almost $6 billion. Meanwhile, the industry’s linear TV spend will decline 11% to $5.56 billion. These shifts in spending align with the fact that social media is an increasingly important source of health information, especially for younger people and healthcare professionals.
Mark Cuban’s online pharmacy, Cost Plus Drug Company, signed a deal to sell a biosimilar version of Johnson & Johnson’s drug Stelara at a price far below the brand-name list price and lower than competing biosimilars. Starjemza isn’t Cost Plus’ first move into biosimilars, but the drug’s steep discount compared to other Stelara competitors could pose a real challenge to typical pharmacy benefit manager pricing negotiations.
69% of US Democrats ages 65 and up trust mass media, compared with 17% of US Republicans in the same age group, according to a September Gallup survey conducted by ReconMR.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) posted rocky Q3 results, with US ad revenues falling 16% YoY to $1.4 billion, largely attributed to linear TV audience declines. WBD’s current ad struggles indicate that significant changes are ahead—but regardless of whether WBD splits or sells, the shift will inevitably deliver greater value to advertisers.
Connected TV (CTV) engagement is growing steadily, with engagement per impression reaching 1.94% in Q2 2025, up from 1% in Q2 2024, per our industry KPI data provided by BrightLine. Consistent growth in audience engagement with interactive CTV ads means advertisers who haven’t jumped on the interactivity bandwagon risk losing an opportunity to make positive impressions on vast CTV audiences.
Eighty-five percent of adult mobile gamers in the US, the UK, Japan, and South Korea play daily—but how they play and pay diverges sharply, per Mistplay’s 2025 Mobile Gaming Across Markets report. The East–West loyalty gap is redefining how mobile game studios and advertisers compete. Asian markets lean on depth and narrative while Western ecosystems chase reach and novelty. Brands and publishers must find ways to localize the full player journey—from discovery to monetization. Cultural fluency and first-party data will define who retains gamers’ attention.
The Trade Desk posted another strong quarter, with revenue up 18% to $739 million and EBITDA margins above 40%, but CEO Jeff Green’s focus remains philosophical. On the Q3 call, Green said the company’s “AI-first” Kokai platform and new tools—Open Ads, Deal Desk, Audience Unlimited, and Trading Modes—position TTD as the infrastructure layer of an open, transparent internet. CTV now accounts for half of total revenue, with Disney and Hearst partnerships lifting publisher yields by 23%. Yet Green acknowledged the open web’s challenges, calling the vision “more aspirational than factual” as walled gardens tighten control.
X’s new link preview function is artificially inflating web traffic and skewing attribution and engagement metrics for publishers and brands, per The Verge. The feature collapses posts when links are clicked on, letting users bookmark, like, repost, and reply while viewing a webpage. It also preloads pages before any interactions, resulting in false page views. Marketers and publishers should audit their analytics tools and scrutinize any sudden, extreme traffic spikes. Prioritizing first-party data and metrics like time spent and conversions—rather than simply counting page views—will help provide more reliable insights.
Social media marketers are prioritizing user-generated content (UGC) and influencer collaborations. More than three-quarters (82%) of B2B and B2C marketers say UGC is at least somewhat important, per Emplifi. But marketers are facing challenges with their workloads. Just 7% report never feeling burned out, and nearly half say they need more headcount and resources. Marketers should invest in joint UGC and influencer strategies and monitor impact beyond vanity metrics, and CMOs should focus on building teams that can work together across silos efficiently.
Only 30% of Gen Z adults plan to travel for the holidays in 2025, down from 44% in 2024, according to an October report from Bankrate and YouGov.
LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe says marketers are now fighting a “war for signals”—a race to collect, clean, and connect data fast enough to prove every dollar’s impact. Speaking alongside Q2 earnings of $200 million (up 8%), Howe described marketing’s new reality as “precision and proof.” LiveRamp’s clean room tech now lets brands merge data across partners like Netflix, Uber, and PayPal to tie spend directly to transactions. With AI acceleration and data collaboration redefining performance, Howe says growth depends less on scale and more on signal speed: “Access to better data gets the flywheel going—and determines who wins.”
Target is overhauling its ecommerce fulfillment model by reducing the number of stores that handle online delivery orders to ease strain on operations and improve the in-store experience. After testing the approach in Chicago, it has expanded to 36 markets with more planned next year. The strategy helps cut transportation costs, reduce out-of-stocks, and raise customer satisfaction, while allowing longer next-day delivery windows. However, Target still trails Walmart and Amazon in delivery speed and coverage and faces ongoing challenges as shoppers increasingly focus on essential purchases.
Snapchat revenues and users grew in Q3—but the company warned that age verification laws would have unpredictable results on its business. While innovative ad tools and a new partnership with Perplexity could offer more value, stagnant growth and new policies that would restrict access to over 18% of Snapchat’s audience make the social platform a riskier investment than those with ad businesses less reliant on a youth-oriented audience like Instagram.
AppLovin beat expectations again, delivering a blowout quarter that affirmed its place among the most profitable players in adtech. Even as the company faces ongoing scrutiny over data practices and an SEC probe, its financial momentum appears unaffected. AppLovin is proving that controversy doesn’t always kill momentum. Its ability to execute quarter after quarter suggests marketers may be more pragmatic than moralistic, following results over rhetoric.