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.
Meta’s internal documents show it knowingly earned up to 10% of its annual revenues in 2024—around $16 billion—from scam and banned product ads, per Reuters. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, reportedly served 15 billion high-risk scam ads daily, often letting them run unless 95% fraud certainty was detected. Brands should audit ad placements to see if scam ads dilute their impact. Seek platforms guaranteeing ad integrity, and require clear enforcement and accountability from ad platforms.
Highwire developed the AI Index, a tool that helps marketing and communications professionals understand how their brands show up in genAI search, per a press release. AI Index benchmarks brand appearances across genAI engines, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini. SEO shouldn’t be tossed by the wayside just yet, but as genAI matures, tools like Highwire Index can help brands navigate changes in search. To boost brand visibility in AI engines, marketers should focus on user-generated content and building brand affinity across social, community-driven platforms.
U.S. Bank launched the Split World Mastercard, a credit card that puts every transaction on an installment plan, per a press release.U.S. Bank wants to capitalize on consumer demand for both card-linked installments and BNPL cards. It’s a play specifically for Gen Zers, who tend to gravitate toward installments. These younger consumers can also use the card as a credit-building tool, a sought-after feature. But the Split Card may be a tough sell to prospects.
At Bank of America’s (BofA) investor day, its first in over a decade, the bank said it spent more than $118 billion on technology in the last 10 years. In 2025, its annual spending on new technology initiatives will reach $4 billion out of a total of $12.7 billion. In the AI race, banks that aren’t already ahead will fall even further behind. Increasingly sophisticated automation as well as an AI-assisted jump in employee productivity mean AI investments quickly compound on themselves. Last month, JPMorgan said it had already broken even on its $2 billion AI investments.
Dave reported $150.8 million in revenue in Q3 2025, up 63% YoY, and a net income of $92 million. The neobank reported 843,000 new members, a 25% increase in debit card spend to $510 million, short-term advance loan originations of $2 billion, and a customer acquisition cost (CAC) of $19. Neobanks’ original positioning as scrappy underdogs fighting the good fight against banks has transformed. It is now a story about how neobanks carved out a new niche catering to underserved customers, mostly competing with other neobanks.