Target is pushing to reclaim its place as a premier destination for affordable fashion. The retailer is turning its small-format SoHo store into a design concept that showcases its apparel and beauty assortment, the company told Axios. Target also relaunched its Target Style Instagram account earlier this month, which will offer up both outfit inspiration and shoppable content. Target’s ability to regain its fashion authority goes hand-in-hand with its ability to reverse its declining fortunes.
As online financial crimes and fraud attempts surge, customers are wary of new brands and frequently abandon transactions over a lack of trust. Over two-thirds (69%) of US adults have abandoned an online transaction or sign-up process due to distrust, per Liquid Web’s 2025 The State of Digital Trust report. In today’s online marketplace, brands need to convince consumers not only of their product quality, but of their company’s legitimacy. Unlike industry-level reputation, which brands can’t control, CMOs can shape digital trust by focusing on transparency, clarity, and responsiveness across the shopping journey.
On today’s podcast episode, we discuss the unofficial list of the most interesting retailers for the month of September, with a twist. This month ‘The Committee’ (Arielle Feger, Becky Schilling, and Emmy Liederman) put together a very unofficial list of the top eight most interesting back-to-college campaigns and activations. In this month’s episode, Committee members Analyst, Arielle Feger and Senior Director of Content, Becky Schilling will defend their list against Analyst, Rachel Wolff and Senior Analyst, Blake Droesch, who will dispute the power rankings by attempting to move retailers up, down, on, or off the list.
Retailers are projected to add fewer than 500,000 seasonal jobs in the final quarter of 2025, the weakest holiday hiring since 2009 and an 8% drop from last year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The slowdown reflects a broader labor market slump that recently led the Fed to cut rates, compounding concerns about rising prices and weak consumer sentiment. With forecasts pointing to sluggish holiday sales growth, lean staffing could further hurt retailers by creating long lines and poor service at a time when customer experience is critical.
The news: Private equity firm Novacap will buy digital advertising measurement and analytics firm Integral Ad Science (IAS) for $1.9 billion, the companies announced Wednesday. The deal will take IAS private after four years of public trading and is expected to close this year. Our take: Measurement fragmentation and transparency concerns with leading ad firms like Google means third-party measurement and attribution companies have a lucrative opportunity to provide much-needed standards.
Generative AI (genAI) has been pitched as a path to efficiency. Instead, 95% of enterprise pilots have failed to show measurable impact, per MIT Media Lab. AI adoption among larger firms peaked at 13% to 14% in early 2024 and dropped to about 9% by mid-2025—a nearly 30% YoY drop. AI adoption fluctuations serve as a warning. CMOs face a choice—either invest in structured AI training and workflow integration or risk eroding brand credibility and trust. Training employees to know when not to use AI will be as important as teaching them how to use it.
YouTube will allow creator accounts banned for election and COVID-19 misinformation to apply for reinstatement after mounting pressure for platforms to reverse Biden-era restrictions. YouTube’s policy shift signals a new norm in online content moderation where platform rules are more fluid and politically contested.
A growing share of consumers are integrating AI into their shopping journeys, with ChatGPT driving nearly 21% of Walmart’s referral traffic in August and playing a major role for Etsy, Target, and eBay. GenAI is now the second-biggest source of product recommendations, with trust in AI shopping tools soaring from 46% to 86% in just months. Retailers are experimenting with frictionless AI-driven checkout, while Salesforce predicts AI tools will drive 21% of global holiday orders this year. Amazon, however, is blocking AI crawlers to protect its ecosystem, a risky strategy that may drive shoppers to rivals.
Aldi will put its name on every private label product it stocks—over 90% of its assortment—as part of the largest packaging refresh in company history. Aldi’s decision to stamp its name across nearly every product it sells reflects a fundamental shift in how shoppers perceive private labels. Once primarily chosen for their price point, private labels are now drawing consumers with quality, variety, and attractive packaging.
The worldwide average session duration for apps in the Entertainment category was 7.3 minutes between April 2022 and June 2025, more than twice the time spent per session on the next-highest category, according to a June 2025 report from Airship.
The news: “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” returned to ABC Tuesday night after a nearly weeklong suspension by ABC and Disney. Kimmel’s return may appear to turn the page on a brief-but-heated conflict for legacy media, but it’s only the beginning. Nexstar and Sinclair have said they will air other programming over the show, cutting it out of local ad revenues. Our take: The responses to Trump administration pressures reflect a media industry that will act quickly to avoid becoming a political target, but one that is also willing to lower its head for business interests.
Access to connected TV (CTV) is inching toward democratization, transforming a high barrier to entry into an accessible landscape for brands with smaller budgets to connect with consumers. AdGood and Magnite illustrate how CTV is evolving from a premium resource to a more inclusive and dynamic marketplace as the format matures.
Disney is raising streaming prices again; Disney+ ad-free will climb to $18.99 per month, Hulu’s ad tier will rise to $11.99, and bundles will increase by up to $3. The hikes follow similar moves by Apple TV+ and Peacock, as subscription inflation outpaces consumer budgets. Nearly half of US adults have altered streaming subscriptions in the past six months, with two-thirds of cancellations tied to high costs. Disney can point to premium franchises, ESPN, and bundles as value, but modest daily engagement gains make retention a tougher challenge in a saturated market.
The news: Cloudflare is rolling out a new feature that gives content publishers greater control over how Google scrapes and presents their content and helps them keep content out of AI summaries without opting out of Google search results all together—a choice Google hasn’t allowed. For publishers, Cloudflare’s feature could provide further control over how content is indexed and brands are compensated. Experimenting with the tools will help companies understand how AI summaries are affecting their traffic and searchability.
Alibaba released two cutting-edge additions to its Qwen 3 large language model (LLM) that are ripe for enterprise application.Qwen3-Omni gives enterprises a rare mix of flexibility, cost savings, and global reach that many proprietary models can’t match. Qwen3-Max could push Alibaba into the frontier of agentic AI, combining massive scale with code-generation tools that could rival other developer-first models. For CMOs, Qwen3-Omni’s multilingual and multimodal skills could power richer customer interactions and unlock real-time insights from video, audio, and text data.
OpenAI and Google are racing to lock in users in two of Asia’s most populous markets with budget-friendly AI subscriptions, per TechCrunch. OpenAI’s $4.50-per-month ChatGPT Go has expanded from India to Indonesia, while Google countered with a similarly priced AI Plus plan ($4.56). Marketers should prepare for audiences in India, Indonesia, and beyond who will be AI-native from the start. Analyzing AI adoption and usage trends opens opportunities for when campaigns run along AI search results. That means testing localized creative strategies and viewing Asia as the engine driving the next phase of generative AI growth, not a secondary market.
Albertsons added a travel perk to its loyalty program, joining retailers that are extending membership benefits beyond core offerings in a bid to boost sign-ups and engagement. Loyalty programs increasingly serve dual functions for retailers. Not only do they help reward and retain customers, they are also an invaluable source of consumer data that can power companies’ retail media strategies. By enhancing the value of its loyalty program—and extending those perks to free members—Albertsons can make inroads with both customers and advertisers.
Over half (51%) of US teen boys say they’ve made a purchase after watching a YouTube Shorts ad, compared with 43% of teen girls, according to June 2025 data from Precise TV.