Meta will cut 600 roles from its Superintelligence Labs (MSL) division as it tries to move faster in the AI race. The layoffs are concentrated on its Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) unit, per Axios. Hiring will continue for Meta’s newly formed TBD Lab group, which has been poaching AI-skilled employees from OpenAI and Apple with splashy and costly buyouts. The rush to commercialize AI raises the need to invest in responsible research. Sustainable AI performance could depend as much on guardrails as it does on growth: CMOs should invest in AI tools that deliver measurable impact today while prioritizing vendors that vet tools, establish guardrails, and demonstrate accountability to protect both brand equity and consumer trust.
The New York Times is adding a Watch tab to its app Wednesday in an effort to boost engagement and usher in more advertising business. The tab will feature a mix of short-form, swipeable, vertical video content, per Adweek. In early 2026, the publisher plans to open video ad placements within the tab to brands through a beta program, per Axios. As publishers introduce vertical video ad inventory, marketers should rethink their media mix to include premium placements that mirror the engagement of social video—while considering how those ads may appear alongside hard news or opinion content.
Amazon plans to replace over 500,000 human jobs with robots as part of a major automation drive aimed at speeding up deliveries and cutting costs, according to The New York Times. After years of workforce expansion, the company is now focused on streamlining operations, with new robotic warehouses like its Shreveport, Louisiana facility already reducing staffing needs by 25%. Amazon expects to replicate this model nationwide by 2027, maintaining headcount while doubling sales by 2033. The shift toward automation is designed to boost efficiency, cut per-package costs, and reinforce Amazon’s dominance in US ecommerce through faster, cheaper fulfillment.
OpenAI launched an AI-powered browser—ChatGPT Atlas—and jumped headfirst into a new kind of rivalry with Google and Perplexity. ChatGPT Atlas is built around OpenAI’s flagship chatbot and features agentic capabilities. The browser is available globally on macOS, and access for Windows, iOS, and Android users is coming soon, per OpenAI. Companies should start optimizing for conversational search by ensuring websites are structured so AI agents can easily find and surface them in user queries. Brands should test both Atlas and Comet to see how their content surfaces and understand how AI browsers engage with users.
A minor technical failure took down Amazon Web Services (AWS) for several hours. Disrupted financial apps reportedly included Chime, Coinbase, and Venmo. Some financial institutions (FIs) were also reportedly affected.A mistake in a digital transformation project or a poor choice of vendor can have far-reaching consequences for a bank’s customer relationships and compliance with recordkeeping regulations. The solution for banks that can afford it has been redundancy through hybrid deployments to the cloud and on-premise.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered an outage that continued to disrupt services into Monday afternoon, degrading services across more than a thousand company websites, including Disney+, Reddit, McDonald’s, Facebook, United Airlines, Coinbase, Perplexity, and Canva, per The Verge. Businesses reliant on a single cloud vendor could face operational, legal, and reputational risks when outages hit public services, banks, and travel sectors simultaneously. Brands should audit vendor dependencies, test crisis communication flows, and prioritize multi-cloud failover readiness to safeguard user experience during inevitable disruptions.
Adobe’s new genAI model marketplace—Adobe AI Foundry—lets brands create bespoke versions of its Firefly AI model. The marketplace helps enterprise users train and deploy customized content-creation models by retraining Firefly’s base knowledge. The models can understand brands’ tone, style, and products, per VentureBeat, then generate content accordingly. Platforms like Adobe AI Foundry could help marketers create more relevant, personalized ad experiences across platforms. CMOs should treat model customization as a way to consolidate creative tools and vendors while scaling personalization at speed, using it to strengthen collaboration between in-house teams and agencies.
B2B buyers are leaning on AI tools for vendor selection, raising the stakes for surfacing in AI results. Eight in 10 global B2B buyers in the tech industry use genAI as much as traditional search when researching vendors, per Responsive’s Inside the Buyer’s Mind report. Four in 10 use genAI and traditional search equally. B2B marketers can insert themselves early in buyers’ discovery, vetting, and selection process by focusing generative engine optimization (GEO) efforts on controllable platforms. Ensure website information is structured and easy to parse by publishing clear FAQ pages with information on pricing, use cases, and product offerings.
The connected car is shifting from a tech talking point to a marketing one as in-car entertainment becomes the next attention battleground for advertisers. Nearly two-thirds (63%) want infotainment systems to give them personalized recommendations based on listening behavior, and 67% want those systems to organize content seamlessly. A brief window exists before in-car ecosystems mature and become harder to penetrate. Marketers should act now by experimenting with partnerships, designing “car-first” experiences, establishing a cross-device identity, and investing in personalization.
YouTube now reaches 76.3% of Mexico’s internet users and has become the default screen in Mexican homes, per DataReportal. But the bigger story is how it’s being watched—mostly through connected TV (CTV). YouTube now sits at the center of Mexico’s CTV and cultural ecosystem. There’s an opportunity for marketers to capture attention by seeking out partner creators for sponsorships. Brands looking to connect should prioritize long-form CTV strategies that hold attention on the big screen, collaborate with local creators who understand community dynamics. and develop original, Spanish-language content that reflects local culture and values.
WhatsApp is tackling spam with a message-capping feature that limits how many messages users and businesses can send without getting a reply from the recipient. When a user nears the limit, which hasn’t been defined yet, they’ll get a pop-up warning to help them avoid being blocked from sending messages, per TechCrunch. Brands need to segment audiences more carefully and measure message quality, not just output volume. To maintain trust, companies should streamline their communication, focus on relevance, and avoid messaging fatigue to talk less and connect more.
AI is rapidly becoming central to retail operations, with 45% of organizations using AI tools daily and nearly all planning to sustain or increase investments next year, according to an Amperity survey. While fears of mass job losses have yet to materialize, ongoing economic pressures—including weak consumer sentiment, rising inflation, and a softening labor market—are driving a surge in layoffs. As companies turn to AI to boost efficiency and manage costs, the challenge lies in balancing automation with the human expertise needed to navigate uncertain times.
Spotify signed a slate of deals with Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Merlin to develop “responsible AI” tools that ensure fair compensation, respect for copyright, and let artists decide whether they want to allow AI use. The music streamer didn’t clarify what kinds of tools it’s developing. Creative platforms are under pressure to show they can harness AI responsibly without eroding creator economics. Brands should vet creative partners and platform placements for reach, transparency, brand safety, and ethical AI practices.
Households may not be tapped out on subscriptions yet, but subscription fatigue is emerging as viewers seek more affordable ways to stream and rethink how much they’re willing to pay. Nine in 10 US households pay for at least one streaming service, per Parks Associates. Nearly half (45%) watched free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) in Q1 2025, up from 42% in Q1 2024. Although viewers may be accepting of ads, overload or irrelevant messaging could turn them away. Advertisers should: diversify placements, invest in creative testing and ad frequency controls, and focus data-driven buying.
Google is embedding its Gemini AI deeper into Gmail with Help Me Schedule—an assistant that proactively identifies when users are trying to set a meeting and auto-suggests times directly within the message. The recipient just picks a slot, and it’s booked for both. GenAI is now part of the fabric of work—booking meetings, writing copy, summarizing calls. Tools like Gemini and Copilot go beyond boosting output to freeing agencies and creatives from menial tasks, giving them back time to focus on ideas that actually move the brand forward.
Google and WPP struck a $400 million, five-year deal to expand AI tools and services across the UK ad agency’s services. The extension of their partnership, first announced in April 2024, marks a structural acceleration of how AI is becoming embedded in marketing operations. Deals like Google and WPP’s redefine what “AI maturity” looks like in marketing and how alliances are reshaping competitive dynamics. For CMOs, announcements like this emphasize the need for strong oversight of agency partnerships and a clear framework for measuring AI-driven efficiency and creative quality.
Content maintenance is no longer optional if brands want to stay visible in generative engines and chatbot answers. Over 70% of pages cited by ChatGPT were updated within the past 12 months, per AirOps’ The Silent Pipeline Killer report, making content renewal and refreshing a must for relevance in AI outputs. Brands that treat content as an ongoing performance lever, not just a one-time project, will earn sustained visibility and trust in generative AI (genAI) results. For CMOs, that means rethinking content strategy as a living ecosystem, where freshness is the new SEO.
OpenAI created an Expert Council on Well-Being and AI—a panel of eight behavioral and mental health specialists tasked to guide how AI tools like ChatGPT and Sora interact with users, per Ars Technica. CEO Sam Altman also announced on X that, “now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.” OpenAI’s loosening guardrails shift responsibility to brands and users who must now share in the responsibility to define and enforce their own ethical boundaries.
As CTV ad spending accelerates, buyers are shifting focus from convenience to performance—zooming in on ad quality, viewer experience, and actionable signals that drive measurable impact. Nearly half of global agencies and demand-side platforms (47%) prioritize ad quality and a positive user experience, per BCG and Google. Easy integration, responsive customer support, and platforms’ ease of use rank far lower. Marketers should push for consistent data-sharing and collaboration with publishers to turn CTV from an experimental channel into a predictable growth engine.
Google updated ad arrangements across its Search interface globally, potentially amping up competition for visibility and user attention. Users can now hide sponsored content by collapsing text ads to only see organic results. The “Sponsored Results” label is pinned to the top of the search screen as users scroll, making that section more apparent even when collapsed. Brands that rely heavily on search visibility need to rebalance paid and organic SEO strategies. They should test how collapsed ads change click-through rates and revise bidding tactics to maintain a share of user attention in increasingly competitive results pages.