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Dentsu Wins i-Health’s Integrated Media and Creative Account i-Health owns a portfolio of consumer health brands including Culturelle probiotics, AZO women’s intimate health products and Estroven menopause supplements. i-Health—the company behind women’s over-the-counter brands AZO, Estroven, and Culturelle—has expanded its relationship with Dentsu, naming the agency its media and creative AOR as it looks to modernize its portfolio and reignite growth.A division of Dutch multinational DSM-Firmenich, i-Health operates primarily in women’s health and gut health, with brands spanning intimate health, menopause relief, and probiotics. Prior to the review, Dentsu handled media planning and buying for Culterelle. Dentsu’s appointment, awarded after…

Lidar-maker Ouster has acquired StereoLabs, a company that makes vision-based perception systems for robotics and industrial applications, for a combination of $35 million and 1.8 million shares. The deal is the latest in a march toward consolidation among perception sensor suppliers. Just last month, MicroVision bought the lidar assets of the buzzy-but-now-bankrupt Luminar for $33 million. Ouster itself has played the M&A game a fair amount, too. In 2022, the company merged with rival player Velodyne. The year before that, it bought lidar startup Sense Photonics. This consolidation is happening right as companies and investors rush to build businesses around…

Sleep tech only seems to be getting more pervasive, permanent, and pricey. One day, you start checking your sleep rings on your Apple Watch, the next, you find yourself shopping for smart mattresses that require you to rethink your entire bed, fans that blow cool air under your duvet, and subscription apps that promise sleep coaching with hyper-granular data. Smart sleep pads are a good middle ground. They don’t require you to replace your bed and frame, strap anything to your body, or radically change your routine. They just sit on or underneath your mattress or pillow, and quietly do…

As Super Bowl advertising becomes less about a single TV moment and more about real-time cultural participation, brands are increasingly investing in influence that plays out off of the broadcast.This year, TikTok positioned its Clubhouse activation as a core second-screen strategy for brands. The IRL creator hub, hosted in early February, was designed to fuel platform-native content throughout the Big Game weekend by bringing together athletes, creators, and brands to collaborate on content specifically designed for the platform.Rather than a replacement for the TV spot, TikTok designed this year’s Clubhouse to amplify Super Bowl ads through creator-led content that shaped…

OpenAI on Monday announced it’s beginning to test ads in the U.S. for users on its Free and Go subscription tiers. The newer Go plan is a low-cost subscription at $8 per month in the U.S. and was introduced globally in mid-January. Subscribers to OpenAI’s paid plans, including its Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers, will not see ads, the company said. OpenAI sought to address concerns about how ads might affect the user experience, stating in a blog post: “Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you, and we keep your conversations with ChatGPT private from advertisers. Our…

Bad Bunny DID THAT. Se la rifo! Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show arrived at a moment when most cultural conversations in the U.S. feel fragmented. Different feeds, different audiences, different realities depending on who you ask. For 13 minutes in the middle of the Big Game, in front of 140 million viewers, that fragmentation paused. Millions of people, across hundreds of languages and thousands of backgrounds, reacted to the same moment at the same time. Have a quick look at X, TikTok, Facebook, your WhatsApp group chat, or even a pit stop at the office watercooler, and you’ll find people…

The most seductive narrative in American work culture right now isn’t that AI will take your job. It’s that AI will save you from it. That’s the version the industry has spent the last three years selling to millions of nervous people who are eager to buy it. Yes, some white-collar jobs will disappear. But for most other roles, the argument goes, AI is a force multiplier. You become a more capable, more indispensable lawyer, consultant, writer, coder, financial analyst — and so on. The tools work for you, you work less hard, everybody wins. But a new study published…

ChatGPT Gets Ads: Omnicom, WPP, and Dentsu Line Up Brands for OpenAI Pilot OpenAI OpenAI officially rolled out ads in ChatGPT on Feb. 9, a watershed moment in its monetization strategy that breaks from its long-standing resistance to in-product advertising.Some U.S. users on ChatGPT’s free tier and its $8-per-month Go subscription plan will start seeing embedded ads, OpenAI said Monday in a blog post. The company previously confirmed to ADWEEK that it wants advertisers to pay at least $200,000 for its early ad test.Despite the high price tag, that test — dubbed OpenAI Ad Pilot Program — has already drawn investment…

India is pushing Aadhaar, the world’s largest digital identity system, deeper into everyday private life through a new app and offline verification support, a move that raises new questions about security, consent, and the broader use of the massive database. Announced in late January by the Indian government-backed Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the changes introduce a new Aadhaar app alongside an offline verification framework that allows individuals to prove their identity without real-time checks against the central Aadhaar database.  The app allows users to share a limited amount of information, such as confirming that they are over a…

OpenAI will not use the name “io” for its forthcoming line of AI hardware devices, according to a Monday court filing.The motion is part of a trademark infringement lawsuit filed last year by audio device startup iyO, which sued OpenAI after it acquired famed Apple designer Jony Ive’s startup io. Peter Welinder, OpenAI’s vice president and general manager, said in the filing that OpenAI had reviewed its product-naming strategy and “decided not to use the name ‘io’ (or ‘IYO,’ or any capitalization of either) in connection with the naming, advertising, marketing, or sale of any artificial intelligence-enabled hardware products.”Welinder also…

Super Bowl 60 brought the biggest tech players—some making their debut, like Anthropic—into the spotlight to pitch AI tools. Yet, not a single major AI company appeared in the top 20 most cited ads across AI chatbots.Analysis from Emberos’ AI Influence Index of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok shows that Xfinity, Bud Light, Squarespace, Ramp, Dove, and Volkswagen dominated the responses, revealing an unexpected hierarchy shaped by how each AI system interprets clarity, purpose, and cultural resonance.Emberos“There’s a really healthy mix between CPG, tech, alcohol, and auto brands,” said Justin Inman, founder and CEO of Emberos. “You would think…

As AI data centers drive up electricity prices, London-based startup Tem thinks AI might be able to help solve it, too. Tem has built an energy transaction engine that relies on AI to cut prices relative to other energy traders. The company has signed up more than 2,600 business customers throughout the U.K. on the promise that buying energy from its utility division can save them up to 30% on their energy bills. The startup recently closed an oversubscribed $75 million Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from AlbionVC, Allianz, Atomico, Hitachi Ventures, Revent, Schroders Capital, and…

There’s been this hand-wave, this assumption, this yada yada at the core of our long-term space programs. If we can return astronauts to the moon, we’ll find ice there. And if we find that ice in sufficient quantities, we’ll break it down into hydrogen and oxygen, and yada yada, we’ll use that fuel to fly deeper into the solar system, maybe even to Mars. And if we get to Mars, we’ll find even more ice on the Red Planet. We’ll mine that, combine it with the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and yada yada, we’ll use that to fly the…

Be it fashion trends or Top 40 hits, America usually takes 20-30 years to rediscover icons of its past and return them to vogue. The 1980s went crazy for the diners and leather jackets of the 1950s. Bellbottom jeans of the ’60s got trendy again in the ’90s. So it was inevitable that the 1990s themselves would come back to us—and they did in a big way in Super Bowl 60’s advertising.Nostalgia wasn’t present solely for its own sake. The adolescents of the ’90s are today’s younger Gen Xers and older millennials, a demographic that’s at—or coming into—its peak spending…

On Monday, Databricks announced it reached a $5.4 billion revenue run rate, growing 65% year-over-year, of which more than $1.4 billion was from its AI products.  Co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi wanted to share these growth numbers because there’s so much talk about how AI is going to kill the SaaS business, he told TechCrunch. “Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, it’s SaaS. What’s going to happen to all these companies? What’s AI going to do with all these companies?’ For us, it’s just increasing the usage,” he said. To be sure, he also wants to distance Databricks from the SaaS label, given that…

There are 100 firmness levels to choose from with the Balance Pro, and it also features the softest memory foam top layer of all its mattress offerings. I ended up leaning toward firmer levels to offset this softness, landing at 60, while my husband opted for 80. It took about a week to fine-tune our preferences and establish a baseline, as the Bryte app outlined during installation.Another marquee feature of smart mattresses, aside from customizable firmness, is compatibility with adjustable bases. Adjustable bases enable a smart mattress head and foot to move to different positions, whether to help with snoring…