Sam Bradley

is that good

things were better when the computer lived in its own specific room and you only went in there sometimes

Headlines Used to Have One Sentence. Not Anymore.

I forgot about this for a while but the Bryce Elder "Sam Altman's kitchen" piece may be one of my favourite things I've read in business or tech history.

www.ft.com/content/b180...

‘All those posh apartments. It’s a playground for the rich’: is Manchester turning into London? £6 a pint, £199 a month for gym membership, £1,200 to rent a studio flat? The Guardian’s former North of England editor asks if the city she’s worked in for 12 years is changing for the better – or wo...

Is manchester becoming too much like london? Come with me on a trip around a high rise city of OnlyFans creators, £6 pints and ever richer overseas students www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

CMOs might be pushing ahead on AI, but lack of measurement’s holding them back CMOs embrace AI, but lack clear ROI metrics to justify full investment. Until then, measurement remains the missing link.

and I teamed up with @kimekom.bsky.social for this piece on the lack of measurement around brand AI investments digiday.com/marketing/cm...

Google’s YouTube overtures gain traction among marketers refocusing on brand investments YouTube is benefitting from prevailing winds propelling marketers toward brand spending.

wrote about rising YouTube ad spend by brands with @krystalscanlon.bsky.social on @digidaymedia.bsky.social
digiday.com/marketing/go...

Throne of Blood Accompanying the 4K restoration of Kurosawa's retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, Ran, we have two more of the Japanese master's Shakespearean masterpieces returning to Filmhouse this month. Akira K...

so delighted the ‪@filmhouseedinburgh.bsky.social‬ is open again. caught Perfect Days a weekend ago (and then went down the road to watch Tornado); very tempted to go and see Throne of Blood on saturday www.filmhouse.org.uk/movie/throne...

TikTok might be working on a standalone U.S. app, but marketers aren’t sold on the idea – yet TikTok is developing a lifeboat for its American business, but media buyers are wary of advertising implications.

also worked with ‪@krystalscanlon.bsky.social‬ looking at TikTok's lifeboat digiday.com/marketing/ti...

B2B and DTC marketers find themselves on the zero-click search frontline Zero-click search is collapsing the user journey for brands reliant on Google. How are B2B and DTC marketers responding?

and this one about why DTC brands might be the ones to watch (if you care about search that is, if you're normal you're off the hook) digiday.com/marketing/b2...

Agencies create specialist units to help marketers' solve for AI search gatekeepers Wpromote, Kepler and Jellyfish practices aim to illuminate impact of black box LLMs on brands.

been writing about zero click search a bit recently, inc this one about ad agencies trying to adapt digiday.com/marketing/ag...

got stupidly sunburned today in the pentlands. red kites and buzzards enjoying the updrafts though

After third postponement, media buyers don’t believe TikTok is going to be banned Media agencies were expected to raise the topic of the ban in Cannes last week, but any questions or concerns were considered non-issues.

also spent some time taking the temp on tiktok advertising demand digiday.com/marketing/af...

The Rundown: The regulatory hurdles still in the way of the Omnicom-IPG merger The Omnicom-Interpublic merger remains on track for completion later this year, following a qualified approval from the FTC.

took a deeper dive on some of the outstanding completion inquiries in the way of the omnicom/ipg deal later on digiday.com/media-buying...

Here are some of the big questions left unanswered by the FTC’s Omnicom-IPG neutrality decree The FTC has granted the Omnicom-IPG merger under unusual conditions with major implications for brand clients.

busy week in which I very responsibly but very boringly stopped writing a “FTC won’t let me be” headline before I could be tempted to put it into the @digidaymedia.bsky.social cms digiday.com/media-buying...

good cover

Media Buying Briefing: What Dentsu’s synthetic audiences deal reveals about future of media planning Synthetic audiences, or digital twins, offer cost benefits to agencies. There are deeper implications, though.

i’m also handling our next couple of media buying briefings, starting with today’s on ‘synthetic’ audiences digiday.com/media-buying...

Sprite’s heat-activated digital billboards suggest a future spot for OOH in the media mix Brands like Arla and Sprite are investing in dynamic digital out-of-home work, due to its efficiency and proximity to purchase.

back in the saddle at @digidaymedia.bsky.social after a week in porto, with a piece on billboards activated by humidity and rising temperatures digiday.com/marketing/sp...

5. the real crime is cishet norms
4. my ordinary life is very literary
3. the real horror is living in the countryside
2. outer space is terrible for your mental wellbeing
1. driving and listening to the velvet underground

otter can be a bit dodgy depending on accents but it usually has a go at transcribing everything - how does turboscribe compare?

when i was about 15, i stayed over at a friend’s house. we ordered pizza and rented inland empire from blockbuster. thought we were getting a crime flick. nope! what a picture!

from the top of west kip, on sunday. spotted a pair of merlin falcons and a hare in the snow

Sophie Smith · Sleeping Women: On the Pelicot trial Gisèle Pelicot doesn’t conceive of her now ex-husband or the other men who raped her as ‘bad apples’, aberrations...

Sophie Smith's piece in the LRB on the rape trial, and on men in general, is chillingly, vividly brilliant. Via @helenbarrett.bsky.social
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Rosa, the Orphaned Sea Otter Who Became a Foster Mom to 15 Pups Despite never having had offspring of her own, she was an instinctive caregiver.

The NYT was a wonderful “Lives They Lived” section today. I never expected to see such a beautiful obit for a sea otter! Pretty cool. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

GRIM

As more brands embrace use of influencer creative in programmatic, creator marketing expands beyond social More brands are beginning to export the benefits of influencer content via programmatic ads inventory.

also wrote about why you might start seeing influencers pop up on your smart tv home screen, or in amazon prime ads digiday.com/marketing/as...

Marketers have a new audience to worry about — large language models Tech firms are creating new ways to understand how large language models perceive their brands.

here’s my last story of the working year, reported with @martyswant.bsky.social it’s about the companies selling tools that purport to monitor what chatgpt is saying about brands behind their back digiday.com/marketing/ma...

6 hours under martial law in Seoul On the ground from the protests outside the National Assembly building

6 hours under martial law: a drunk scene report from Seoul www.theverge.com/24312920/mar...

At the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Mastercard joins a pack of consumer brands flocking to Formula One For marketers looking to align their brands with F1’s expanded appeal to audiences, the Las Vegas Grand Prix is providing a slip road into the sport.

beep beep! i wrote about what brands are up to at the las vegas gp digiday.com/marketing/at...