The Travel Trends You Need to Know for 2024

Celebrating a promotion by going out to dinner is so 2023, according to Expedia’s annual Unpack report of travel trends for the coming year. The report, compiled using data from Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo, found that people are commemorating big life events by taking trips rather than saving their jet-setting for traditional vacations. And the…

Some World War II POWs Escaped With Help From Bicycle Playing Cards

Of the roughly 94,000 U.S. soldiers who became prisoners of war in Germany during World War II, an especially unfortunate several hundred wound up in a camp called Oflag IV-C, better known as Colditz Castle, a 12th-century stone fortress built atop a 250-foot cliff in Saxony. The Germans believed that escape from Colditz was impossible….

Infographic: Will Electric Cars Ever Take Over the Road?

Electric vehicles now represent 8% of new auto sales in the United States. That may not sound like much, but there’s good reason to believe change is coming down the road. Figures from data analytics firm YouGov, which surveyed more than 2,300 Americans, show the majority of vehicle owners aged 18-34 are likely to consider…

This AI Ethics Expert Juggles Motherhood and a Tech Career

The first time Sasha Luccioni applied for a position at Hugging Face–the AI startup now valued at $4.5 billion–she was rejected. “I wasn’t what they were looking for,” she recalled. This was nearly three years ago. Shaking off that initial rejection, she went to work at BigScience, a yearlong volunteer research workshop funded by Hugging…

Off the Clock: MarketMaker’s CEO Has Sky-High Ambitions

For some, the world of advertising just isn’t exciting enough. The always-on-the-move Celeny Da Silva, chief executive of market development and advisory company MarketMakers, is a born traveler and can often be found at the industry’s largest digital advertising conferences. One of her many life goals is visiting every country in the world. She’s checked…

Angel Reese Is Taking Her Game to the Next Level—and Bringing Brands With Her

Angel Reese was already a star, but when LSU won its first NCAA women’s basketball championship in school history in April, No. 10 knew things would never be the same. “My price just went up. Today’s price ain’t tomorrow’s price,” Reese told reporters that night–with a gold crown in front of her–post-game in Dallas before…

More Data, More Problems. Simplify by Adding AI

The appeal of data collaboration has always been its potential to bring simplicity to the traditionally fraught process of compiling a comprehensive picture of customer behavior and preferences from various sources. This, in turn, was supposed to make it easier for media buyers and sellers to derive meaningful insights and drive informed decision-making for specific…

Champions of Change: 24 Women Who Are Transforming the Sports World

As we close out 2023, it’s hard not to look back at the unprecedented year that women’s sports–and the women in sports–have had. From Sam Rapoport’s relentless focus on DEI in the NFL to the evolution of the NWSL’s marketing and commercial models under Julie Haddon, we couldn’t be prouder to honor Adweek’s inaugural Champions…

Cookie Crunch: Performance Marketers’ Preparation (or Lack of) for Deprecation

When Google deprecates third-party cookies from Chrome–as it says it will–in the second half of 2024, performance marketers will lose yet another signal to track potential customers, after Apple and others have retired cookies in recent years. While performance marketers–including big brands looking to drive sales and direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands spending more on lower-funnel efforts…

How Marketers Are Navigating AI’s Language Gap

When Mike Sotelo, vice president of digital content and experience at ad agency Alma, experimented with OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence tool GPT-3 in Spanish earlier this year, it wasn’t long before he came across a language gap. Sotelo entered two prompts: “How does a guey [a Mexican-Spanish slang term for a man] look in Miami?”…

Publishers’ AI Licensing Negotiations Mark an Inflection Point

Driven by the uncertainty surrounding generative AI, news publishers have begun the complex process of drafting licensing agreements that would, in exchange for payment, grant AI firms access to their content. Publishers are faced with the impossible–albeit familiar–dilemma of needing to determine what is best for them now based on what might happen in the…

The Technology and People Driving Positive Change in Artificial Intelligence

As we hurtle headfirst into the next tech frontier, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we need thoughtful, smart approaches to fully realize the power of generative artificial intelligence, rather than the breathless excitement of this year’s earlier months. With that in mind, we’re pleased to bring you the winners of Adweek’s inaugural AI Awards. Here,…

The Buying Power of Diverse Communities in the US Is Rising

Americans’ disposable income is estimated to reach $22.8 trillion by 2026, up 23% compared to 2021. More than in past decades, this buying power will come from a diverse group of shoppers. The University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth anticipates that in a few years, more than $1 out of every $5 of…

The Next Chapter of DEI: Shifting the Focus Back to Inclusion

In 2022, Adcolor conducted a study taking a closer look at the state of the workplace, particularly when it comes to the retention of historically excluded communities in adland. While the study homed in on macro factors that impact inclusion and retention, it also shined a light on other issues. One is the importance of…

Why Do People Hate the Term ‘Influencer’?

When people ask Sara Wilson about her former position at Facebook (now Meta), which began in 2013, she includes a caveat: “I worked with influencers, but now ‘influencer’ is a dirty word, so we call them ‘creators.’ “The early social media version of an influencer is largely negative,” continued Wilson, who is now the founder…

How Neurodiversity Became My Best Leadership Asset

“Neurodivergent” describes anyone who experiences a variation in their mental processing, including conditions like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). With an estimated 20% of U.S. adults having a neurodivergent condition, many will undoubtedly face challenges with their symptoms, particularly within a workplace setting. But it’s important to consider the strengths and…

Black-Owned Publishers Are Building More Collaborative Collective Models to Court Brand Budgets

In 2020, brands and agencies pledged to devote more marketing spend to Black-owned and Black-targeted publishers. But the immature advertising infrastructure of the sector–a lack of programmatic pipes–as well as scale challenges, soon bottlenecked the effort and benefited incumbents in the space. Since then, in a bid to address these technical issues and capitalize on…

For UPS, Delivering DEI to the Fashion Industry Never Goes Out of Style

There was once a time when UPS was the unlikeliest brand to be associated with fashion. With its ubiquitous (some would say drab) brown color scheme, nothing about the shipping company seemed to connect with an industry often characterized by its kaleidoscopic usage of color. This unexpected, radical connection makes UPS uniquely situated to usher…

This Nonbinary VP Found Ad Tech More Inclusive Than Network TV

When Gaby Maestre (they/them) decided to leave the TV industry, their colleagues weren’t thrilled. “The feedback was not encouraging, I’ll be honest,” said Maestre, now the vice president of global creative solutions at ad-tech firm Nexxen. Earlier in Maestre’s career, at Viacom and Turner, they worked on household brands including Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. But…

Born in New Mexico, Overland Is Fit for British Royalty

For better or worse, just about everything Prince Harry does these days is sure to make the news. So it was no surprise that the blogs and gossip pages began buzzing in March of last year when the Duke of Sussex turned up at the Stockyards Championship Rodeo in Texas. It wasn’t just that he…