International wildlife charity Born Free has launched a national Digital Out of Home (DOOH) calling for an end to the captivity of great apes in UK and European zoos. Great Apes ‘Not for a Cage’ features still photography brought to life through digital animation to deliver the message that wild animals should be Born Free, not for a cage or public entertainment. The wild gorillas featured were photographed in their natural habitat in Limbe, Cameroon by George Logan who worked with Born Free and Jake Hickman at postproduction house Neon Beast to visualise the disparity between a caged and free existence. The screen space was donated and planned by Ocean Outdoor under its Drops in the Ocean programme which awards a percentage of the company’s annual UK revenue in advertising space to selected environmental causes. Breaking on 31st July for 14 days, the full motion campaign is appearing on five screens across five cities including Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and London.
AEG Global Partnerships has announced a new digital advertising offering – AEG Digital Solutions – which allows brands to close the gap between physical activations and digital interactions. The sponsorships arm of the world’s largest live entertainment and sport company AEG has created an all-encompassing platform by combining its own channels, including digital screens and AXS apps, with Meta and Google advertising services. Audience targeting on the advanced AdTech platform will be powered by first-party data. With a current reach of more than four million live entertainment fans across the UK and plans to expand significantly over the next 12 months, AEG Digital Solutions has been designed to offer existing partners and brands access to high-quality audiences. As a standalone service or part of a fully integrated partnership, brands can now connect and reconnect with fans starting at the point of purchase and continuing far beyond the events themselves.
UK consumers are increasingly opting for ad-supported streaming services over ad-free subscription-based services, according to new research from Teads UK. The new UK CTV Pulse 2025 reveals that 42% of viewers choose to watch via AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) services, a 7% year-on-year increase. This is ahead of both BVOD (broadcaster video on demand) services at 36% (+6% YoY) and SVOD (subscription-based video on demand) services at 36%. The research has also found that younger streamers in the UK are more likely to engage with interactive features in CTV ads, such as QR codes, virtual try-ons or activating a brand’s Alexa skill while watching an ad on a big screen. Overall, 10% of UK viewers are willing to scan a QR code in a TV ad, which increases to 24% for those aged between 18-24 years old. Other interactive tools are welcomed by younger demographics, with 15% of UK 18-24-year-olds and 14% of 25–34-year-olds willing to add products to a shopping basket using interactive features in CTV ads.
New data from Visualsoft shows that the Women’s Euros 2025 drove stronger online retail growth than the Men’s tournament the previous year, with Sports & Outdoors, Fashion & Footwear, and Children’s sectors all seeing higher revenue, more orders, and increased average order value (AOV) during the fortnight leading up to the final. Comparing the two weeks before each final – 1–14 July 2024 (Men’s) vs 14–27 July 2025 (Women’s) – the data reveals that spending in support of the Lionesses outpaced that seen during the men’s campaign, which also saw England reach the final. Children’s retail saw the biggest uplift, with revenue up 54%, orders up 15%, and AOV jumping 34% year on year. Visualsoft’s data also reveals clear peaks around key matches. In 2025, Sports & Outdoors revenue surged by 30% the day before the Semi Final, while Children’s revenue jumped by 45% two days before. Fashion & Footwear consistently peaked 1–2 days before matches, with a 14% uplift just ahead of the Quarter Final. Similar behaviour was seen during the 2024 Men’s Euros, but the spending spikes were consistently lower, underlining the growing commercial power of the women’s game.
Motorola initiative leveraging Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) screens reinforced by display ads has delivered significant results for the telecoms brand. The Q4 2024 campaign was executed in partnership with Assembly and Hawk, Azerion’s independent activation platform, to raise awareness and purchase intent for the Razr and Edge 50 handsets. Azerion used Hawk’s advanced technology and its exclusive data partnership with Captify to deliver a strategy that combined location data with real-time search intent to enable precise audience targeting. DOOH ads were activated in regions where relevant searches for Motorola products were high, enabling the brand to reach in-market consumers; geolocation was also deployed to serve display creatives in areas with Motorola high street stockists. Impression measurement was reinforced by a search uplift study to demonstrate the campaign’s direct impact on Motorola’s share of search.
A group of UK advertising’s trade bodies, including the Advertising Association, ISBA, the IPA and IAB UK, has launched a comprehensive, cross-industry awareness campaign to help professionals working on Q4 campaigns understand the incoming Less Healthy Food (LHF) advertising restrictions. The campaign will signpost key resources including FAQs and online training to help the industry comply with the restrictions from October 1, 2025. The campaign highlights an Industry Agreement with the Government that from October 1, ads for identifiable LHF products should not be shown before the watershed on Ofcom-licensed TV and Ofcom-regulated on-demand services, or as paid-for online advertisements at any time. This voluntary agreement enables the Government to clarify the law to ensure brand advertising remains exempt from the incoming legislation.
Debenhams Group, the online retailer behind brands including Debenhams, PrettyLittleThing, boohoo, boohooMAN and Karen Millen, is using the visual search and discovery platform, Pinterest, to increase brand awareness and boost customer growth. Debenhams is the first Group brand in the UK to launch a campaign on the platform this year. The online department store is working closely with Pinterest on a marketing strategy to help position it as the ‘go-to’ shopping destination across home, fashion and beauty. As the majority of users come to Pinterest with the intention to shop and 96% of their searches are unbranded, Pinterest is the ideal platform for Debenhams to reach an engaged audience, at the very moment they’re making their purchasing decisions. This approach has already produced results. Earlier this year, Debenhams successfully launched a Bridal campaign to promote its new collection, which led to 75% better click-through rates compared to category benchmarks.
Affiliate marketing platform, 2Performant (BVB:2P), has announced a strategic partnership with Vevol Media, Ireland’s renowned Shopify development agency, to deliver an integrated solution that combines e-commerce development with performance-based marketing expertise. The collaboration creates a seamless pathway for Shopify merchants to launch and scale their online businesses through affiliate marketing. Businesses often struggle with fragmented tools and services across marketing and technology, a significant challenge when the average Shopify merchant uses six different apps to run their store. By combining Vevol Media’s Shopify development expertise with 2Performant’s BusinessLeague affiliate platform, merchants now have access to a unified solution that covers everything from building their store to managing performance-driven marketing programmes.
Optimizely, the digital experience platform (DXP) provider, has introduced the latest innovations to its CMS with new features designed to help increase discovery in the AI era. As AI redefines how people search and discover content, Optimizely is helping brands solve a problem they didn’t know they had: invisibility. Its newly enhanced CMS turns websites from content warehouses into visibility engines, built for discovery in the age of AI. Online behaviour is fundamentally shifting with website traffic predicted to drop 25% by 2026 as generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are increasingly used as a search engine. This shift has accelerated the need for Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)—a new approach to structuring content so it can be surfaced, summarised, and selected by AI agents. To compete in this model, content must be trustworthy, machine-readable, and strategically structured. To ensure Optimizely’s CMS becomes a visibility engine for brands navigating a dual-audience world, it will include new capabilities across three core areas: page optimisation, site-wide optimisation, and GEO analytics.
Incubeta, a global leader in digital marketing, today announced the launch of its innovative Seamless Search solution on Google Cloud Marketplace. This powerful offering leverages Google’s Gemini models alongside Incubeta’s advanced proprietary machine learning models to harmonize paid and organic search efforts, driving unprecedented incrementality and optimizing search reach at a scale previously unattainable. Incubeta has built its platform in lockstep with a mature organic offering that focuses on relevance, engagement, authority and experience. Their Seamless Search offering, and acquisition of organic content marketing agency ShoutBravo only bolsters this offering – enabling them to deliver client growth in the AI-powered future of search.
