Mail Metro Media has unveiled two new dedicated social publishers: dmg newmedia and creator media. Dmg newmedia is a social news and entertainment platform for young audiences, while creator media is home of multiple social-first, lifestyle brands powered by creators including fashion and beauty publisher Eliza. Nick Moar will be responsible for all content, creative and operations as Head of dmg newmedia and Jo Bridger, Head of creator media, will lead the editorial team of the lifestyle brands Eliza, Eliza’s Brother, and You. In a newly created role, Hannah Blake, Managing Director, Commercial, creator and new media, will lead the commercial team. Dmg newmedia has launched with brands – Daily Mail, Daily Mail UK, and Mai Sport – and is building a portfolio of specialist channels. It recently launched The Respawn (gaming), The Spotlight (entertainment) and This Is Money (personal finance for Gen Z), with upcoming channels in health, wellness, technology, food and climate. creator media’s flagship brand is Eliza, which reaches more than 50m people a month with its relatable and affordable shopping advice for young women. It recently relaunched You Magazine on social, and is developing a new brand focused on a young male audience, Eliza’s Brother.
THG Commerce has announced a new charity partnership with Smart Works Greater Manchester. The partnership will leverage THG Commerce’s Women in Commerce Network to raise vital funds to support the charity’s mission of helping women break the cycle of hardship that results from being unemployed. The partnership will launch at the upcoming Women in Commerce Network event on 9 October 2025, where attendees will be invited to donate pre-loved workwear with an empowering story attached. These donated items will be featured in a special exhibition at THG Studios in December. The exhibition will also showcase a curated selection of luxury fashion items from the Smart Works archive, including pieces from brands such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton. An auction of items donated by the Women in Commerce Network will follow the exhibition, with all proceeds going directly to Smart Works Greater Manchester. The funds will support the charity in providing high-quality interview clothing and coaching to unemployed women.
Time Out and The Lion King on Broadway have announced a multi-month partnership, which has seen the stage production become the exclusive opening sponsor of the new Time Out Market New York, Union Square. The Time Out team has developed a campaign with a blend of digital and in-market activations, connecting The Lion King with Time Out’s audience of food and culture lovers. Screens throughout the market feature curated recommendations from Time Out New York experts, providing digital out-of-home opportunities to partners. The Lion King is being integrated across the screens, with costumes and masks on display, branded cocktails and trays, and more. This is being complemented by a digital campaign across all Time Out channels including editorial sponsorship, brand video plus social media. The partnership will run until January 2026.
AudienceProject has launched a direct integration with Netflix, enabling advertisers in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain to measure Netflix campaigns across all devices in its cross-media measurement platform, AudienceReport. Advertisers can now gain insights into the reach and frequency of their Netflix campaigns, including how many people they reach in their target audience and how efficiently they reach them. These insights can be accessed for Netflix campaigns alone or in combination with other channels across the open web, social media, online video, connected TV, and linear TV.
The Trade Desk, in collaboration with DIRECTV, announced plans to develop a custom version of Ventura TV OS that integrates DIRECTV’s streaming user interface. This version of Ventura is designed for deployment by any third-party TV manufacturer, retailer, or hospitality partner seeking a OS solution. Through DIRECTV’s interface on this version of Ventura, viewers will be able to access free ad-supported content, as well as streaming apps from the Ventura TV OS app store, within one platform.
Influencer marketing agency Pulse Advertising has unveiled a new research study, ‘Made in Italy in the Social Media Age,’ together with research institute Eumetra, to understand whether the “made in” label or country of origin still carries value in the current evolution of social media. The study measures the perception of luxury brands on social media through analysis conducted on the Made in Italy brand in UK, Germany, France, China and USA. The results of the study demonstrate how social media is evolving, what the channels of penetration are, the perception and the meanings associated with luxury Italian goods in fashion, food, automotive and travel. The research reveals a fundamental shift that demands immediate strategic attention from CMOs: social media leads discovery in every single market tested – from China (56%) to France (35%) – while traditional channels lose ground globally. The survey reveals that British consumers are more likely to pay more for Italian designer clothes than France, Germany & the USA with more than half (51%) of Brits stating they would pay more for a luxury Italian brand. Sixty-nine per cent of Brits say that influencers would be ‘quite or very likely’ to influence their purchasing decision with 72% of Americans admitting the same. This figure is significantly lower in France (59%) and Germany (57%).
DanAds, a provider of self-serve advertising platforms for publishers, has expanded into the APAC region. The business already powers self-serve platforms for several APAC media companies – including Nine (Australia), New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), and MBC Media Solutions (MMS) – and the move is aimed at building on that. To support this expansion, DanAds will partner with Scalient Ventures, which has developed a tailored go-to-market approach to accelerate and scale a regional sales strategy.
Iceland Foods is enhancing its retail media capabilities through a new partnership with Epsilon, the global data, technology and services company. The move will introduce offsite media, onsite video formats and a new auction-based buying model, making it easier for more brands to engage with Iceland’s nine million annual shoppers in smarter, more relevant ways. The new capabilities are announced within a year of Iceland’s partnership with GIG Retail, which enabled onsite display ads and in-store digital screens. Now, with Epsilon onboard, Iceland is adding to the scale and maturity of its retail media offer, offering advertisers the ability to bid in real time for both onsite and offsite placements, including video. The partnership marks a further step towards Iceland’s ambition to build one of the most extensive full-funnel retail media propositions in the UK. Future phases will include connected TV and broader video activation, giving brands more ways to reach verified audiences across more screens and channels.
Taboola (Nasdaq: TBLA), a global leader in delivering performance at scale for advertisers, has announced a new partnership with JOE Media Group. Leveraging Taboola’s performance advertising technology and audience engagement tools, JOE has seen its average monthly revenue increase by 40%. JOE achieved this growth by integrating a suite of Taboola products, including Feed, Mid-Article, Explore More and Newsroom. Under the terms of the partnership, JOE Media Group is utilising a range of Taboola products to grow its audience, optimise user engagement and drive revenue across its portfolio. These include Taboola Feed, which provides readers with personalised multi-format content recommendations to create a more engaging experience. JOE Media Group will also leverage Taboola’s Newsroom platform, which helps writers, editors and special-interest teams monitor real-time and historical data about content performance.
Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), the UK’s largest converged telecommunications provider, has achieved multimillion-pound annual savings and rebuilt its digital content ecosystem from the ground up, thanks to a strategic shift to Storyblok’s headless CMS. The performance gap between AI leaders and laggards is widening fast with agentic AI emerging as a powerful force shaping future-built companies. Globally, 5% of companies qualify as “future-built” for AI. These firms are at the forefront of AI innovation, systematically building cutting-edge AI capabilities across functions and consistently generating substantial value. In contrast, 35% (“scalers”) are scaling up their efforts and beginning to generate value, but many of them admit that they could be moving faster. The remaining 60% of organizations (“laggards”) report minimal revenue and cost gains and don’t yet have the proper capabilities for scaling AI in place. These are among the findings from a new report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) titled The Widening AI Value Gap: Build for the Future 2025 . Based on a global survey of 1,250 senior executives and AI decision makers across nine industries and more than 25 sectors, the study assesses AI maturity across 41 foundational capabilities, covering strategy, tech, people, innovation, and outcomes.
Immediate, home to trusted brands people love, has announced a new multi-platform partnership with Crown Paints and Good Food, the UK’s biggest food media brand. The innovative campaign, which launches this week, is aimed at connecting the colours of travel and food with home spaces. The ‘Colour Your Senses’ campaign showcases how Crown Paints can transform spaces in your home through a bespoke video series, content hub, and print executions. All content will connect the themes of food and travel with Crown colour choices. Each video features a different member of the Good Food team focusing on different cuisine and colour pairings: Episode 1 sees Cassie Best, Head of Food, bringing the vibrancy of Seville to the newly-decorated Good Food kitchen, while future episodes, set in the dining and living rooms, will include Barney Desmazery, Skills and Shows Editor and Helena Busiakiewicz, Food Content Producer. The videos, created by Immediate’s Imagine Studio, are presented by writer, blogger and content creator Claire Douglas.
Award-winning UK podcast network Noiser will launch a major new serialised audio adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice on 30th September, narrated by Dame Julie Andrews. The series marks a strategic step for Noiser as it expands its portfolio of premium adaptations, building on the success of its Sherlock Holmes Short Stories series narrated by Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey, Paddington), which has already attracted millions of listens worldwide. Pride and Prejudice continues the network’s ambition to reimagine classic literature for global audiences, championing the best of globally recognised British talent while opening up new monetisation opportunities for brand partners and advertisers. Pride and Prejudice sees Noiser partner once again with BBC Sounds, who hold non-exclusive rights to the show. This collaboration ensures the series will reach one of the UK’s largest podcast audiences, while also reinforcing Noiser’s credentials internationally as a trusted content provider for one of the world’s leading broadcasters. Spanning 25 episodes released twice weekly, this audio adaptation of Pride and Prejudice reading offers listeners the chance to rediscover Austen’s masterpiece in an intimate and immersive audio format.
StackAdapt the leading technology company in advertising and marketing, today announced that it has been recognized by Snowflake, the AI Data Cloud company, as an Activation & Delivery: Paid Channels one to watch in The Modern Marketing Data Stack 2026: How Marketers Become Agents of Change in an AI-Driven World. The fourth annual edition of Snowflake’s Modern Marketing Data Stack identifies the technologies, solutions, and platforms adopted by Snowflake customers to show how leading brands unlock growth and performance with modern data infrastructure. Snowflake assessed the use of marketing technologies by more than 11,100 customers to determine how AI, privacy, and data gravity are continuing to accelerate the evolution of martech and adtech across 13 categories.
NewsGuard has announced the launch of its new page-level news safety protection, an expansion of its industry-leading brand safety services that help advertisers safely and responsibly advertise on news content. The new capability leverages real-time, journalist-verified data about the specific page URLs on which false claims are spreading online to protect brands from their ads appearing on pages containing provably false claims. This level of precision overcomes the limits on reach and performance that can result from overly broad methods such as keyword blocking, sentiment analysis, and other blunt tools used by legacy verification companies that cost both advertisers and publishers valuable opportunities for safe ad placement. The new protections offer brands unmatched precision, enabling them to safely reach audiences on a wide range of news publishers without ads ending up adjacent to harmful provably false claims and conspiracy theories.
