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It might seem that “ChatGPT” is all you ever hear about when discussing AI chatbots, also known as LLMs. As it turns out, that’s reflected in the real world, too. Statcounter, which tracks the market share of operating systems, browsers, social media sites, and more, has begun tracking the number of sessions by users who visit artificial intelligence sites like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude AI, Microsoft Copilot, and more. The winner, not surprisingly, is ChatGPT, by an enormous margin: over 80 percent and climbing, which coincides with our own chatbot tests. Statcounter began tracking the statistics in March, and they’ve roughly remained the same since then: ChatGPT absolutely dominates, with a cluster of smaller AI chatbots below. So far, the only major change seems to have been Perplexity AI, which captured 16 percent of U.S. users in March, but has dropped to about 6 percent since then. Microsoft’s Copilot has risen, beginning at under 1 percent and now capturing about 10 percent of the market. For the U.S,, the Statcounter numbers break down as follows: in July, 80.22 percent of U.S. chatbot sessions went to ChatGPT, 9.51 percent to Copilot, 5.61 percent for Perplexity, 2.67 percent to Google Gemini, and 1.56 percent to Claude, with Deepseek capturing just 0.43 percent. Statcounter Though those numbers reflect the market share for U.S. users, the picture doesn’t differ that much when viewed from a worldwide perspective. There, ChatGPT’s market share rises to 82.69 percent, followed by Perplexity at 8.06 percent and Copilot (4.56 percent). Gemini (2.2 percent) and Deepseek (1.59 percent) captured the remainder of the sessions Statcounter tracked, with Claude bringing up the rear at 0.91 percent. To be fair, however, it’s not clear how Statcounter arrives at its numbers for tracking AI chatbots. In terms of sample size, Statcounter’s global statistics are based on an analysis of more than 5 billion page views on more than 1.5 million websites per month, the company says. Cookies on those 1.5 million sites can track which devices access them, what operating system they use, and so on. For estimating search engine results, Statcounter says that it uses those tracking cookies to determine if a user arrived from Google, Bing, or somewhere else. Still, one of the challenges with AI chatbots is that they’re not sending users anywhere else, which is worrying to content creators with the rise of features like Google’s AI Mode and AI-powered search. Statcounter representatives did not immediately answer a request for comment. Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers’ News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room. Read More

Skip to content Image: Christopher Null/Foundry At a glance Expert’s Rating Pros Petite, unobtrusive hardware Wi-Fi connectivity and interconnected features work well Very affordable Cons Doesn’t detect the presence of carbon monoxide No battery backup on the hub; any power outage means no push notifications We encountered a minor operational problem during testing Our Verdict This three-alarm smoke detection system offers seamless, long-range interconnectivity and Wi-Fi support, giving you extra layers of fire security. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: X-Sense XS01-M Interconnected Smart Smoke Alarm (model FS31) The trouble with smoke alarms is that one alone usually doesn’t provide enough protection, even in smaller homes. An alarm that goes off in one room might not be heard in the rest of the house, obviating the entire point of the technology. Interconnected smoke alarms offer a solution: If one goes off, they all go off. But the technology either means having dedicated wiring installed or standardizing on a wireless interconnectivity platform and hoping your mesh of alarms are all in range of one another. Specifications The new XS01-M Interconnected Smart Smoke Alarm smoke alarm system (X-Sense model number FS31) gives the wireless interconnect concept an upgrade by putting a base station in the middle of the mesh. That station doesn’t just coordinate the satellite smoke alarms (it should be noted that these alarms will not detect harmful accumulations of carbon monoxide), it also connects to your home Wi-Fi network (2.4GHz only) and relays information to the X-Sense app on your smart phone. The X-Sense FS31 system worked exactly as promised, despite a wealth of interfering walls, floors, doors, electrical wiring, plumbing, and metal electronics between its three satellites. The satellites are modified versions the X-Sense XS01-WT smoke alarm I reviewed in the spring of 2021, bearing the model number XS01-M. They look identical to the standalone XS01-WT, with the only real difference being the addition of an internal 915MHz radio that’s used for inter-alarm communications. Three satellites come with the base station in the box (a 5-station model is also available for $140). A maximum of 24 satellites can be supported on one network, with add-on detectors priced at $30 each ($20 each at Amazon at press time). The unobtrusive hub of the X-Sense XS01-M Interconnected Smart Smoke Alarm system. Christopher Null/Foundry The base station, smaller than you might think at just 3.5 inches square, is powered by a USB-C connection. Note that it doesn’t carry a battery backup, so if the power goes out, your mobile notifications will go dark; consider plugging the hub into an uninterruptible power supply just in case. Each satellite is powered by an included (and replaceable) 3V lithium cell. The preinstalled batteries promise a 5-year operating life, and the alarm itself boasts a 10-year operating life before it must be retired. Installation and setup Setup is a multi-step affair, and the process is not immediately obvious, as the X-Sense app instructs you to scan a QR code on the back of the manual to begin registration. But that didn’t work for me, and eventually I stumbled my way through the app to find a screen for adding the smoke alarms directly, based on their model number. Again, the app doesn’t indicate how to add the base station but attempting to add an alarm prompts you to first onboard the base station by scanning a QR code on its underside. Once the base station has been added to the app, you can proceed to add the alarms, one at a time, by activating their respective batteries and pressing a pairing button on the side of each device. I encountered no trouble with this part of the process. Performance You can add up to 21 additional X-Sense XS01-M smoke alarms to the FS31 system, but be aware these do not detect the presence of harmful levels of carbon monoxxide. Christopher Null/Foundry The X-Sense FS31’s big selling point is of course the alarms’ interconnectivity, so I tested the devices by placing them in the furthest corners of my house, and then using the X-Sense app’s test feature to trigger an alarm that should, in theory, cause all of them to sound off. Sure enough, the system worked exactly as promised, despite a wealth of interfering walls, floors, doors, electrical wiring, plumbing, and metal electronics between the three satellites. X-Sense claims a 500-meter (1,640 feet) maximum range in open air, and though my home is not nearly that large, the system appeared more than capable at blanketing my entire house with coverage. The sirens are very loud and piercing, and three different siren styles are available, so you can customize different alarms with different sounds if desired. The volume of the alarm on the base station can be set, but all siren alarms remain at maximum volume regardless. Each satellite alarm can also be configured to send a variety of different notifications to your phone, including when alarms are triggered or end; when a device is silenced, tested, or malfunctions; low battery notifications; and offline notifications. Push notifications were successfully sent to both my phone and my email inbox. The X-Sense app gives you an at-a-glance look at all your alarms’ status and displays push notifications if the system goes into an alarm state. Christopher Null/Foundry I also tested the alarms with simulated smoke and found they alerted quickly when exposed to the hazard and stopped sounding promptly when the smoke cleared, with push notifications (and an email) being pushed out in seconds. Finally, I also tested the alarms with the base station disconnected. When one alarm was exposed to smoke, each of the other alarms still activated, even without the central hub to coordinate them. The only difference being that push and email notifications were not sent (with the app showing all devices offline). The absence of battery backup on the hub seems like a missed opportunity. The X-Sense app gives you

Image: AliExpress Multi-screen laptops are a thing, and have been a thing for a while. I vividly remember the ThinkPad W700DS, which had a pull-out, secondary screen years before people started packing USB monitors in their bags. But what about a laptop with a secondary touchscreen, in a convenient place, and a lot smaller than any similar design I’ve seen? The SZBox DSX156 uses a standard 15.6-inch 1080p screen up top, plus a 7-inch touchscreen to the left of the keyboard on the bottom. Again, this isn’t a new idea—we’ve seen the secondary touchscreen on a couple of laptops, like one of Lenovo’s ThinkBook offshoots or the Asus Zephyrus Duo. But both of those are fairly beefy designs, much closer to a “workstation” than a standard laptop. This one crams the secondary functionality into a laptop that’s shockingly normal-sized and just 1.6 kilograms (3.53 pounds), and I can see how touch-friendly apps on the secondary screen would make sense. AliExpress Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be checking it out. There are several red flags for this design, which Liliputing says is now on its second revision. One, the dimensions don’t make sense. A full-sized ANSI keyboard is about 11 inches wide, while a 15.6-inch 1080p screen is 13.6 inches wide. Based on those dimensions and the 7-inch 1280×800 touchscreen (5.6 inches wide without adding in the bezel), and accounting for the 357mm/14-inch total width, it seems like the keyboard on the DSX156 must be very squished, like something sized for a small tablet. (This is why the ThinkBook that had a roughly similar layout was over 17 inches on the primary screen.) Based on the specs listed at AliExpress, it’s also pretty light on power, with an Intel N100 processor and a single slot for DDR4 RAM that I wouldn’t trust to handle that secondary touchscreen at the same time as Windows 11. A 5,400mAh battery is tiny for any laptop, let alone for one with two screens—that’s the size of a phone battery—so I think it might be a typo. (Maybe 54 watt-hours?) At least it’s affordable, showing as $425.12 at the time of this writing… but that’s without RAM, storage, or an operating system. Still, the fact that this exists seems to indicate that we can fit bigger secondary screens in smaller laptops, if not without compromise. I think it’s worth investigating if you happen to be a laptop maker looking for ways to make a new model stand out from the crowd. Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he’s the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop “battlestation” in his off hours. Michael’s previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he’s covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he’s always looking forward to his next kayaking trip. Read More

Image: Ben Patterson/Foundry The United States Federal Trade Commission tried to make it easy to cancel subscription services in 2023. The judiciary threw it out earlier this year, just before it was scheduled to go into effect, on the grounds that the FTC had overstepped its authority and skipped procedural steps. Now the legislature, or at least a few members, will try to achieve the same thing. The newly proposed Congressional bill is being provisionally titled the “Click-to-Cancel Act of 2025.” It’s essentially trying to do the exact same thing that the FTC attempted, explicitly stating that it wants “to codify the rule issued by the Federal Trade Commission relating to click-to-cancel.” The two-page submission merely points to the original FTC filing, which says that customers must be able to cancel a subscription by the same means it was originally agreed upon. So if the bill passes, Americans couldn’t be forced to call or even snail-mail to cancel a subscription that was begun online or in an app. They’d also get an annual reminder before they were charged for re-upping a subscription for another year. It’s being proposed by a trio of Democratic congresspeople from California, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania, as Ars Technica reports. And unfortunately, that means it has little hope of passing under the current administration. At the risk of oversimplifying, the US Congress is currently bitterly divided with a slim margin of control held by business-friendly Republicans, who have gutted federal safeguards over industry at all levels. The conservatives are likely to keep any progressive proposals, no matter how popular, stymied. With the Trump administration apparently keeping an iron grip over the judiciary as well, it’s possible that even if the law were passed, it would be either sued out of existence or simply not enforced by federal regulators. The odds of any progress being made in the area of exploitative subscription tactics used against consumers seem slim to none, at least in the short term. Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he’s the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop “battlestation” in his off hours. Michael’s previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he’s covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he’s always looking forward to his next kayaking trip. Read More

Skip to content It should come as no surprise that students the world over are using ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots to cheat. On homework, on tests, and on anything else you care to mention. After all, why work something out yourself when there’s an AI chatbot waiting and willing to do the hard work for you? This is obviously a problem in need of fixing, and OpenAI’s answer is a Study Mode that’s now baked into ChatGPT. The idea is to stop students from simply asking ChatGPT to tell them the answer to a question, and to have ChatGPT teach them how to answer the question for themselves. Will this work? Possibly. Maybe. Probably not. Either way, I gave ChatGPT’s Study Mode a spin for ourselves to find out what it’s capable of – and I wound up utterly loving it. How to enable ChatGPT’s Study Mode Dave Parrack/Foundry First things first. In order to use Study Mode, you’ll need to be logged into ChatGPT. Then, under the invitation to “Ask Anything,” click Tools > Study and Learn. This will put ChatGPT into Study Mode, forcing the AI chatbot to respond in a very different way than it usually does. ChatGPT offers three default prompts in Study Mode: “Help me with my homework,” “Explain a topic to me,” and “Create a practice quiz.” You can either select one of these or provide ChatGPT with another prompt to deal with. I initially asked it to explain a topic to me, forcing it to ask for more details as to what I was studying and what grade I am in. I answered truthfully that I was a mature adult learning purely for the sake of learning. That way, ChatGPT knew exactly who and what it was dealing with. It then offered up some fascinating topics we could explore together, from ancient empires through to quantum physics. I chose the latter because it’s a fascinating subject. I then got a basic explanation of quantum physics before ChatGPT paused to throw a question back at me. Namely, how do I picture an electron in an atom? The point was to force me to actively think about the subject and what I think I know about it rather than just passively absorb whatever information ChatGPT offered up. Dave Parrack/Foundry This is, in a nutshell, why I love ChatGPT’s Study Mode. It forces ChatGPT to teach you, and forces you to learn. I find the interactions regarding a specific subject matter much more useful when in Study Mode than in the AI chatbot’s regular mode. It’s the old adage about teaching a man to fish writ large. Sure, just like a calculator would, ChatGPT could just tell me what 32 multiplied by 53 is, but that only helps me once. Explain the easiest way to multiple 32 by 53, however, and that helps me for life. Beyond that essential raison d’etre, I love the way ChatGPT’s Study Mode seeks to continue the conversation at all costs. While the regular ChatGPT mode is also good at encouraging follow-ups, Study Mode ramps things up a notch — leading to me having a long, ranging conversation about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, for example. ChatGPT has taught me something, I have learned something, and it was a collaborative effort. I also love the way that ChatGPT’s Study Mode changes the essence of what generative AI is and does. So far, AI has been seen as a quick fix for problems. From managing mundane chores for you, to achieving everyday tasks with single, one-line prompts, generative AI has taken the lead. Whereas, once ChatGPT has been switched into Study Mode, it forces you to do the work yourself. Turning it from a lecturer to a teacher, from a servant to an assistant. ChatGPT’s Study Mode: Room for improvement Dave Parrack/Foundry Is ChatGPT’s Study Mode perfect? No. But then this is just the first iteration, with OpenAI committed to improving it. One obvious way of doing so would be to have an option to lock ChatGPT into Study Mode. That would prevent students (or just curious adults such as myself) from getting so far before simply giving up and asking for the answer. However, regardless of how Study Mode evolves, it has already given me a new way of interacting with ChatGPT. If you try ChatGPT’s Study Mode for yourself, I recommend pushing beyond the default options, and experimenting with prompts. Options range from questions as simple as, “What are the three states of matter?” to questions a lot deeper and likely to force a longer back-and-forth discussion, such as “What is the meaning of life?” I asked the latter in both ChatGPT’s Regular Mode and Study Mode, and the responses were very different. In Regular Mode, ChatGPT simply offered up some possible answers based on different interpretations of the question. However, while in Study Mode, ChatGPT asked me what I myself thought the meaning of life was. Which is 42, obviously. Thanks for all the fish, ChatGPT Study Mode. Author: Dave Parrack, Contributor, PCWorld Dave Parrack has been writing about technology since 2007. He has also been an editor, covering consumer tech news and seeking to help people better understand the devices and services they use daily. He has bylines at MakeUseOf, SlashGear, and New Atlas, and has produced thousands of articles in a long and varied career. He uses Windows (somewhat begrudgingly), but actually prefers his Chromebook. He thinks AI may just change the world, but hasn’t yet decided if it will be for the better or worse. Read More

Marketers are under increasing pressure to deliver better business outcomes, even as they face budget shortfalls and shrinking teams. These circumstances make it imperative for teams to maximize their spending. One way marketers are addressing these challenges is through programmatic CTV, which is emerging as an essential channel for achieving more efficient, targeted and measurable outcomes. In this Q&A with Blockboard CEO Matt Wasserlauf, he discussed how marketers are driving growth through smarter, more accountable programmatic buys on CTV. As belts tighten, the value of programmatic CTV lies in helping advertisers reach the right audiences, prove performance and optimize spending in real time — all while maintaining the premium, high-attention environment of the TV screen. Matt Wasserlauf: Doing more with less is where the market is going — and both advertisers and consumers are engaging with CTV to optimize their investments. Customers are increasingly signing on to their favorite CTV providers, whether it be Hulu, Netflix or Paramount Plus. Live sports are also driving CTV engagement with more and more live sports being aired on platforms like Amazon Prime and Apple TV. So that’s where the hockey puck is going. We’ve got to skate to the puck. CTV is where it’s at, and it works across every industry and vertical. For CTV, the whole business has become programmatic, which is a fancy word for automation. Humans are no longer on the dials; they’re not pulling the levers. But we’ve let this automation really run amok, and we have not minded the camp, which is why a good portion of these impressions are being viewed by fake bots. And that’s where the ad fraud and waste happen. So when you reach human beings, you eliminate the waste. I know for a lot of folks in the market, that’s not an easy thing to do, but there are solutions out there, and that’s the simple answer to scale and outcomes: reach human beings. We have to recalibrate and reset the marketplace. Programmatic is still a very efficient means of reaching your customers, and when done right, it can result in unbelievable outcomes and optimal performance.  Speaking of performance, how are advertisers using granular data to target specific, high-value audiences? Matt Wasserlauf: Ultimately, CTV is digital, and now that TV is becoming digital, we have the full-funnel opportunity with CTV like never before. It’s all about driving through CTV and then using the data to retarget those customers. Really, retargeting is the key now, and we’ve done that really well at Blockboard. In fact, we’re helping brands find people at the top of the funnel on premium CTV. We know who they are, and then we can retarget them and drive them to convert. That’s how CTV works. Programmatic CTV aims to deliver both scale and performance, but what kind of outcomes can advertisers expect when they focus on reaching real audiences? Matt Wasserlauf: Programmatic CTV is bringing the efficiency of automation and programmatic to the most powerful medium on Earth: TV. It’s going to change the entire advertising game. And there is a huge difference in performance when you’re driving reach and frequency to real people, which impacts campaign outcomes and secondary KPIs. For big brands, if the first priority is reach and frequency, a secondary KPI tends to be leads, sales, store visits or other engagement metrics. There is a host of secondary metrics, and for those brands, that’s where we excel — performance beyond reach and frequency. For example, we worked with Dexcom, a diabetic treatment. Dexcom had a problem and wasn’t reaching or driving leads for its diabetic patch. The incumbent technology vendor and the agency weren’t able to get under a cost of $8,000 per qualified lead. Blockboard immediately got the cost down to $2,000 and helped the agency save the account. What we did in the two years ensuing is we drove that $2,000 down to $750 per qualified lead. That’s just another example of how, when you eliminate the waste, you drive unbelievable outcomes.  I believe we’re quickly coming to a point of maturation in CTV where marketers are looking even harder at reach and frequency. They want to know what kind of quality audiences they’re reaching. I’m very encouraged by that. It sounds like tackling waste and fraud is a big part of how Blockboard is able to improve outcomes. What are the biggest causes of waste and fraud that you’re seeing, and how should people be addressing them?  Matt Wasserlauf: It’s not typically coupled with fraud, but reach extension is a very common method for publishers to drive extended reach off of their CTV platform.  Even though it’s maturing, CTV is still young. For a lot of these major media companies that have recently launched CTV channels or are in the midst of launching CTV channels, they want to capture as much of this CTV money as possible. What they’ll often do is go to reach extension vendors and partners. That reach extension is very fraudulent and conducive to all kinds of fabricated ways of extending that audience. What marketers need is verification that their ads ran against quality content and appeared in front of real people. There are lots of ways to do this. Marketers can request log files and go through them manually. They can also demand timestamps from their vendors. Timestamped log files offer transparency, so marketers can really understand where their ads ran and how they ran. It’s table stakes for us at Blockboard, but nobody else has followed.  We double down on verification by using blockchain-powered smart contracts. These are the guardrails of every one of our media buys. They ensure that the ad impression goes toward real media that a brand or agency can go back and look at, ensuring that their spend was not wasted. With the second half of the year underway and 2026 planning on the horizon, how should advertisers balance efficiency, growth and fraud prevention in their programmatic CTV strategies? Matt Wasserlauf: If

Sponsored by DIRECTV  •  July 31, 2025  • Drew Groner, svp, head of sales and marketing, DIRECTV Advertising When viewers hit pause on their streaming or traditional TV entertainment, they’re not tuning out. They’re leaning in and taking control of their viewing experience. That’s the key finding from a newly released study from Magna Media Trials and DIRECTV Advertising that examines the dynamics of pause behavior and the opportunity it presents for advertisers. Ninety-one percent of viewers said they hit pause all the time or sometimes while watching streaming TV, and 70% of viewers said they hit pause all the time or sometimes while watching traditional TV, according to the study. Although advertisers may think viewers hit pause to take a break from the content they’re watching, the majority of viewers actually hit pause to remain engaged. Eighty-one percent of viewers said they pause to either avoid missing an important scene, to rewind and rewatch something important, or to wait for someone else to join them to watch together. That’s the exact opposite of disengagement — making pause ads a highly effective way to reach viewers during TV’s can’t-miss moments. Pause ads are an invitation, not an interruption Pause ads are a particularly effective form of TV advertising because they meet consumers in a moment of their choosing. The majority of people surveyed across generations for Magna and DIRECTV’s study said they would rather see a pause ad than a frozen screen — 67% of Gen Z, 67% of millennials, 63% of Gen X and 60% of baby boomers said this. Furthermore, consumers across generations also said that they want to be able to interact with pause ads, which makes this ad format a prime opportunity for brands to connect with audiences. The top interactive features consumers said would make pause ads better are being able to save offers or reminders and receiving product recommendations based on the content they’re watching. Viewers were also interested in having the ability to scan QR codes to learn more and being able to use a clickable button to visit a brand’s website or app. Pausing sports content for the win Viewers hit pause when they watch content across all entertainment genres, but when they hit pause during sports programming, they remain more engaged than during general entertainment programming. Nearly one-half of survey respondents (42%) said they didn’t step away from the viewing screen after pausing sports programming. By comparison, less than one-third of respondents (28%) said they didn’t walk away after pausing general entertainment content. Survey respondents were also more likely to pause sports programming than they were to pause general entertainment programming — reflecting a desire to control the viewing experience and not to miss key game moments. Sports fans often pause, rewind and rewatch sports talk shows as well to avoid missing parts of the commentary. Among respondents who said they paused content, nearly two-thirds of viewers (64%) said they paused two to three times while watching sports content, versus 58% who said they paused two to three times while watching general entertainment shows. Because viewers tend to remain glued to their TV screens during sports programming, pause ads are an ideal way for advertisers to reach fans at a moment of maximum engagement and outside of traditional 30-second ad spots or sponsorships. The key to pause ad success is matching the right ad with the right moment in time. Timely and useful ads — such as ads related to food delivery or ads that offered discounts — resonated the most with viewers, according to Magna and DIRECTV’s study. Forty-four percent of viewers said they would be very likely to notice a pause ad when the ad showcases what they want in the moment (e.g., food or drinks). The same percentage of viewers (44%) said they would be very likely to notice a pause ad when the ad offers a deal or discount. Brands can move beyond simply advertising to consumers by offering them solutions to their meal, drink and deal needs in the form of pause ads focused on food delivery services and discounts. Pause ads also provide a key opportunity for brands to launch new products or to announce product updates, as viewers across generations are significantly more likely to notice when pause ad content reveals something new. Sixty-five percent of all viewers said they would notice a pause ad more if the ad revealed something new. That percentage jumped to 69% among Gen Z survey respondents who said the same and to 67% among millennial respondents. Programmatic pause ads improve the flexibility of buys Recently, supply-side platforms like Triple Lift have taken pause ad buying to the next level by introducing programmatic pause ads. These ads provide increased flexibility for digital and traditional TV buyers alike, from run-of-video for scale, takeovers for brand dominance or targeted addressable approaches for precision. When buyers add QR codes for shoppability, viewers have a direct path from awareness to action — and brands can allocate real dollars for real results. Pause ads are highly effective not only for breaking through the clutter of a fragmented marketplace where viewers’ attention is scarce, but also for reaching viewers during can’t-miss TV moments. Because a pause ad, by definition, reaches viewers who have actively chosen to engage with the ad’s content, brands aren’t simply buying an ad unit.  They’re buying a moment in time when viewers create their own advertising experience by choosing when to engage and whether to opt into a brand’s message. The pause ad revolution isn’t coming — it’s here. Sponsored by DIRECTV https://digiday.com/?p=584417 More from Digiday Read More

By Sara Guaglione  •  July 31, 2025  • Dotdash Meredith’s (DDM) rebrand to People Inc. reorients the company around its flagship publication, and is the start of a more concerted effort to grow the publisher’s core titles. Aside from People, the publisher is drawing a line around 19 of its 40 titles — Allrecipes, Health, InStyle, Martha Stewart and Verywell Mind among them. These are the brands that will get the investment, the protection, the long-term bets. The other 21 will keep running, but they’re no longer in the growth plan.  As CEO Neil Vogel put it, the play is focus. In a market being reshaped by AI and endless volatility, the idea that everything can scale is being retired. The rebrand isn’t just a name change – it’s an acknowledgement that survival now depends on knowing what not to save.  Digiday caught up with Vogel to hear how he’s positioning People Inc. for a post-search era. This conversation has been edited and condensed. Why is DDM rebranding to People Inc? When we put these businesses together… we knew Dotdash Meredith was not our forever name. But we had a finite amount of time to close the deal, and do a million things. We basically just mushed the names together… It’s clunky and not great, and it doesn’t mean anything… Dotdash Meredith could be a law firm or an oil company. We wanted a new thing, and so we’ve been kicking around for a while what a new name should be. Then it hit us that the best name is probably here already, and it’s People, our biggest property. But the second thing – almost a more important thing – is “people” is a really good representation of our narrative and what we do in this world, where so much is synthesized, fake and artificial. We are real people making real content [and] experiences across these very real brands… If we’re going to have a bright future, it’s all going to be about these brands. Why do you think People is growing at a time when so many sites are really struggling to keep their traffic stable? The team that runs it is incredible and very forward-looking. We are ruthlessly unsentimental, meaning you cannot do what you used to do because you liked it, because it worked.  The thing we really did was [adopt a] totally different content process – almost newsroom process. For the print magazine, that’s going to [look like coverage of] George Clooney, [who] will always do well in the print magazine. But when you get to the web, that’s Kardashian stuff… and when you get to Instagram, it’s Alix Earle. They are the celebrities of the medium. You let the people who are the best do their thing and meet people where they want to [be met]. You have to really love your brands, but you can’t be precious about them. And we’ve done this exercise [with all our publications]. If that playbook is working for People, why can’t it be applied successfully to other sites that are seeing their search traffic decline? We have 40 brands… 19 of them we consider core. If you look at our revenue growth, last quarter it was up… That does not say everything’s growing. What that says is more things are growing than not growing. [Not all the] brands have the ingredients to survive here – not all 40 of our brands have been [growing] so all of our resources are going to the brands we’ve talked about that have. We have other brands that we really love, but they’re really challenged for whatever reason… You just have to make these really hard decisions. Our biggest 19 brands of our 40 are the ones where all the resources are going to go. And that’s the trick.  So what does that mean for the future of those other publications? Just let them wither away? I think all of the brands that aren’t necessarily considered our core brands, they all have something that is still worthwhile in the universe, otherwise we wouldn’t [have them]… but they’re just not going to be part of the economic growth engine.  If there’s a brand that is too exposed to search, that we can’t buy other things with… that’s not going to get that much investment. Because it might look good now, but it’s not going to make it. Does this mean more investment is going to go to the People brand? People is already our biggest brand and already gets the most investment. So I don’t think it’s going to be getting any more. It already gets a ton… It’s more about taking advantage of the brand recognition of that name and the meaning of that name than it is a signal that we’re going to treat it any differently. I’m glad you didn’t choose a name that people would make fun of you for. Remember Tronc? In media, everybody will make fun of you for anything. https://digiday.com/?p=584445 More in Media Read More

It can be difficult for smaller advertisers to gain a foothold in Google’s search advertising auctions. Money talks, and marketers without the limitless cash reserves of their largest rivals often find themselves boxed out of the best slots. But every now and then, a major player dips out – and the status quo gets remixed. In the last week, an apparent withdrawal from Google Shopping ads by Amazon has revealed opportunities for rival advertisers while prompting speculation from Linkedin Kremlinologists. So, how do we know that Amazon’s retreated from the arena? Well, marketers and media buyers investing in Google ads have access to a tool called “Auction Insights.” Among other things, it provides them with a view of the top 10 advertisers for share of impressions in the search environments they’re bidding. Because Amazon’s retail business covers such a wide swath of product categories, it’s a regular sight on the leaderboard. “For years, they’ve been one of the most aggressive and consistent advertisers in shopping,” said Heidi Sturrock, consultant at OMG Commerce. “Their presence helped set the pace for impression share and CPCs in many categories.” As recently as July 17, it enjoyed a 60% share of impressions in the U.S. and 55% in the U.K., according to researcher Mike Ryan, head of e-commerce insights at Smarter Ecommerce. But since last week (July 23), the e-commerce giant has disappeared from view – a sure sign that it’s all but withdrawn from bidding on Google Shopping inventory. “All the evidence points to the fact that they’re not spending at all in Google Shopping,” said John Burton, head of performance at MRS Digital, a performance agency that works with clients like insurer LV. The drop was also confirmed by media agency Tinuiti. “As of July 23rd (the most recent data available from Google), it appears that Amazon has entirely dropped out of Google Shopping auctions for the first time since the early days of the pandemic in 2020,” said Mark Ballard, director of research, in an email. It’s a significant move by the retailer.  Amazon’s exact reasons for cutting the media channel out of the blue are as yet unknown; a spokesperson for Amazon declined to comment. But it’s worth remembering that Google Shopping ads are used by advertisers to net consumers close to the point of purchase. They’re a bottom-funnel format useful for translating awareness and consideration into hard cash – and one turned on and off with relative ease, as brands’ strategies shift. When Temu and Shein ducked out of the search market earlier this year, it was an indicator they were cutting spend in response to rising costs. Amazon isn’t in the same predicament, but it’s not the first time this year that the retailer has reduced its ad spending in this way, per Ballard. “In mid-Q2 of this year, Amazon had cut back their presence in Google auctions for about three weeks before ramping up again ahead of, and particularly during, Prime Day,” he said. Amazon’s apparent moves have got performance media experts speculating on its motivations. The cutback could be a sign the retailer is tired of funding a rival for advertising dollars and e-commerce supremacy, as Ryan wrote on LinkedIn. It could be a cost-cutting exercise kicking in during the trough between major sales events like Prime Day and Black Friday, noted Burton. Or, taken together with the April reduction, it could be a live-fire incrementality test – Amazon’s execs turning off the channel to see how much it affects conversion rates. Whatever the cause, it’s welcome news for the other brands vying for the eyes and clicks of search users. Amazon’s sudden absence from the market means they’re more likely to increase their share of impressions, increase conversions and click-through rates (CTR) and do so at a lower cost-per-click (CPC). “This could provide a significant opportunity for other brands to capture traffic in Q3 if the e-commerce giant continues to sit on the sidelines,” added Andy Taylor, vp, research, Tinuiti. Sturrock said that advertisers like Walmart, Target and Home Depot had already increased their share of impressions since July 23 by as much as 20%. “[Amazon] inflates the costs for everyone else. Everyone else is having to pay more to compete with them. So we’re fully expecting to see CPCs drop for our clients,” said Burton. It’s not immediately apparent how far rates could fall, however – or how fast. Scott Carruthers, senior director of paid search at Journey Further, said one of the agency’s FMCG clients saw a CPC decrease of 40% – an indication of Amazon’s former activity in that category – but that on average, CPCs had fallen 1-3%. He told Digiday that Google’s agency reps had suggested Journey Further’s clients increase their spending owing to Amazon’s retreat (without mentioning the retailer by name) in a routine call, but said none had yet taken up the invitation. “We’ve had a couple of Google reps try to talk people into take advantage of this … the performance outcome off the back of it is likely to be decent, because there’s one less major competitor in the space,” he said. Similarly, Sam Piliero, founder and CEO of performance agency The Moonlighters, said his team had recorded a 4% average drop in CPCs since July 27 – but noted that such a drop was so far within ordinary bounds, given the waxing and waning of ad spend and demand; Amazon’s retreat may yet cause a larger decrease. Still, any drop is welcome news for smaller advertisers, particularly those with automated bidding strategies already set up. “This is a good time to review auction insights data before and after July 23 to identify where gaps have emerged,” said Sturrock. But it would likely take both a significant fall in CPCs and conversion rates on Google Shopping ads holding steady for advertisers to consider shifting additional budget into the channel, Piliero suggested. “Where we want to jump on it immediately is when we see a dip in CPC

This Future of TV Briefing covers the latest in streaming and TV for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series → This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at why advertisers’ sports spending still skews heavily toward traditional TV despite more sports being available to stream. Streaming has overtaken traditional TV when it comes to overall viewership. But sports still tilts the balance back to traditional TV in a way that can make traditional TV the baseline for advertisers. “While [streaming services] have definitely made inroads in sports, sports – live marquee events, the thing that still drives eyeballs to a screen – a lot of that inventory still lives in linear television,” said Dani Benowitz, chief negotiations officer at IPG Mediabrands, on stage at Digiday’s CTV Advertising Strategies event in New York City earlier this month. Case in point: During the fourth quarter of last year, UM Worldwide had seen that one of its clients had experienced a decline in the return on investment of its CTV advertising. In fact, the agency observed that 83% of the people it was reaching on CTV were also being reached on other platforms, UM Worldwide chief investment officer Marcy Greenberger said at the CTV Advertising Strategies event.  “Our hypothesis is it’s because we’ve been leaning so much more into live sports in linear TV, which tends to have a really broad reach. And historically, I think the overlap was very minimal between linear and CTV. And the more that we’re leaning into this really broad-reaching, premium linear inventory, the more that we’re starting to see less of that incrementality,” Greenberger said. Honestly, that overlap doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Considering CTV offers more performance-oriented ad formats like QR codes and shoppable video ads, the dynamic means CTV can serve as mid-funnel channel for advertisers to move the people they initially reached through sports on traditional TV to get closer to a point of purchase.  But it also means streaming would be playing the part of relief pitcher while traditional TV gets the starting nod, which is how traditional TV networks are largely selling their sports inventory anyway. Aside from games that are exclusive to streaming services like NBCUniversal-owned Peacock’s NFL playoff games – we’ll get to Amazon, Netflix, etc. in a second – companies like NBCUniversal typically run – or “pass through,” in industry parlance – the same ads on their TV networks as they do on their streaming services when simulcasting games across both platforms. And this can be advertisers’ preference anyway. “Our preference is always to have pass-through,” said Horizon Media president of global investment David Campanelli at the CTV Advertising Strategies event. “We want the largest audience possible with a single unit running. Streaming is now 5% to 10% of the audience, maybe larger. So it’s a significant add-on to the linear [audience] when there is a simulcast. So we want the whole audience in one shot. That’s our preference.” But what about all the opportunities left on the table by not taking advantage of streaming’s unique capabilities, like ad targeting and interactive ad formats? Well, they’re kinda counterintuitive. Advertisers aren’t buying sports to carve up their audiences into pockets of people who share certain characteristics or according to who’s able to be seen a different piece of creative.  “You’re looking for immediate mass-scale. When you make that 30-second spot that can reach 15 million people at once [into an] addressable [ad placement], you’re defeating the purpose of paying this high CPM, high premium to be in such a big event and maximize the scale,” said Campanelli. None of this is to say that advertisers should be content to strap on streaming as a supplement to their traditional TV-oriented sports spending. Amazon and Netflix, for example, obviously only selling streaming sports inventory. So is NBCUniversal with the upcoming NBA season that will air 50 games exclusively on Peacock. Therefore, as more sports viewership becomes exclusive to streaming, more sports ad buying will become oriented around streaming. Of course, that can introduce its own ROI headache. “As you’re bringing streaming live sports into the [media mix modeling] equation and it’s being calculated alongside CTV, it’s a very different price point. So you’re even doubling down on the efficiency challenges, but I think that’s also confusing the model a little bit because now there’s also more overlap,” said Greenberger. “If I’m watching Peacock, for example, and I’m watching ‘Sunday Night Football’ on Peacock and I’m watching ‘Love Island’ on Peacock, I might be apt to have more overlap there.” What we’ve heard “Basically, brands no longer want to work with agencies ad-hoc on single campaigns. They’re looking for longer term partnerships with an agency that can effectively oversee their entire creator marketing strategy.” — Digiday platforms reporter Krystal Scanlon on the latest Digiday Podcast episode Numbers to know $9.8 billion: How much ad revenue YouTube generated in the second quarter of 2025. 40%: Percentage share of self-identified sports viewers who say they only watch sports through streaming services. -80,000: Number of pay-TV subscribers that Charter lost in Q2 2025, compared to a 408,000-subscriber drop in Q2 2024. 10%: Percentage stake that the NFL would take in ESPN as part of a deal between the league and Disney-owned TV network that involves the NFL Network and NFL RedZone. 120,000: Number of unique viewers, on average, who are watching MLS matches through MLS Season Pass this year. 16%: Percentage year-over-year increase in Netflix’s overall revenue in Q2 2025. What we’ve covered The upfront is still not done — why and who’s benefiting from it: Most agency holding companies are still working to wrap up their upfront negotiations. Independent agencies have moved past the halfway point. Read more about the upfront here. TikTok invests in growing team to build out search ads as spending grows: TikTok is looking to hire a sales leader for its search ads team in New York. The