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Newsweek is launching more subscription products and expanding non-advertising revenue streams as it braces for a future where AI answer engines replace traditional search — and potentially siphon off the traffic publishers have long relied on.  While Google’s rollout of AI summaries and zero-click features is still in its early days, the writing is on the wall: the old SEO playbook is under pressure. Publishers are now reconsidering how they produce content, manage SEO and protect their data – all while exploring new revenue streams.  Newsweek generated $90 million in revenue in the last financial year, with a 20 percent profit margin. Of that, 63 percent ($57 million) came from digital advertising (70 percent of which was programmatic advertising and 30 percent direct). Naturally, search-driven traffic is a big part of that monetization model for the publisher, which had approximately 43 million monthly users on desktop and mobile in May 2025, up 8.8 percent year-over-year, according to Comscore. Events and subscriptions accounted for less than 1 percent of revenue last year.  Newsweek CEO Dev Pragad stressed that Google AI Overviews and AI platforms generally haven’t caused significant traffic erosion yet, but that the publisher wants to reduce its reliance on digital advertising, taking the split from 63 percent of its overall revenue to 55 percent over the next year.  The goal for the next year is to still aim for 10-15 percent growth, rather than last year’s 43 percent year-over-year revenue hike, given the AI headwinds and macroeconomic uncertainty, he noted. But it wants to get there with a more diversified revenue mix – one which he believes will insulate the company from the encroachment of AI referral traffic erosion.  This involves building out its verticals strategy with more events, subscription experiments and more editorial rankings – data-driven co-branded lists produced in partnership with research firms like Statista, that evaluate and spotlight top-performing organizations, institutions and services across a wide range of sectors, including healthcare and retail. Pragad hasn’t ruled out applying a more advanced subscriptions strategy more broadly across general news either, but the publisher is in the very early stages of testing.  Newsweek already runs digital and print subscriptions for its magazine, priced at $4.99 per month, or $49.00 per year. Pragad said these drive a “reasonable amount of revenue,” but that the company doesn’t push or market them hard. Direct and programmatic advertising will remain priorities, with the publisher having recently acquired Adprime, a healthcare-focused advertising platform, specifically to target pharmaceutical and healthcare brands, to complement its existing healthcare vertical.    Like many publishers, focus has been on driving more direct and PMP buys, vs. open-web programmatic, with those accounting for around 40% of total digital advertising this year, per Pragad. “This year, our focus is to really stabilize the growth we experienced last year, and then build on top of it. So Newsweek alone would be [a] $100 million business [with the 10 percent predicted growth] and Adprime on top of it, that would take us substantially north of that,” said Pagrad.  Preparing for ‘zero-click’ search  Most publishers are preoccupied with planning for a “zero-click” future, and Newsweek, and its strong search-driven traffic, is no exception. With programmatic ad revenue so reliant on page views, many of which come via Google search, Newsweek is also pressing to reduce its reliance on open-web programmatic advertising and shore up more direct ad deals. “What’s driving the diversification is partly how AI will impact or affect the way consumers engage with information,” Pragad said. “So a big part of our diversification [strategy] is looking at revenue streams that could potentially be disrupted by AI and then trying to invest and grow revenue streams that won’t be disrupted by how people engage and consume information through AI.” Many publishers — including the Washington Post and even The New York Times — have now signed AI licensing deals to ensure they’re compensated for AI engines scraping their content, but Newsweek hasn’t been met with terms that have made that worth its while, yet.  The publisher has turned down what it deemed low-ball offers in the “low seven figures,” said Pragad, though he didn’t say from which companies. “For the amount of money that they were willing to pay for all our historic content, and on a yearly basis… and of course, a deal would mean giving them general release to everything…the money that was on the table just didn’t make sense for us to do a deal. That [seven-figure deal] would have had no material impact at all,” he added.  However, Pragad is more optimistic about the potential for future syndication deals with AI companies being a more lucrative revenue model for publishers like Newsweek. The publisher uses TollBit to track how often its content is scraped, which is pretty often. Bot traffic directed to the TollBit bot paywall increased by 732 percent between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, according to TollBit. When an AI bot needs access to articles on Newsweek, it must pay a per-use fee as set by the publisher. So far, publishers — Newsweek included — are tight-lipped on what they earn from these setups.  “My hope is there will be a sustained industry effort to bring them [LLMs] to the table and negotiate a fair deal. And that there will be some sort of a standard through which publishers also make money because we are the ones who are producing the content,” added Pragad.  Two media buyers, who requested anonymity so they could speak candidly, said that Newsweek hasn’t quite sustained the clout it once had as the print giant of its heyday, but that continued investment in its investigative journalism will be a crucial part of its future differentiation, as publishers come under even more pressure to be visible in the new era of AI-generated summaries.  “It’s [Newsweek] a name brand, no doubt about it, but it’s not yet apparent whether the rest of it lives up to what the name once

By Kimeko McCoy  •  July 23, 2025  • This article is part of our Confessions series, in which we trade anonymity for candor to get an unvarnished look at the people, processes and problems inside the industry. More from the series → For the past few years, big brands and their agency partners have largely shied away from advertising on conservative channels, citing brand safety fears in ads showing up next to politically charged content. The tides, however, may be turning. In today’s highly polarized cultural stratosphere, marketers are toeing the line with a both-sides approach to media spend and marketing messaging. For one diverse, inclusivity-driven comms agency, that line toeing has meant taking on a conservative, faith-based media client, and trying to better understand right-wing media to help clients adjust to the new hyper-partisan normal. “It’s a wait and see — let’s dip a toe and see if we don’t get messed up,” an exec from the agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Let’s see if we don’t turn into another Target or another AB InBev, and if we don’t, let’s keep going.” In this conversation — part of our Confessions series, where we trade anonymity for candor — the executive talks about clients’ changing relationship with conservative media and what that means for agency-client work. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Everything seems more politicized than ever. How are your clients responding to the so-called cultural wars? I’m going to speak to it not as an agency that represents and does comms for agencies. I’m going to speak to it as a PR agency now representing a type of client that normally we may not have. We have actually taken on a conservative, [faith-based] media company that reached to us to do some programming around one of their tentpole [events]. Usually, we would be like, “Absolutely not.” That’s not something that we would want to touch, especially as a multi-diverse agency. But we have decided that we want to take this one. We want to see what the other side is doing, we really want to see what the other side is saying. We’re not going to know unless we’re [out from] behind the frontlines.  I liken it to the fact that I have started reading right-wing media because I want to see what’s out there, I want to see what they’re saying. I want to see what other brands are saying and what other brands are doing. I can’t do that if I’m just reading CNN and The Cut and New York Magazine. We’re doing that and I’m seeing some of our clients do that as well. It’s less another set of eyes [on campaigns and messaging] and a little more open to seeing what’s on the other side of the fence than we would have been before.  Absolutely. Some of the big brands, streamers and platforms that are now involved. I’m surprised they’re signing up. I wish I could tell you who they were, but they are brands that you know. What’s the drive for clients?  They want to still make money without ruffling any feathers and not leaving anybody out in the cold. Before, they were like, “We don’t want to touch that because nobody’s touching that. Don’t even go there. That flies in the face of brand safety.” Brand suitability wasn’t even a term at that point. They just didn’t want to be associated with perceived hate speech, violence, pornography or illegal content. Now, because the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of “Anything political, we’re not going to touch,” people are realizing they can’t do that anymore because the administration has really infiltrated every single part of culture. Before, culture could exist without politics. How many clients are doing this?  I’m not seeing a massive shift. It’s project by project. It depends on the time, the place and the purpose. It’s still a little bit of a wait-and-see approach. For those that are experimenting, where are the dollars going? Conservative influencers? Podcasts?  I want to say across the board. Two clients in particular — one focused on influencer marketing and one focused on B2B. Completely different audiences. On the consumer side, the aperture is widening a little bit. On the B2B side, the aperture is widening a bit, but it’s not across the board. Everyone’s taking calculated risks in a vacuum that it can’t affect other parts of the business. https://digiday.com/?p=583878 More in Marketing Read More

By Krystal Scanlon  •  July 23, 2025  • Ivy Liu Google’s slow updates to Performance Max continues, offering just enough to suggest progress without ever fully handing over the keys to marketers. The latest addition, dubbed Performance Max Channel Performance, is the company’s attempt to address one of advertisers’ longest-running frustrations: not knowing where exactly their dollars are working across Google’s sprawl. Still being rolled out in open beta globally, the tool offers channel-level breakdown across search, YouTube, display, Discover, Maps and Gmail, according to a document Google recently shared with marketers and reviewed by Digiday. It lives within the Insights and Reports section of Google Ads, and promises a campaign summary, a channel-to-goals visualization, and a table of performance metrics by channel. For marketers, it’s a partial reveal — another piece of the puzzle but not the picture. There’s data. But context, as usual, remains elusive. “When it first came out it was an opt-in type of beta, but now they’re making it more available which is nice,” said Michelle Merklin, vp of search innovation and growth at Tinuiti, which has hundreds of Google Ads clients — the majority of whom have already had access to this new Performance Max channel reporting. But looks can be deceiving. A major challenge right now is the fact advertisers have access to this channel-level data through this new reporting, but without any ability to take action on the information they’re shown. “I don’t think there’s a ton of value, other than being able to validate or find issues with Performance Max,” Merklin said. Another challenge is the granularity. Merklin explained that while it’s helpful to see channel performance per campaign, there’s no way to see trends in aggregate across an advertiser’s Performance Max campaigns. “A lot of times, clients will ask what trends we are seeing overall, but there’s no easy way for us to answer that question right now, without exporting every single campaign’s data manually and pivoting it out,” she explained.  That fragmented view brings with it another risk: misinterpretation. As Shamsul Chowdhury, global evp of paid social at Jellyfish, noted, advertisers may overindex on what looks like a top-performing channel only to unintentionally break what was working. Performance Max works because of how placements blend. Marketers start tinkering with that and performance could collapse.  “I applaud Google for providing that transparency, but I feel it’s going to backfire if advertisers start taking that approach,” Chowdhury said. “I think this [reporting] is a way for them [Google] to verify what they were telling advertisers before, but now they’re actually showing the data. But advertisers need to use it in the right way to inform their decisions, versus just putting everything into one placement that’s converting, otherwise they’ll miss out on the bigger picture.” Enders Analysis’ senior research analyst, Jamie MacEwan echoed this.  “The solution for advertisers who look at the reporting and really want to cut out an underperforming channel is to run separate campaigns targeting only the desired channels,” he explained. “But that is a lot of extra work and undoes the cross-channel and automation benefits of Performance Max if an advertiser has been getting globally good results from it.”  How does video resonate in Performance Max? Some advertisers have found that video isn’t such a big deal to their campaign performance after all — that’s despite short-form video being touted by the industry as the number one format across the board. Merklin, for example, said that from what her team has seen so far, video is “a lot less of a big deal than Google wants us to think within Performance Max”. She explained that while many of Tinuiti’s clients have video assets loaded into their Pmax campaigns, they’re not driving a lot of volume through video. She did not provide specific figures. But Tinuiti’s Q2 2025 benchmark report backed it up. According to the report, less than 10% of spend volume on Pmax comes from video inventory. “There may be impressions coming from there, but very little conversion volume. And in some cases, very little impression volume,” she said. “We’re able to see that it really is more of a search campaign pipe than they [Google] had previously been positioning it as.”  The channel performance reporting almost provides advertisers with the data to support their theories. “It lets us export the data directly so we can analyze it more and understand where the conversion rates are stronger on certain channels than others,” she added. Responding to a request for comment, a Google spokesperson said: “Channel performance reporting in Performance Max is a direct response to advertiser needs for greater transparency. We initially launched this feature in beta to gather valuable feedback and to help advertisers make more informed decisions to optimize their campaigns. We’re encouraged by ongoing advertiser input as it continues to roll out.” https://digiday.com/?p=583849 More in Marketing Read More

This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series → Influencer marketing has been a top marketing strategy since the mid-2000s, but it may be showing some cracks — at least when it comes to consumers’ willingness to actively engage with influencers’ Instagram posts. Brands in the United States will spend $10.5 billion on influencer marketing in 2025 and up to $13.7 billion in 2027, according to a recent eMarketer forecast. Instagram is the No. 1 social media channel marketers use, according to Digiday’s upcoming CMO Strategies report on social media. However, Digiday’s 2025 Influencer Index research findings indicate that consumers may be growing weary of specific types of content in both sponsored and organic posts on Instagram, and that their engagement levels with influencers’ posts may be more seasonally based than consistent year-round.  To measure the impact influencers have on consumers’ purchasing behaviors, Digiday+ Research analyzed the engagement levels leading influencers received on their sponsored and organic Instagram posts in 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. That analysis also informed predictions for influencer marketing trends for the year ahead. This first installment of Digiday’s 2025 Influencer Index focuses on analyzing influencers’ posts on Instagram. Future installments will cover influencers’ posts on TikTok and YouTube. The Digiday Influencer Index collects data from 22 influencers and their Instagram channels, scoring them across a set of key dimensions to create a total index average score. Each influencer is then given a deviation percentage from the index average to denote above- or below-average performance in specific dimensions. Results are dependent upon the list of influencers and the time period of data collection, generating a snapshot of the influencer space at a specific moment in time. Digiday’s index collected Instagram data from 2024 (Jan. 1, 2024 – Dec. 31, 2024) and the first quarter of 2025 (Jan. 1, 2025 – March 31, 2025). Data collection was conducted by social media management company Dash Social. The influencers were selected by Digiday’s editorial team, based on their reputations for creating content their followers deem to be honest and valuable, or helpful in making informed purchases. 03 Fashion influencers buck posting trends The product categories with the most sponsored posts on Instagram during 2024 were beauty (coming in at No. 1) and fashion (which came in at No. 2). The beauty category had 561 posts for the year, while the fashion category had 185 posts. After beauty and fashion, the categories with the second- and third-most sponsored posts were finance and technology, with 35 posts, and food and beverage, with 29 posts. (It’s worth noting, though, that the majority of influencers included in this year’s index are beauty and fashion influencers, so the data skewed toward these specific categories.) Sponsored finance and technology posts were dominated by partnerships with buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) companies like Klarna and Afterpay. These flexible payment companies typically partner with influencers on posts that feature products that can be bought using their BNPL plans. For example, a sponsored post from Madeleine White showcases fashion products from Old Navy that can be purchased using a BNPL plan from Afterpay. Regardless of the quarter of the year in which a post appeared, product demonstrations, at 456 posts, were the most common type of content influencers included in their sponsored posts — particularly beauty product demonstrations. Following demonstrations, influencers posted vlogs (156 posts), professionally shot photographs (101 posts), and styling or get-ready-with-me (GRWM) videos (82 posts) most often — in that order. While sponsored beauty posts typically lacked variety and focused on product demonstrations, sponsored fashion posts and posts within other product categories regularly utilized different types of content, such as styling videos, vlogs and professional photoshoots. 04 Organic vs. sponsored posts’ engagement varies by quarter When analyzing the average number of likes per post within different quarters of 2024, Digiday’s analysis uncovered some interesting performance trends. In general, organic, non-sponsored posts had higher engagement in both likes and comments than sponsored posts. For organic posts, their highest rates of user engagement occurred during the second and third quarters of the year. However, sponsored posts saw their highest engagement rates during the fourth quarter of 2024, followed by the second quarter. Looking at Q2 2024, organic and sponsored posts had similar results during the quarter, with strong user engagement for both types of posts. Influencers’ organic posts received an average of 77,136 likes per post in Q2, while sponsored posts had an average of 33,330 likes per post. Typically, the second quarter of the year is when major beauty retailers Sephora and Ulta hold their annual sales events: Sephora’s VIB (Very Important Beauty Insider) event and Ulta’s 21 Days of Beauty event. During these events, smaller retailers and brands often price-match Sephora’s and Ulta’s sales. It seems that beauty consumers who are aware of this sales time period tend to engage more often with brands’ and retailers’ social media posts during Q2, hoping to find shopping inspiration or product deals. It is a significant sales period for the beauty category, and both brands and influencers capitalize on the increased consumer attention by posting more content. Interestingly, despite Q2 being a prime time for brands’ and retailers’ beauty sales, influencers’ Q2 2024 organic posts saw higher rates of consumer engagement than their sponsored posts. With consumers being more active in general during Q2, marketers have an opportunity to encourage organic posts about their brand, rather than relying solely on paid influencer partnerships for sponsored content. One strategy marketers can use is sending free PR to influencers. The third quarter of the year — the summer months and early fall, when influencer content is often focused on casual content, like travel —  is also a time in which influencers’ organic posts see high rates of engagement. In Q3 2024, influencers’ organic social posts had an average of 65,269 likes per post. That’s not to say there aren’t

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 recaps what brand and agency executives had to say behind closed doors at last week’s CTV Advertising Strategies event in New York City. Sure, in an ideal world for brands and agencies, advertisers would pay bottom dollar for CTV ad impressions and wouldn’t pay any ad tech fees. Obviously. But that’s not realistic.  The reality is, though, that ad buyers feel like CTV inventory is being marked up to too high of a degree — by streaming services and by ad tech intermediaries — and they’re backing up those claims. During Digiday’s CTV Advertising Strategies event in New York City last week, brand and agency executives discussed CTV CPMs and ad tech fees during a behind-closed-doors town hall session, in which participants were granted anonymity in exchange for candor. Here’s a selection of what they had to say. “Streaming video in general, whether you buy direct or programmatic, CPMs are higher than a linear TV buy. And clients often favor cheaper CPMs. So we’ve been trying to provide complementary metrics, such as brand lift, search lift and all the halo effect that CTV has across other channels. But that is a general challenge: streaming video is expensive.” “One of the challenges is that pricing for CTV inventory has been fairly decoupled from supply and demand dynamics for a long time. Most publishers are focused on maintaining a certain price level in the market versus monetize a higher percentage [of available inventory]. That leads to a lot of, frankly, annoying conversations with [CTV ad sellers] of, ‘Well you’re not selling 100% of it, so why can’t you drop your price by X?’” “It happened back in linear TV. If you bought a late-night mix, you negotiate a mix that’s 50-50 [between] two shows, and they will spend all year trying to give you the cheaper show. It’s the same thing [in CTV], just on a bigger scale. They’re going to figure out where they can make a margin. And if they can make a margin, they’re going to keep doing it until they get caught.” “With Hulu, we’ve had back-to-back quarters now where we’re doing [programmatic guaranteed] deals with guaranteed delivery. And before the end of the quarter, we’re way under where we should be from a pacing standpoint. And Disney’s just saying, ‘Oh it’s the end of the quarter, you know, high competition.’ It’s kind of like airlines overbooking seats.” “Do you just lift all your frequency [caps] so you can just deliver in full? Because then, from an agency standpoint, if you deliver under [the client’s target], there’s consequences. But when the providers are setting up guaranteed deals, setting their impressions, but they’re not hitting them — the math isn’t mathing.” “It’s not always communicated properly to all clients. So they don’t understand where all the fees are coming from, whether it’s working media media and essentially what’s happening on the supply side too. Whether it’s an SSP taking a take rate or even the agency applying a markup or principle that’s not disclosed or it may be hidden in the details.” “[Clients] just may not be used to seeing every layer of the ad tech fee. Data supply, programmatic ad tech fee — it just gets compounded. It could be upwards of 15%, 20%, 30%, 40% of your media when you use some DSPs.” “We just had a client who asked to only be on premium content. So they wanted Hulu, Disney, Max, Amazon. So we did individual RFPs to all of them to understand what the CPMs were. They were ranging in the $20s with all the targeting we wanted. And then we did DSPs, and they were between $45 and $55. So the challenge was: Do we have to do individual buys [where] we have inconsistencies from tracking to reporting to buying and all that? Or do we pay the 50% [markup to buy through the DSPs], which we have to then justify to our client? And the 40% to 50% [markup] was on the low side. We saw some giving us CPMs that were close to $70.” [Digiday: “Who were the ones for $70?”] “LocalFactor. Basis.” “If I were to say to a client, ‘We’re going to put all our money in Amazon because I’m going to pay the $22 [CPM], is it worth getting more viewers through the different platforms and paying that increased CPM, or is it worth having your dollars concentrated on one platform and being able to buy it, manage it, with that consistency of the lower CPM?’ — that’s tough.” DSP dynamics Given the need to use Google’s DSP to buy YouTube and Amazon’s DSP to buy Prime Video and The Trade Desk to access other CTV inventory, “there’s three different DSP fees until such a point that there’s one DSP that has access to everything, and it’s one fee that’s baked in. Which may not happen. That’s going to be the challenge that the agencies face in terms of going back to clients and trying to minimize fees so much that it starts to get into the agency fees to help offset that. That’s just going to be a challenge because there’s no one DSP that has access to everything right now.” “There are certain DSPs like The Trade Desk that do offer ways to quantify, if you’re using programmatic to drive incremental reach and manage frequency holistically, they’re able to report back to you how many unique households you drove in that or how many households were passed by in the bidding process because they would have been duplicative. That’s just one example, but I think that’s really key because the fees are not hidden. The fees are not necessarily a bad thing to getting you access to technology and

The Sidephone (pictured) is an upcoming dumb phone, scheduled to launch this year. (Image source: u/chrisristovski on Reddit) As dumb phones gain popularity, here are 8 great models you can invest in if you’re in the market for one right now. Some of these are merely functional, while others are more design-focused – and one specific model is poised to launch later this year. Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author. The resurgence of “dumb phones” in recent years is more than just nostalgia. Rather, it’s a deliberate response to growing concerns over digital overload, attention fragmentation, and always-on screens. Smartphone fatigue is clearly a growing problem, so millions are choosing basic phones for their reliability, and essential functionality. To be fair, this trend is driven by both cultural and practical factors. With huge increases in feature phone sales among younger adults and a wider recognition of technology’s impact on mental health, the market for affordable, durable, and distraction-free devices is booming. Whether it’s about saving money, resisting the pressures of being connected all the time, or seeking a more intentional digital life, dumb phones are taking us back to what meaningful mobile use looks like in a hyperconnected world. Here are 8 of the best dumb phones for value in 2025 – based on reliability, features, and overall worth for your money. 1. Nokia 6300 4G – $70 (Image source: HMD) Great overall value The Nokia 6300 4G tries to bridge the gap between basic and smart functionality. It features a 2.4-inch display, runs KaiOS 2.5, and includes essential apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Google Maps, and Google Assistant. Key advantages include dual SIM support, WiFi hotspot capability, and 4G connectivity. The 1500mAh battery can provide up to 25 days of standby time. While it has a basic VGA camera and micro-USB charging, the feature set far exceeds its price point. 2. Nokia 2780 Flip – (curr. $89.99 on Amazon) (Image source: HMD) A solid traditional flip phone This modern flip phone has a nostalgia-heavy design with a lot of contemporary features. It offers dual displays (2.7-inch main and 1.77-inch external), KaiOS, and 4G VoLTE support. The 5MP camera with LED flash should provide decent photo quality, and the device includes WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, and dual SIM support. Battery life reaches up to 18 days standby (as stated by Nokia) with great call quality. The flip-to-end-call feature and accessibility options make it particularly user-friendly. 3. Nokia 110 4G – (curr. $48.99 on Amazon)

The Audio-Technica Mimio Assist One earbuds and Mimio Sound Move speakers help users hear voices better in their surroundings and from their TVs. (Image source: Audio-Technica) Audio-Technica has launched Mimio, a new brand in Japan that focuses on assistive hearing products. Two new products, the Mimio Assist One earbuds and the Mimio Sound Move TV speakers, increase the intelligibility of voices. Audio-Technica has announced their latest brand, Mimio, with two new products targeting users who have some form of hearing loss – the Mimio Assist One earbuds and Mimio Sound Move speakers. Hearing loss is common especially as one ages, with sensitivity in higher frequencies often declining first. Those affected find it harder to understand what others are saying, but even more important, have a higher risk of developing dementia. The Mimio products target those who do not need doctor-prescribed hearing aids. They can be considered personal sound amplification devices as described by the FDA and do not require a prescription for purchase and use. The Mimio Assist One earbuds (ATMM-SHD1) are wireless earbuds with a similar design to A-T’s conventional models (such as the ATH-CKS50TW sold on Amazon). They can be used as regular earbuds by those without hearing issues with any Bluetooth audio source. For the targeted users, hearing mode is immediately active when the earbuds are taken from the case and worn, even without pairing to an external audio source. They come with three modes, TV, conversation, and outdoors, and the ability to suppress the user’s own voice to help increase the intelligibility of voices heard. The smartphone app is used to fully set up the earbuds for each user’s hearing needs. The earbuds are IP55-rated against dust intrusion and water jets. The Mimio Sound Move speakers (ATMM-SP780TV) are wireless, battery-powered speakers that can be placed close to the user, up to 30 m (98 ft.) from the TV. The transmitter/recharging dock is connected to the TV set and is AC powered. Two Clear Sound settings increase the intelligibility of speech. The Sound Move can be used in the kitchen and is IPX2-rated for resistance against water droplets falling on it. The Assist One is scheduled for sale starting August 1 in Japan, while the Sound Move is scheduled for August 8. The earbuds are priced at 49,500 yen (~$340) and the speakers are priced at 21,780 yen (~$150). A rental service is offered for 20 nights and 21 days at 3,980 yen (~$27), or 3 months for 13,440 yen (~$92), to allow customers to try the products before purchase. Readers outside Japan wanting to hear their favorite TV shows better might consider the Mirai speaker sold here on Amazon. ▶ load Youtube video ▶ load Youtube video ▶ load Youtube video Related Articles David Chien – Tech Writer – 661 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2023 Having worked at Activision, UCLA, Anime Expo and more, I’ve seen technology being used to save lives, create games, and create fantastic 3D VR/AR worlds. There’s always something fun in emerging technology that I want to get my hands on and all my friends turn to me to find the best for their needs, so I’m glad to bring my experience to Notebookcheck. David Chien, 2025-07-23 (Update: 2025-07-23) Read More

The rumored Anker 150W Charging Base would follow the original 100W accessory (pictured). (Image source: Anker) Anker is rumored to be working on a new 150W Charging Base for Anker Prime Power Bank models. This upcoming accessory will support the brand’s new 150W fast charging protocol, and is said to be compatible with various existing and upcoming portable power banks. A new Anker 150W Charging Base for Anker Prime Power Bank devices appears to be on the way. This new accessory, model A1903, follows the older 100W Charging Base, which was released in 2023. Recently, AnkerInsider has shared details and images of this new 150W Charging Base. Like its predecessor, the new model is a 4-in-1 charger. At the top is a more powerful 150W pogo pin output, with the product supporting Anker’s new 150W fast charging protocol for power banks. Other outputs include 140W USB-C, 100W USB-C and 22.5W USB-A. When the accessory is used to charge multiple devices, power is said to be distributed dynamically, with a maximum combined output of 150W.  This new model has a different digital display, indicating the charging status. It supports Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connectivity, enabling users to manage the device through the Anker smartphone app. According to the report, this accessory measures 10.3 x 10.3 x 2.3 cm (~4.1 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches). It is reported to be compatible with various power banks, listed below. The Anker 150W Charging Base for Anker Prime Power Bank is expected to retail for $149.99 in the US, though it is unclear how much this will cost. The older 100W Charging Base for Anker Prime Power Bank is currently available at Amazon for $109.99. List of compatible power banks Existing models: Anker Prime 12,000mAh Power Bank (130W) (model A1335) Anker Prime 20000mAh Power Bank (200W) (model A1336) Anker Prime 27650mAh Power Bank (250W) (model A1340) Upcoming models: Anker Prime 26K Power Bank (300W) (model A110A) Anker Prime 20K Power Bank (220W) (model A110B) Anker Prime 50K Power Bank (300W, Built-in Retractable Cable) (model A1341) Related Articles Polly Allcock – Senior Tech Writer – 4215 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2021 I’ve been interested in technology for as long as I can remember. From a young age, I have loved gadgets and understanding how things work. Since graduating, I have worked for several technology companies across FinTech, AdTech and Robotics. Polly Allcock, 2025-07-22 (Update: 2025-07-22) Read More

What’s another AI chatbot in an already crowded field? That’s the question Proton is trying to answer today with the release of its new Lumo assistant. And like with its best known service, Proton Mail, the company says Lumo is for those who want a private alternative to what big tech is offering. Proton says every conversation with Lumo is secured with zero-access encryption, meaning only your device can unlock your content. In the context of an AI chatbot, that has several implications. Most notably, it means not even Proton can view your chats. As a result, the company can’t share your data with governments, advertisers or, for that matter, any other company, and it can’t use your data to train future AI models. “By using Lumo, you can enjoy the benefits of an advanced AI assistant without the risk of your data being misused,” says Proton. I briefly tried Lumo. It’s a bit slow to generate a response, but you can broadly expect a similar experience to what you would find using ChatGPT or Claude for free. Lumo can search the web to answer questions beyond its knowledge cut-off date, but by default that feature is turned off to further protect user privacy. You can also upload files to Lumo. Here again Proton says the chatbot won’t save any information. Proton isn’t touting the performance of Lumo’s large language models, but if you’re curious about this sort of thing, it’s powered by a handful of open-source systems, including Mistral NeMo and Mistral Small 3, among others. Proton told The Verge Lumo will filter requests through the model best suited for the task. For example, it will use NVIDIA’s OpenHands system for coding requests. Lumo is free to use, with a weekly query limit. You don’t need a Proton account to begin a conversation with the chatbot. In addition to being available on the web, Proton offers both Android and iOS apps. A $13 per month Plus plan offers unlimited usage, alongside perks like larger uploads, access to more advanced AI models, priority support and more. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission. Read More

Apple has introduced a new tier of its AppleCare insurance policy called AppleCare One. This allows you to cover up to three of your Apple products under a single plan for $20 per month. If you want to add extra devices beyond that, you can do so for an additional $6 per month, per product. Apple first introduced AppleCare+ in 2011 as a means of insuring your iPhone against accidental damage, and has since expanded the plan to its entire product line, adding coverage for theft and loss. Currently, AppleCare+ costs from $10 per month to insure an individual iPhone, with subscription prices starting at $3.49 per month for a Mac, and $5 for an iPad, depending on the model you own. You can also insure your Apple Watch, Vision Pro headset, AirPods, Apple TV and HomePod either individually, or as part of your new AppleCare One plan. AppleCare One features all the same benefits as AppleCare+, including unlimited repairs for accidents such as drops and spills, round-the-clock support from Apple experts, servicing and battery coverage. The theft and loss protection that was previously exclusive to iPhone plans now also covers iPad and Apple Watch if they’re included in your AppleCare One plan. You can make up to three claims a year for theft or loss of an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch. The $20 monthly price is fixed regardless of which products you include (as is the $6 you pay to add an additional device), meaning the amount you actually save will depend on what they would cost to insure individually, so it’s worth looking into that before you take out the new plan. Apple says that people who cover their iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch could save as much as $11 per month on AppleCare One compared to what they’d pay if each device was insured under AppleCare+. Also new with AppleCare One is the ability to add devices you already own to a protection plan. Previously you’d have to decide within 60 days of purchasing an Apple device. Apple says that providing they’re under four years old, are in good condition when added and are in your Apple account, they can be covered under AppleCare One. You may need to run a diagnostic check either on the device itself or at an Apple Store to get it approved. AppleCare One also simplifies the trade-in process. If you trade in a product covered by your plan directly to Apple, it is automatically taken out and replaced by the new device. Unlike AppleCare+, though, there doesn’t appear to be a way to pay annually for your plan. Instead, it rolls monthly for as long as you need it, and Apple will let you move products in and out of coverage whenever you want. AppleCare One launches tomorrow in the US, and can be activated either on your iPhone, Mac or iPad, or in an Apple Store. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission. Read More