- Nike’s Collab With Kim Kardashian’s Skims Makes Sense
Nike has been fighting to revive its cultural cache for a while, as competitors like On and Hoka dent its market share. A collaboration with Kim Kardashian’s Skims might just provide a much-needed boost.
Last week, Nike created buzz by announcing it would launch an activewear brand in partnership with Skims, called NikeSkimms.
In case you missed it, Nike is betting big on Kim Kardashian’s Skims. The pair have just announced a collaboration: NikeSkims, an activewear brand for women that will launch this spring.
Like most things Kardashian touches, the news created a big buzz. Within 24 hours of the announcement, Nike’s share price rose 6.2%, adding $6.7 billion to its market value.
Though Nike has partnered with many brands for limited sneaker runs (see: recent launches from Corteiz and Comme des Garçons), NikeSkims marks the first time the sportswear giant has launched an entirely new brand with an outside company.
The collection will debut in the U.S.
- X is betting on AI to help recover some of the millions it has shed in ad revenue over the last two years
In its latest bid to win back advertisers, X has added AI-powered advertising to its toolkit. On Friday, the Elon Musk-owned platform announced two new features that rely on its AI assistant, Grok, to automate parts of the ad creation process, as well as the analytics on the back-end.
Though some advertisers are returning to the platform, X’s ad revenue has yet to fully recover, and its relationship with advertisers remains fraught amid an ongoing lawsuit concerning an alleged advertising boycott of the platform.
Two new features, rolling out in phases to advertisers, rely on X’s proprietary AI assistant Grok to generate ad copy, imagery, and campaign insights with minimal human input.
“Prefill with Grok” is a new creation tool for advertisers. Instead of manually developing creative, users can enter their website URL, and Grok will analyze the content to produce a ready-to-use ad.
- Amazon Ups Transparency for Advertisers Following CSAM Scandal and Senator Pressure
In response to the latest Adalytics report, which found major adtech platforms were inadvertently funding child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) online, Amazon has added new transparency controls to its demand-side platform (DSP), Amazon Ads.
Amazon will update its DSP to include page-level reporting, which will give ad buyers more visibility into the content that appears alongside their ads. It’s a level of control privacy advocates, industry critics, and ad buyers have long called for.
The report, compiled by the research firm Adalytics, was published by ADWEEK and coincided with a group of Senators probing how this content was funded. This spurred a wave of public backlash against the named technology platforms, which include adtech firms Google, Amazon, Integral Ad Science, and Double Verify, as well as the certification bodies Media Rating Council and Trustworthy Accountability Group.
- Technicolor, Owner of The Mill and MPC, Is Shutting Down
In a major blow to the advertising and creative production sector, Technicolor Group, the parent company of production and visual effects studios The Mill and MPC, is closing down operations.
Technicolor’s shutdown, which will affect thousands of jobs globally, has sent a ripple effect through the industry. The Mill and MPC are giants in advertising production, and the studios have been behind numerous campaigns for the likes of Michelob Ultra, Skoda, Gatorade, Renault, and more.
In a blow to the advertising and creative production sector, Technicolor Group, the parent company of production and visual effects (VFX) studios The Mill and MPC, is shutting down operations, according to multiple reports.
On Friday, Technicolor sent U.S. employees a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice, which requires companies with 100 or more employees to provide notifications of layoffs or closures 60 days in advance. Technicolor cited “severe financial challenges” and said it would be “required to cease our U.S.
