A new Invoca report on B2C marketing AI reads like a mirror for the industry - wildly optimistic, visibly overconfident, underinvested in the right places, and dangerously disconnected from what customers actually feel. The winners will not be the brands that move fastest, but the ones that close four specific gaps around budgets, data, speed and reality.

After five years of legal back and forth, a US federal judge has ruled that Meta is not an illegal monopolist and will not be forced to spin off Instagram or WhatsApp. The court decided that regulators failed to prove Meta still dominates social networking in a world where TikTok, YouTube and other apps compete for the same attention.

On Thanksgiving morning, a sharp toothed, rabbit eared creature from China is joining one of America’s most traditional TV rituals. Labubu, Pop Mart’s “ugly cute” monster, is getting a full float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, backed by pop ups and a New York retail push. For most viewers it will look like a quirky new character.

Amazon just turned your ad into an answer. With its new AI-powered sponsored prompts inside Rufus, your Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands are no longer just tiles on a page; they are shaping the actual responses shoppers see when they ask questions. That means your PDPs, reviews & brand assets are now training data for a virtual product expert that speaks on your behalf. For marketers, this is not “one more format,” it is the moment retail media, AI search, and brand st