Brands are getting creative as fuel costs raise shipping fees

This story was first published by Digiday sibling Modern Retail.

Major carriers are implementing new fuel surcharges, pushing more e-commerce brands to get creative with their shipping options.

Effective last week, UPS now has surge emergency fees for goods coming from India, China and Hong Kong to the United States. There’s also a $0.32-per-pound fee for goods shipped internationally from the United States and a $1.50-per-pound fee for those going to Israel or the United Arab Emirates. The fees are in effect until further notice. In late April, the U.S. Postal Service implemented a temporary 8% fuel surcharge that will stay in place until at least January 2027.

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Universal Ads must pass the pizza test if it’s to steal ad dollars from social

A more diverse customer set could give big media companies like Comcast the same resilience to market shocks as Meta and Google enjoy, but persuading enough performance-minded brands to try CTV — and they’ll need a lot of them — takes constant effort.

For Comcast, that effort means stacking up a slew of feature announcements and developing out its SMB-focused Universal Ads business even as its media execs attempt to court big-ticket advertisers during upfront negotiations. 

Last week, Universal Ads released an MCP (Model Context Protocol) extension, following a similar policy change from Meta in April. The move means that small teams of marketers can connect home brewed AI media agents built with Claude or Gemini directly with Universal Ads, allowing them to build tools for campaign optimization or data analysis.

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