Influencer boost budgets are throwing gas on social video spending fire 

Brand spending on social video is accelerating rapidly. One contributing factor could be the practice of amplifying influencer video content on platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Once an overlooked methodology that saw marketers use small budgets to top up reach on organic creator posts, amplification is now an essential element of influencer campaign planning.

Chris Robinson, interim head of paid media at Goat, said amplification budgets have been rising at a “steady trajectory,” in line with rising creator spending and the transformation of influencer marketing into a channel dominated by video content.

Social video spending is set to rise 13% in the U.S. this year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), faster than investment in CTV. Marketers cited falling production costs for creative video assets and the ability to target audiences on social platforms as the primary drivers behind that.

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The Economist prepares for a two‑track internet: one for humans and one for AI agents

The Economist is testing new ways of structuring content to be read solely by agents as AI engines increasingly surface and summarize news.

For now, the subscription publisher is experimenting with agent‑readable versions of content that already sits outside its paywall — chiefly marketing copy and B2B sales material — and restructuring those surfaces for AI answer engines.

The bet is that discovery won’t start on homepages or even in search boxes, but with AI intermediaries acting on a user’s behalf. As Josh Muncke, vp of generative AI at The Economist Group, told Digiday, the publisher is preparing for “a world with two versions of the web” — one optimized for rich, human reading experiences, and another where “agents want clear structure, questions and answers, ideally text,” not carousels and feature art.

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