Jan 24 2025

Short-Form Video Dominance: The Future Of Engagement In Social Media via @sejournal, @donutcaramel13

Short-form videos are no longer a passing trend – they are here to stay.

Short clips on platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts have taken over our feeds and continue to thrive on social because of their sharply edited content and low investment requirement.

With YouTube Shorts boasting over 50 billion daily views and TikTok surpassing 1.6 billion monthly active users, it’s clear that short-form videos are dominating the social media landscape.

Whether you’re a social media manager, creative artist, B2B professional, or anyone who uses these three main platforms for their business, this article will explore opportunities that may work for your key vertical.

The Evolution Of Social Media Formats

After the massive uptake of TikTok back in 2018, Instagram and YouTube responded with their own version of video shorts.

Each of them brings their own unique selling points to compete for views. Here’s what you need to know at a glance:

Platform	Launch	Key Stats
TikTok	August 2018	Over 1.6 billion active monthly users worldwide. It’s the most used social media platform for short-form videos, with over 40% of U.S. users preferring it vs. others. Android users spend an average of 34 hours a month on the app. Video maximum length: 10 minutes.
Instagram Reels	August 2020	This feature is available to Instagram’s 2 billion monthly active users. Close to two-thirds of users spend their time on Instagram. IG Reels ranks third on U.S. user’s preferred platform for watching short-form videos. Reels maximum length: 90 seconds.
YouTube Shorts	March 2021	YouTube has over 2.5 billion monthly active users. 23% of U.S. users prefer YouTube Shorts for short-form videos, making it second place for preference. YouTube Shorts maximum length: 3 minutes.

Let’s take a closer look at each platform:

YouTube Short’s Evolution

Out of the three, YouTube is the one that evolved the most and has been the longest-running platform – known for long-form user-generated content for more than a decade now.

From the 2010 homemade comedy skits (Nigahiga, Fred, KevJumba), Let’s Plays (Pewdiepie), and beauty gurus (Zoella) to travel vlogs (Casey Neistat), kid content (MrBeast), and energetic livestreams (IShowSpeed) – it’s quite a jump in production value.

Speaking of vlogs, YouTube helped popularize this concept.

But slowly, short-form content presented some problems for YouTube’s Partner Program. YouTube partners make money from ads, which are frequently shown in long-form videos.

The rise of short-form content presented a financial challenge for creators not used to producing short videos.

Most creators mentioned earlier are no longer at the top like they used to be, although some have quit due to personal reasons, and others have shifted career focus over time.

Also, with the rising star TikTok, which showcases short clips only, and Instagram Reels, a 2020 product that followed suit, I can imagine that YouTube felt pressured to create a new format to keep up with its contemporaries.

It began testing in India in 2020 and debuted globally in 2021, with its video limit expanding over time up to five minutes.

YouTube Shorts succeeded, given that 20.7% of its audience are ages 25 to 34, making them the largest age demographic. The platform had over 2 billion monthly logged-in users at the end of July 2023.

Now, YouTube Shorts are longer. Keep in mind that last October, YouTube announced that YouTube Shorts can now be three minutes long, maximum.

This is in contrast to TikTok’s 10-minute maximum and Instagram Reels’ 90-second maximum length.

Instagram Reel’s Evolution

Instagram was first launched as a photo album-style platform. It then added video capabilities in June 2013 so that Instagram could rival the now-defunct video-sharing platform, Vine.

Seven years later, in August 2020, Instagram Reels was launched so that it could compete with newcomer TikTok.

With music, augmented reality (AR), and editing tools, it became easy to create and post short videos on Instagram – all videos under 15 minutes are also automatically converted into Reels as of July 2022.

TikTok’s Evolution

As for TikTok, it underwent the least amount of evolution. It started with Musical.ly, a lip-syncing app that was acquired by ByteDance, the Chinese tech company.

They bought it back in 2018 and merged its user base with its product, TikTok. Thus began TikTok as we know it, and it had already featured very short clips – think 15 seconds, max.

TikTok is the most popular short-form video platform of the three. According to DataReportal, it rivals and beats Instagram’s reported ad audience by 30%.

Although YouTube is the one to beat when it comes to daily use and opening of the app, TikTok is king when it comes to time spent on the app (34 hours on average per month), compared to YouTube’s 28 hours and 5 minutes and Instagram’s 15 hours and 50 minutes.

That’s amazing, given that much of YouTube activity is spent on it being played in a browser. Additionally, YouTube has the most significant number of active users.

But don’t overlook Instagram. Its “audience affinity,” according to GWI, makes it the world’s favorite app, with 16.5% of all users selecting it vs. all the others, twice more than the 7.4% that chose TikTok.

Instagram is also set to become video-first and drives half of Meta’s revenue in the coming year, according to a report by Jasmine Enberg of EMARKETER.

Why Short-Form Video Is Winning

In this research paper, Shorts on the Rise: Assessing the Effects of YouTube Shorts on Long-Form Video Content, 250 participants were studied, and the outcome was that Shorts were indeed more engaging than the average YouTube video. (Note: While this is a limited study, it may still offer insight.)

Long-form video vs. Short-form creators: Views, likes, and comments were compared. And spoiler alert: Short-form videos from short-form creators won views by a landslide in the views category and only lost out on comments.

Screenshot from Shorts on the Rise: Assessing the Effects of YouTube Shorts on Long-Form Video Content, used under CC BY 4.0. No changes were made.

Short-form videos are 2.5 times more likely to receive more engagement, and 85% of viewers prefer videos with a duration of 15 seconds or less.

This makes it useful for SEO and a brand to increase user engagement on the page.

Also, scaling remains a big part of the reasons behind the rise of short-form videos. It’s not just the viewers who benefit from shorter videos, but you as a creator.

A 15-minute video takes fewer resources to create (and can be spliced from existing long-form, pillar content).

Repurposing content works perfectly well in this example for Zillow, a real estate and rental marketplace, explaining whether it’s a buyer or seller’s market, depending on where the customer lives.

The long-form video has eight likes and is barely two minutes long.

And here’s the Shorts version. While it’s not an exact clip from the long-form content, it got over 574 likes at the time of writing and is only 39 seconds long.

Takeaway: Educational content in digestible snippets can work wonders for your brand, whether you’re in real estate, law, or retail.

Zillow’s new market heat index chart didn’t have to be presented against a corporate backdrop, and notice how simply the representative is dressed.

The real estate market could be intimidating for beginners, but this presentation seemed simple enough to understand while being concise.

Overall, it leaves me with the impression that the brand is approachable, and will probably entice more customers to learn and try out their app.

While it works well for B2C, it also works for B2B SaaS, as they have the potential to make it personable and highlight their services.

Here’s how Shopify appeals to its target audience: online entrepreneurs using relatable skits as short-form content on TikTok.

@shopify

all it took was a single stitch for @mel’s crafty coRNer 🌈🫶🏼 to spin up a thriving craft business

♬ original sound – Shopify

This one presents the emotional journey of an aspiring entrepreneur with a nursing degree who wanted to set up her craft business.

She hit the ground running and thrived, thanks to Shopify. It highlights the brand’s unique selling point as a retail point-of-sale system without trying too hard – all in 45 seconds flat.

Prediction For 2025: The Shift In Creator Strategies

I’m predicting the rise of multi-platform influencers – people who shine on all platforms and aren’t celebrities who have worked to become famous online.

TikTok influencers who are unknown on Meta exist by the ton and vice-versa.

Old-school YouTubers may look into TikTok monetization and try to diversify their content to bite-sized formats or give product reviews with a yellow basket.

They could also hire a social media manager to make sure they star on all channels. The only platform that has good integration for crossposting is Meta.

By next year, creators will be trying their hand at other platforms and seeking new audiences there, and agencies can get partnerships with them that really tie in together with their social media strategy.

Finally, creators will shift and incorporate more mixes of short- and long-form content, or dedicate new channels to:

Solely to breadcrumb their viewers into watching the full version, like movie teasers and music video releases.
Create an entirely new art, stories, memes, etc., worth 15 seconds long.

There Is No Shortcut: Challenges For Your Brand

The competition is fierce across various niches. Beauty creators, dancers, and even doctors are becoming dual-platformers.

Short-form videos have the potential to attract new customers, so everyone wants to demonstrate their expertise in 15 seconds.

I believe talent and great storytelling will triumph on the right platform – as long as they are optimized.

Expedia, the travel tech company, does it well across the board, which is something to note for both small and big travel agencies and marketplaces. Here’s an example of its TikTok, Instagram Reel, and YouTube Shorts.

Finally, the competition is now fiercer than ever with AI. How can you stand out in your industry on these platforms? Learning the art of short-form video can only help as the trend progresses.

For B2B SaaS companies, explainer videos and product demos need to be more concise, 15 seconds ideally, but a tutorial on setting up systems can take time.

So, as long as it can incorporate a trendy sound clip or relatable format, it can work (check out this list of TikTok trends our team regularly updates).

Hospitality brands need to focus on visual storytelling, like the examples highlighted above. It’s recommended not to skimp on production because even 15 seconds’ worth of content has to entice customers.

Lastly, lifestyle and fashion brands find success when they focus on user-generated content.

From unboxings to dance trends featuring #OOTDs (outfit of the day), encourage customers to use your branded hashtags on these short-form video platforms.

Consider how Zara fans post their own style hacks, and Zara has its ongoing #SELECTEDby campaign, which allows the retailer to collaborate with stylish influencers and, potentially, fans.

Short-Form Videos: Make Every Second Count

Short-form videos will continue to boom on social media, and these three apps are paving the way – for now.

While long-form content won’t necessarily go out of style anytime soon, creators should pay attention to the short format and ideate how to create mobile-friendly, engaging content for your brand.

TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts dominate the game, but there are emergent ones who are trying to be the next TikTok, with an offering from Vine’s co-founder called “Byte” one to watch.

Fitting your content into 15 seconds takes a lot of effort, but it can be done.

Chop up parts into a series, tighten the script, adapt TikTok trends and challenges, and try your best to keep it consistent when uploading (put effort into descriptions and thumbnails).

So, if you decide to go short, where do you upload?

Personally, I would recommend TikTok for viral intent and the latest trends, Instagram Reels for niche and established audiences with visual storytelling, and lastly, YouTube Shorts for creators who already rock on the platform.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Frame Stock Footage/Shutterstock

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Jan 24 2025

Google Shares Insight On SEO For AI Overviews via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller shared his insights on how to approach SEO for AI Search in an interview published on YouTube. The discussion also touched on what SEOs should do in 2025 given the realities of what users want.

The video discussion was hosted by Mike Grehan on his new marketing podcast titled, Inside Marketing With Mike Grehan. Mike is a search marketer who was a co-founder of a search marketing organization and was famous for publishing interviews with Google search engineers.

John Mueller Affirms The Necessity Of SEO

Mike got straight to the point in the discussion by asking what the search community should be focusing on in 2025, jokingly asking if SEO is finally dead. While Mueller obviously didn’t say that search was dead, he and a couple of the other participants in the discussion did acknowledge that SEO is undergoing profound changes.

John Mueller said that he thinks that many in the general public may wish that SEO was dead but that they don’t realize that search optimization has a positive effect, implying that it helps Google surface the websites the public wants to see.

He answered:

“SEO is Dead… I don’t think SEO is dead. I think one of the challenges is lots of people online wish SEO were dead, but they don’t realize that it’s… it’s almost like driving so many of the things that they’re doing online. Where they they notice when something is weird in search or when something is weird on the Internet and they’re like, oh, this is pesky SEO. And they don’t realize all of the things that actually work well because of some of the work that SEO’s do.”

Technical SEO Is Still Important

Mueller suggested that technical SEO will continue to be important for search engines and for AI search. He also mentioned that SEO will be helpful for giving access to large language models that depend on Internet content.

He continued:

“So I think from my side, what people should be doing this year, is kind of hard to say exactly. But I think a lot of the technical SEO stuff definitely continues to make sense. I think a lot of that continues to make sense also with regards to all of the AI things that are happening, all of the different kind of large language models that are trying to train off of the Internet like they need that foundation of technical SEO.”

How SEO Needs To Evolve

Mueller next explained what search marketers need to do in order to evolve with the reality of where we’re at today because of artificial intelligence.

He offered the following insights:

“I think what is also important is to try to figure out like what is the value that you want to get out of the Internet. And …the easy aspect that SEOs have been focusing on in the past is like I want clicks, I just want like lots of clicks. And clicks alone is not really what is driving value for a lot of websites.

So that’s almost like a subtle mindset change of going from clicks to trying to figure out what is the value that I want to get out of it.”

What Mueller was talking about is the narrow perspective that SEO has traditionally ignored anything that didn’t measurably drive traffic or involve a link. Part of the reason for that is client expectations from SEO but it’s also reinforced on the SEO side where they talk about KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. KPIs for SEO are organic traffic, rankings, clicks from the search results.

So what happens is that, at best, SEOs are in their silo doing half the work that needs to be done to drive traffic to a site and at worst they’re doing nothing to promote a site and make it successful. Getting SEO to embrace the promotional part and thinking about what the site actually brings to users.

Mike Grehan remarked:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if people stopped thinking about SEO as just a traffic driver, just throwing numbers and actually thought about it more with a marketing and a more scientific mind?”

Time To Become Real Marketers

Something that Mueller has advised in the past for those who wanted to grow traffic to new websites is to get out there and promote it. Promotion is more than just SEO.

Ryan Jones of Razorfish and founder of the SERPRecon SEO tool (LinkedIn profile) agreed with Mueller that SEOs need to get out of the traffic and clicks bubble, encouraging listeners to add more marketing to their mix.

Ryan said:

“I think it’s time we become real marketers. We’ve been spoiled for so long where we focus on lower funnel and attribution. And you know, no one ever asked TV how many clicks or visits they got when they run a Super Bowl ad, you know? And even paid search too, in effect, gets away with it.

In SEO if we say, hey, if we’re not there, our competitor might be there. Like OK. Great. How many clicks is it gonna get? But on on paid media, we can say, well, if we’re not there, our competitor will get there and they’ll say here’s $1,000,000. Go, go be there, right?

And so I think it’s time we evolve SEO to be full funnel. We gotta start thinking about user intent, what users want, do real marketing. It’s not enough to focus on clicks, and we’ve been spoiled. We’ve we focused so much on tactics, right?

To go back to ‘is SEO dead,’ if all you thought about is tactics to get clicks and links and rankings, then yeah, it’s dead. But if you thought about giving users what they want, then no, it’s not dead. It’s evolving.

So …that stuff is important, but I think, to bring it home… We have to do real marketing. It’s not enough to just do last click attribution like we have been in the past, we got to be real marketers and that excites me because I think you know at a large agency or with all of our backgrounds, I think we’re all well positioned to be real marketers because we’ve been doing that.”

Face The SEO Reality

Ryan Jones went on to say that it’s time to get real about the fact that people increasingly don’t want to visit a website, that they want information. He suggested that the role of websites no longer fits with what people want, so SEOs need to be realistic about that. The irony of what he’s suggesting is that SEOs love to talk about user intent but they have failed to keep up with the reality of what users want.

He said:

“When I search “when is the Super Bowl” I want to know it’s February 9th. That’s it. End of task. I’m done. …What I don’t want, and go click the first, second, third or 4th result for this, I promise you’ll get it, what I do not want is a website with an overlay ad, a cookie consent notice, and opt in to click in your alerts, an e-mail signup form, and seven paragraphs of unrelated text before it tells me it’s February 9.

…Nowadays… people just want the …answer, they don’t actually want the website. And a lot of SEOs haven’t kept up with that shift or paradigm. …we lost track of what the user actually wants.”

John Mueller Discusses SEO For AI Overviews

Mike Grehan next asked the question that everyone wants answered, which is how to optimize for AI Overviews.

John Mueller recommended thinking about it the same way that SEOs optimize for featured snippets.

Mueller said:

“I just want to say that all of these discussions we had, I don’t know what was it like 5 or 10 years ago? Featured snippets. It’s basically the same thing, right?

It’s like this is very visible on top and it’s like, ‘I hate it.’ And then a year later, everyone’s like, oh, how do I get in and how do I optimize for it? How do I appear more visibly?

And my feeling is… without kind of any big crystal ball, is that this is something that is going to evolve in a similar direction and I think user expectations definitely change. I think AI type answers make sense for a lot of queries and that’s going to be frustrating for some sites that focus on those queries, kind of like with featured snippets as well. And that also provides a lot of opportunities.

And I also think that’s something where kind of like the different levels of SEO that you’re working at they continue to make sense. Like at a low level you work on a lot of technical issues which remain the same and then you move up to more strategic approaches where you try to figure out like what direction you should go.”

Watch also: Mastering AI Overviews For Greater Search Visibility

Inside Marketing With Mike Grehan

There are many more ideas discussed on Mike’s video podcast, it may be useful to find the time to go watch the video.

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App Climate change and energy The Spark

Jan 24 2025

Why the next energy race is for underground hydrogen

It might sound like something straight out of the 19th century, but one of the most cutting-edge areas in energy today involves drilling deep underground to hunt for materials that can be burned for energy. The difference is that this time, instead of looking for fossil fuels, the race is on to find natural deposits of hydrogen.

Hydrogen is already a key ingredient in the chemical industry and could be used as a greener fuel in industries from aviation and transoceanic shipping to steelmaking. Today, the gas needs to be manufactured, but there’s some evidence that there are vast deposits underground.

I’ve been thinking about underground resources a lot this week, since I’ve been reporting a story about a new startup, Addis Energy. The company is looking to use subsurface rocks, and the conditions down there, to produce another useful chemical: ammonia. In an age of lab-produced breakthroughs, it feels like something of a regression to go digging for resources, but looking underground could help meet energy demand while also addressing climate change.

It’s rare that hydrogen turns up in oil and gas operations, and for decades, the conventional wisdom has been that there aren’t large deposits of the gas underground. Hydrogen molecules are tiny, after all, so even if the gas was forming there, the assumption was that it would just leak out.

However, there have been somewhat accidental discoveries of hydrogen over the decades, in abandoned mines or new well sites. There are reports of wells that spewed colorless gas, or flames that burned gold. And as people have looked more intentionally for hydrogen, they’ve started to find it.

As it turns out, hydrogen tends to build up in very different rocks from those that host oil and gas deposits. While fossil-fuel prospecting tends to focus on softer rocks, like organic-rich shale, hydrogen seems most plentiful in iron-rich rocks like olivine. The gas forms when chemical reactions at elevated temperature and pressure underground pull water apart. (There’s also likely another mechanism that forms hydrogen underground, called radiolysis, where radioactive elements emit radiation that can split water.)

Some research has put the potential amount of hydrogen available at around a trillion tons—plenty to feed our demand for centuries, even if we ramp up use of the gas.

The past few years have seen companies spring up around the world to try to locate and tap these resources. There’s an influx in Australia, especially the southern part of the country, which seems to have conditions that are good for making hydrogen. One startup, Koloma, has raised over $350 million to aid its geologic hydrogen exploration.

There are so many open questions for this industry, including how much hydrogen is actually going to be accessible and economical to extract. It’s not even clear how best to look for the gas today; researchers and companies are borrowing techniques and tools from the oil and gas industry, but there could be better ways.

It’s also unknown how this could affect climate change. Hydrogen itself may not warm the planet, but it can contribute indirectly to global warming by extending the lifetime of other greenhouse gases. It’s also often found with methane, a super-powerful greenhouse gas that could do major harm if it leaks out of operations at a significant level.

There’s also the issue of transportation: Hydrogen isn’t very dense, and it can be difficult to store and move around. Deposits that are far away from the final customers could face high costs that might make the whole endeavor uneconomical.

But this whole area is incredibly exciting, and researchers are working to better understand it. Some are looking to expand the potential pool of resources by pumping water underground to stimulate hydrogen production from rocks that wouldn’t naturally produce the gas.

There’s something fascinating to me about using the playbook of the oil and gas industry to develop an energy source that could actually help humanity combat climate change. It could be a strategic move to address energy demand, since a lot of expertise has accumulated over the roughly 150 years that we’ve been digging up fossil fuels.

After all, it’s not digging that’s the problem—it’s emissions.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Another thing

Donald Trump officially took office on Monday and signed a flurry of executive orders. Here are a few of the most significant ones for climate:

Trump announced his intention to once again withdraw from the Paris agreement. After a one-year waiting period, the world’s largest economy will officially leave the major international climate treaty. (New York Times)

The president also signed an order that pauses lease sales for offshore wind power projects in federal waters. It’s not clear how much the office will be able to slow projects that already have their federal permits. (Associated Press)

Another executive order, titled “Unleashing American Energy,” broadly signals a wide range of climate and energy moves.
→ One section ends the “EV mandate.” The US government doesn’t have any mandates around EVs, but this bit is a signal of the administration’s intent to roll back policies and funding that support adoption of these vehicles. There will almost certainly be court battles. (Wired)
→ Another section pauses the disbursement of tens of billions of dollars for climate and energy. The spending was designated by Congress in two of the landmark laws from the Biden administration, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Again, experts say we can likely expect legal fights. (Canary Media)

Keeping up with climate

The Chinese automaker BYD built more electric vehicles in 2024 than Tesla did. The data signals a global shift to cheaper EVs and the continued dominance of China in the EV market. (Washington Post)

A pair of nuclear reactors in South Carolina could get a second chance at life. Construction halted at the VC Summer plant in 2017, $9 billion into the project. Now the site’s owner wants to sell. (Wall Street Journal)

→ Existing reactors are more in-demand than ever, as I covered in this story about what’s next for nuclear power. (MIT Technology Review)

In California, charging depots for electric trucks are increasingly choosing to cobble together their own power rather than waiting years to connect to the grid. These solar- and wind-powered microgrids could help handle broader electricity demand. (Canary Media)

Wildfires in Southern California are challenging even wildlife that have adapted to frequent blazes. As fires become more frequent and intense, biologists worry about animals like mountain lions. (Inside Climate News)

Experts warn that ash from the California wildfires could be toxic, containing materials like lead and arsenic. (Associated Press)

Burning wood for power isn’t necessary to help the UK meet its decarbonization goals, according to a new analysis. Biomass is a controversial green power source that critics say contributes to air pollution and harms forests. (The Guardian)

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App Biotechnology and health

Jan 24 2025

This is what might happen if the US withdraws from the WHO

On January 20, his first day in office, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization. “Ooh, that’s a big one,” he said as he was handed the document.

The US is the biggest donor to the WHO, and the loss of this income is likely to have a significant impact on the organization, which develops international health guidelines, investigates disease outbreaks, and acts as an information-sharing hub for member states.

But the US will also lose out. “It’s a very tragic and sad event that could only hurt the United States in the long run,” says William Moss, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

A little unfair?

Trump appears to take issue with the amount the US donates to the WHO. He points out that it makes a much bigger contribution than China, a country with a population four times that of the US. “It seems a little unfair to me,” he said as he prepared to sign the executive order.

It is true that the US is far and away the biggest financial supporter of the WHO. The US contributed $1.28 billion over the two-year period covering 2022 and 2023. By comparison, the second-largest donor, Germany, contributed $856 million in the same period. The US currently contributes 14.5% of the WHO’s total budget.

But it’s not as though the WHO sends a billion-dollar bill to the US. All member states are required to pay membership dues, which are calculated as a percentage of a country’s gross domestic product. For the US, this figure comes to $130 million. China pays $87.6 million. But the vast majority of the US’s contributions to the WHO are made on a voluntary basis—in recent years, the donations have been part of multibillion-dollar spending on global health by the US government. (Separately, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed $830 million over 2022 and 2023.)

There’s a possibility that other member nations will increase their donations to help cover the shortfall left by the US’s withdrawal. But it is not clear who will step up—or what implications changing the structure of donations will have.

Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, thinks it is unlikely that European members will increase their contributions by much. The Gulf states, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, on the other hand, may be more likely to pay more. But again, it isn’t clear how this will pan out, or whether any of these countries will expect greater influence over global health policy decisions as a result of increasing their donations.

Deep impacts

WHO funds are spent on a range of global health projects—programs to eradicate polio, rapidly respond to health emergencies, improve access to vaccines and medicines, develop pandemic prevention strategies, and more. The loss of US funding is likely to have a significant impact on at least some of these programs.

It is not clear which programs will lose funding, or when they will be affected. The US is required to give 12 months’ notice to withdraw its membership, but voluntary contributions might stop before that time is up.

For the last few years, WHO member states have been negotiating a pandemic agreement designed to improve collaboration on preparing for future pandemics. The agreement is set to be finalized in 2025. But these discussions will be disrupted by the US withdrawal, says McKee. It will “create confusion about how effective any agreement will be and what it will look like,” he says.

The agreement itself won’t make as big an impact without the US as a signatory, either, says Moss, who is also a member of a WHO vaccine advisory committee. The US would not be held to information-sharing standards that other countries could benefit from, and it might not be privy to important health information from other member nations. The global community might also lose out on the US’s resources and expertise. “Having a major country like the United States not be a part of that really undermines the value of any pandemic agreement,” he says.

McKee thinks that the loss of funding will also affect efforts to eradicate polio, and to control outbreaks of mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Burundi, which continue to report hundreds of cases per week. The virus “has the potential to spread, including to the US,” he points out.

“Diseases don’t stick to national boundaries, hence this decision is not only concerning for the US, but in fact for every country in the world,” says Pauline Scheelbeek at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “With the US no longer reporting to the WHO nor funding part of this process, the evidence on which public health interventions and solutions should be based is incomplete.”

Moss is concerned about the potential for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is a prominent antivaccine advocate, and Moss worries about potential changes to vaccination-based health policies in the US. That, combined with a weakening of the WHO’s ability to control outbreaks, could be a “double whammy,” he says: “We’re setting ourselves up for large measles disease outbreaks in the United States.”

At the same time, the US is up against another growing threat to public health: the circulation of bird flu on poultry and dairy farms. The US has seen outbreaks of the H5N1 virus on poultry farms in all states, and the virus has been detected in 928 dairy herds across 16 states, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have been 67 reported human cases in the US, and one person has died. While we don’t yet have evidence that the virus can spread between people, the US and other countries are already preparing for potential outbreaks.

But this preparation relies on a thorough and clear understanding of what is happening on the ground. The WHO provides an important role in information sharing—countries report early signs of outbreaks to the agency, which then shares the information with its members. This kind of information not only allows countries to develop strategies to limit the spread of disease but can also allow them to share genetic sequences of viruses and develop vaccines. Member nations need to know what’s happening in the US, and the US needs to know what’s happening globally. “Both of those channels of communication would be hindered by this,” says Moss.

As if all of that weren’t enough, the US also stands to suffer in terms of its reputation as a leader in global public health. “By saying to the world ‘We don’t care about your health,’ it sends a message that is likely to reflect badly on it,” says McKee. “It’s a classic lose-lose situation.”

“It’s going to hurt global health,” says Moss. “It’s going to come back to bite us.”

Update: this article was amended to include commentary from Pauline Scheelbeek.

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Jan 24 2025

The Download: US WHO exit risks, and underground hydrogen

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

This is what might happen if the US withdraws from the WHO

On January 20, his first day in office, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization.

Why the next energy race is for underground hydrogen

In an age of lab-produced breakthroughs, it feels like something of a regression to go digging for resources. But looking underground could help meet energy demand while also addressing climate change. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Cattle burping remedies: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2025

Companies are finally making real progress on one of the trickiest problems for climate change: cow burps.

The world’s herds of cattle belch out methane as a by-product of digestion, as do sheep and goats. That powerful greenhouse gas makes up the single biggest source of livestock emissions, which together contribute 11% to 20% of the world’s total climate pollution, depending on the analysis.

Enter the cattle burping supplement. DSM-Firmenich, a Netherlands-based conglomerate, says its Bovaer food supplement significantly reduces the amount of methane that cattle belch—and it’s now available in dozens of countries. Read the full story.

—James Temple

Cattle burping remedies is one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025, MIT Technology Review’s annual list of tech to watch. Check out the rest of the list, and cast your vote for the honorary 11th breakthrough.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Tech leaders are squabbling over Trump’s new Stargate AI project
Musk says its backers don’t have enough money. Satya Nadella and Sam Altman disagree. (The Guardian)+ It’s far from the first time Musk and Altman have clashed. (Insider $)
+ The scrap could threaten Musk’s cordial relationship with Donald Trump. (FT $)

2 Trump has threatened to withhold aid from California
He falsely claimed the state’s officials have been refusing to fight the fires with water. (WP $)
+ A new fire broke out along the Ventura County border last night. (LA Times $)

3 Redditors are weighing up banning links to X
In response to Elon Musk’s salute. (404 Media)
+ Not everyone agrees that the boycott will have the desired effect, though. (NYT $)

4 How right-leaning male YouTubers helped to elect Trump
Young men are responding favorably to content painting them as powerless. (Bloomberg $)

5 Why the US isn’t handing out bird flu vaccines right now
It’s not currently being treated as a priority. (Wired $)
+ How the US is preparing for a potential bird flu pandemic. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Why you might be inadvertently following Trump on social media
And why it may take a while for Meta to honor requests to unfollow. (NYT $)
+ The company has denied secretly adding users to Trump’s followers list. (Insider $)+ Handily enough, Trump has ordered the US government to stop pressuring social media firms. (WP $)

7 Investors’ interest in weight-loss drugs is waning
A disappointing trial and falling sales spell bad news for the sector. (FT $)
+ Drugs like Ozempic now make up 5% of prescriptions in the US. (MIT Technology Review)

8 A software engineer is trolling OpenAI with a new domain name
Ananay Arora registered OGOpenAI.com to redirect to a Chinese AI lab. (TechCrunch)

9 Macbeth is being turned into an interactive video game
The Scottish play is being given a 21st century makeover. (The Verge)

10 Why measuring the quality of your sleep is so tough
Not everyone agrees on what counts as good sleep, for a start. (New Scientist $)

Quote of the day

“I acknowledge that this action is largely just virtue signalling. But if somebody starts popping off Nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration of a purported ‘first world’ country, then virtue signalling is the least I can do.”

—A Reddit moderator explains their decision to ban links to X in their forum after Elon Musk’s gestures at a post-inauguration rally this week, NBC News reports.

The big story

Welcome to Chula Vista, where police drones respond to 911 calls

February 2023

In the skies above Chula Vista, California, where the police department runs a drone program, it’s not uncommon to see an unmanned aerial vehicle darting across the sky.

Chula Vista is one of a dozen departments in the US that operate what are called drone-as-first-responder programs, where drones are dispatched by pilots, who are listening to live 911 calls, and often arrive first at the scenes of accidents, emergencies, and crimes, cameras in tow.

But many argue that police forces’ adoption of drones is happening too quickly, without a well-informed public debate around privacy regulations, tactics, and limits. There’s also little evidence that drone policing reduces crime. Read the full story.

—Patrick Sisson

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)

+ If you were struck by the beautiful scenery in The Brutalist, check out where it was filmed.
+ This newly-unearthed, previously unreleased Tina Turner track is a banger.
+ What to expect from the art world in the next 12 months.
+ Let’s take a look at this year’s potential runners and riders for the Oscars.

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Jan 24 2025

OpenAI launches Operator—an agent that can use a computer for you

After weeks of buzz, OpenAI has released Operator, its first AI agent. Operator is a web app that can carry out simple online tasks in a browser, such as booking concert tickets or filling an online grocery order. The app is powered by a new model called Computer-Using Agent—CUA (“coo-ah”), for short—built on top of OpenAI’s multimodal large language model GPT-4o.

Operator is available today at operator.chatgpt.com to people in the US signed up with ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI’s premium $200-a-month service. The company says it plans to roll the tool out to other users in the future.

OpenAI claims that Operator outperforms similar rival tools, including Anthropic’s Computer Use (a version of Claude 3.5 Sonnet that can carry out simple tasks on a computer) and Google DeepMind’s Mariner (a web-browsing agent built on top of Gemini 2.0).

The fact that three of the world’s top AI firms have converged on the same vision of what agent-based models could be makes one thing clear. The battle for AI supremacy has a new frontier—and it’s our computer screens.

“Moving from generating text and images to doing things is the right direction,” says Ali Farhadi, CEO of the Allen Institute for AI (AI2). “It unlocks business, solves new problems.”

Farhadi thinks that doing things on a computer screen is a natural first step for agents: “It is constrained enough that the current state of the technology can actually work,” he says. “At the same time, it’s impactful enough that people might use it.” (AI2 is working on its own computer-using agent, says Farhadi.)

Don’t believe the hype

OpenAI’s announcement also confirms one of two rumors that circled the internet this week. One predicted that OpenAI was about to reveal an agent-based app, after details about Operator were leaked on social media ahead of its release. The other predicted that OpenAI was about to reveal a new superintelligence—and that officials for newly inaugurated President Trump would be briefed on it.

Could the two rumors be linked? OpenAI superfans wanted to know.

Nope. OpenAI gave MIT Technology Review a preview of Operator in action yesterday. The tool is an exciting glimpse of large language models’ potential to do a lot more than answer questions. But Operator is an experimental work in progress. “It’s still early, it still makes mistakes,” says Yash Kumar, a researcher at OpenAI.

(As for the wild superintelligence rumors, let’s leave that to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to address: “twitter hype is out of control again,” he posted on January 20. “pls chill and cut your expectations 100x!”)

Like Anthropic’s Computer Use and Google DeepMind’s Mariner, Operator takes screenshots of a computer screen and scans the pixels to figure out what actions it can take. CUA, the model behind it, is trained to interact with the same graphical user interfaces—buttons, text boxes, menus—that people use when they do things online. It scans the screen, takes an action, scans the screen again, takes another action, and so on. That lets the model carry out tasks on most websites that a person can use.

“Traditionally the way models have used software is through specialized APIs,” says Reiichiro Nakano, a scientist at OpenAI. (An API, or application programming interface, is a piece of code that acts as a kind of connector, allowing different bits of software to be hooked up to one another.) That puts a lot of apps and most websites off limits, he says: “But if you create a model that can use the same interface that humans use on a daily basis, it opens up a whole new range of software that was previously inaccessible.”

CUA also breaks tasks down into smaller steps and tries to work through them one by one, backtracking when it gets stuck. OpenAI says CUA was trained with techniques similar to those used for its so-called reasoning models, o1 and o3.

Operator can be instructed to search for campsites in Yosemite with good picnic tables.

OpenAI has tested CUA against a number of industry benchmarks designed to assess the ability of an agent to carry out tasks on a computer. The company claims that its model beats Computer Use and Mariner in all of them.

For example, on OSWorld, which tests how well an agent performs tasks such as merging PDF files or manipulating an image, CUA scores 38.1% to Computer Use’s 22.0% In comparison, humans score 72.4%. On a benchmark called WebVoyager, which tests how well an agent performs tasks in a browser, CUA scores 87%, Mariner 83.5%, and Computer Use 56%. (Mariner can only carry out tasks in a browser and therefore does not score on OSWorld.)

For now, Operator can also only carry out tasks in a browser. OpenAI plans to make CUA’s wider abilities available in the future via an API that other developers can use to build their own apps. This is how Anthropic released Computer Use in December.

OpenAI says it has tested CUA’s safety, using red teams to explore what happens when users ask it to do unacceptable tasks (such as research how to make a bioweapon), when websites contain hidden instructions designed to derail it, and when the model itself breaks down. “We’ve trained the model to stop and ask the user for information before doing anything with external side effects,” says Casey Chu, another researcher on the team.

Look! No hands

To use Operator, you simply type instructions into a text box. But instead of calling up the browser on your computer, Operator sends your instructions to a remote browser running on an OpenAI server. OpenAI claims that this makes the system more efficient. It’s another key difference between Operator, Computer Use and Mariner (which runs inside Google’s Chrome browser on your own computer).

Because it’s running in the cloud, Operator can carry out multiple tasks at once, says Kumar. In the live demo, he asked Operator to use OpenTable to book him a table for two at 6.30 p.m. at a restaurant called Octavia in San Francisco. Straight away, Operator opened up OpenTable and started clicking through options. “As you can see, my hands are off the keyboard,” he said.

OpenAI is collaborating with a number of businesses, including OpenTable, StubHub, Instacart, DoorDash, and Uber. The nature of those collaborations is not exactly clear, but Operator appears to suggest preset websites to use for certain tasks.

While the tool navigated dropdowns on OpenTable, Kumar sent Operator off to find four tickets for a Kendrick Lamar show on StubHub. While it did that, he pasted a photo of a handwritten shopping list and asked Operator to add the items to his Instacart.

He waited, flicking between Operator’s tabs. “If it needs help or if it needs confirmations, it’ll come back to you with questions and you can answer it,” he said.

Kumar says he has been using Operator at home. It helps him stay on top of grocery shopping: “I can just quickly click a photo of a list and send it to work,” he says.

It’s also become a sidekick in his personal life. “I have a date night every Thursday,” says Kumar. So every Thursday morning, he instructs Operator to send him a list of five restaurants that have a table for two that evening. “Of course, I could do that, but it takes me 10 minutes,” he says. “And I often forget to do it. With Operator, I can run the task with one click. There’s no burden of booking.”

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App Artificial intelligence What's Next in Tech

Jan 24 2025

What’s next for robots

MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.

Jan Liphardt teaches bioengineering at Stanford, but to many strangers in Los Altos, California, he is a peculiar man they see walking a four-legged robotic dog down the street.

Liphardt has been experimenting with building and modifying robots for years, and when he brings his “dog” out in public, he generally gets one of three reactions. Young children want to have one, their parents are creeped out, and baby boomers try to ignore it. “They’ll quickly walk by,” he says, “like, ‘What kind of dumb new stuff is going on here?’”

In the many conversations I’ve had about robots, I’ve also found that most people tend to fall into these three camps, though I don’t see such a neat age division. Some are upbeat and vocally hopeful that a future is just around the corner in which machines can expertly handle much of what is currently done by humans, from cooking to surgery. Others are scared: of job losses, injuries, and whatever problems may come up as we try to live side by side.

The final camp, which I think is the largest, is just unimpressed. We’ve been sold lots of promises that robots will transform society ever since the first robotic arm was installed on an assembly line at a General Motors plant in New Jersey in 1961. Few of those promises have panned out so far.

But this year, there’s reason to think that even those staunchly in the “bored” camp will be intrigued by what’s happening in the robot races. Here’s a glimpse at what to keep an eye on.

Humanoids are put to the test

The race to build humanoid robots is motivated by the idea that the world is set up for the human form, and that automating that form could mean a seismic shift for robotics. It is led by some particularly outspoken and optimistic entrepreneurs, including Brett Adcock, the founder of Figure AI, a company making such robots that’s valued at more than $2.6 billion (it’s begun testing its robots with BMW). Adcock recently told Time, “Eventually, physical labor will be optional.” Elon Musk, whose company Tesla is building a version called Optimus, has said humanoid robots will create “a future where there is no poverty.” A robotics company called Eliza Wakes Up is taking preorders for a $420,000 humanoid called, yes, Eliza.

In June 2024, Agility Robotics sent a fleet of its Digit humanoid robots to GXO Logistics, which moves products for companies ranging from Nike to Nestlé. The humanoids can handle most tasks that involve picking things up and moving them somewhere else, like unloading pallets or putting boxes on a conveyor.

There have been hiccups: Highly polished concrete floors can cause robots to slip at first, and buildings need good Wi-Fi coverage for the robots to keep functioning. But charging is a bigger issue. Agility’s current version of Digit, with a 39-pound battery, can run for two to four hours before it needs to charge for one hour, so swapping out the robots for fresh ones is a common task on each shift. If there are a small number of charging docks installed, the robots can theoretically charge by shuffling among the docks themselves overnight when some facilities aren’t running, but moving around on their own can set off a building’s security system. “It’s a problem,” says CTO Melonee Wise.

Wise is cautious about whether humanoids will be widely adopted in workplaces. “I’ve always been a pessimist,” she says. That’s because getting robots to work well in a lab is one thing, but integrating them into a bustling warehouse full of people and forklifts moving goods on tight deadlines is another task entirely.

If 2024 was the year of unsettling humanoid product launch videos, this year we will see those humanoids put to the test, and we’ll find out whether they’ll be as productive for paying customers as promised. Now that Agility’s robots have been deployed in fast-paced customer facilities, it’s clear that small problems can really add up.

Then there are issues with how robots and humans share spaces. In the GXO facility the two work in completely separate areas, Wise says, but there are cases where, for example, a human worker might accidentally leave something obstructing a charging station. That means Agility’s robots can’t return to the dock to charge, so they need to alert a human employee to move the obstruction out of the way, slowing operations down.

It’s often said that robots don’t call out sick or need health care. But this year, as fleets of humanoids arrive on the job, we’ll begin to find out the limitations they do have.

Learning from imagination

The way we teach robots how to do things is changing rapidly. It used to be necessary to break their tasks down into steps with specifically coded instructions, but now, thanks to AI, those instructions can be gleaned from observation. Just as ChatGPT was taught to write through exposure to trillions of sentences rather than by explicitly learning the rules of grammar, robots are learning through videos and demonstrations.

That poses a big question: Where do you get all these videos and demonstrations for robots to learn from?

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, has long aimed to meet that need with simulated worlds, drawing on its roots in the video-game industry. It creates worlds in which roboticists can expose digital replicas of their robots to new environments to learn. A self-driving car can drive millions of virtual miles, or a factory robot can learn how to navigate in different lighting conditions.

In December, the company went a step further, releasing what it’s calling a “world foundation model.” Called Cosmos, the model has learned from 20 million hours of video—the equivalent of watching YouTube nonstop since Rome was at war with Carthage—that can be used to generate synthetic training data.

Here’s an example of how this model could help in practice. Imagine you run a robotics company that wants to build a humanoid that cleans up hospitals. You can start building this robot’s “brain” with a model from Nvidia, which will give it a basic understanding of physics and how the world works, but then you need to help it figure out the specifics of how hospitals work. You could go out and take videos and images of the insides of hospitals, or pay people to wear sensors and cameras while they go about their work there.

“But those are expensive to create and time consuming, so you can only do a limited number of them,” says Rev Lebaredian, vice president of simulation technologies at Nvidia. Cosmos can instead take a handful of those examples and create a three-dimensional simulation of a hospital. It will then start making changes—different floor colors, different sizes of hospital beds—and create slightly different environments. “You’ll multiply that data that you captured in the real world millions of times,” Lebaredian says. In the process, the model will be fine-tuned to work well in that specific hospital setting.

It’s sort of like learning both from your experiences in the real world and from your own imagination (stipulating that your imagination is still bound by the rules of physics).

Teaching robots through AI and simulations isn’t new, but it’s going to become much cheaper and more powerful in the years to come.

A smarter brain gets a smarter body

Plenty of progress in robotics has to do with improving the way a robot senses and plans what to do—its “brain,” in other words. Those advancements can often happen faster than those that improve a robot’s “body,” which determine how well a robot can move through the physical world, especially in environments that are more chaotic and unpredictable than controlled assembly lines.

The military has always been keen on changing that and expanding the boundaries of what’s physically possible. The US Navy has been testing machines from a company called Gecko Robotics that can navigate up vertical walls (using magnets) to do things like infrastructure inspections, checking for cracks, flaws, and bad welding on aircraft carriers.

There are also investments being made for the battlefield. While nimble and affordable drones have reshaped rural battlefields in Ukraine, new efforts are underway to bring those drone capabilities indoors. The defense manufacturer Xtend received an $8.8 million contract from the Pentagon in December 2024 for its drones, which can navigate in confined indoor spaces and urban environments. These so-called “loitering munitions” are one-way attack drones carrying explosives that detonate on impact.

“These systems are designed to overcome challenges like confined spaces, unpredictable layouts, and GPS-denied zones,” says Rubi Liani, cofounder and CTO at Xtend. Deliveries to the Pentagon should begin in the first few months of this year.

Another initiative—sparked in part by the Replicator project, the Pentagon’s plan to spend more than $1 billion on small unmanned vehicles—aims to develop more autonomously controlled submarines and surface vehicles. This is particularly of interest as the Department of Defense focuses increasingly on the possibility of a future conflict in the Pacific between China and Taiwan. In such a conflict, the drones that have dominated the war in Ukraine would serve little use because battles would be waged almost entirely at sea, where small aerial drones would be limited by their range. Instead, undersea drones would play a larger role.

All these changes, taken together, point toward a future where robots are more flexible in how they learn, where they work, and how they move.

Jan Liphardt from Stanford thinks the next frontier of this transformation will hinge on the ability to instruct robots through speech. Large language models’ ability to understand and generate text has already made them a sort of translator between Liphardt and his robot.

“We can take one of our quadrupeds and we can tell it, ‘Hey, you’re a dog,’ and the thing wants to sniff you and tries to bark,” he says. “Then we do one word change—‘You’re a cat.’ Then the thing meows and, you know, runs away from dogs. And we haven’t changed a single line of code.”

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the robotics company Eliza Wakes Up has ties to a16z.

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Jan 24 2025

New Ecommerce Tools: January 23, 2025

Every week we publish a rundown of new products from companies offering services to ecommerce merchants. This installment includes updates on generative AI search, website builders, fulfillment, marketing platforms, reverse logistics, mobile payments, cross-border ecommerce, and click-to-cancel requirements.

Got an ecommerce product release? Email releases@practicalecommerce.com.

New Tools for Merchants

Perplexity releases Sonar API with real-time AI search. AI search engine Perplexity has launched Sonar and Sonar Pro API, enabling developers to integrate Perplexity’s generative search capabilities with real-time information and citations. Sonar API is the base version, which is cheaper and quicker and includes citations and the ability to customize sources. Sonar Pro API can handle in-depth, multi-step queries with added extensibility, such as double the number of citations per search, more nuanced searches, and follow-up questions.

Sonar API by Perplexity

Wix and Worldline partner to expand ecommerce payments in Europe and Asia. Website builder Wix has partnered with payment provider Worldline in select Europe and Asia Pacific countries. New and existing Worldline customers can access Wix’s platform to build and manage an online store. Wix users can leverage Worldline’s local payment processing services and distribution networks.

Amazon launches portal to help FBA sellers with reimbursable opportunities. Amazon has launched an “Inventory Defect and Reimbursement” portal to streamline seller operations and provide transparency into Fulfillment by Amazon’s defects practices. Sellers can manage inventory defects and reimbursements within warehouse lost, warehouse damage, and customer returns — all through the IDR portal. Sellers get visibility into defects and their status, detailed information for each defect, a view of defects from multiple reports and policy checks, and insights into defect frequency and the resolution rationale.

Veho launches premium economy delivery service. Veho, a technology company operating alternative U.S. delivery platforms, has launched a Premium Economy service for parcel delivery in five days or less. Veho says Premium Economy will provide a cost-effective alternative to USPS and UPS services and is well suited for consumer brands shipping lightweight parcels, subscription brands shipping non-perishable goods, and third-party logistics providers.

Veho

Omnisend adds reporting functionality to its ecommerce marketing platform. Ecommerce email and SMS platform Omnisend has launched upgraded reporting functionality, allowing merchants to analyze emails, SMS, and push notifications in one reporting platform for any date range. Businesses can now compare the performance of each channel with full data history, comparisons of each channel’s revenue, and control over sales attribution to different channels.

DHL Supply Chain acquires reverse logistics platform. DHL Supply Chain, part of logistics provider DHL Group, has acquired Inmar Supply Chain Solutions, a division of Inmar Intelligence and a returns solutions provider for the retail ecommerce industry. The acquisition will result in 14 return centers joining DHL Supply Chain, expanding the company’s North American footprint, which currently stands at over 520 warehouses. DHL Supply Chain will strengthen its returns capabilities to include product remarketing, recall management, and supply chain performance analytics.

Swap and Avalara partner on cross-border commerce. Swap, an ecommerce logistics platform, has partnered with Avalara, a provider of tax compliance automation software. Swap and Avalara will collaborate to enable cross-border compliance for brands selling on marketplaces and platforms. According to Swap, the integrated offering reduces cross-border complexity and compliance risk and ensures timely payments of duties, taxes, and fees.

Swap

Amazon launches a suite of foundational models. Amazon has launched Nova, a suite of foundation models to help businesses leverage artificial intelligence. By tapping into a company’s data sources, Amazon Nova can deliver tailored insights, recommendations, and more. Nova features natural language understanding, integration with popular business apps, price performance, and enterprise-grade security features. Use cases include customer support, content generation, data analysis, and personalized product or service recommendations.

Deluxe launches mobile app dlxPAY for merchants. Deluxe, a payments and data company, has launched dlxPAY, a mobile app to enhance the payment experience for merchants and partners. dlxPAY offers merchants a suite of features to streamline payment processing, including real-time transaction management, advanced security, and customizable notifications. Additionally, the app integrates with Ingenico’s Moby 5500 card reader device, adding flexibility for businesses that require mobile payment solutions, including contactless and Europay, Mastercard, and Visa chip card acceptance.

Cloudways hosting launches AI-powered diagnostic solutions for SMBs. Cloudways, part of DigitalOcean Holdings, is launching Cloudways Copilot, a suite of AI services that bring intelligent managed hosting to small- and medium-sized businesses. Cloudways Copilot empowers digital businesses to address website-related problems by automatically detecting, diagnosing, and supporting the resolution in real time. The rollout of AI-powered issue diagnostics is the first phase of the Cloudways Copilot launch.

Chargebee subscription management helps with click-to-cancel requirements. Chargebee, a subscription management platform, has announced that its Retention feature helps businesses meet the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s new click-to-cancel requirements. The FTC now mandates a straightforward cancellation process for consumers, targeting subscription services that use features such as automatic renewals or free-to-pay conversions. Chargebee Retention helps businesses comply with the new requirements and provides insights into why customers leave.

Chargebee

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Jan 24 2025

Print Ads Are an Ecommerce Opportunity

Print magazines can be an unusual opportunity for niche ecommerce merchants.

Digital advertising dominates ecommerce, with good reason. The ads are measurable, easily updated, and often produce instant results. Place an ad and get a sale on the same day.

In contrast, print advertising does not usually produce immediate results and is not easy to measure. Yet the medium has unique values that established marketers appreciate.

Take Amazon’s October 2024 printed toy catalog, for example.

“We’re not surprised to see Amazon leaning into their toy catalog,” said Polly Wong, president of Belardi Wong, a New Jersey-based marketing firm, in a correspondence with Practical Ecommerce.

“Hundreds of brands have added direct mail and catalogs to their mix over the last five years because print offers unique advantages to digital marketing — more real estate to show your product and entice consumers to buy, 100% reach, high lifetime value from customers who respond to print, and a very effective way to stand out to new customers.”

In essence, print promotions — such as catalogs or magazine ads — complement digital advertising.

Brand Advertising

Magazines and printed catalogs can provide valuable brand advertising, an often overlooked approach by ecommerce marketers.

Brand ads in a magazine tend to linger and get many “impressions.”

“An ad in print will sit in someone’s home or near someone’s desk for months upon months, sometimes even years,” wrote Troy Klongerbo, general manager at Homestead Living magazine, in an email interview.

To Klongerbo’s point, most magazine subscribers flip through the publication several times, repeatedly referring to articles and ads. His publication often includes recipes and reference material so that issues become “fixtures” in the kitchen or the shed.

Print magazines such as Homestead Living can linger on a coffee table or desk for months as subscribers revisit them.

Printed ads can also build trust. A company with a printed ad appears to be established and trustworthy.

“There’s a deeper implied trust with words and pictures placed in print. Once printed, words and messages cannot be altered, providing for a sort of permanence. Digital ads, even the best of them, are ephemeral to a degree,” wrote Klongerbo.

Indications

While short-lived, digital ads provide solid data, which print does not. An advertiser must be clever about collecting and analyzing print performance and willing to accept indications.

Many print advertisers use several performance indicators in combination.

Brand lift surveys. Measure changes in brand awareness, consideration, and favorability after exposure to brand advertising campaigns.

Social media engagement. Monitor mentions, shares, and sentiment related to the brand, especially when an issue is first published.

Website traffic. Pay attention to website traffic and engagement metrics. An increase in direct or branded search visits often indicates that print advertising is working.

Share of voice. Compares the brand’s advertising or marketing presence against competitors within a specific market or industry.

Direct response. Finally, thanks to coupon codes, subdomains, and QR codes, magazines and catalogs can capture some direct response data, but this, too, is indicative, not definitive. Ten scanned QR code visits may represent 100 consumers.

Advertisement with a QR code in Homestead Living magazine

QR and coupon codes enable print ads to capture direct response data, as in this example from Homestead Living.

Affiliates

Some print publications use this last form of measurement — direct response — to run affiliate ads for ecommerce brands.

This affiliate relationship is relatively new in print magazines, perhaps borne out of influencer marketing. Modern advertisers are often comfortable with influencer relationships combining flat-rate and affiliate payments.

For example, a direct-to-consumer brand might pay an influencer a nominal fee to produce an Instagram Reel and then pay affiliate commissions to the influencer for sales made with her discount code.

Similar arrangments now occur in print. The advertiser pays a low flat rate to help offset the cost of printing and distributing the ad and shares the revenue tracked via a QR code.

If a brand’s typical affiliate share is 15%, the publication might receive 30% to 50%, recognizing that some shoppers will search for the brand or type in its URL rather than using the QR code.

Complementary

Branded print advertising can positively impact digital. Countless published reports confirm that branding boosts performance ads, driving relatively more clicks, engagements, and conversions.

In short, printed and online ads are complementary approaches to achieving marketing objectives.

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Jan 24 2025

Does Google Favor UGC? Reddit Leads In Search Growth [STUDY] via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

This past year was a big one for SEO, with major changes in how Google ranks content.

According to SISTRIX’s latest IndexWatch report, the year’s biggest winners were platforms focused on user-generated content (UGC), AI-powered tools, and large ecommerce brands.

Reddit emerged as the leader among standout performers, but its dominance raises questions about Google’s practices.

Here’s a breakdown of the top-performing sites and what drove their success.

Top Performers in Search Growth

The report highlights Reddit as the year’s top performer, nearly tripling its visibility in Google’s US search results.

Reddit climbed higher in rankings for a variety of keywords, from product reviews to niche discussions, making it a major competitor to traditional content and e-commerce sites.

Other big winners in search visibility included:

Reddit.com: +190.9% growth
Instagram.com: Significant increases driven by its visual and video content
YouTube.com: Continued dominance through video SEO
Spotify.com: Strong gains in music-related searches
Wikipedia.org: Consistent growth as an authoritative content source

Reddit’s Dominance Raises Questions

While Reddit’s success is significant, it raises ethical and strategic questions for the SEO community.

Google’s policies, such as its stance on “site reputation” and “scaled content” abuse, discourage websites from publishing content outside their established topical authority. This policy aims to prevent sites from piggybacking on their existing authority to rank for unrelated keywords.

Yet Reddit appears to be exempt from this rule. The platform ranks for an incredibly wide range of keywords, from precise technical terms to general lifestyle topics, without being tied to a single area of expertise.

This begs the question: why does Reddit get to rank for everything while other sites are penalized for straying too far from their core focus?

Adding to the intrigue, it’s worth noting that Reddit has a deal in place with Google for broader search distribution. While this partnership isn’t entirely transparent, it raises further concerns about fairness in Google’s ranking system and whether specific platforms receive preferential treatment.

Fastest-Growing Sites by Percentage

While the largest platforms gained the most ground overall, several smaller ones stood out:

ck12.org: +601.59% growth in rankings
VirginAtlantic.com: +509.74% growth following site migrations
Quillbot.com: +490.70% growth via AI-driven SEO strategies
Hardrock.com: +436.63% growth after consolidating site sections
TheKitchn.com: +300.40% growth driven by recipe content

The report notes that many sites relied on “programmatic” SEO strategies.

For example, ck12.org used AI-powered resources to rank for thousands of educational queries.

Lily Ray states in the report:

“For some of the winners, visibility growth stemmed from a “programmatic SEO” strategy, which use automation to scale pages that target many different search queries relevant to the site’s core offerings. For example, the site ck12.org, which claims to be the “world’s most powerful AI tutor,” has seen substantial visibility growth, predominantly stemming from its ‘flexbooks’ subdomain and ‘flexi’ subfolders.”

User-Generated Content

UGC platforms had a breakthrough year. Alongside Reddit, sites like Quora, Stack Exchange, and GitHub gained significant search visibility.

HubPages, particularly its Discover subdomain, also emerged as a major winner, growing in rankings by targeting topics like jokes, pet advice, and music.

Google’s algorithm seems to favor UGC platforms even when individual articles vary in quality.

The report notes:

“Interestingly, many of these articles resemble low-quality content that often causes demotion by Google’s algorithm updates targeting spammy content. This suggests Google’s algorithms may put more weight on prioritizing UGC websites like HubPages, which contain authentic human experiences and contributions, over penalizing or demoting individual articles included on those sites.”

E-Commerce Sites Make a Comeback

E-commerce platforms rebounded after a challenging few years.

Carters.com, for example, saw a boost by ranking for popular keywords like “baby clothes” and “kids clothing store.”

Other brands, such as Nike, Lenovo, and eBay, also experienced steady growth thanks to site updates, platform migrations, and better keyword targeting.

Key Takeaways

This year’s biggest SEO winners reflect three major trends:

Google loves UGC: Platforms like Reddit and Quora thrived as Google prioritized community-driven content over traditional formats.
Programmatic SEO strategies can work: Sites like ck12.org and Quillbot.com used scalable, AI-driven approaches to rank for various search queries.
E-commerce rebounds: Retailers focused on SEO-friendly updates and keyword targeting saw strong gains in organic search.

Final Thoughts

Reddit’s rise highlights a larger debate: Is Google playing fair?

While most sites are held to strict standards for authority and expertise, Reddit appears to operate under different rules, ranking across nearly every vertical. Combined with its search distribution deal with Google, this raises questions about transparency and equity in search rankings.

As we move into 2025, it’s clear that websites must adapt to an evolving rulebook—one in which authenticity, AI strategies, and ethical considerations all play a role in success.

Featured Image: eamesBot/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments

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