In what appears to be a development in OpenAI’s expansion, former Chrome engineering veteran Darin Fisher has joined the AI company.
This move adds fuel to earlier reports about OpenAI’s plans to develop a web browser to compete with Google Chrome.
Background & Context
Earlier reports from The Information indicated that OpenAI has been quietly assembling a team of former Google developers to work on a new browser project.
The company has reportedly been in discussions with various partners, including Conde Nast, Eventbrite, Redfin, and Priceline, about implementing specialized search features for travel, food, real estate, and retail websites.
Latest Development
According to an update to his LinkedIn profile, Fisher has recently joined OpenAI.
Screenshot from LinkedIn, November 2024.
His arrival is noteworthy, given Fisher’s background in browser development.
His professional history includes contributions to Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Neeva, making him an asset for OpenAI’s browser ambitions.
You can learn more about Fisher and what he brought to the Chrome team in the video below:
Potential Impact
This development comes at a critical time in the browser market.
Google Chrome dominates with approximately 65% of desktop and 68% of mobile users.
However, the market could shift following recent U.S. Department of Justice proposals suggesting Google should divest its Chrome browser business due to monopoly concerns.
Looking Ahead
While OpenAI’s browser project is reportedly in the early stages, the addition of experienced browser developers like Fisher suggests the company is serious about entering this space.
The potential browser is expected to feature deep integration with ChatGPT and AI-powered search capabilities, though a launch timeline remains unclear.
This move represents another step in OpenAI’s apparent strategy to expand beyond pure AI development into consumer-facing products.
SEO is a multifaceted discipline. It requires a solid strategy, connection to broader digital marketing (and business goals), and accountability.
While there are differing processes, approaches, and even opinions on how you should implement it, it is something that you can’t ignore or push off specific short-term tactics if you want to get to specific long-term results.
I’m against just blindly “doing” best practices or following a prescribed checklist in the absence of a strategy or documented plan.
Rather than giving you a specific checklist of things to do during the year, I’m unpacking activities categorized by daily, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.
I feel strongly that if you have a well-balanced approach to SEO that starts with a strategy and solid goals, then you can move into the ongoing campaign management or tactical implementation phase of moving through your year.
My goal is to unpack this cadence so that you will be able to factor it into your plan and see it through to ultimate return on investment (ROI) and success.
Daily
Educate Yourself
Staying up to date on industry news is a critical aspect of SEO that must be built into any maintenance or ongoing management plan.
This ranges from the mission-critical alerts and updates the search engines announce to keeping tabs on SEO best practices and breaking news from sources like Search Engine Journal.
AI news seems to be constantly disruptive, and we have to be mindful of how SEO is not just all about Google or concepts that we have applied in the past (if you’ve been in the game for a while).
Monitoring your key SEO performance metrics in real-time, or at least once per day, is especially necessary for brands and organizations that rely on ecommerce transactions or lead volume to feed a sales team.
Knowing how your website performs in search through top-level metrics is important for recognizing any red flags. These could include:
A specific or aggregate positioning drop.
An organic traffic drop.
A decrease in sales or lead volume.
Being able to recognize problems as soon as they happen is key.
You need to be able to diagnose issues and reverse any negative trends before they impact your overall marketing and business goals.
By keeping tabs on actual performance, you can compare to benchmarks and baselines to make sure that you fully understand the cause and effect with your metrics and not have an issue happen for too long before you can intervene.
You can monitor less critical KPIs (any that don’t necessitate an immediate reaction) on a weekly basis.
Make Progress On Tactics
A solid digital marketing plan – especially an SEO plan – or campaign must start with strategy (including goals), tactics, assets needed, how it will be measured, and documented steps to be accountable and actionable.
Without a plan, process, or defined approach, you can waste a lot of time chasing specific SEO aspects that might be low impact and low priority – or tactics absent of a strategy that are part of a “best practices” checklist, but not one that is specific to your business.
The daily process should include specific tasks, milestones, and achievable actions that work toward the bigger picture.
The tactics can include things done for the first time in a phased approach or action items more in a rinse-and-repeat methodology.
Regardless, the list of specific technical, on-page, and off-page action items should be defined for the year, broken out into months, and further into tactics and progress that can be made on a daily basis to stay on track.
SEO requires both big-picture thinking and the ability to tackle daily tasks and action items.
Monthly
Report On Performance
Beyond the daily or weekly KPI monitoring, it’s often important to use monthly cycles to more broadly report on performance.
The focus of monthly checkpoints allows for dedicated time to compare a larger sample size of data and see trends.
Monthly performance reporting should include year-over-year comparisons of the completed month plus any available year-to-date stats.
Find meaningful intervals to measure and be consistent. Looking at bigger ranges of time helps to see trends that are hard to decipher in small sample sizes.
Any stories of the what and why for deviations in goal, celebrations for exceeding goals, and metrics that warrant possible changes to the plan are critical to the surface and prioritized through a dashboard or snapshot report of the performance data.
Recap Completed & Continuing Action Items
This is a chance to evaluate the tactics and execution in the previous month against the plan.
Was everything completed?
Were there deviations?
What obstacles or roadblocks were in the way or overcome?
Looking at the past helps shape the future.
When you combine the action items and tactics with the performance data, you should get an overall picture of the reality of what is driving SEO performance.
Plan Next Month’s Action Items & Evaluate The Plan
Monthly intervals are great for ensuring accountability for the completion of tasks.
Even when the year is planned out, things change in SEO, and performance isn’t always what we expect after doing something the first time.
Taking a monthly planning approach, adjustments can be made to the plan, such as doubling down on a specific tactic or adjusting the overall strategy to recalibrate.
By being agile enough to evaluate performance and tactics monthly, you can avoid overthinking things and reacting too swiftly, but also not let too much time pass and lose footing with trends toward goals.
Having a good balance of planned tactics and actions versus the need for agile methods to pivot when needed is often the best approach to staying current and proactive.
Quarterly
Technical Issues Auditing
Assuming you have covered technical issues at the beginning of your SEO focus and are also watching for any that trigger red flags in daily and weekly monitoring, it is important to take a broader look through an audit each quarter.
Plus, comparison to benchmarks and standards for site speed, mobile usability, validation of structured data, and the aspects that aren’t often looked at on a more frequent basis.
On-Page Issues Auditing
Without an audit process and even with frequent monitoring, things happen on websites.
A code update, database update, plugin/extension update, or publishing content can cause duplicate tags, duplicate content, or even missing on-page elements.
A quarterly audit of on-page issues that can be conducted using a wide range of free and subscription third-party tools is important.
There are tools that will even send alerts and factor into the daily process if something changes, like a meta description being wiped out.
Regardless, having a solid tools stack and process for quarterly evaluation and comparison to the previous audit is important to ensure that the results of the audit and any fixes needed are noted and made into the tactical plan.
Link Profile Auditing
Overall, the SEO plan likely includes some form of link building.
Whether that is through attracting links with engaging content or a more focused plan of research and outreach, it is likely a part of the ongoing tactics (or should be considered if it isn’t).
Investing time and effort into the tactics makes it important to have visibility of the overall link profile and progress.
This might be a performance metric tracked in the monthly reporting phase, but quarterly should be audited in a deeper sense.
Evaluating the quality of links, the number of links, the diversity of sources, the relevancy of linked content, comparisons to competitors, comparisons to benchmarks, and period-over-period comparisons are all important aspects to ensure that the plan is performing as intended in the area of backlinks.
Plus, if not caught through daily or monthly efforts, any spammy links or negative SEO attempts can be caught here and addressed through the disavow process, if applicable or if it makes sense for your situation.
Local Listings Audit
Once local listings management is in maintenance mode, there won’t be a frequent need for major changes with NAP (name, address, phone) data or inconsistencies in listing data.
However, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen and can be “set it and forget it.”
This audit can identify issues that can be addressed on a one-off basis as well as provide guidance on performance and any needed changes to the content, reviews, and other aspects of the listings themselves beyond the basic NAP data.
If any third-party data sources or listings were missed, Google Business Profile data could be overwritten with inaccurate listing info.
Even if nothing changes with your management of listings, data can change and needs to be monitored at a minimum.
Yearly
Measure Performance
When running annual plans for SEO – and even when not on annual agreements or evaluation cycles – taking an entire year of data and evaluating it is helpful to advise strategy and find measurable ROI calculations.
SEO is a long-term process that aims to achieve the most competitive positioning and visibility possible in search engines. It is a valuable investment of time to look at performance data over 12-month spans, compare it to previous periods, look at benchmarks, and celebrate successes.
Even if you don’t have annual budgets or agreements with outside partners/providers, taking an annual step back and looking at performance and the effort like an investment rather than an expense is important.
Planning Strategy & Tactics
In addition to reviewing yearly performance data, you should also plan your goals, strategy, and tactics for the next year.
Even though the plan could change a week into maintenance, having a plan and setting a target are key to measuring progress.
Without a plan and using past learnings and a realistic view of the resources being invested in the coming year, there can be a gap between expectations and reality.
It is best to sort this out before getting months down the road.
Conclusion
To reiterate what I noted earlier, SEO isn’t about just following a basic checklist of best practices. It is getting harder and harder to be successful at.
I look at the changes based on AI, Google’s algorithms, and fragmentation in the search market share as an opportunity.
When we have clear goals defined for our strategy, build out the tactics needed to get there, have solid assets (websites, content, etc.), can measure it, and stick to it with a schedule that doesn’t get sidetracked by other priorities or hats we wear, we can get there.
Our annual plan or “checklist” is custom to us with a cadence of daily, monthly, quarterly, and yearly when it comes to things we do, so we can see SEO all the way through to ROI in both short-term and long-term applications.
From the role of AI in SEO and the rise of AI Overviews (AIO) to significant Google updates, 2024 introduced sweeping changes in search. Now, it’s time to brace for what’s next.
Join our upcoming webinar as we dive into exclusive survey data from industry-leading SEOs, digital marketers, content marketers, and more to uncover the priorities and challenges shaping the future of search in 2025.
Why This Webinar Is A Must-Attend Event
To navigate SEO in 2025, understanding the evolving priorities and challenges is crucial.
Key Insights from 2024 – We’ll review the defining SEO trends from this year, helping you set a foundation for 2025.
Emerging 2025 Priorities – Discover the strategies and focus areas that will be critical for success in the year ahead.
Impact of Google’s AIO – Learn about Google’s AIO advancements so far and the AIO-specific priorities that will shape search next year.
Expert Insights From Shannon Vize And Steven Van Vessum
This session will be led by Shannon Vize and Steven van Vessum from Conductor, who bring a wealth of SEO expertise. They’ll share strategies for resourcing and reporting to streamline your 2025 SEO plans and offer insights on tackling upcoming challenges.
Who Should Attend?
This webinar is perfect for:
SEO professionals aiming to stay on top of AI and Google-driven changes.
Digital marketers focused on ensuring their strategies are set up for lasting success.
Content creators looking to align with the latest in search.
Anyone interested in how SEO changed in 2024 and how it will evolve in 2025.
Live Q&A: Get Your Questions Answered
After the presentation, Shannon and Steven will host a live Q&A—the perfect opportunity for you to ask any of your burning questions and get expert advice for planning your SEO strategy in 2025.
Don’t Miss Out!
2025 is set to be a transformative year for SEO. Register now to gain exclusive insights and position yourself for success in the search landscape.
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Marketers spend years crafting strategies to drive results through Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and more.
Of these many strategies adopted by brands and agencies, in my experience over the last 15 years, one topic that sits across every paid search strategy is brand bidding.
What Is Brand Bidding?
Brand bidding, in its truest form, relates to targeting keywords that relate to your (or your clients) business.
For example:
Screenshot for search for [new balance], Google, November 2024
The most common keyword marketers will include in their strategy is the company name. But depending on search demand, there may be additional keywords that are included.
Such as:
Brand keyword + product.
Brand keyword + ‘address’.
Brand keyword + ‘customer service’.
Brand keyword + ‘returns’.
There is also an element of brand bidding focused on products/services that may not contain the company name.
Think Apple and the “iPhone” or Converse and the “Chuck Taylor.” These terms are most certainly brand keywords, just without the company name.
From a tactical standpoint, whether brands bid on their keywords or not is a decision made between the stakeholders involved.
However, since Google Ads was birthed in October 2000, this topic has been very controversial for several reasons.
Why Is Brand Bidding A Controversial Topic?
The controversy is rooted in a question that many brands or agencies will likely have been asked or have asked themselves, “Why should we pay for traffic that we can get for free through organic?”
This is a completely justified perspective on brand bidding, and if brands could guarantee that the Google search engine results page (SERP) would serve a single organic result – and no competitor ads when a brand term is searched – it would make the decision for and against much more straightforward.
However, times have changed, as have Google Ads campaign types and the way in which the SERP is delivered and used by searchers.
Brand bidding should be treated on a case-by-case basis, considering as many situational factors as possible, such as:
Competition.
Market penetration.
Keyword contextuality (a common case being a high volume generic keyword as part of your company name, e.g., “The Next Day Flower Company”).
Search demand.
Resellers.
Budgets.
Organic rankings.
It’s not always clear which path to take, but there are a host of reasons for and against.
What Are The Benefits Of Brand Bidding?
Strengthened Visibility
Serving a branded text ad on the SERP alongside your organic listings provides an additional link for searchers to click through to your site.
Let’s say you rank position one organically for your company name, have the knowledge panel displaying your company information, a text ad serving sitelinks alongside your review rating, and your company telephone number. The real estate you are maximizing on the SERP will serve as an authority for your brand.
Brand Protection
Being on the receiving end of competitor bidding is a common reason for marketers and agencies to activate their own brand campaigns.
Brands are free to bid on competitor company names and/or related keywords across Google, Bing, etc. This is a common strategy used by brands and agencies worldwide.
There are restrictions that forbid brands from including trademarked company names within ad copy, but outside of this, brands have free reign.
In my experience, there are a few reasons (among others) for why brands adopt this strategy:
Reactiveness – when a brand spots a competitor bidding on their brand terms to get their brand back to position one as soon as possible.
Exploration to see whether the results-driven are in line with KPIs and if the incremental value is worthwhile.
Necessity as competitor bidding is common practice, and bidding on a brand is a requirement to ensure users can find your brand immediately in a busy SERP.
Messaging And Control
The organic listing served for brand queries contains a customizable title tag and meta description.
By serving a branded search ad, the advertiser is given complete control over the messaging.
This is useful in many scenarios:
Poor organic rankings (e.g., not serving an organic listing for branded search, wrong page ranking above the homepage).
To instantly serve bespoke messaging for your branded ads (e.g., promotions, updates).
Combatting rewritten title tags and/or meta descriptions.
Creating bespoke sitelinks to direct users to different landing pages.
Click Costs
Context aside, brand cost-per-click (CPC) is likely cheaper than non-brand (generic keywords) as there is less competition, and your quality score will be strong.
Each industry (market and vertical) will have a different scenario in terms of how much a branded click costs.
Take Nike, for example. Its brand terms will be incredibly competitive as resellers, marketplaces, and affiliates will serve ads on the company name. However, a small ecommerce store might not have anyone bidding on its brand name.
With the typically cheaper click costs, bidding on branded keywords can be seen as a cost-effective strategy, but all other factors must be considered – a key one being the impact on organic performance.
Incrementality
This refers to driving better results overall by bidding on branded keywords than you would without, and is a very hot topic in PPC.
As with almost all arguments for and against brand bidding, the incremental gains driven through this strategy differ by brand.
Among other methods, turn-off experiments are common practice.
This is where marketers pause brand bidding for a treatment group while maintaining visibility for the control group to observe the impact of bidding on branded keywords.
Studies have shown that turning off brand campaigns can result in lower overall performance versus having brand ads live.
Others have shown barely any impact overall, with organic picking up the sales or leads that would have been driven through ads.
What is the best way to find out? Give it a test.
What Are The Drawbacks Of Brand Bidding?
Budget
Context plays a huge role (size of business, level of demand, market, etc.).
But aside from any incrementality testing – in a budgeting scenario at the very top level – spending money on brand terms that (to some degree) will be picked up through organic can be seen as an inefficient use of spend.
It’s not uncommon to see companies with huge levels of brand search demand cut their brand spend. eBay did this over a decade ago, and more businesses have followed suit since.
Freeing up this budget will impact brands with considerable online demand. For smaller brands with less search demand, it’s really a case of weighing up the savings and seeing how far this could go if it were to be reinvested into non-brand new customer acquisition.
Impact On Organic
If a searcher is looking for your company name and you have organic listings serving on Google, the chances are they know who your company is and will visit your company website (among other reasons).
By activating brand ads, the amount of traffic, sales/leads, and overall organic engagement will be impacted when the ad serves above the organic listing.
It really depends on the brand, team, goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs) in question to weigh up the impact of running brand ads on organic, and a good place to start is incrementality testing.
Existing Customers
In most cases, new and existing customers should be targeted separately for brand search.
Take ASOS, for example. Its brand traffic will be a mix of new searchers, existing customers looking to shop, existing customers looking to log in and send returns, speak to customer service, and more.
By not accounting for this within your strategy, efficiencies could be missed, and the budget could be spent on driving users to take actions that are not aligned with KPIs.
Different Takes On Performance Reports
Brand performance will almost always be stronger than traffic driven for searchers who are not aware of your brand.
Over the last 15 years, I’ve seen many accounts that blend together brand and non-brand performance in reporting, including shopping and Performance Max campaigns, which also serve brand queries.
In some cases, this is the lens that stakeholders want to see. But if a brand drives a large percentage of revenue/leads for a small percentage of spend, the overarching view of performance may look more preferable than it is from a new customer acquisition point of view.
Relationships (Particularly Resellers)
Brands who sell through resellers/marketplaces can often have a competitive auction for brand terms.
Mutual agreements can be a way to put structure in place, agreeing to not bid directly on the company name with the freedom to bid on brand + terms (e.g., brand + product), for example.
However, these agreements can be difficult to manage as many parties can be involved (resellers with in-house teams, new agencies onboarded into resellers, etc.).
As a result, the auction can become competitive, which will, in turn, drive up click costs and lower efficiency.
What Else Do You Need To Consider With Brand Bidding?
Performance Max
PMax is a consolidated campaign type offered by Google and Microsoft. This fully automated campaign serves across multiple networks, one being Google search.
This campaign can (and will) serve branded queries. I’ve seen brands report strong PMax performance many times under the assumption that it’s non-brand when, in fact, a high percentage of sales/leads are driven through their own brand searches.
There are controls in place to remove brand from PMax (account-level negative keywords, campaign-level negative keywords added via Google Support, etc.). However, if you want control, I’d recommend creating a brand search campaign and removing brand from PMax.
Broad Match
This Google Ads keyword match type allows your ads to serve on searches related to the meaning of the keywords you’re bidding on.
With this, as your brand falls under this category, the chances of your ads entering auctions for brand queries despite your keyword not containing your company name are high.
As with PMax (but a little easier to implement), you can remove your brand terms from your broad match campaigns with the use of negative keywords.
Alternatively, you could target brand queries through broad match with a comprehensive negative keyword strategy to ensure you are only allocating budget to brand.
The Semantics Of Your Brand Name
Let’s say your brand name contains a word + the product you sell, such as “123 designer handbags.”
When bidding on brand terms, you may see competitors in auction insights matching through broad and/or PMax for the term “designer handbags.”
This may impact your click costs, which can fluctuate over time depending on investment (e.g., brands increasing budgets across PMax during peak months).
Competitors may still bid on your brand terms directly, but others may pick these queries up through PMax or Broad, a key consideration for budgeting and planning.
So, Should You Be Bidding On Your Brand Keywords?
There isn’t a right or wrong answer, and claims that there is will likely be rooted in personal experiences.
Knowing which path to take ultimately comes down to context, and this path will change over time.
For agencies managing multiple clients, each brand should be treated on a case-by-case basis, and historical context is certainly needed.
For in-house marketing teams, the same logic applies but you likely have fewer brands to make the decision for.
The arguments for and against are there to guide you in your strategic decision-making.
The best place to start is by listing all considerations and questions, such as “What is our organic positioning like for brand?”, “How many resellers do we have and what brand terms are they bidding on?”, and “Do we have the budget?”
From here, whether you currently bid on brand and want to test incrementality, or if you’re interested in running a short stint and haven’t used this strategy before, ensure reporting is robust and that you are always testing.
The technology powering mobile airline boarding passes also enables push notifications for retail marketers.
Mobile wallet passes are digital representations of tickets, boarding passes, and cards for auto insurance, loyalty programs, coupons, and memberships.
Stored within mobile wallet applications such as Apple Wallet, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay, these passes allow consumers to access and use them directly from their smartphones, streamlining transactions, improving security, and avoiding physical alternatives.
Marketing Opportunity
Wallet passes also work for brick-and-mortar and ecommerce shops, with three key features: persistent storage, updates, and push notifications.
Consider an airline boarding pass.
A traveler checks in remotely for a flight and adds the boarding pass to her wallet. The pass will remain in the wallet until she deletes it manually. Passes stay for years and, often, move from an old phone to a new one.
If the flight’s departure gate or time changes, the digital boarding pass updates with the most recent information.
Finally, the boarding pass can send notifications on a smartphone’s lock screen, informing the traveler about the new gate or departure time.
Expired boarding passes from the author’s digital wallet.
Imagine similar steps applied to a retailer.
A shopper adds a store loyalty card to his wallet to earn discounts.
During a week-long promotion leading up to Black Friday or Cyber Monday, the store offers daily updates with special offers and discounts. Each day, the digital loyalty card (wallet pass) shows the sale item and offer.
The retailer can also send push notifications directly to the lock screen on the shopper’s smartphone, announcing each day’s deal.
The store could include external links in either the loyalty card or the notification (depending on the mobile operating system), sending the shopper directly to a sales landing page to make a purchase.
In some cases, it could be a single-click checkout, where tapping the message link leads directly to the order confirmation page. Few other channels offer this level of conversion potential.
Notably, the mobile wallet pass reaches a shopper directly on her phone. It’s a potent channel during the holiday shopping season amid saturated email and advertising campaigns.
Digital coupon and loyalty cards can link directly to the checkout. These hypothetical examples are from the Apple Wallet documentation.
A Good Fit?
A do-it-yourself approach to wallet pass marketing is entirely possible. All major mobile operating systems have well-documented software development kits (SDKs) or application programming interfaces (APIs).
Yet one hardly needs to make the effort. Prominent mobile pass providers include Vibes, PassKit, and Airship. The Shopify app store has more than 70 options for wallet passes. Some providers offer 1,000 persistent loyalty card passes for less than $100 per month.
Still, shoppers need a reason to add a pass. The motivation might be a loyalty card with its promise of points and prizes or a recurring monthly coupon. Both likely appeal to shoppers more than downloading an app.
Clearly, however, wallet passes don’t make sense for every retailer. They likely fit merchants with:
Diminishing returns from other promotional channels.
Nonetheless, mobile wallet passes are a potential marketing channel for sellers online and off. The technology’s ability to persist on shoppers’ smartphones, provide real-time updates, and send push notifications directly to locked screens makes the passes especially valuable during high-competition periods such as the holidays.
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
Earlier this year, a boy in Sweden celebrated his 10th birthday. Reproductive scientists and doctors marked the occasion too. This little boy’s birth had been special. He was the first person to be born from a transplanted uterus.
The boy was born in 2014 after his mother, a 35-year-old woman who had been born without a uterus, received a donated uterus from a 61-year-old close family friend. At the time, she was one of only 11 women who had undergone the experimental procedure.
A decade on, over 135 uterus transplants have been performed globally, resulting in the births of over 50 healthy babies. The surgery has had profound consequences for these families—the recipients would not have been able to experience pregnancy any other way.
But legal and ethical questions continue to surround the procedure, which is still considered experimental. Who should be offered a uterus transplant? Could the procedure ever be offered to transgender women? And if so, who should pay for these surgeries?
These issues were raised at a recent virtual event run by Progress Educational Trust, a UK-based charity that aims to provide information to the public on genomics and infertility. One of the speakers was Mats Brännström, who led the team at the University of Gothenburg that performed the first successful transplant.
For Brännström, the story of uterus transplantation begins in 1998. While traveling in Australia, he said, he met a 27-year-old woman called Angela, who longed to be pregnant but lacked a functional uterus. She suggested to Brännström that her mother could donate hers. “I was amazed I hadn’t thought of it before,” he said.
According to Brännström, around 1 in 500 women experience infertility due to what’s known as absolute uterine factor infertility, or AUFI, meaning they do not have a functional uterus. Uterus transplants could offer them a way to get pregnant.
His meeting with Angela kick-started a research project that started in mice and eventually moved on to pigs, sheep, and baboons. Brännström’s team started performing uterus transplants in women as part of a small clinical trial in 2012. In that trial, all the donors were living, and in many cases they were the mothers or aunts of the recipients.
The surgeries ended up being more complicated than he had anticipated, said Brännström. The operation to remove a donor’s uterus was expected to take between three and four hours. It ended up taking between eight and 11 hours.
In that first trial, Brännström’s team transplanted uteruses into nine women, each of whom had IVF to create and store embryos beforehand. The woman who was the first to give birth had IVF over a 12-month period, which ended six months before her surgery. It took a little over 10 hours to remove the uterus from the donor, and just under five hours to stitch it into the recipient.
The recipient started getting her period 43 days after her transplant. Doctors transferred one of her embryos into the uterus a year after her surgery. Three weeks later, a pregnancy test confirmed she was pregnant.
At 31 weeks, she was admitted to hospital with preeclampsia, a serious medical condition that can develop during pregnancy, and her baby was delivered by C-section 16 hours later. She was discharged from hospital after three days, although the baby spent 16 days in the hospital’s neonatal unit.
Despite those difficulties, her story is considered a success. Other uterus recipients have also experienced pregnancy complications, and some have had surgical complications. And all transplant recipients must adhere to a regimen of immunosuppressant drugs, which can have side effects.
The uteruses aren’t intended to last forever, either. Surgeons remove them once the recipients have completed their families, often after one or two children. The removal is also a significant operation.
Given all that, uterus transplants are not to be taken lightly. And there are other paths to parenthood. Some ethicists are concerned that in pursuing uterus transplantation as a fertility treatment, we might reinforce ideas that define a woman’s value in terms of her reproductive potential, Natasha Hammond-Browning, a legal scholar at Cardiff University in Wales, said at the event. “There is debate around whether we should be giving greater preference to adoption, to surrogacy, and to supporting children who already exist and who need care,” she said.
We also need to consider whether there is a “right to gestate,” and if there is, who has that right, said Hammond-Browning. And these concerns need to be balanced with the importance of reproductive autonomy—the idea that people have the right to decide and control their own reproductive efforts.
Further questions remain over whether uterus transplants might ever be an option for trans women, who not only lack a uterus but also have a different pelvic anatomy. I asked the speakers if the surgery might ever be feasible. They weren’t hugely optimistic that it would, at least in the near future.
“I personally think that the transgender community have been given … false hope for responsible transplantation in the near future,” was the response of J. Richard Smith of Imperial College London, who co-led the first uterus transplant performed in the UK. Even cisgender women who have needed surgery to create “neovaginas” aren’t eligible for the uterus transplants his team are offering as part of a clinical study. They have an altered vaginal microbiome that appears to increase the risk of miscarriage, he said.
“There is a huge amount of work to be done before this work can be translated to the transgender community,” Smith said. Brännström agreed but added that he thinks the surgery will be available at some point—just after a lot more research.
And then there are the legal and ethical questions, none of which have easy answers. Hammond-Browning pointed out that clinical teams would first need to determine what the goal of such an operation would be. Is it about reproduction or gender realignment, for example? And how might that goal influence decisions over who should get a donated uterus, and why?
Considering only 135 human uterus transplants have ever been carried out, we still have a lot to learn about the best way to perform them. (For context, more than 25,000 kidney transplants were carried out in 2023 in the US alone.) Researchers are still figuring out how uteruses from deceased donors differ from those of living ones, and how to minimize complications in young, healthy women. Since that little boy was born 10 years ago, only 50 other children have been born in a similar way. It’s still early days.
Now read the rest of The Checkup
Read more from MIT Technology Review
The first birth following the transplantation of a uterus from a dead donor happened in 2017. A team in Brazil transferred the uterus of a 45-year-old donor, who had died from a brain hemorrhage, to a 32-year-old recipient born without a uterus.
People on Ozempic, Wegovy, and similar drugs are losing their appetite for sugary, ultraprocessed foods. The food industry will have to adapt. (TIL Nestlé has already started a line of frozen meals targeted at people on these weight-loss drugs.) (The New York Times Magazine)
People who have a history of obesity can find it harder to lose weight. That might be because the fat cells in our bodies seem to “remember” that history and have an altered response to food. (The Guardian)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took leave as chairman of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit known for spreading doubt about vaccines, to run for US president last year.But he is still involved in legal cases filed by the group. And several of its cases remain open, including ones against the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health—all agencies Kennedy would lead if his nomination for head of Health and Human Services is confirmed. (STAT)
Researchers are among the millions of new users of Bluesky, a social media alternative to X (formerly known as Twitter). “There is this pent-up demand among scientists for what is essentially the old Twitter,” says one researcher who found that the number of influential scientists using the platform doubled between August and November. (Science)
Since 2016, a team of around 100 scientists have been working to catalogue the 37 trillion or so cells in the human body. This week, the Human Cell Atlas published a collection of studies that represents a significant first step toward that goal—including maps of cells in the nervous system, lungs, heart, gut, and immune system. (Nature)
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.
How OpenAI stress-tests its large language models
OpenAI has lifted the lid (just a crack) on its safety-testing processes. It has put out two papers describing how it stress-tests its powerful large language models to try to identify potential harmful or otherwise unwanted behavior, an approach known as red-teaming.
The first paper describes how OpenAI directs an extensive network of human testers outside the company to vet the behavior of its models before they are released. The second presents a new way to automate parts of the testing process, using a large language model like GPT-4 to come up with novel ways to bypass its own guardrails. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive preview of the work.
—Will Douglas Heaven
Who should get a uterus transplant? Experts aren’t sure.
Over 135 uterus transplants have been performed globally in the last decade, resulting in the births of over 50 healthy babies. The surgery has had profound consequences for these families—the recipients would not have been able to experience pregnancy any other way.
But legal and ethical questions continue to surround the procedure, which is still considered experimental. Who should be offered a uterus transplant? Could the procedure ever be offered to transgender women? And if so, who should pay for these surgeries? Read the full story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter about the latest in biotech and health. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 OpenAI may launch a web browser Which would be a full-frontal assault on Google (The Information $) + The Google browser break-up is an answer in search of a question. (FT $) + OpenAI accidentally deleted potential evidence in a training data lawsuit. (The Verge)
2 Border militias are ready to help with Trump’s deportation plans Regardless of whether they’re asked to or not. (Wired $) + Trump’s administration plans to radically curb the powers of the federal agency that protects unions. (WP $)
3 Russia hit Ukraine with a new type of missile Here’s what we know about it so far. (The Guardian)
4 Microsoft is about to turn 50 And it’s every bit as relevant and powerful as it’s ever been. (Wired $)
5 China has overtaken Germany in industrial robot adoption South Korea, however, remains streets ahead of both of them. (Reuters $) + Three reasons robots are about to become way more useful. (MIT Technology Review)
6 The irresistible rise of cozy tech Our devices, social media and now AI are encouraging us to keep looking inward. (New Yorker $) + Inside the cozy but creepy world of VR sleep rooms. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Churchgoers in a Swiss city have been spilling their secrets to AI Jesus And they’re mostly really enjoying it. Watch out, priests. (The Guardian)
8 A French startup wants to make fuel out of thin air Then use it to fuel ships and airplanes. (IEEE Spectrum) + Everything you need to know about alternative jet fuels. (MIT Technology Review)
9 WhatsApp is going to start transcribing voice messages This seems a good compromise to bridge people’s different communication preferences. (The Verge)
10 Want a new phone? You should consider second-hand It’s better for the planet—and your wallet. (Vox)
Quote of the day
“Nope. 100% not true.”
—Jeff Bezos fires back at Elon Musk’s claim that he was telling everyone that Trump would lose pre-election in a rare post on X.
The big story
This chemist is reimagining the discovery of materials using AI and automation
DEREK SHAPTON
October 2021
Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a Mexico City–born, Toronto-based chemist, has devoted much of his life to contemplating worst-case scenarios. What if climate change proceeds as expected, or gets significantly worse? Could we quickly come up with the materials we’ll need to cheaply capture carbon, or make batteries from something other than costly lithium?
Materials discovery—the science of creating and developing useful new substances—often moves at a frustratingly slow pace. The typical trial-and-error approach takes an average of two decades, making it too expensive and risky for most companies to pursue.
Aspuru-Guzik’s objective—which he shares with a growing number of computer-savvy chemists—is to shrink that interval to a matter of months or years. And advances in AI, robotics, and computing are bringing new life to his vision. Read the full story.
—Simon Lewsen
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 tweet ’em at me.)
+ Do you struggle with a lack of confidence? Here’s how to take up a bit more space. + These recipes will ensure you have a delicious Thanksgiving next week. + It’s impossible not to dream of lazy sunny days while gazing at Quentin Monge’s work. + Tom Jones x Disturbed = very funny.
Kevin Dahlstrom once paid cash for a $211,000 Porsche. He was in his 30s, living in Texas, holding down high-powered corporate marketing jobs, such as with Mr. Cooper, a mortgage services company, and Elevate, a credit solutions firm.
He says the Porsche created more stress than joy and started his practice of minimalism — letting go of material things. So in his 40s he chucked it all, moved his family to Colorado, and focused on “a more meaningful and balanced life.”
He and I recently spoke. He shared his evolution — from money-seeking to happiness, purpose, rock climbing, and more. Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.
Eric Bandholz: Give us your overview.
Kevin Dahlstrom: I live in Boulder, Colorado, with my wife and two teenage daughters. I’m 53, and my motto is, “I learned everything the hard way, so you don’t have to.” My career has involved starting four companies and working at the C-level in larger companies, typically as a chief marketing officer. At the peak of my career in my mid-40s, I walked away from the corporate world, moved to Boulder, and rebooted my life. I focused on finding happiness through activities like rock climbing and creating a more meaningful and balanced life.
When I was younger, I bought into society’s definition of success — money and status. I climbed the corporate ladder but realized I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t deliberate in shaping my life around what mattered to me. In my mid-40s, I redefined success on my own terms and built my life around that vision. Today, I have control over my time, balancing my passion for work and rock climbing while being a dedicated husband and father.
Bandholz: Could you have achieved this life without the money-and-status stage?
Dahlstrom: There are seasons in life. There’s a season for grinding and one for reaping the rewards. I’m in the latter now. What’s essential is grinding with purpose. I made the mistake of pursuing goals that didn’t matter much to me. I can tell you from experience that once you hit a certain level of wealth, adding more doesn’t improve your life — it can even worsen it.
It’s all about setting boundaries. I started early in my 30s when I realized I was on a hamster wheel, running faster but getting nowhere. Boundaries ensured I remained present for my family and maintained my health. Many think you grind for years, then suddenly retire. I see it as a sliding scale where you gradually gain control over your time and choices. Even though I rebooted in my 40s, this process had been underway for years.
Bandholz: Were there events that triggered your reassessment?
Dahlstrom: I have an exercise called the “ideal end state.” You list what your perfect life looks like — not achievements, but how you want to spend your time and who you want to be with. Most people find that what they want costs less than they thought. I did this exercise, and it led to my reboot.
A pivotal moment was when I bought a Porsche 911, a childhood dream. I paid $211,000 in cash, but it brought me more stress than joy. I realized I wasn’t that kid anymore, and the Porsche didn’t define me. That experience started my practice of minimalism, helping me let go of material things that didn’t align with who I had become.
Bandholz: You’re into rock climbing. Is your family involved?
Dahlstrom: One of my daughters used to climb but lost interest. My wife is into tennis; it’s healthy for everyone to have their own thing. I believe in the concept of “three lives”: your life as a family, your life as a couple, and your individual life. All three need to be maintained.
Many young parents give up one or two of those lives, which creates a toxic environment. Early in my marriage, climbing caused conflict, but we’ve come to appreciate the importance of maintaining separate interests for a sustainable relationship.
We’ve been married 27 years, and anyone who says it’s easy is lying. A healthy marriage, like any long-term relationship, is hard work. The best advice I ever got was, “A great marriage is a choice you make every day.” It’s about mindset — believing in your partner.
Weekly check-ins are crucial. My wife and I sit down for 30 minutes without distractions and discuss how things are going. This intentional time keeps the relationship strong, even in tough times. As soon-to-be empty nesters, we’re excited for the next phase of life and the freedom it brings.
Bandholz: You’ve said you’re focused on the long term. How does that play into your success?
Dahlstrom: I’m only interested in long games. Short games don’t appeal to me. Long games involve ups, downs, suffering, and discipline. I thrive in that. My ability to endure, to power through tough times, is my secret weapon. Long games are about mastery — you might not see immediate results, but over time, the benefits compound. That’s how I’ve approached climbing and business. Stick with something long enough, and you’ll eventually see success.
Bandholz: You’ve talked about manifesting the life you want. What is that?
Dahlstrom: Manifesting is about setting your mind on something and letting that intention guide your actions. Your behavior follows your thoughts. It’s not just about setting goals — it’s about aligning your energy and actions to create the life you want.
Bandholz: Where can people connect with you?
Dahlstrom: They can sign up for my newsletter. I’m on X and LinkedIn.
Decision-makers at brands and agencies know that the new AI-generated holiday ads from Coca-Cola have attracted a lot of criticism.
Others have described the three new AI versions of the classic “Holidays Are Coming” campaign as “a soulless and creepy, dystopian nightmare” and “the biggest branding blunder of the year,” with others saying the AI campaign “destroyed the spirit of Christmas” and “earns Coca-Cola a lump of coal.”
Strong words. But has Manuel “Manolo” Arroyo, the executive vice president and global chief marketing officer for the company, just made a career-damaging move?
In testing for festive campaigns globally by DAIVID, none of Coke’s new AI-generated holiday ads made the top 30 most effective holiday campaigns of 2024 against 90 other Christmas ads.
Watch the new AI-generated holiday ads, which were created by three different ad agencies, and form your own opinion.
Secret Santa
Secret Level created “Coca-Cola – Secret Santa (AI-Generated Christmas Ad 2024).”
Holidays Are Coming
Silverside created “Coca Cola – Holidays Are Coming.”
Unexpected Santa
Wildcard created “Coca-Cola – Unexpected Santa (AI-Generated Christmas Ad 2024).”
Holidays Are Coming 2020
While you’re reviewing these new versions, you should also watch the version that was uploaded to Coca-Cola Great Britain & Ireland’s YouTube channel back in 2020.
How Do Coke’s New AI Versions Compare To The Classic 2020 Ad?
What do you notice? What do you wonder?
Attention
All the new AI versions generated above-average attention from the start.
However, the classic version, which starts with a boy ringing a bell, captures more attention than any of the AI versions, which mostly start with shots of snowy landscapes.
People will generally attract more attention than images of trees and lakes.
Prevalence Of Intense Emotions
According to testing by DAIVID, none of the AI ads generate the same levels of intense positive emotions as the 2020 version, and all of them are below the industry average.
The 2020 version generates almost twice as much warmth as the norm, while the AI versions are level or slightly above.
The AI version that generated the most warmth was still 38% less likely to make people feel warmth than the 2020 version.
The AI versions were less relatable and less – for want of a better word – real.
Brand Recall
All of the new AI versions predictably scored above the industry average for correct brand recall.
This is not surprising, considering that people know the ad well, and the brand is present throughout and integral to the storyline (Coke Trucks).
The classic scores higher than the AI versions, though. This, again, is possibly due to the familiarity of the ad, but also the fact the famous “Holidays Are Coming” track kicks in much quicker.
Next Step Intents
One of the emotions that the AI versions consistently scored higher than the 2020 ad for is feelings of craving. All are around two to three times higher than average.
This is probably due to the close-ups of someone opening a cold bottle of Coke, which wasn’t included in the 2020 version.
What Was The Most Effective AI Version?
Ian Forrester of DAIVID reported:
“The AI versions of Coke’s classic ‘Holidays Are Coming’ campaign were strong for attention in the first second and brand recall, but were let down by their evocation of intense positive emotions, which were all below the industry norm.
The difference between the AI and the original was most stark in their evocation of warmth, a mainstay of Christmas advertising. The original evoked intense warmth among 33.0% of viewers, whereas the AI versions were significantly below this.
So, while the AI is producing images which on the face of it seem cute and heart-warming, the human viewer to some degree discerns their synthetic nature, which detracts from their impact.”
How Can Brands Avoid AI Negative Backlash?
After analyzing the data published by DAIVID, I reached out directly and spoke to their Chief Growth Officer, Barney Worfolk-Smith:
GJ: Why does AI have such a negative perception?
BWS: It’s not surprising that the use of generative AI, especially jazzing up familiar Christmas traditions like Coke’s truck, garners some negative opinions.
As the introduction of generative AI into processes is nascent and messy at best, none of us really know exactly how it will play out.
So, some in the advertising community who feel a sense of ominous threat will instantly adopt a negative stance. I don’t blame them, but the reality is, the toothpaste is out of the tube, so we should all have a hand on the wheel of a human-AI hybrid Christmas Coke truck to have a stake in the future.
GJ: Can brands navigate carefully to avoid backlash?
BWS: Generative AI is present – or at least coming down the chimney – in almost all aspects of advertising. It’s actually incumbent upon brands to try bits of it out.
Sure, it’s going to be bumpy, but the backlashes will frequently be confined to the advertising community.
As a result, as long as they’re doing measured introductory human AI experiments and not dismissing the agency of record, I think they’ll avoid a hit on the share price.
GJ: Why was the original video such a classic?
BWS: The original was a glorious confluence: strong, familiar emotions, which Coca-Cola evokes generally, the shared history of Santa and Coca-Cola’s colors, and a palpable, relatable sense of anticipation that even the “Grinchiest” of us feel in the run-up to Christmas.
GJ: Why has AI failed to replicate the success of the first campaign?
BWS: At DAIVID, we understand the importance emotions play in advertising effectiveness – and the AI versions all garnered below-average U.S. positive emotional responses.
Without a doubt, the uncanny valley plays a part here, especially with an advert that is so recognizable to so many of us.
GJ: What must marketers do when using AI in video or images?
BWS: Marketers need to take their eyes off the spreadsheet and on to the creative process.
Of course, AI can drive efficiencies, but it can also open up new avenues of creativity, and that will happen when creatives are empowered to use AI, not be threatened with it.
Embrace AI Cautiously In Holiday Ads
Holiday ads are notoriously tricky to navigate and strike the right sentiment, with the best intention often missing the mark.
Feelings of warmth and nostalgia are at the heart of the festive season. Perhaps AI just can’t replicate the nuance of human emotion – or more likely, humans don’t like the idea of AI trying to replicate that.
Coca-Cola’s new ads emphasizes the challenge for brands to cultivate emotional authenticity when engaging with their audience as AI becomes more integrated into advertising campaigns.
It reminds us to embrace AI cautiously while upholding the human elements that underpin marketing campaigns – holiday ads, in particular.
Methodology
DAIVID used its AI-powered platform that predicts the emotions an ad will generate, and its likely impact on brand and business metrics – enabling advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns at scale.
They tested 90 Christmas ads for 39 different emotions. The strength of emotions people feel is ranked from 1-10, with 8-10 considered “intense.” Data for the chart was compiled at 7:00 AM on November 15, 2024.
