CES Highlights, Yorkshire Tea’s Latest Ad, and Google Under Investigation
While the usual tech giants like Samsung and Tesla featured at last week’s CES in Las Vegas, it was arguably Yakai Engineering’s wacky robotics that stole the show. First up, the engineering brand revealed Mirumi, a lovable robotic furball that mounts to a purse and reacts to those around it. They followed that up with Nékojita FuFu, a toy cat designed to cool your coffee by blowing at varying intervals. These will surely sit in the Chindōgu realm, the art and craft of inventing things that are (almost) useless but a whole lot of fun, and they will undoubtedly put smiles on faces nonetheless.
The Labour government has indicated that the use of AI will be central to its future plans. According to ministers, it will be “mainlined into the veins of the nation,” touching everything from research and defence to education and accounting. This is a strong show of faith in the potential of AI, and the plan continues the progress made by Rishi Sunak to position the UK as a global leader in technology. However, equal focus must be placed on the governance and regulation of its usage, particularly when the public’s data is being used to fuel learning models.
Nintendo has released a first glimpse of its highly anticipated Switch 2 handheld console in a new video unveiled yesterday. The original Switch, credited alongside the Wii for revitalising the company, became a massive success with 146 million units sold, making it the third best-selling console of all time. The sleeker design of the Switch 2 suggests that Nintendo is targeting a more mature audience, though many details remain under wraps as fans await its launch later this year.
Kia Australia has teamed up with creative agency Innocean to showcase its electric vehicle range in a unique way. The campaign highlights the cars' impressive apocalypse-ready features, including soundproof glass, foam-insulated tyres, and silent motors, effectively branding the cars as "zombie-proof."
The cast of Severance surprised fans with a live stunt at New York's Grand Central Station this week, recreating the show's Lumon Industries office inside a glass box. The stars performed in character, completing tasks and interacting with fans to promote the upcoming second season.
It wouldn’t be Stuffed if we didn’t sneak in some self-promo when we get the chance. This week, Yorkshire Tea launched the latest chapter of its “Where Everything’s Done Proper” platform, featuring Sarah Lancashire as the Head of Security at their headquarters. The ad, created by Lucky Generals with media buying handled by Goodstuff, casts the Happy Valley star as a no-nonsense detective, interrogating colleagues to solve the mystery of the stolen biscuits.
Aldi has embarked on a rescue mission to cheer up those snowed in at Britain’s highest pub, Tan Hill Inn. The care packages, thoughtfully filled with food, wine, and board games, were delivered to keep boredom at bay. The initiative began when ten tourists declared they were fine but "sausage-less.” The stunt was carried out with the help of a local farmer and his snowplow.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating Google due to concerns about its dominance in the search engine advertising market. The investigation focuses on the impact of Google's market power on advertisers, consumers, news publishers, and competing search engines.
The CMA will examine whether Google uses its position as the dominant search engine to influence the development of new AI technologies, or if it blocks innovation and creates obstacles for potential competitors.
Depending on the investigation's findings, the CMA could impose regulations on Google. Currently, Google handles over 90% of all search queries, and more than 200,000 UK advertisers rely on its search engine advertising services. This raises the question: Could this investigation lead to the end of Google’s dominance in paid search advertising?
The final series of ITV’s Vera premiered on 1st January 2025, drawing an overnight audience of 3.6 million, matching ITV’s biggest drama of the year, Mr Bates vs The Post Office. However, Vera faced stiff competition from BBC One’s The Traitors, which averaged over 5.1 million viewers.
Vera claimed 22.7% of the viewing audience, peaking at 3.9 million viewers, with numbers expected to grow as catch-up viewing on ITVX continues. Channel 4’s top programme on New Year’s Day was Gogglebox, averaging 1.52 million views (-5% year on year) and peaking at 1.68 million.
Channel 4’s film re-runs followed, with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (691,000 viewers) and Groundhog Day (610,000) leading. ITV averaged a 20% viewing share during late peak (8–11 pm), while Channel 4 captured 8%, down three points from 2024.
The Trade Desk, a programmatic AdTech platform, has announced the acquisition of Sincera, a digital ad data provider. This marks its second publicly disclosed acquisition since purchasing AdBrain in 2017. The acquisition aims to enhance programmatic performance by improving the quality of data signals that advertisers receive from publishers.
Sincera specialises in optimising ad campaign investments by analysing the quality of publisher data, enabling advertisers to value ad impressions more accurately. Its integration with The Trade Desk’s platform will help publishers identify which signals are most valuable to advertisers. Sincera, known for ranking alternative identifiers such as LiveRamp’s RampID, now aims to offer deeper insights when combined with The Trade Desk’s capabilities.
This acquisition appears to be a strategic move by The Trade Desk to strengthen its data capabilities, potentially raising the standard for data quality across the programmatic advertising ecosystem.