Does Facebook Advertising Still Work? What the Data Actually Shows
Facebook’s ad platform reaches 3.07 billion users and generates $122 billion in revenue, but effectiveness hinges on strategic targeting and continuous optimization. Data from WordStream and industry reports show an average click‑through rate of about 1.7% and CPC ranging from $0.34 to $1.22, with successful campaigns requiring at least $1,000‑$2,000 for a 30‑60‑day testing window. The article outlines a step‑by‑step framework—pixel installation, clear conversion goals, three audience tests, and creative variations—to turn reach into measurable ROAS. It also highlights common pitfalls such as broad targeting, reliance on vanity metrics, and premature budget cuts.
Telegram Hosting World’s Largest Darknet Market
Elliptic’s latest analysis reveals that Telegram now hosts the world’s largest Chinese‑language darknet markets, with Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee together processing roughly $2 billion each month in money‑laundering, stolen‑data sales, AI deep‑fake tools, and other illicit services. Despite Telegram’s 2025...
The Chatbot Will See You Now: How AI Is Being Trained to Spot Mental Health Issues in Any Language
Researchers at Makerere University are using anonymized call recordings from Uganda’s Butabika Hospital to train an AI algorithm that can recognise mental‑health cues in local languages such as Swahili and Luganda. The goal is to power a multilingual chatbot that...
Forget Follower Count: What Actually Drives Sales, According to a TikTok Marketing Expert
TikTok strategist Jemma Wu argues that follower counts are misleading and that authentic, engaged communities drive sales. She cites a livestream where a 500k‑follower creator generated $350k, dwarfing a 1M‑follower influencer who sold only $5K. Wu’s own brand experience shows...
What I’d Say to Me Back Then – Be Kind, Not Nice, Says Epicor’s Kerrie Jordan
Kerrie Jordan, Epicor’s CMO and SVP of Product, shares how a blend of storytelling and technical expertise shaped her career from a literature degree to senior leadership. Early roles at a product‑lifecycle startup and Oracle honed her ability to turn...
The Challenge for Software Engineers in 2026 — and Beyond
In 2025 software engineers grappled with rapid AI integration, facing skill erosion, cost‑heavy LLM infrastructure, and rising burnout as delivery pressures intensified. Gartner analysts warn that overreliance on AI tools can stunt core engineering capabilities, making upskilling a critical priority....
The Isaacman Era Begins at NASA
Jared Isaacman was confirmed by a 67‑30 Senate vote and sworn in as NASA administrator by a federal judge, ending a year‑long nomination saga. He introduced himself at a NASA town hall, emphasizing a faster, less bureaucratic approach to the...
Shoppers Want Flexible Delivery over Free Shipping
The 2025 Delivery Experience Study by Bringg reveals that shoppers now prioritize a reliable, flexible delivery experience over free shipping. Seventy‑one percent of consumers think about delivery before checkout, and 72% consider on‑time arrival essential. Late or inflexible deliveries drive...
Houston Deserves a Space Shuttle, but Not Like This
The 2027 "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act" attached to the One Big Beautiful Bill will move the Discovery orbiter from the Smithsonian’s Udvar‑Hazy Center to a Houston non‑profit near Johnson Space Center. Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz engineered the provision after years...
The Ambitious Plan to Spot Habitable Moons Around Giant Planets
Exomoons have remained undetected not because they are absent, but because existing techniques lack the necessary precision. A new study proposes a kilometric baseline interferometer capable of 1 µas resolution, enabling detection of Earth‑sized moons out to 200 parsecs. The design relies...
New Zealand Orders Review Into ManageMyHealth Cyberattack
New Zealand Health Minister Simeon Brown has ordered a comprehensive review of the cyberattack on private health‑record platform ManageMyHealth, which may have exposed data of 6‑7% of the nation’s 1.85 million users. The breach, claimed by a hacker known as Kazu,...
Review: Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon
Jeffrey Kluger’s 2025 hardcover, *Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon, the Untold Story*, attempts to redress the perceived neglect of NASA’s Gemini program. The book chronicles Gemini’s ten crewed flights, technical innovations, and astronaut profiles, drawing on NASA oral histories...
See You on the Other Side: What Jim Lovell's Apollo 8 Mission Taught a Divided World
Jim Lovell’s 1968 Apollo 8 mission marked the first crewed orbit of the Moon and captured the iconic Earthrise photograph, offering a new visual of Earth as a fragile, border‑less sphere. The mission unfolded against a backdrop of domestic upheaval—assassinations, protests,...
Influencer Marketing Strategies: A Practical Framework for Sustainable Growth in 2026
Influencer marketing has shifted from a niche experiment to a core growth engine for brands in 2026, driven by consumer skepticism toward traditional ads. The article outlines a practical framework that ties business objectives to audience insight, creator authenticity, and...
Techno-Optimists vs Enterprise-Incrementalists – Why Agent Platforms Encode Very Different Futures
The article contrasts two competing philosophies in AI agent platforms: techno‑optimists who champion high‑autonomy, exploratory agents, and enterprise‑incrementalists who embed agents within existing, controlled processes. Although both camps use similar terminology, their underlying beliefs about agency, risk, and value creation...
Find Support at Exit Five During Slow January
5 days into January. CEO already on you about why January is pacing slow… Good time to join a community like Exit Five. Place to vent, get feedback, share with your peers. Details here: https://www.exitfive.com/
VoAgents Launches Enterprise Voice AI Platform to Help Businesses Automate Customer Conversations and Scale Operations
VoAgents unveiled an enterprise‑grade voice AI platform that automates inbound and outbound phone interactions with human‑like conversation quality. The solution leverages a multi‑model architecture, supporting OpenAI, Anthropic and other large language models, and continuously self‑learns from each call. Early adopters...
Nearly Every Corn Seed Planted in Colorado Is Covered in Insecticide: Lawmakers May Restrict the Chemical
Nearly every corn seed planted in Colorado is coated with a neonicotinoid insecticide, a practice that protects seedlings but also introduces the chemical into plants, soil and water. Environmental groups are drafting legislation that would ban such coatings unless farmers...
Marketing Architects Partners with Jounce Media for Greater Transparency in CTV Buying
Marketing Architects has partnered with Jounce Media to embed the latter’s bid‑stream analytics into its proprietary AI buying platform, Annika®. The integration delivers app‑level supply insights, allowing advertisers to see exactly where CTV ads run and to prioritize high‑quality, direct...
Neonode Appoints Marec Gasiun as EVP of Sales & Marketing
Neonode Inc. announced the appointment of Marec Gasiun as Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, effective Jan. 1, 2026. Gasiun brings extensive leadership experience from Google’s automotive software unit, Telia, and SeeReal Technologies. The hire follows Neonode’s recent conversion of a...
QR Payments Power SE Asia AI Fintech Boom
Beyond payments: SE Asia's QR fuels AI fintech surge • Wealth +24%, insurance +16% YoY • 700 AI startups—3X consumer enthusiasm • Cross-border QR remittances rocket • $300B digital GMV—15% growth unstoppable The real bombshell is in the chart below → Don’t miss the chart...
Questa Launches a New Privacy Focused Ai Assistant to Get Insights From Business Files Without Any Ai Training on Them
Questa unveiled Novara, a privacy‑first AI analytics assistant that redacts sensitive data before any large language model processes it. The solution uses a local "Blackbox" anonymizer, available on‑premise or in a dedicated cloud account, to ensure documents never train the...
J.Jill Names Viv Rettke as Chief Growth Officer
J.Jill has appointed Viv Rettke as its first chief growth officer, a newly created role aimed at accelerating the brand’s expansion. Rettke brings growth expertise from Cole Haan, Reebok and Kraft Heinz, where she led major brand transformations. She will...
Moon Rush: These Private Spacecraft Will Attempt Lunar Landings in 2026
2026 will see a surge of private lunar landers as Blue Origin, Firefly, Intuitive Machines, and Astrobotic each schedule missions to the Moon. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 pathfinder will demonstrate a 3‑ton cargo capability and test exhaust‑interaction science. Firefly’s...
XML Sitemap: What It Is And How To Generate One
An XML sitemap is a structured file that lists the URLs a site wants search engines to crawl and index, often including metadata such as last‑mod dates, change frequency, and priority. It boosts crawl efficiency, especially for large or complex...
Forthcoming Machine Learning and AI Seminars: January 2026 Edition
The episode outlines a calendar of free virtual AI and machine learning seminars running from early January to late February 2026, featuring talks on topics such as LLM introspection, causal representation learning for climate teleconnections, AI ethics, combinatorial optimization, generative...
How to Optimize Your Website for SEO (Beginner’s Guide)
Search engines now surface AI‑generated overviews alongside traditional listings, making structured, authoritative content essential. The guide stresses targeting low‑volume, low‑difficulty keywords to capture both organic clicks and AI‑summary citations. It outlines high‑impact steps for new, stagnant, or declining sites, from...
Octopus Energy and GoCardless Complete £12bn Direct Debit Migration
Octopus Energy has completed one of the UK’s largest Direct Debit migrations, transferring 5.5 million customer mandates and £12 billion in payments to fintech platform GoCardless. The move accelerates refund processing, cutting typical times from five days to one‑two days via an...
QR Adoption Fuels Asia's Mobile Money Explosion
Asia's mobile money explodes: 862M users, 41% global share (UPI/WeChat excluded) • QR accepted at 76% merchants—double global average • Drives 80% digital tx in East Asia, ~$500B volume • P2P 70% of flows; remittances +50% YoY • 1 in 3 new global accounts...
AI-Powered LEOM Revolutionizes Satellite Mapping
Seeing The Lay Of The Land With AI. A new AI model, the Large Earth Observation Model (LEOM) is transforming the process of map-making. https://t.co/TLjW5z5ymH #TechNews #AI #LEOM #ScienceDirect
9 IT Resolutions for 2026
CIOs are shaping 2026 agendas around AI, agentic automation, and people‑centric technology. Leaders such as Cognizant’s Neal Ramasamy plan to deploy purpose‑built small language models and invest in GPU infrastructure to deliver actionable insights across functions. Across the board, executives...
Agentic AI: Autonomous, Ethical, Human‑Centric Intelligence
🧠 What is agentic AI? Think of today’s AI, but remove the need for most human prompts Think multi-modal AI, hyper-personalized experiences, open-source innovation, real-time edge computing, sustainable design, and a growing focus on how humans and AI work together, ethically. ...
How Oshkosh Corp. Turns AI Hype Into Measured Business Value
Oshkosh Corp., a century‑old industrial‑tech firm, is turning AI hype into measurable value by embedding intelligence directly into its vehicles and business processes. CIO Anu Khare leads a disciplined four‑pillar AI framework—scope, technology, prioritization, and value measurement—that ties projects to...
4 Strategies to Retain Deposits, Attract New Account Holders and Drive Growth
Community banks face deposit erosion as fintechs lure customers, but Cornerstone Advisors estimates a $2 trillion growth opportunity if banks integrate digital investing. Embedding investment services into mobile and online banking can retain deposits and attract younger clients, while generationally tailored...
L’Oréal Brings AI Into Everyday Digital Advertising Production
L’Oréal is integrating generative AI tools into its digital advertising production to speed up and scale content creation across global markets. The AI assists with video polishing, format adaptation, and visual asset generation, while human teams retain creative oversight and...
2025 Digital Rights Review: Spyware, AI War & EU Regulations
2025 saw a surge in sophisticated spyware, AI‑enabled digital warfare, and a retreat of EU digital‑rights safeguards. Paragon’s Graphite spyware was used in Europe, exploiting zero‑day, zero‑click vulnerabilities, while the EU’s export‑control rules added human‑rights language but left enforcement gaps....
Data Sovereignty: Not Just an Issue for Governments
As cloud adoption accelerates, data sovereignty—where data obeys the laws of its storage location—has become a top concern for organizations beyond governments. A recent OVHcloud survey shows 77% of UK IT decision‑makers now view sovereignty as more critical than three...
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Why 'Slow AI' Is Holding Back Enterprise Deployments [Q&A]
Enterprises are hitting a hidden bottleneck dubbed “slow AI,” where outdated, complex networks impede the rapid rollout of AI workloads. AI’s massive data throughput, ultra‑low latency, and hybrid‑cloud demands expose gaps in legacy network capacity, visibility, and security. Companies often...
Introducing Falcon H1R 7B
The Technology Innovation Institute unveiled Falcon H1R 7B, a decoder‑only 7‑billion‑parameter LLM that rivals much larger reasoning models. Leveraging a two‑stage pipeline of curated supervised fine‑tuning and reinforcement learning with the GRPO algorithm, the model excels on math, code, and general...
WholeSum Raises £730K to Advance a Qualitative Data Analysis Platform
WholeSum, a UK‑based qualitative analytics startup, secured £730,000 combining a Women TechEU grant with a pre‑seed round led by Twin Path Ventures. The funding also involved SFC, Ventures Together angels, and founders from JustPark, Episode 1, ClearScore, and Prolific. WholeSum’s AI‑driven...
Introducing Falcon-H1-Arabic: Pushing the Boundaries of Arabic Language AI with Hybrid Architecture
Falcon‑H1‑Arabic introduces a family of 3B, 7B and 34B parameter models that merge Mamba state‑space modules with Transformer attention in a hybrid block design. The architecture expands context windows to 128K tokens for the 3B model and 256K tokens for...
InsurTech Investment Growth Hits Gartner-Style Plateau
The plateau of productivity. 🧐 → https://t.co/lB4HCrj1eu This echoes - you may have recognized it - the famous Gartner curve. And that’s exactly what came to mind as I looked at the curve of InsurTech investments in Europe at the end of...
Machine Learning Drives Drug Repurposing for Neuroblastoma
Researchers at Lund University used machine learning to repurpose existing drugs for high‑risk neuroblastoma. They identified a synergistic combination of a statin and a phenothiazine that markedly slowed tumor growth in mouse models. Laboratory trials showed reduced tumor cholesterol, increased...
Viant Raises Its Bet on AI as Digital Advertising Becomes More Fragmented
Viant has launched Outcomes, an AI‑driven campaign manager built on its 2024 Viant AI platform, designed to meet cost‑per‑action and return‑on‑ad‑spend goals with minimal human input. In a beta test against a human trader, Outcomes outperformed by 2.3× on CPA...
Flutterwave Buys Nigeria’s Mono in Rare African Fintech Exit
Flutterwave has acquired Nigeria’s open‑banking startup Mono in an all‑stock transaction valued between $25 million and $40 million. Mono’s APIs, which have linked over 8 million bank accounts and supplied 100 billion data points, will remain an independent product under Flutterwave’s umbrella. The deal...
‘Do More with Less’: Anthropic’s Daniela Amodei Outlines Strategy to Compete with OpenAI
Anthropic’s president Daniela Amodei says the company will win the AI race by “doing more with less,” prioritizing disciplined spending, algorithmic efficiency, and smarter model deployment. The startup’s enterprise‑first approach monetizes Claude, Sonnet and Opus models, with Claude Code emerging as...
Acronis Drives Cybersecurity Growth Through TRU Intelligence and Awards
Acronis is accelerating its cybersecurity leadership by leveraging its Threat Research Unit (TRU), which published 17 original threat reports in 2025, and by rolling out AI‑driven product enhancements such as Security Posture Management for Microsoft 365 and an upgraded SIEM...
GoML and EMB Global Form Strategic Alliance to Accelerate Enterprise Generative AI Adoption Across India and South Asia
GoML and EMB Global have formed a strategic alliance to accelerate enterprise generative AI adoption across India and South Asia. The partnership combines EMB's data‑driven delivery framework and regional go‑to‑market reach with GoML's production‑grade generative AI engineering expertise. Together they...
Resecurity, D4DS Partner to Boost Cybersecurity in Saudi Arabia
Resecurity, a U.S. cyber‑intelligence firm, has entered a strategic partnership with Riyadh‑based consulting group D4DS to deliver intelligence‑driven security solutions across Saudi Arabia. The alliance targets the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 priorities by accelerating data‑protection compliance and strengthening resilience against sophisticated cyber...
I’m Watching Myself on YouTube Saying Things I Would Never Say. This Is the Deepfake Menace We Must Confront |...
Yanis Varoufakis discovered hundreds of AI‑generated deepfake videos of himself circulating on YouTube, many depicting him commenting on geopolitics he never addressed. Despite filing takedown requests, the content reappears under new channels, highlighting the difficulty of controlling synthetic media. He frames...
