When you open your Peacock mobile app this summer, you might see the AI likeness of TV host Andy Cohen pop up on your homepage. In an announcement on Friday, NBCUniversal said Cohen's avatar will serve as a guide through Peacock's 'infinitely swipeable' feed of clips from Bravo shows, like Love Island, The Real Housewives series, and Below Deck.
Paramount executives are brainstorming several ways to make their namesake streamer more competitive, including a short-form video feed, a sports multiview feature, and free content, according to an internal presentation viewed by Business Insider. The presentation was sent by Dan Reich, the Paramount+ head of global product and design, to Dane Glasgow, Paramount's chief product officer, via email in mid-January.
As Wall Street obsessed over Microsoft's Azure growth rates and OpenAI accounting, LinkedIn quietly crossed $5 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in the Redmond company's December quarter, up 11%. That puts the business social network on an annual run rate of more than $20 billion. LinkedIn is known for its recruiting tools and job postings, but given overall weakness in the job market, the latest growth is being fueled by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, its advertising business.
Paramount Skydance is planning to add a heavy dose of short-form video to its flagship streaming service, according to internal presentations and emails viewed by Business Insider. Dan Reich, the head of global product and design for Paramount+, emailed fellow executives in mid-January, asking to set up a meeting with Paramount product chief Dane Glasgow to discuss "Short Form Clips." "We are trying to figure out how to jump-start efforts to get a million clips into our Short Form UX as quickly as possible," Reich wrote in an email.
This surge was likely triggered by concerns over TikTok's change in ownership and its unfortunately timed technical glitches. TikTok had announced on January 22 the establishment of the TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, designed to comply with Trump's executive order requiring the company's U.S. operations be sold to a group of American investors. TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance will now own less than 20% of the new entity.
A study conducted by Opera Mediaworks has revealed that shorter mobile video creative - at six to eight seconds - is the optimal length for branding campaigns, delivering on average 36 per cent higher engagement levels than long form, and providing the best return on driving traffic. The study found that overall, video is a more effective ad format for mobile. Regardless of length, video on mobile drives click-through rates double to that of online video, according to eMarketer.
A group of Gen Zers 200 deep, snaked down Houston Street in hopes of shopping at a pop-up for Rogue, a Y2K-focused vintage retailer operated by the TikTok star. Inside, they browsed racks of vintage picks and vinyl records, but it was the charismatic, acid-green-haired Rogue, who was arguably the biggest draw. She posed for selfies with fans, as she does at all her stores, which are styled like deliberately dishevelled millennial bedrooms, complete with early-2000s ephemera like Britney Spears posters.
After testing the interest of sports fans in short-form content, Disney aims to bring brief bursts to a broader audience. The company aims to bring so-called "microcontent" to Disney+ in 2026, it announced Wednesday at CES, and in doing so joins a parade of traditional media purveyors working harder to court younger consumers who have grown more accustomed to swiping through Tik Toks, Reels and other attenuated attempts to entertain.
O'Leary's modern money-making idea is to "sell customer acquisition with social media." In essence, he said he would create video content for a business and ask for $100 for every paying customer he earned them. "You'd be amazed at how many business owners have no idea how to use social media, and if you've grown up with a phone in your hand, you do," he said. "It's the best side hustle there is: understanding how to make content for social media."
With artificial intelligence reshaping nearly every aspect of how we work, reaching customers has become even more challenging. Search is increasingly less effective, people are overwhelmed by continuous noise on social media, and brands are struggling to find their voice. In 2025, AI upended traditional marketing strategies. It drastically reduced the effectiveness of search engine optimization, yet it also allowed savvy brands to reach new potential clients with well-honed, engaging content.
YouTube cofounder Steve Chen is one of the latest tech trailblazers to warn against social media's impact on kids. Chen warned in a talk short-form video "equates to shorter attention spans" and said he wouldn't want his own kids to exclusively consume this type of content. Companies that distribute short-form video (which includes the company he cofounded, YouTube) should add safeguards for younger users, he added.
Marketing budgets in 2025 have stayed the same, yet expectations keep rising. CMOs report budgets stuck at roughly 7.7% of company revenue, which means teams are expected to do more with the same dollars. In that context, the most practical use of AI is not a moonshot, but a set of clear fixes to everyday bottlenecks that slow teams down and drive costs up.
We're flooded with short-form video and pinged constantly with breaking news. Many people, especially Gen A and Gen Z, are swiping and scrolling all day long. The lines between digital leisure and news consumption are fuzzy. You may hop on TikTok or Instagram to kill some time but end up being triggered by some take on what's happening in the world. And increasingly, that scrolling will include AI-generated slop.
In an age where digital noise is overwhelming and attention spans are increasingly fragmented, one medium is rising above the rest: video. Whether it's a 10-second TikTok clip, a concise product demo or an immersive virtual tour, video content is a great way to engage viewers, communicate value and drive growth. For organizations operating in hybrid or remote environments-including higher-education institutions, nonprofits and mission-driven businesses-video is no longer optional. I believe it has become a strategic imperative.
The biggest mistake people make with AI is that they don't make it a priority up front to get to know each other really well. When your preferred AI tool (choose only one as your primary) really gets you, you'll get more on-brand responses to your prompts. Make sure it knows your: Values, passions, purpose, strengths, and differentiators Pet peeves, the things you really dislike Best work. Share your stellar articles, blogs, and emails with AI The ways you want it to support your work
Short-form videos at varying lengths have been popularized across a variety of digital surfaces over the past few years. The shortest of these videos, hovering in the 15-second range, present a particularly compelling option for law firm marketing funnels because they have the potential to grab potential customers' attention quickly and convey an impression of value founded in legal acumen within a comparably short period of time.
Dler sensed an opportunity: what if you could use short-form video to connect with that same demographic while delivering valuable cultural insight in a way that didn't feel overly commercial or contrived? If that idea doesn't sound revolutionary by itself, Dler's masterstroke was to ensure the content would be produced by the very people whose attitudes, behaviours and tastes it represents.
Short videos are in high demand. Across large platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, users are watching billions of videos every day, with companies benefitting massively from this content explosion. For creators, this often means there is pressure to create more content than ever before to be relevant and make a living out of it, especially as more AI-generated slop is infiltrating these platforms.
Recent friendly overtures aside, India does not always see eye to eye with China. But when it comes to the battle for eyeballs, the country's entertainment industry has taken a leaf out of the Chinese playbook. Micro-dramas, or 90 seconds to two-minute videos, loaded with hooks and wild plots, surpassed box office collections in China last year, building a near $7 billion industry, and the Chinese trend has made its way into India.
Not long ago, the idea of getting paid to share your morning routine online would have sounded absurd. Yet today, influencers are big business: The global market is expected to surpass US$32 billion by the end of 2025. Rooted in celebrity culture but driven by digital platforms, the influencer economy represents a powerful force in both commerce and culture. I'm an expert on digital consumer research, and I see the rise of influencers as an important evolution in the relationship between companies, consumers and creators.
"There's this bullshit that we're seeing from Meta and OpenAI and others where they decided that somehow we're better off with all AI-created social media content," Rabble said in an interview with Business Insider. "That's not where social media came from. Social media was social first. It's about humans and our connection, not just pretty videos."
As TechCrunch reports, the rebooted platform, dubbed diVine, will include over 100,000 archived videos from the platform, likely only a small fraction of the platform's original database. Vine had over 200 million active monthly users in its heyday ten years ago, but was shut down in 2016. But the reboot has a hidden ace up its sleeve: AI-generated content is banned outright, and any suspected use of AI will be flagged and prevented from being posted - a panacea for an internet that's been overrun with lazy AI slop.
