Bloomberg Media provided robust sessions during Day 2 of its “Good Business” programming at BOBO Bistro in Cannes. In one session, titled, “Balancing Speed and Responsibility: AI and Marketing in 2024," speakers said marketers must understand the technology, according to a summary of the event provided by Bloomberg. Doug Martin, chief brand and disruptive growth officer at General Mills, stated that it’s no longer “possible to be a successful CMO … without having a close relationship with your CTO.” But Martin and others cautioned against rushing things.

Federal lawmakers have made some advertiser-friendly revisions to a bipartisan privacy bill that would regulate the collection and use of consumers' data. Among other changes, the new draft of the bipartisan proposed American Privacy Rights Act, unveiled late Tuesday, appears to require businesses to allow consumers to opt out of online behavioral advertising -- meaning ads served based on cross-site and cross-app data. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce is scheduled to mark up the bill on Thursday. The new language relating to online behavioral advertising is less restrictive than language in the original version, which was introduced last month by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington). That version, widely considered ambiguous, would have either required companies to obtain opt-in consent for online behavioral advertising, or banned such advertising altogether, depending on interpretation.

It wasn’t just shoppers with strapped budgets that boosted buy-now, pay-later services to a record-setting $1 billion in transactions on Cyber Monday. It was also the brands and fintech companies that pushed the services front and center. This holiday season, more brands deployed BNPL services with different payment options beyond the more familiar “pay-in-four” structure, whether a six-month payment plan at 0% interest or a 24-month installment loan with interest. And the services are showing up in more digital wallets. Apple Pay users, for instance, can now toggle a payment plan with Affirm and Klarna, while Afterpay has new integrations with its sister company Cash App. BNPL represented about 7.3% of all spending from Nov. 1 to Dec. 2 this year, according to Adobe, and it’s forecasted to account for around $20.2 billion between Nov. 1 and the end of the year.