If an AI visibility dashboard helped you win prosperity this year, peruse four datasets before your next quarterly review. Together, they display AI assistants dispatch a sliver of the traffic Google sends. They additionally display that none of these datasets could isolate the hidden AI power many of us assumed was turning up in Direct and tagged search.

That doesn’t create AI visibility a sham. It method most of the ways we measure it wouldn’t continue a essential data norm test.

One Event, Or The Start Of A Trend?

On Oct. 22, 2026, Rand Fishkin published a 5-Minute Whiteboard on the SparkToro Blog titled “Is AI Visibility a Marketing Boondoggle?” The next day, Amanda Natividad, SparkToro’s chief evangelist, sent her Audience Research Newsletter asking, “What if AI visibility is a sham?”

A lengthy period ago, I learned to distinct events from trends. Two warnings from co-authors of the identical book, Zero Click Marketing, who activity at the identical business and publish a day apart, appearance additional akin one event than two.

But the data underneath their warnings came from another people. And it has been piling up.

The Traffic Numbers Are Small, And The Conversion Story Is Mixed

Marie Haynes looked at 12 months of GA4 data throughout 100 websites. ChatGPT visitors converted at 13.8%, against 3.02% for Google organic. That’s additional than 4.5 times better, and it’s the stat AI visibility vendors volition quote.

But here’s the stat they won’t. Google motionless drove 96.5% of total conversions in her dataset, and Google integrated drove 27 times additional conversions than all LLMs combined. She additionally established that the exponential growth in ChatGPT sessions ended in August 2025, about the publish of GPT-5.

SEO Works established a narrower edge. AI referrals converted at 7.18% versus 6.08% for organic, a pooled proportion of 1.18. Yet AI traffic converted worse on 23 of the 63 sites alongside adequate quantity to compare. For B2B merchandise businesses, AI converted at 0.62 times the integrated rate.

The row from that study I’d strip to all SEO manager’s detect is this one. A 5% lift in integrated hunt delivered 10.3 additional conversions per location per month. Doubling AI referral traffic delivered 6.6.

The Hidden Influence Hasn’t Shown Up Yet

The customary rebuttal is that clicks were never the point. People see a brand in a ChatGPT answer, don’t click, and afterward hunt for it or category in the URL later.

Kevin Indig went looking for that. At first, eight of his 12 properties showed Direct traffic expanding from August to September. Then he filtered for busy sessions. Across the filtered January-September sample, total Direct rosy 140.9%, during busy Direct changed by −1.0%. On one site, GA4 recorded 409,000 Direct sessions, and lone 198 were engaged.

That’s bots, not buyers.

He afterward ran 632 tests on four brands, comparing weekly AI visibility alongside Direct traffic and tagged hunt at delays of zero to six weeks. When he shifted the data to deliberately incorrect dates as a placebo check, multiple of those mismatched alignments correlated as powerfully as the genuine ones. His conclusion: “An consequence could motionless exist. I fair couldn’t isolate it.”

Natividad tied this rear to an Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands from May 2025. Branded web mentions correlated at 0.664 alongside AI Overview brand visibility, and tagged anchors at 0.527. Branded hunt quantity came in final at 0.392. If AI visibility reliably produced tagged search, she argued, that figure have to be much higher.

See also: Direct Traffic & Popularity – Correlation, Not Causation

What Fishkin And Natividad Actually Concluded

Neither of them stated AI doesn’t matter. Fishkin wrote that AI is “probably fairly influential on several buyers in several sectors.” He credited Mike King alongside the improved frame, that AI is “more akin a brand channel, a digital advertisement if you will, and it have to be invested-in and measured as such.”

Natividad put it additional sharply. “Familiarity itself is a promotion outcome.” Then she added the declaration that matters most for anyone construction a dashboard. “If we can’t demonstrate it, we shouldn’t rely the attribution fair since it seems right.”

The Measurement Industry Saw This Coming In May

The SEO earth is arriving delayed to a conversation the PR measure earth started months ago.

On May 20, 2026, AMEC, the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, launched its GEO Principles at its Global Summit in Dublin. Two days later, I admitted that I’d been treating AI citations as the new hunt rankings and that framing was wrong. Appearing in an AI answer is an output, whether it changes what group understand, believe, or do is an outcome.

AMEC has additionally gone a tier deeper alongside a companion pale paper, “AMEC Data Quality Principles: Tackling the Unstructured Data Quality Challenges in the AI Era.” Its guide author is Rob Key, originator and CEO of Converseon, and it was produced alongside the Global Data Quality Initiative, a alliance that includes the Insights Association, ESOMAR, and the Market Research Society.

The document was written for social listening and media analysts, not SEOs. Read it alongside an AI visibility dashboard open in another tab anyway. It proposes four questions any data set should continue before anyone acts on it.

The third inquiry is the one that should keep SEO board up at night. AMEC calls it predictive and build validity. A metric can be “internally accordant but externally untrue,” the document warns, and in an AI era that benevolent of data “does not remain quarantined; it propagates.”

That is a exact clarification of most AI visibility scores. They’re accordant from week to week. They go up whenever you publish more. Whether they foretell item a endeavor cares concerning is, following Indig’s 632 tests, motionless unproven.

Two additional lines from the document pertain in all GEO throw deck. Principle four says, “Evaluations performed formerly and stored on a rack are decorative, not protective.” And its crosswalk alongside AMEC’s GEO example says outputs are directional and have to be tested “across tools, prompts, and time.” A sole screenshot of ChatGPT recommending your brand is an anecdote.

Principle five goes further. It tells practitioners to evade manipulative GEO, definition satisfied engineered to equivalent generative AI fairly than communicate it. AMEC’s expression for it is “promotion complete precision.”

One alert in the soul of the document itself. Some of its most striking figures, including the assertion that off-the-shelf opinion models hover at 60% to 65% precision, arrive from a Converseon-sponsored benchmark, and Converseon sells the cure. The document calls itself non-promotional, and I think its principles remain on their own. But use its Source inquiry to the paper, too.

Where I Come Down

I don’t think AI visibility is a boondoggle. I think the AI visibility mark is.

The datasets complete don’t demonstrate AI has no influence. They demonstrate we’ve been grading a brand conduit alongside traffic-channel math, afterward filling the gap alongside scores nobody has validated against behavior. That’s how a sensible idea turns into a prosperity row you can’t defend.

Mike King’s advertisement example is the correct one, and it fits what I’ve been arguing in my columns on YouGov’s brand research. AI brands are winning on deliberation before they win on trust. If AI answers activity akin a advertisement for your brand, measure them the way brand marketers have measured advertisements for decades, alongside exposure, recall, and consideration, and halt asking them to behave akin a hunt result.

How To Measure AI Visibility So It Survives A CFO

Demote AI referral traffic to a diagnostic. Keep reporting it. Stop environment targets on it. Then run the SEO Works math on your own GA4 property. Calculate what a 5% lift in organic conversions is value next to doubling your AI referrals. If integrated wins, as it did throughout their sample, your roadmap should say so.

Run your dashboard through AMEC’s four questions. Before an AI visibility figure goes into a deck, document which tools and prompts produced it, whether results were logged in or logged out, and how bot sessions were filtered. Define whether you’re counting a mention, a citation, or a recommendation, since they aren’t interchangeable. If you can’t answer those, the figure fails AMEC’s Source and Accuracy questions before anyone asks concerning results.

Test your mark for real-world validity, Indig style. Pull weekly AI visibility for your brand and row it up against busy Direct sessions, tagged search, and pipeline at lags of one to six weeks. Then change the sequence to incorrect dates and run it again. If the incorrect dates correlate as fine as the correct ones, you’ve learned your mark isn’t predicting item yet. That’s value knowing before your vendor renewal.

Build a governed prompt library and re-run it on a schedule. Pick prompts that map to genuine buyer questions, not prompts that flatter your brand. Run them throughout multiple AI tools, preserve the outputs, and reiterate monthly or quarterly. AMEC’s regulation is that accuracy isn’t a item in time, and the identical holds for visibility.

Ask people, afterward triangulate. Indig’s advice is self-reported attribution. Add a free-text “How did you comprehend concerning us?” site to demo and signup forms, and add AI assistants to your brand lift surveys. Natividad warns that this data has its own flaws, so treat it as one input. Her example of exposure, behavior, and endeavor outcomes is a sensible way to measure them together.

Put prosperity anywhere the evidence overlaps. SEO Works established the sites gaining AI referrals were the identical sites improving in organic, alongside a association of +0.557. Ahrefs established tagged web mentions tracked AI Overview visibility improved than tagged hunt did. Earned authority does twice duty. That’s the smallest glamorous prosperity row on your scheme and, correct now, the finest supported one.

The Bottom Line

Fishkin asked whether AI visibility is a promotion boondoggle. My answer is that it becomes one the instant we study a figure we haven’t checked against what customers really do.

More Resources:

• Brands Are Tracking AI Visibility, But Are They Measuring The Right Things?
• Why AI Visibility Does Not Only Depend On SEO
• AI Visibility Rankings Aren’t Stable – New Research Shows It’s Mostly Statistical Noise

Featured Image: PeopleImages/Shutterstock

Fox has bought Roku in a agreement that could change the TV elephantine into a free streaming powerhouse.

The timing of the $22 milliard agreement is a surprise. Fox initially stated it expected its Roku acquisition to be finalized in the archetypal fractional of 2027.

Buying Roku volition assistance Fox measure its promotion endeavor during giving it authority of The Roku Channel and Tubi, the second- and third-largest free streaming services by US TV viewership. YouTube is the apparent No. 1.

Together, Roku, Tubi, and Fox's broadcast conduit and cable networks — which contain Fox News and FS1 — create additional TV viewership in the US than Netflix or NBCUniversal, according to Nielsen.

Fox stated in its agreement notice on Friday that it expects to create concerning $400 myriad in annual disbursal funds inside two years by purchasing Roku.

"Our top precedence for the blended business is to continue to relentlessly assist audiences and partners," Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch stated in a statement.

ABOARD THE HMS PRINCE OF WALES — An F-35 stealth combatant roars downward the escape phase of Britain's newest airplane carrier, hurtling toward a ski-jump ramp complete the Norwegian Sea.

Seconds later, the jet is airborne, climbing into the sky. Silence returns to the escape phase of the HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy's flagship.

The Prince of Wales can transport up to 36 F-35 combatant jets, but lone a fistful were aboard whenever Business Insider visited the warship during it was functioning off the shoreline of Norway this week.

"We have a comparatively modest, yet extremely efficient, air section alongside the airplane that we have," Capt. Ben Power, the carrier's commanding officer, stated on the bridge.

Even alongside comparatively few fighters onboard, the transporter can prolong high-tempo escape operations.

The Prince of Wales, currently foremost the UK transporter attack group, is deployed to the Norwegian Sea for the second phase of Operation Firecrest, a deterrence goal in the Arctic and North Atlantic. It is sailing alongside NATO warships during additionally participating in the alliance's recurring Neptune Strike exercise.

The transporter can modify up to 72 aircraft, including 36 F-35Bs, the short take-off and vertical landing variants — and a mix of helicopters, akin the Merlin Mk2, which is designed for anti-submarine warfare. The container can additionally transport up to 1,600 sailors and Royal Marines.

Power stated the Prince of Wales is smaller than the US Navy's Ford-class carriers and typically operates alongside fair 1,200 sailors, compared alongside nearly 5,000 aboard USS Gerald R. Ford, which can transport additional than 75 aircraft, including dozens of combatant jets.

We are a "very lean-crewed, effective, and productive platform, as you would expect, since this is extremely contemporary technology," Power stated of the Prince of Wales.

Power credited the Prince of Wales' elevated sortie charge to its well-trained squad and advanced innovation aboard the $4 milliard vessel, commissioned in 2019. He singled out the automated weapons-handling scheme that moves bombs and missiles from magazines profound inner the container to the escape deck, reducing the manpower needed to arm combatant jets and get them rear into the air.

Both of the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers use the Highly Mechanised Weapon Handling System. Power called it an "incredibly productive process" that distinguishes the British ships from other NATO carriers, which use weapons elevators but frequently depend additional heavily on personnel to move munitions around.

"It's efficiently all automated," Power said. "It's a sequence of lifts and a sequence of processes that's run by a device that, whenever we location the petition indication for the arm systems, they are delivered. So there are no humans in that process. It's all completely automated."

The Prince of Wales demonstrated its capability to run alongside a larger air section final year, carrying 24 F-35s. The UK stated at the period it was the largest figure of fifth-generation jets always assembled on either of its Queen Elizabeth-class carriers.

The figure of fighters aboard varies depending on the goal and possible threats, officers said. They asserted that functioning alongside small jets does not necessarily bounds the carrier's effectiveness.

Commodore Richard Hewitt, the UK transporter attack collection commander, stated the Prince of Wales can prolong escape operations 24 hours a day, adding that "there is significant preparedness that goes into these deployments to create certain that we're ready."

A escape phase officer, who said on the circumstance of anonymity, stated that whenever the Prince of Wales reached complete operational capability final year, it demonstrated the capability to initiate eight jets at 30-second intervals.

During the archetypal phase of Operation Firecrest in first July, F-35 jets took off from the Prince of Wales to behavior NATO air policing operations, marking the archetypal period that the alliance has launched specified missions from a European airplane carrier.

Hewitt characterized the goal as "hugely successful" and stated the transporter could perform a greater function in specified operations in the future.

"Prince of Wales was the archetypal NATO transporter to provision that capability off the shoreline of Iceland," Power said. "We are positioned and capable and prepared to do additional policing operations should we be required to do so."

I affection making Ina Garten's recipes, particularly during the holidays.

Whether it's her delicious brown-butter skillet cornbread or creamy murphy gratin, Garten has never let me downward on Christmas and Thanksgiving.

But I'd never tried making one of Garten's desserts for my family's festivities. So whenever I saw a formula for bourbon chocolate pecan pie in her "Go-To Dinners" cookbook, which includes a store-bought pie crust, I knew it'd be an uncomplicated supplement to my Thanksgiving menu.

Wendy’s is saying gratitude but no gratitude to Nelson Peltz. The burger chain’s autonomous board unanimously rejected the advocate investor’s $1.4 milliard buyout offer, saying it “substantially undervalues” the company, according to the Associated Press.

The sequence additionally adopted a shareholder entitlements plan, known as a “,” to fend off a antagonistic takeover. If any individual or collection reaches a 15% stake, all another shareholder gets the correct to buy discounted stock. Peltz’s Trian Fund Management and its partners already clasp 16.3% of Wendy’s shares. The scheme stays in location for one year.

Peltz argues that inflation, squeezed consumers and tougher competition create his bid the finest way for shareholders. CEO Bob Wright, who joined from Potbelly in May, told investors Wendy’s has “the correct strategy, implementation and resources” to rotate things around. Shares rosy additional than 2% Thursday following better-than-expected third-quarter results.

Wendy’s plans to near up to 358 older U.S. restaurants this year. Its portion of U.S. burger sequence revenue slipped from 11.5% in 2019 to 10.4% final year, according to Technomic.

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos are continuing their quest to conquer the manner industry.

After making manner waves in 2025, the married couple kicked off this twelvemonth alongside a bang.

They attended Paris Couture Week, made promotional appearances, and sponsored the 2026 Met Gala. Naturally, they did all of the complete in eye-catching looks.

Here are the finest and worst outfits they've worn so far.

World

Academic libraries are fighting off swarms of data-scraping bots — that are slowing or crashing sites meant for students, researchers and the community — as AI companies continue hunting for satisfied to nourish their ample tongue models.

One academy says it was overwhelmed by additional than 11,000 searches on Finnish music in fair one day

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Academic libraries are fighting off swarms of data-scraping bots — that are slowing or crashing sites meant for students, researchers and the community — as AI companies continue hunting for satisfied to nourish their ample tongue models.

University libraries say complete collections are being knocked offline by persistent streams of unruly bots trying to admission their archives, which contain academic, historic and authorities documents. 

"They're fair out there on the internet, fair bombarding us alongside trying to catch up as much matter as possible," Jill Strykowski, cataloguing and government documents guide at San Jose State University, told CBC News.

The bots are used by the two AI and third-party companies to scour websites and recover data, frequently to nourish LLMs akin Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT.

Libraries, museums and another traditional bequest institutions are premier targets since they have quality, vetted data that is mostly not hidden rearward paywalls or logins. 

The bots are "causing an amazing amount of activity and headache for all institution that does digitization activity and all institution that is trying to create data openly available," Strykowski says.

Researchers found specified reports started appearing in delayed 2024 throughout North America, Europe and Oceania and experts inform CBC News the issue continues to get worse.

LISTEN | Even smarter, alongside equal small guardrails:

The Sunday Magazine23:41Inside the earth competition toward an AI that power slay us all

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And new challenges keep arising, says Dean Seeman, director of collections and digital infrastructure at University of Victoria Libraries.

"Sometimes the bot traffic gets so bad that it causes the sites to go downward entirely for a small while," he said. 

Seeman says this creates a "real problem" for community access. 

Regular group using archive websites are now, effectively, in competition alongside infinite traffic from bot farms, says Peter Lewis, Canada Research Chair in Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence at Ontario Tech University.

"This is another case of large, personal companies making use of common-good community involvement institutions in a way that's extremely extractive and fair assumes that that material is accessible and is liberated — and afterward using it to be capable to create extremely business models that afterward they can go and market rear to people," he said. 

Workers act data from an old document belonging to the McMillan Memorial Library during a digitization exercise at the Eastland Library in Nairobi on March 24, 2022. Libraries and another traditional bequest institutions are premier targets for AI bots. (Patrick Meinhardt/AFP/Getty Images)

Good bots and bad bots

Eric Hellman, administrator director of Project Gutenberg — a U.S.-based unpaid institution that digitizes and archives traditional plant and distributes eBooks — wrote in a blog final year that these bots, which he characterizes as poorly programmed "monstrosities," are "destroying open access" on the internet. 

He tells CBC News that "everything's gotten worse" since he wrote that.

Hellman says the issue comes downward to fine bots and bad bots. 

He explains that hunt engines akin Google, and filing sites akin Internet Archive, use bots that prosecute robots.txt — voluntary sets of instructions on websites that inform them what they can and can't do, so they don't disrupt the site's functioning during gathering information.

AI abrasion bots, on the another hand, sometimes disregard these rules and overwhelm websites — in several cases requesting thousands of documents a second and downloading them in all accessible format.

WATCH | Young AI researchers in Ontario:

This is what young group studying synthetic intellect are thinking — as the forthcoming of AI grabs headlines

Developments in AI, and companies and developers alert concerning the forthcoming of the technology, are grabbing headlines again. But there are young group in Windsor studying the technology. The CBC's Jacob Barker caught up alongside them to comprehend their perspective.

As an example, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reported final twelvemonth that it received additional than 11,000 searches for Finnish music from thousands of distinct net addresses on the identical day. The university stated its archive catalogue was periodically shutting out students, department and personnel because of bot traffic.

And since one business or bot ranch can activity from thousands of IP addresses, Hellman says the old fix of blocking problematic IPs is no longer useful.

Michael Weinberg, co-director of GLAM-E, a collaborative attempt focused on open-access policies for traditional institutions, is operating to defend community admission to information. (Submitted by Michael Weinberg)

He says Project Gutenberg is blessed for its materials to be used as AI training data and equal offers a one-click download of its complete archive of books, "but the bots are too foolish to use it." 

"Our matter is nearly all community domain material. It's exactly the kind of matter that they have to be training on," he said. "We fair desire they would do it in a respectful way that doesn't obtain downward websites."

Open admission a 'huge benefit'

Some libraries have set up CAPTCHA challenges or another verification systems to weed out bots. 

The issue is, those measures can additionally weed out the fine bots, says Michael Weinberg, co-director of GLAM-E, a collaborative academic initiative at NYU Law School and the University of Warwick focused on open-access policies for traditional institutions.

Some libraries have additionally begun to necessitate login credentials, a arguable move that those who said to CBC News say they desire to evade since it puts barriers on individual admission to things they accept have to be effortlessly accessible.

And as the abrasion bots get additional advanced, experts say they could additionally study to activity about these strategies.

The Anthropic logo is displayed at during the Dreamforce innovation acme in San Francisco, on Sept. 17. AI firms have broadly asserted that abrasion publically accessible data is permissible under fair use and in the public's finest interest. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Major AI firms have asserted that abrasion publically accessible data to train their models is permissible under fair use and in the public's finest interest.

But faced alongside general criticism and copyright lawsuits, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft expressed assistance final week for honouring a single, standardized opt-out indication in a website's robots.txt document that could obstacle their web crawlers from harvesting data.

Compliance would be voluntary, however, and the accord leaves out problematic bots from third-party companies and smaller AI startups.

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Weinberg says the digitization of precious data has been a "fantastic" betterment for humanity — giving researchers, teachers and inquisitive citizens uncomplicated admission to resources that, 20 years ago, "would have required driving for flying or a particular approval to get access."

Organizations akin GLAM-E are trying to fig out long-term solutions to maintain that admission for humans and helpful bots alike.

Right now, the bots create "a disincentive for libraries and another institutions to create parts of their gathering accessible online," Weinberg said. "I think it's been a huge advantage to community that libraries and museums and another traditional institutions have put a huge amount of activity into making their collections available."

People appearance at their laptops and in the chief study area of the New York Public Library on Oct. 5, 2016, in New York City. Increased bot traffic method regular group using archive websites are efficiently competing alongside infinite traffic from bot farms, says one expert. (Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images)

The European Commission claims TikTok bankrupt its online phase rules by offering a advice algorithm that creates a “rabbit gap effect” on users. In an announcement on Friday, the regulators allege TikTok’s algorithm can damage users alongside “endless and repeated exposure” to satisfied connected to sadness, isolation, or build image.

The findings arrive months following the EU Commission declared that TikTok’s scheme is too “addictive.” While TikTok has implemented controls to mitigate the algorithm’s “rabbit gap effect,” the Commission says its preliminary findings propose that they’re not effective. TikTok must now alter the scheme of its For You feed, or alternatively visage fines of up to 6 percent of its earth annual turnover. The phase is additionally facing force in the US, with lawmakers and a motion of lawsuits raising concerns concerning kid safety.

Since enacting the Digital Services Act in 2023 — a set of rules that clasp tech companies legally accountable for their effect on users— the EU Commission has targeted multiple companies for allegedly violating the regulations, including X, Meta, Temu, and AliExpress. As reported by Politico, this is the archetypal period the Commission has cited a advice algorithm as the logic for a breach.

“Every period a person scrolls or likes a video on TikTok, the algorithm serves additional of the identical foremost users downward rabbit holes they cannot effortlessly escape from,” Henna Virkkunen, the EU Commission’s administrator vice chairman of tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, says in the media release. “Today’s preliminary findings display again that TikTok needs to stage up its efforts to defend users’ well-being, including those of minors.”

Amazon is adding a new characteristic to Alexa for Shopping that allows customers to acquisition items by texting the AI buying assistant. Users can depict the products they’re looking to buy and/or provision a photo of the item, and Alexa for Shopping volition hunt for matching results in Amazon listings, content rear alongside recommendations, and command the item on the users’ behalf.

This initiate builds on the existing Alexa for Shopping cognition that launched in May, allowing users to location orders during moments anywhere texting is additional convenient than using Amazon’s app or website. The communication volition appear in your phone as “Amazon Alexa,” and can be used for a broad range of buying requests, including ordering weekly groceries, asking for current recommendations, finding akin products to item you’ve snapped a photo of, and more. Alexa says it remembers your individual preferences complete period (so if you frequently ask for vegan options, it’ll withstand that in intellect for merchandise recommendations), and can track deals and prices to content you whenever an item you’re observing has gone on sale.

The texting capability is rolling out to a small collection of Amazon customers in the US starting today, who volition obtain a content communication inviting them to try the experience. It volition afterward rotate out to “millions additional customers” in the coming weeks, according to Amazon’s announcement.

“Customers frequently jot downward what they need the instant they think of it in their notes, in their messages, in their collection chats,” stated Rajiv Mehta, vice chairman of Conversational Shopping at Amazon. “Now alongside Alexa for Shopping, your individual buying delegate is fair a content away. Message it what you need and Alexa goes to activity on your behalf — searching, comparing, and purchasing so you can get on alongside your day.”

Amazon is one of multiple companies that have introduced ways to content their chatbots. Last duration saw OpenAI launching a characteristic that allows users to exchange content messages alongside its individual AI agent, Dot. DoorDash additionally introduced a text-based ordering characteristic in September that lets users get dish recommendations and command food by texting the Ask DoorDash AI chatbot.

Recent satellite images display that Russia turned an bare site into an assault drone basis in a matter of weeks.

The photos, provided by US business moon imaging firms Vantor and Planet Labs, grasp activity at a location in southwestern Russia approximately two miles from an air basis in Millerovo.

The area is residence to one of concerning a dozen publically known initiate sites for its Gerans, Russian versions of Iranian long-range attack drones. Moscow launches these drones alongside ballistic and cruise missiles, making barrages larger and additional complex.

In latest months, Russia has pivoted toward mass-producing its newer, jet-powered Gerans for attacks, additional stressing Ukraine's already strained air-defense network.

A photo taken on August 8 shows that the site near Millerovo was basically bare at the time.

By September 12, the groundwork for a compound had plainly emerged, alongside building roads built and district cleared for initiate rails and buildings.

Nine days later, the site's layout had begun to obtain shape, alongside berms, designated initiate bays, and structural foundations. In the photo, an admission highway cuts into the bosom of the base.

By October 12, the base's features are plainly visible, including retention accommodation and assistance buildings.

Spencer Faragasso, a elder chap at the Institute for Science and International Security who studies Russian and Iranian drones, told Business Insider that this is apt a initiate facility for the newer Geran-5.

The most apparent inform is the two longer catapult initiate rails for the drone installed at the border of the site, he said.

The Geran-5, idea to be a Russian type of the Iranian Karrar, is reported to fly at speeds up to 370 mph and exhibits several characteristics of a cruise missile. It is known to necessitate initiate rails of concerning 280 feet or longer. It is the fastest of Russia's two types of jet-powered assault drones.

Such drones are a high-priority involvement for Ukraine, which fears it volition have to obtain them downward alongside costly air defence missiles since many of the interceptor drones capable to obtain downward the older Gerans can't fly accelerated adequate to keep up alongside the new ones.

The new initiate location current was built alongside a "very accelerated turnaround for a basis to be in specified an advanced phase of building since dirt interrupt in August," Faragasso said.

"What's concerning current is the fact that Russia was capable to build this facility in specified abbreviated order," he said, adding that it showed the Kremlin was gaining cognition and ability in construction its drone bases rapidly.

It would be unsurprising to see Russia build akin bases elsewhere, Faragasso added.

"If one basis were to be attacked and destroyed by cruise missiles or ballistic missiles, another apt could be built quickly," he said.

A photo from October 27 shows the location was motionless under construction. It's unclear if it's now operational, but it's unlikely.

The photo shows that Russia has set up at smallest eight initiate bays at the new installation, perchance all for Geran-5s.

Brady Africk, an open-source expert alongside the American Enterprise Institute, told Business Insider that the October 27 depiction shows multiple of these bays haven't had catapult rails installed yet and that buildings for equipment and munitions retention are apt motionless being erected.

While its layout is akin to most of Russia's other Geran initiate bases, this one indicates that Moscow has been learning new lessons, Africk said.

"It has additional initiate rails, and longer ones, than several of Russia's earliest drone initiate sites, alongside alongside protective areas for munitions and equipment," he said.

Russia is making a 'massive infrastructure bet'

The drone basis near Millerovo is lone concerning 14 miles from Ukraine's internationally recognized border, although the forefront row is concerning 130 miles away. A drone launched from this location would have to fly approximately 200 miles to attain important cities akin Kharkiv, or 450 miles to Kyiv.

In an inspection shared alongside Business Insider, drone danger intellect resolute DroneSec stated that the location additionally includes an secluded building area to the southeast, which it suspected could be for air defenses.

With four another rails already at the Millerovo air base, this new building project could bring the total figure of Geran initiate bays in the area to 12, per DroneSec's analysis.

Mike Monnik, the originator of DroneSec, earlier told Reuters that this Russian basis could apt initiate 100 Geran-5s a day — an appraisal that Ukraine's armed forces intellect agency additionally reported in delayed October.

Advanced drones akin the jet-powered Geran-5, which began emerging additional frequently in first 2026 and are now a average pillar of Russia's regular drone waves, have Ukraine scrambling for solutions.

Cost and amount are a important aspect in this air war. Ukrainian estimates say the Geran-5 expenses concerning $115,000 per drone, compared to the million-dollar missiles Kyiv volition have to expend if it cannot create a cheap, dependable way to oppose newer Gerans.

"This is why Russia is making a enormous infrastructure bet," Monnik told Business Insider.

The Kremlin launched concerning 4,000 jet-powered drones, including the Geran-5, in October alone, per Ukrainian reports. That's an average of concerning 133 daily, a figure that could surge as initiate sites develop and new ones emerge.

"By standardizing initiate bases and construction hubs to storage thousands of units, they are creating an assembly-line example designed for four-figure saturation waves," Monnik said.

Real-world results, from creatives to earth brands

Businesses, startups, and creatives are already using Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash in their workflows. And for the archetypal time, Gemini Omni is now mostly available, backed by Google Cloud’s enterprise-grade infrastructure and security. Provisioned Throughput is available, and outputs transport an imperceptible SynthID watermark.

Protesters bankrupt into a Microsoft data center building location on the outskirts of Amsterdam on Friday during an anti-AI demonstration.

Images on social media display activists scaling fences and congregating inner the building site. Some of them climbed a crane, unfurled a banner alongside an anti-AI message, and let off flares.

Geef Tegengas, a Dutch advocate collective, stated on social media that it organized the act and that hundreds of its supporters were blocking building of the site.

"We won't obtain Amsterdam being used for the innovation of AI slop and the facilitation of genocide," stated Geef Tegengas spokesman Roos Molenaar in a statement. "This data center is gulping up our drinking h2o to create the affluent equal richer."

Microsoft did not immediately react to a petition for comment.

The protests are the latest example of backlash against data centers, the machines that have rotate into a sign for people's fears of AI and concerns complete its ecological impact. They were a key matter in the US midterm elections and extensively rejected at the ballot box complete concerns concerning power bills, h2o use and another impacts on local communities.

In its statement, Geef Tegengas stated the Microsoft project would strain the power grid during a accommodation deficit and provision the tech business additional authority complete data and the stream of information.

The collection additionally objects to what it describes as the use of Microsoft's innovation for surveillance and armed forces operations.

A video posted on X by Dutch newsman Tom Olthof shows group hanging banners opposing the project, during a distinct display is held throughout the road.

Police feared imaginable damage to the building location from chemic use, Olthof stated in the caption.

The Amsterdam location was additionally targeted in June by Geef Tegengas activists, temporarily halting work.

This is a evolving story. Check rear for updates.

India motionless surprises me, and I was delivered and raised here.

I've spent years exploring the country, from the palaces in Rajasthan to the backwaters of Kerala, and nearly all trip turns up item I didn't expect.

Friends, family, and plentifulness of strangers online ask me the identical question: "What's really value seeing in India?"

It's a big inquiry for a nation this size, and not all celebrated halt deserves a place on a abbreviated itinerary. Some places have stayed alongside me for years, whereas others I was blessed to see formerly and move on from.

Here are the three I'd propose to any first-time visitor, and the two I'd skip.

AI slop is mucking up our feeds and making several creators concern that their satisfied volition get buried under a sea of generic videos. So, what's the remedy?

Creators can combat rear by going out in the genuine earth and really doing something, Mark Rober, a discipline YouTuber who has additional than 85 myriad subscribers, told Business Insider.

"Do you desire to see a simulation of person dunking a basketball alongside a ill trick, or do you desire to see person really do it?" he said. "The fact that you cognize it's genuine is what makes it crazy."

AI presents the two a difficulty and an chance for creators. It can speed up video editing and assistance satisfied dispersed additional via tools akin AI tongue dubbing. However, it's foremost to the commodification of content. That's a big issue for several types of creators, akin not-on-camera YouTubers or animated channels. It could additionally recommendation an border to creators alongside a recognizable visage and a dedicated audience, Rober said.

"Our brains developed for hundreds of thousands of years alongside individual connection," and there volition be a craving for "real and authentic" content, he said.

"At smallest for a while, I think I have a moat on the YouTube channel," since of that, he added.

Social media platforms are conscious that AI-generated satisfied is proliferating in their feeds, and several have begun to expert downward on it. YouTube is demonetizing AI content that looks mass-produced or generic as part of its inauthentic satisfied policy. LinkedIn allows users to emblem whenever a article "seems akin AI slop." TikTok lets users toggle the amount of AI satisfied they see in their feeds, and Substack offers a Pangram-powered tool to scan newsletters for AI writing.

While Rober says his appearances in YouTube videos can assistance them interrupt through, his long-term goal is to change additional to the backdrop and let his company, CrunchLabs, obtain center stage.

"I desire CrunchLabs to be a lot additional fine known than Mark Rober," he said.

Rober stated his business bankrupt equal on its YouTube channels final year, earning about $17 myriad in income during incurring a akin amount of costs. Its gain controller is CrunchLabs, which sells a mix of person goods, including creator kits designed to instruct young group concerning discipline and engineering. It additionally offers a liberated instructional syllabus for schools. The business now has complete 200 employees, Rober said. Its goal is to advance learning and curiosity.

"Curiosity is so crucial in this new age of AI," Rober said. "It method you fair have a life of learning, versus like, 'Oh, this item knows the answer, so who cares?'" he said, referring to the instant answers that AI chatbots can provide.

Key Takeaways

• Don’t assume a network affiliate is a local expert; norm and market cognition change widely.
• Bring local teams in during planning, not fair execution. 
• Judge local campaigns against local benchmarks, since a “small” outcome globally can be important market intrusion in a smaller market. 

Global brands affection a proven playbook. When they act a smaller market, the enticement is to run it again but at a smaller scale. However, a smaller market isn’t an easier one, and strategies that activity in ample countries can autumn distinct whenever they encounter different purchasing habits. After years of assisting global brands initiate in Armenia, I’ve seen earth brands create the identical assumptions, and all one is avoidable.  

Relying on affiliates fairly than local experts 

Hiring, as any endeavor owner knows, is a pain. So, it’s understandable that a ample earth business looking to act a smaller market power default to global affiliates already inside its network. This approach, however, isn’t continually the best.

The issue comes in whenever you assume that the position and ability of a globally recognized agency network automatically extends to all local affiliate functioning under its name. In reality, the quality, capabilities and strategic ability of local affiliates can change significantly.

This additionally method not relying solely on local hubs (especially in Europe, anywhere proximity doesn’t necessarily average similarity in humor, expressions and traditional references). Understanding these nuances is key to entering smaller markets successfully. At Prodigi, for example, we’ve received requests from global agency network affiliates to execute digital promotion services for their earth clients in Armenia. In specified cases, the earth brand selects an agency according to its global network affiliation, during the genuine local ability and implementation arrive from an independent agency. This raises an crucial question: are brands choosing the most capable local partner, or merely the most acquainted global name?

Applying earth strategies to local markets 

At Prodigi, we additionally frequently see that international companies autumn into the trap of applying earth verticals and channels to local markets. While sticking to a prosperous scheme seems sensible, in reality, smaller markets frequently necessitate a entirely distinct approach.

For example, a earth promotion squad may automatically prioritize Google Ads in a new region as it’s one of its center global acquisition channels. In smaller markets, though, local platforms may have greater attain and power among mark audiences.

This was the case for a important pharmaceutical business alongside which we worked. Its earth scheme was organized about distinct stages of the buyer’s journey, but it led to a disconnect between the earth buyer’s journey and actuality of the local market.

In another markets, online buying options supported the action/conversion stage. However, in Armenia, the brand had no equal digital purchasing channel. 

Despite this, the earth squad insisted on maintaining the identical scheme initially. Rather than merely copying the earth framework, Prodigi adapted the method to the brand’s genuine endeavor goals in Armenia and unified applicable local media channels. 

Assuming smaller is easier  

A smaller market doesn’t necessarily average it’s easier. When a nation has small consumers you can attain and multiple brands vying for their attention, you typically need a additional focused and targeted strategy. 

Take the use of influencers, for example. A earth business may have seen powerful results from operating alongside macro-influencers in larger countries. However, in smaller markets, a ample follower figure doesn’t necessarily translate into meaningful endeavor results. In these markets, influencer choice requires a deeper understanding of local audiences, involvement norm and brand fit. 

Prodigi’s cognition operating alongside a premium global automotive brand illustrates how earth brands sometimes prioritize impressive-looking influencer metrics complete run objectives and genuine spectators relevance. For this project, the campaign’s goal was to develop the brand’s local social media page. 

Despite our advice to regard substitute creators who are improved aligned alongside the local audience, the earth promotion squad insisted on selecting a macro-influencer alongside complete 250,000 followers and a visually appealing profile. The result: fair five new followers.

Using local ability lone for execution 

Linked to the archetypal point, using local experts purely to modify or allocate earth campaigns is another error we frequently see. Instead, they should assistance form strategic and imaginative decisions before campaigns rotate into difficult or costly to change. 

Case in item is our straightforward cognition alongside a earth beverage brand. The brand developed an global run featuring a celebrated football participant as the chief element. 

However, the licensing accord excluded Armenia and several another countries. As a result, the local squad wasn’t permitted to use the campaign’s chief imaginative assets. 

This oversight considerably constricted our imaginative options and we couldn’t completely bring the first run idea to existence in Armenia. This issue could’ve been identified earlier, if the local market requirements were considered whenever the earth run was planned and the local teams engaged previous to the implementation stage. 

Applying earth benchmarks to local performance 

Finally, whenever evaluating the achievement of a run in a smaller market, a brand must use the correct metrics. Rather than environment targets for reach, acquisition or conversion rates according to global campaigns, a earth promotion squad should use achievement metrics that indicate not lone the market size but additionally the local person habits and digital maturity.

Failing to do so can guide a brand to underestimate what constitutes fine performance. What’s dismissed as a small outcome for a earth run can portray important market intrusion in a local market.

It can additionally shove the implementation squad toward targets that don’t create endeavor awareness locally, as our activity for an global quick-service eatery brand shows. The brand wanted to run online orders and purchases via its mobile app, following its earth digital strategy. 

However, the Armenian market was at a distinct phase of digital acceptance and customers weren’t yet as acquainted to ordering online or through a mobile app. This meant that applying the identical expectations for digital orders and app acceptance in additional mature markets wasn’t realistic.   

This is why entering a smaller market really requires local ability from the commencement to the end of the journey. The most precious stage a earth brand can obtain whenever it enters a new market is to hear to the group who cognize it best. This method choosing partners for their local cognition fairly than their network name and involving them before the plans are finalized.  

Key Takeaways

• Don’t assume a network affiliate is a local expert; norm and market cognition change widely.
• Bring local teams in during planning, not fair execution. 
• Judge local campaigns against local benchmarks, since a “small” outcome globally can be important market intrusion in a smaller market. 

Global brands affection a proven playbook. When they act a smaller market, the enticement is to run it again but at a smaller scale. However, a smaller market isn’t an easier one, and strategies that activity in ample countries can autumn distinct whenever they encounter different purchasing habits. After years of assisting global brands initiate in Armenia, I’ve seen earth brands create the identical assumptions, and all one is avoidable.  

Relying on affiliates fairly than local experts 

Hiring, as any endeavor owner knows, is a pain. So, it’s understandable that a ample earth business looking to act a smaller market power default to global affiliates already inside its network. This approach, however, isn’t continually the best.

The issue comes in whenever you assume that the position and ability of a globally recognized agency network automatically extends to all local affiliate functioning under its name. In reality, the quality, capabilities and strategic ability of local affiliates can change significantly.