Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

For Americans, the idea of watching live television without the constant barrage of commercials for prescription medications and junk food might seem foreign. That’s now the norm in the United Kingdom. Starting on Monday, a ban has gone into effect that prohibits advertising foods high in fat, salt, and sugar on TV before 9 p.m. and at any time online. It’s an attempt by the UK government to tackle childhood obesity. In 2022, 15% of children between the ages of 2 and 15 were obese, according to figures from the National Health Service. What constitutes a banned product is a bit complex to decipher, as the rules cover 13 wide-ranging categories of food. Some produc…

While the Lego Group has dipped its toes into tech waters before, the company hasn’t strayed far from its analog roots. But on Monday, the 94-year-old company unveiled a new product line that embraces the digital age, without abandoning its core business. At CES, Lego announced the upcoming launch of the Lego Smart Play system, an interactive technology that lets users’ Lego creations respond to player actions with tailored sounds, lights, behavior, and more. The company says it’s a way to further engage digital native kids without having them stare at yet another screen. While the toy market has struggled for the past few years, sales at the Lego Group have remai…

If you signed up for an Amazon Prime membership between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025, Amazon might owe you as much as $51. This comes after the online retail giant entered into a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations that the company used deceptive practices to enroll customers in its Prime membership. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Amazon and the FTC have agreed to a settlement over allegations that the online retailer used deceptive practices to enroll people in its Amazon Prime membership, while also making it difficult for those same individuals to cancel the membership. The settlement was rea…

We all think that we have great ideas. And we all tend to fall in love with our own ideas because, well, they’re ours. But most of my ideas—and yours—are probably mediocre. And no, that’s not an insult; it’s just a fact about the way most ideas are generated. I mean, if we were all genuinely spewing game-changers the world would be in a much different place than it is today. Most ideas are created without much thought or insight or pushback—and could probably benefit from people challenging them a lot more. Way too many ideas get approved that shouldn’t have made it out of the conference room, but with lack of time, energy, and questioning, they move forward at an al…

Working from home might be frowned upon at some companies these days, but the rising number of layoffs last year and the growing collection of workers who are launching their own businesses means the number of people working out of a home office is on the rise. If you’re among them, you’ve no doubt learned that to make it a comfortable experience, you need a lot more than a laptop and a convenient table. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year, plenty of items on display seemed well-suited to make work life easier for home-based employees. Here’s a look at the most notable tools. Xebec Tri Screen 3 If you’re used to a multi-monitor set…

For decades, design followed a singular truth. Whether it was the insistence that “form follows function” or the later pivot toward “form follows emotion,” the industry tended to adhere to a simple formula for design thinking: Find your North Star and follow. But that formula does not fit today’s reality. “Form follows X” is no longer a clean equation, because X isn’t a single variable. It’s a constellation that refuses to be reduced to one guiding idea. Modern design across brands, products, and experiences must use a multidimensional approach, speaking to function, feeling, context, narrative, culture, and experience, all at once. HUMAN EXPERIENCE DESIGN …

Imagine you are searching for a new mattress online and find something surprising. The retailer displays an ad featuring a “Mattress Comfort Scale” running from 1 (soft) to 10 (firm), followed by the message that if your firmness preference is at either end, this mattress is not for you. Wait . . . what? A retailer telling someone not to buy its product? No way! Why would a company tell potential buyers that the product might not suit them? Our team of professors—Karen Anne Wallach, Jaclyn L. Tanenbaum, and Sean Blair—examines this question in a recently published article in the Journal of Consumer Research. Marketers spend billions trying to persuade consumers th…

There are many made-up celebrations these days, but at least National Pizza Week delivers something tasty. Coming in hot on the heels of so-called quitter’s day, when many people abandon their New Year’s resolutions, pizza shops around the U.S. will be tossing around some deals that could save customers some dough. Of course, many people don’t need an excuse to eat pizza—on any given day, about 11% of Americans do so, according to a study released in 2024 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Americans grappling with the high cost of living got some relief as inflation cooled in November, but that doesn’t mean that food prices have come down—and particularly for …

Chris Cuomo is returning to SiriusXM, putting him on the air with morning and evening talk shows. He will host a two-hour weekday show centered on listener calls on the satellite radio company’s P.O.T.U.S. channel, starting Jan. 20 at 7 a.m. Eastern. Guests on his first few shows include Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, sportscaster Bob Costas, and political consultant James Carville, the company said Tuesday. Cuomo previously hosted a show at the network but quit in 2021, shortly after he was fired from CNN when it was revealed that he assisted his brother, former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in fighting accusation…

As our attention spans and cognitive abilities are increasingly damaged by digital overuse and AI-mediated shortcuts, the ability to focus deeply and learn something in depth is quickly becoming a critical skill. Never have we had such broad access to information. And never have so many people felt unable to concentrate long enough to truly master anything. Learning is everywhere, yet depth feels elusive. In a world where artificial intelligence can retrieve, summarize, and recombine information faster than any human, what remains valuable is the capacity to incorporate it. And for that to be possible, you need to stay with a subject long enough for it to transf…

While traveling to Riyadh for the Fortune Global Forum, FII9, and the Global Health Exhibition, I witnessed something that should be a wake-up call for health systems everywhere. Saudi Arabia is already operating the kind of connected, AI-enabled healthcare infrastructure many countries are still debating how to build. At FII9, the conversation was unmistakable. Global innovation momentum is shifting toward the Middle East, and nowhere more than Saudi Arabia, where national digital platforms like Sehhaty already give millions of residents unified access to their health data. At the Global Health Exhibition, I saw population-level analytics, AI-powered diagnostics, multiom…

TurboTax has a new flagship—its first foray into physical retail—in SoHo. The warm, welcoming Japandi-styled space on the corner of Broadway and Grand is adorned with plants, plush sofas, and a 30-foot-long screen on a curved slatted oak wall that displays color fields. Up front, there’s a sensory dome with chromatherapy-inspired lights and a soothing soundscape piped into the area and in the back there’s a coffee bar. It reads more like the lobby of a wellness hotel than a tax store. The entire space, designed by Gensler, is meant to be an antidote to the negative sentiments associated with doing your taxes—the cocktail of fear, uncertainty, and doubt millions of Am…

I told myself I won’t check emails until I check off my “one thing” to do for the day. I couldn’t do it. I always reach for the phone in the morning. Willpower wasn’t enough. The brain is wired to take the path of least resistance. Fighting it every day with willpower won’t work. These days I use systems. I work with rituals. I get my most important tasks (MIT) done between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. I schedule my MIT’s the night before. And get straight to work at the scheduled time. Ninety percent of the time at the same place. I’ve done it for so long, I do it on autopilot now. My three-hour block means no motivation required. I’m not relying on willpower to stay “producti…

If drivers want to switch away from a completely gas-powered car to something electric, they have a few options. Namely: battery electric vehicles, hybrids, or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs). All are seen as a way to reduce transportation emissions and move away from gas-guzzling internal combustion cars. But it turns out, plug-in hybrid owners may not actually be plugging in their vehicles, making PHEVs not quite the environmental solution that they seem like. General Motors CEO Mary Barra, speaking this week at the Automotive Press Association conference in Detroit, touched on this reality when talking about GM’s plans with electric and hybrid vehicles. “What …

The northern lights could light up the skies above several northern states this weekend. The aurora borealis will be visible Friday and Saturday nights over North America, and most prevalent for those states on the northern border of the mainland, according to a forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center. Friday offers the highest odds of visibility for most Americans, with the northern lights potentially visible in those states stretching from Washington to Maine, and as far south as Iowa. And Friday’s aurora could be brighter, with a score of 5 out of 9 on an index measuring the three-day geomagnetic…

Putting yourself out there is difficult. Rejection is tough. And feeling like you’ve gotten the rug pulled out from under you is the worst. When you’re in charge of business development, where you’re responsible for growing your revenue within your current client portfolio as well as seeking out new potential opportunities, you can easily vacillate from feeling like a hero to feeling like a zero, depending on what kind of results you’re getting from your efforts. As a time management coach for 17 years, I’ve learned how to summon the inner resolve to continue forward with business development even when it feels difficult, and I’ve coached many clients on how to do the…

For professionals looking to moodboard, but sick of juggling Instagram lists and Pinterest boards, Cosmos arrived in 2023 to woo millions of users in an otherwise crowded market. With a pared-back design, and an algorithm trained on a carefully seeded list of creatives, it topped the Design category in the App Store, and the company reports it’s now used by creative teams at companies including Nike, Apple, and Amazon, who snag over 10 million pieces of content a month from across the internet for their collections. This growth has been enough to raise a $15 million Series A from Matrix Partners, GV, Accel, and Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena, as the company con…

Balancing gut feelings with hard data isn’t a soft skill. It’s a strategic advantage. In an era where AI, automation, and ubiquitous dashboards flood us with metrics, it’s tempting to believe that better spreadsheets alone will yield better decisions. But our most consequential choices rarely emerge from a cell in column D. They arise from an ongoing negotiation between intuition and rational analysis. The paradox is this: as technology becomes more sophisticated at processing information, the human capacity to notice what matters—the intangible signals of opportunity or risk—becomes more valuable. Yet most organizations force a false choice. We either roman…

In a powerful speech before the Minneapolis City Council, a nurse broke down as she shed light on the fear so many in her profession are feeling as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have stormed the city. “In Minneapolis, I feel like I’m a sitting duck,” the speaker began in a January 15 address. “I don’t feel safe at home. I don’t feel safe at work. Kids aren’t safe at school,” she said through sobs. “I was born in Minneapolis and I am scared out of my mind because I have skin that is not white and that is not fair.” The speaker went on to contend that ICE’s presence and the aggressive tactics agents have increasingly been using has created a “publ…

Warren Buffett’s successor appears to be considering his first significant move after taking over as CEO this month. Kraft Heinz warned investors Tuesday that Berkshire Hathaway may be interested in selling its 325 million shares in the name brand food giant that Buffett helped create back in 2015. The news came in a filing with stock market regulators. Buffett and the Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital orchestrated the merger of Kraft and Heinz back then because they already owned Heinz and believed in the power of their brands. Now Greg Abel may be plotting a different course. Over the years since Buffett had come to realize that the company’s competitive moat arou…

Star Trek—a franchise that famously promotes the philosophy “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”—is being accused of “becoming” too “woke”. Last week, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller shared a post from the X account End Wokeness that featured a short clip from the premiere episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Tragic. But it’s not too late for @paramountplus to save the franchise. Step 1: Reconcile with @WilliamShatner and give him total creative control. https://t.co/HRMDcYeBnU — Stephen Miller (@StephenM) January 16, 2026 The clip showed cast members Tricia Black (playing Lt. Rork), Gina Yashere (Lura Thok) and Holl…

It’s 9:30 p.m. Snack time. A sacred fourth meal, when I pull out my handwash-only kobachi and drop in a small handful of Blue Diamond Smokehouse almonds. I’ve been eating them for more years than I care to admit, appreciating the mix of natural (high protein and fiber) almonds with a splash of addictive processing (mmm, hickory smoke flavor and maltodextrin) to keep them feeling dangerous. It’s the perfect portion of the perfect snack in the perfect bowl. Almost. The problem with Blue Diamond Smokehouse isn’t the product. It’s the packaging. Specifically, the Ziploc-esque “resealable” zipper stops working, like clockwork, when I’m about halfway through the ba…

When a stranger smiles at you, you smile back. That is why, when Sir Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Amadeus) walked on the stage in front of me, looked me straight in the eye, and smiled at me, I smiled back. It was the polite thing to do. It was also completely unnecessary, because McKellen was not actually on the stage in front of me. He smiled at me through a pair of special glasses. The reason for this unusual social interaction is called An Ark, which bills itself as the first play to be created in mixed-reality. Using Magic Leap glasses, the play blends the physical world with the digital realm, creating an unusually intimate theater experience. Ope…

Apple will turn its Siri assistant into a full-fledged chatbot by next year. The company is working on a personal AI device to compete with the one OpenAI is building with Jony Ive. And Apple is putting control over its AI strategy into new hands within the company. So say a flurry of new reports, all advancing the larger story that Apple is doing what it can to get itself back in the AI race. And it’s doing it in a way that may allow it, in classic Apple fashion, to lead from behind. That is, it may hang back and benefit from the hard lessons learned by others marketing a new technology, then arrive fashionably late with a more polished product. Apple and Goog…