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Welcome to The Brief by Kuro House, your daily dose of sharp insights and in-depth stories from the fast-evolving world of marketing, media, and business. Today, we’re diving into the latest innovations in chatbot advertising, the real impact of celebrity endorsements, the future of B2B marketing, and what’s happening in the world of cable and evening news ratings. Let’s get started.

First up, from Adweek, we’re seeing a fascinating evolution in digital advertising: retargeting is coming to chatbots. Evertune, a generative engine optimization firm, has just expanded its Partner Connect offering to allow marketers to retarget users who exit answer engine sessions—think ChatGPT, Gemini, or AI Overviews. Here’s how it works: after a user interacts with a chatbot and clicks through to a website (which happens in about 12% of sessions), Evertune’s system enables brands to serve ads on those sites, capturing high-intent users who’ve just been searching for answers. This is a big deal, because until now, answer engines have been walled gardens for advertisers—OpenAI’s ad product is still in limited rollout, and most chatbot platforms remain closed to brands. Evertune’s current approach is contextual, using simulated prompts to find the most-cited webpages and selling ad inventory there. But soon, they’ll be able to retarget users based on the actual queries they made in the chatbot, combining referral data with landing pages to get even more precise. While this is incremental rather than revolutionary, it’s a welcome step for marketers who’ve been waiting to see how advertising will work in the age of AI-driven search. The infrastructure may look familiar, but the stakes—and the opportunities—are new.

Now, let’s talk about the celebrity effect in advertising, especially around the Super Bowl, courtesy of Digiday. This year, a whopping 63% of Super Bowl ads featured celebrity talent, up from just a quarter of ads in 2011. Brands are betting big—paying $3 million to $5 million per celebrity, not counting media costs—hoping to tap into the “golden halo” of A-listers. There’s evidence it works: Nike’s Tiger Woods partnership, for example, drove a 2.5% lift in golf ball sales over a decade, translating to $100 million in business. But as brands scramble for cultural relevance in a fragmented media landscape, experts warn that leaning too hard on celebrities brings new risks, especially political ones. Recent events, like artists wearing “ICE out” pins at the Grammys, show that stars can quickly become lightning rods for controversy. Marketers are wary, since big corporations are built to minimize risk, but as Tim Derdenger from Carnegie Mellon points out, brands aren’t risk eliminators—if they try to be, they’ll lose impact. And as Sean Gilpin, CMO of Hyundai, notes, a celebrity can’t save a bad ad; at worst, you get “borrowed attention” that fades fast. So while fame can help brands break through in the short term, it’s no guarantee of lasting brand value.

Switching gears to B2B marketing, Adweek brings us insights from Workday CMO Emma Chalwin, speaking at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos. Chalwin argues that CMOs need to step up as strategic business leaders, especially in the age of AI. Her philosophy is all about blending the “art and science” of marketing—moving beyond pure storytelling to become data-driven growth officers who can tie brand campaigns directly to revenue, retention, and pipeline impact. She stresses the importance of focusing on customer retention, not just acquisition, especially as businesses face uncertainty and anxiety about AI and the future of work. Chalwin’s approach is “B2B to B2H”—Business to Human—meaning messaging should speak directly to individual decision-makers, addressing their specific pain points and aspirations with transparency and empathy. Finally, she believes brand values are a key differentiator in a crowded market; brands need to anchor their strategy in values that competitors can’t replicate, creating emotional connections that drive loyalty. For CMOs, the takeaway is clear: combine financial literacy, human-centered storytelling, and a strong values-based narrative to lead both marketing and the business forward.

Let’s take a look at what’s happening in cable news ratings, with data from Adweek’s TVNewser. For the week of February 2, 2026, Fox News was the only cable news network to see week-to-week gains, with its highest ratings since September 2025. Fox averaged 2.63 million total viewers and 275,000 adults aged 25-54 in primetime, up 3% and 12% respectively from the week before. Meanwhile, MS NOW and CNN both saw declines across all categories. Fox News dominated the top 15 most-watched cable news shows, with The Five leading at 4.08 million viewers. The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell were the only non-Fox programs to make the list. Year-over-year, Fox News is actually down in both total viewers and the demo, but in the short term, it’s the only network showing momentum. CNN, interestingly, saw significant year-over-year growth but slipped week-to-week. For brands and media buyers, these shifts underscore the importance of tracking both short-term spikes and long-term trends in audience behavior.

Finally, let’s check in on the evening news landscape, also via Adweek. ABC World News Tonight with David Muir remains the most-watched evening newscast, averaging 8.99 million viewers and 1.15 million in the 25-54 demo. However, ABC was the only network to lose viewers week-over-week. NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas, on the other hand, was the only broadcast to see gains, narrowing the demo gap with ABC to just 50,000 viewers. NBC’s boost was helped by an exclusive sit-down with President Donald Trump. CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil also saw a slight uptick in total viewers but dropped in the demo. Year-over-year, NBC and CBS are both up in total viewers, showing that while ABC still leads, competition is heating up—especially when big news or exclusive interviews give networks an edge.

That’s all for today’s Brief. We’ve seen how AI and chatbots are reshaping retargeting, why celebrity endorsements are both a shortcut and a risk, how B2B marketing is getting more human, and how the news landscape is shifting week by week. As always, the only constant in marketing and media is change—and the smartest professionals are the ones who keep learning and adapting. Thanks for listening, and stay sharp.