Media, Marketing & Communications

San Francisco – September 15, 2026 -- The Globee® Awards has opened nominations for the 18th Annual Globee® Awards for Innovation, also known as the Golden Bridge Awards®, seeking organizations and professionals that have applied artificial intelligence to produce measurable business results.

Program targets AI achievements across enterprise functions

The awards accept submissions covering generative AI, AI agents, enterprise AI, machine learning, and intelligent automation, alongside sector-specific applications in healthcare, cybersecurity, financial services, manufacturing, and research. Categories also extend to customer experience, data and analytics, accessibility, employee enablement, decision support, and product and service innovation.

Pasadena, Calif. – September 15, 2026 -- The share of U.S. consumers using AI tools for local business recommendations jumped to 45% in the past 12 months, up from 6% in 2025, according to new research cited by digital marketing agency Cybertegic.

Consumer trust in AI recommendations coexists with heavy verification habits

Among the 455 consumers surveyed who reported using AI for local recommendations, 63% said they trust AI-generated suggestions, while 88% said they still check the source or legitimacy of AI-presented information. The data comes from BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, based on a representative SurveyMonkey panel of 1,002 U.S. adults, with AI-specific findings published March 10, 2026.

Osnabrück – – September 15, 2026 -- German regional publisher NOZ/mh:n-Gruppe has rolled out an AI-powered election assistant and a series of 17 live-streamed candidate debates to inform voters ahead of Lower Saxony's municipal elections on September 13.

AI bot draws exclusively on newsroom-verified candidate data

The noz-Wahl-Bot, built on the publisher's in-house AI system frag noz, is embedded directly into election coverage on noz.de and the noz News app. It answers voter queries using only NOZ's own editorial reporting and standardized questionnaires completed by the majority of local candidates. An automated LLM-as-a-Judge review process checks each response to prevent hallucinations or fabricated content, according to Senior AI Product Manager David Pinzauti.

Boston – September 14, 2026 -- H.I.G. Capital has completed a significant investment in Click Here Digital, a Baton Rouge-based performance marketing agency serving the automotive, legal, and government sectors, through one of its affiliates.

H.I.G. Capital deploys capital from its $75 billion platform into digital marketing

H.I.G., a global alternative investment firm managing $75 billion in capital, backed Click Here as part of its middle-market equity strategy. The firm's equity funds typically target management buyouts, recapitalizations, and corporate carve-outs across manufacturing and service businesses.

Berlin – September 14, 2026 -- German Sunday broadsheet WELT AM SONNTAG will retire its blue masthead for the first time since 1952 as part of a full relaunch set for the print edition of September 12/13, 2026. The redesign marks the most significant change to the paper's title header in 74 years, according to publisher PREMIUM-GRUPPE.

New masthead drops blue background for white design shared with daily WELT

The white lettering on blue ground that has defined the title since 1952 disappears. The logo replaces the bold bar with the lighter WELT brand mark on a white background and introduces the globe symbol taken from the daily edition into the Sunday paper for the first time, visually linking the two titles within the print family.

Vancouver, BC – September 14, 2026 -- Time Out and Rival Technologies have won a 2026 Esomar Award for Excellence in Global Research, announced at the Esomar Congress in Valencia, Spain.

Global City Survey engaged 18,500 people across nearly 60 countries

The award-winning project surveyed participants in 45 languages, generating approximately 1.6 million data points and an 86% completion rate. The research underpins Time Out's Best Cities ranking, a decade-long global editorial initiative built on resident feedback and Time Out's journalism.

Rival's conversational platform replaced traditional survey formats

Time Out partnered with Rival Technologies to shift the Global City Survey from a standard survey format to a mobile-first, chat-like research experience while preserving the scale needed for a global program spanning dozens of markets.

Los Angeles – September 14, 2026 -- Vision Films will release the dystopian drama "Isolation" worldwide on Transactional VOD on September 14, 2026, through a distribution agreement with Legacy Distribution.

Deal expands independent film's reach across major streaming platforms

The film will launch on Amazon, Apple TV/iTunes, Google Play and most cable platforms in the US, Canada and UK on the same date. The agreement pairs Vision Films' VOD aggregation network, which handles over 800 titles, with Legacy Distribution's international programming and digital media distribution infrastructure.

Plano, Texas – September 14, 2026 -- Fox Corporation's planned $22 billion acquisition of Roku underscores the strategic value of controlling the platform layer that connects viewers, content, and advertisers, according to new data from Parks Associates.

Roku dominates US streaming hardware with 43% device share

Parks Associates' Tech Ecosystem Dashboard, based on surveys of more than 8,000 US internet households, found 43% report a Roku device as their most-used streaming media player. Among smart TV owners, 17% said their primary TV runs on Roku OS.

Fox deal would combine premium content with Roku's 100 million-household reach

Fox reports that Roku reaches more than 100 million streaming households globally. The acquisition would pair Fox's live sports and news programming and its Tubi service with Roku's operating system, The Roku Channel, Frndly TV, Howdy, advertising infrastructure, and first-party viewer data.

Lufkin – September 14, 2026 -- Lemon Seed Marketing will host its seventh annual Lemon Seed Conference, themed "Into the Wilderness," on March 3-6, 2027, at Timber Creek Church's Lufkin, Texas campus.

Event combines two days of education with three days of networking for home service leaders

The conference targets home service business owners and leaders, offering sessions on finance and operations, leadership and team building, and community engagement alongside a vendor expo. Crystal Williams, co-owner and lead strategist at Lemon Seed, said the "wilderness" theme reflects how independent home service owners navigate a competitive marketing landscape.

New York – – September 13, 2026 -- Brand Engagement Network, Inc. (NASDAQ: BNAI) and Cataneo GmbH will present an AI-enhanced version of the MYDAS advertising platform at IBC2026, targeting broadcasters and media companies still running on legacy on-premises systems.

MYDAS already processes inventory for more than 1,000 media brands

Cataneo's cloud-native MYDAS platform manages advertising sales, scheduling, traffic, content management, monetization, analytics, CRM integration, and real-time reporting across more than 1,000 media brands and over 200 broadcast and digital channels worldwide, including major U.S. film studios.