Horizon Media and Google Power the Future of Entertainment Marketing at AI Hackathon
Top team wins $10,000 for breakthrough audience solution, using Google's AI technology and Horizon Media's audience insight data
NEW YORK, May 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Horizon Media, the world's largest independent media agency, partnered with Google to host Hacking the Screen — a one-day AI hackathon held at Google's St. John's Terminal office in Manhattan. Designed to reimagine the future of entertainment marketing, the event brought together students from nine universities — including University of Massachusetts, Cornell University, Columbia University and New York University — for a hands-on Hackathon in applied innovation.
Hosted by Bob Lord, president of Horizon Media Holdings, and Paijmaan Premji, data transformation lead at Google, the event showcased the natural synergy between two companies at the forefront of digital transformation. United by a shared commitment to advancing responsible AI, nurturing emerging talent and shaping the next wave of intelligent media solutions, the collaboration emphasized innovation with integrity.
A competitively selected and diverse group of participants worked in teams, leveraging Horizon's proprietary audience intelligence tools alongside Google's Vertex AI platform to develop innovative solutions to key marketing use cases for a leading entertainment brand. Grounded in behavioral data and evaluated for strategic impact, each prototype served as a real-world exploration of AI's potential to transform business outcomes across industries and audiences.
The hackathon is part of Horizon's broader ambition to fuse experimentation with execution on behalf of its clients — advancing the ongoing development of Blu, its AI-native growth platform, while cultivating next-gen talent and pioneering new partnerships across technology, media, and culture.
'These students surfaced actionable opportunities — not hypotheticals,' said Bob Lord. 'By pressure-testing Google's AI tools and Horizon's Data Insights against real business challenges, they revealed how AI can elevate strategy, speed execution, and sharpen relevance. Innovation like this doesn't happen in a vacuum — it takes bold thinking, collaborative energy, and the courage to build what hasn't been built yet.'
The winning team, Synth Solutions, earned a $10,000 grand prize for its strategic use of large language models to optimize campaign messaging across nuanced audience segments. The team — composed of Nyosha Homicil of Pace University, Matthew Labasan of Columbia University, Eric Kouperman of Pace University, and Apun Datta of Hunter College — developed a prototype that blended empathy, data, and generative intelligence to power more predictive, high-impact campaigns.
Projects were evaluated on a five-point scale across five categories: problem understanding, technical execution, creativity and innovation, real-world relevance, and presentation. Judges looked for clear problem statements, effective use of AI and data tools, original thinking, and practical applications in media and advertising.
The panel included Nadia Carta, head of data, measurement and analytics at Google; Elizabeth Twersky, vice president and group director of data solutions at Blu, Horizon Media; and Cindy Kim, executive vice president and managing partner of business solutions at Horizon Media.
Top participants have been selected for internships with Horizon's AI, analytics, and innovation teams.
About Horizon Media
Horizon Media, the largest independent media agency globally, delivers data-driven business outcomes for some of the most innovative and ambitious brands. Founded in 1989, headquartered in New York, and with offices in Los Angeles and Toronto, the company employs 2,400+ people and has media investments of more than $8.5 billion. Horizon Media's fundamental belief is that business is personal, which drives its approach to connecting brands with their customers and engaging with its own employees, resulting in industry-leading workplace satisfaction levels (Glassdoor). The company is consistently recognized by independent media outlets for its client excellence and has earned several 'Best Workplaces' awards reflecting its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and the life and well-being of everyone at Horizon Media.
View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/horizon-media-and-google-power-the-future-of-entertainment-marketing-at-ai-hackathon-302449603.html
SOURCE Horizon Media
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


WIRED
39 minutes ago
- WIRED
A Google Shareholder is Suing the Company Over the TikTok Ban
Jun 10, 2025 1:34 PM Silicon Valley software engineer Tony Tan says his battle against Google and the Trump administration is about upholding the rule of law. The TikTok app page in the Google Play Store. Photograph:The Trump administration is still refusing to enforce a federal ban on TikTok, and Silicon Valley software engineer Tony Tan is fed up. Last month, Tan sued the US Department of Justice for allegedly failing to turn over records about why it has not taken action against Google and Apple, which Tan believes are violating the law by continuing to host TikTok on their respective app stores. Tan is now stepping up his fight against what he sees as a worrying and potentially costly trend away from respecting the American legal system. On Tuesday, he filed a shareholder lawsuit in Delaware state court against Google's parent organization Alphabet. Tan alleges the company wrongfully denied a request he made for internal documents about Google's decision to risk billions of dollars in fines by not complying with the TikTok ban. 'The biggest thing that motivates me here is I've been frustrated by the volume of recent attacks on our legal system,' says Tan, who is in his late 20s and owns a small number of Alphabet shares directly and through investment funds. 'If Google is outright breaking the law, and they don't have to acknowledge it, they very much are above the law, and that doesn't seem right to me.' Google declined to comment on the lawsuit. But in a letter to Tan's attorneys seen by WIRED, a lawyer representing Google questioned whether the tech giant was really violating the TikTok ban, calling the idea an 'unsupported legal conclusion.' Tan's records request 'appears simply to be wondering if Alphabet is complying with applicable laws,' Doru Gavril, a partner at the firm Freshfields, wrote in March. 'Curiosity alone is not a basis for a books and records inspection demand.' TikTok's future in the United States has been under threat for years. President Donald Trump tried banning the app during his first term in 2020, arguing it posed a risk to national security because it was run by ByteDance, a Chinese tech company. After years of congressional debate and a legal battle that made it up to the Supreme Court, a law banning companies such as Apple and Google from helping to distribute TikTok and other Chinese apps in the US went into effect this past January. TikTok then disappeared from app stores for about half a day, until Trump issued an executive order pausing enforcement of the law and giving ByteDance time to reach a deal to reduce its ownership stake in TikTok's US operation. In the months since, Trump has used the popular video platform as a bargaining chip in high-stakes trade negotiations with China. Legal experts and some lawmakers have questioned the legality of Trump's order, which expires next Thursday. But there haven't been any known legal challenges to it, and the president has indicated that he will extend the pause again as discussions with Beijing continue. Tan, who declined to say whether he personally supports the TikTok ban, believes the central issue is enforcement. 'There is a federal law that says the TikTok app should not be on your store, and I can see TikTok is on the app store,' he says of Google. 'Congress passed the law, and the Supreme Court upheld it. It's not debatable.' In his view, Google is openly ignoring the law, and he wants to understand the legal basis for that decision, as well as the extent to which shareholders should be worried about Google's potential liability. 'I felt I should join the someones who are doing something,' Tan says. Books and Records Tan has a history of using records requests and litigation to investigate and combat what he views as injustices. In 2019, he sued a New Hampshire hotel for allegedly violating anti-discrimination laws by barring bookings from adults under 21 years old. Tan says he dropped the case after the hotel amended its policy. This February, Tan filed a public records request with the US Department of Justice seeking copies of letters that Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly sent to companies such as Google and Apple advising them that they would not be held liable for continuing to distribute TikTok. After the attorney general's office claimed it did not have records matching Tan's request, he took the Department of Justice to court. (The New York Times has filed a similar lawsuit.) In a court filing, the Justice Department denied any wrongdoing. In March, Tan requested minutes and materials from meetings of Alphabet's board of directors related to the TikTok ban, including the same reported letter from the attorney general. Tan made his request under a law in Delaware, where Alphabet is incorporated, that allows shareholders acting in 'good faith' to inspect 'books and records' when investigating suspected mismanagement. Through a series of exchanges between Alphabet's attorneys and his, Tan learned that the company possessed about half a dozen relevant documents, but that it wouldn't turn them over unless ordered to do so by a court. 'The board minutes will show whether or not the board discussed the risks associated with making the TikTok application available through Google Play and, if so, whether and how they assessed the risk of liability,' Tan's lawsuit filed on Tuesday states. 'The board minutes will also show whether the board considered whether making TikTok available through Google Play constituted a positive violation of federal law.' Companies that violate the TikTok ban by continuing to distribute the app can face penalties of up to $5,000 per user. Tan's lawsuit alleges that Google should not be relying on Trump's executive order and Bondi's letter alone to shield them from legal risks, and that the tech giant could be held liable by a future president—or even by Trump, who is known to frequently change his mind. Gavril, the attorney representing Google, contended in one exchange with the attorneys representing Tan that 'a lot of planets would have to align for that hypothetical harm to become reality. Some would argue that a concerned shareholder should wait for there to be an actual harm before progressing to investigate how it came to be.' Alphabet and Apple have yet to specifically mention the TikTok law in shareholder disclosures listing risks to their businesses. Akamai, which provides content hosting services to TikTok, wrote in a February disclosure that the attorney general determined the company could continue serving the app 'without incurring any legal liability,' but added 'there is no assurance that we will not be exposed to liability' in the future. Tan says that many incidents under Trump 2.0 this year have left him concerned about the rule of law, the foundational democratic principle that everyone should be treated the same way by the government. But the TikTok situation was one he felt capable of investigating, and as a shareholder of tech companies such as Alphabet, he felt a duty to try to protect his own bottom line. 'If these companies are openly willing to break the law, will others be pressured into breaking the law because it's politically convenient?' he says. 'Will shareholders be left holding the bag when the legal liability comes due?' Tan says his work in tech has nothing to do with TikTok or Google, but in general, he doesn't want the industry he is part of a trend toward what he considers flagrant lawbreaking. He claims no one—not even friends and family—has encouraged him to pursue his lawsuits over the TikTok ban. His attorneys at Berger McDermott have represented Meta in the past, but the social media company has no hand in his cases, he says. Tan adds he is paying standard rates for his legal representation. 'It's been expensive,' he says, 'and it's going to be more expensive.' Tan explains that he prioritized challenging Google over other companies, including California-incorporated Apple, partly because of the Delaware law allowing him to seek internal records. In recent years, shareholders have filed an increasing number of these kinds of requests, with the hope of using the obtained records as the basis for shareholder resolutions or lawsuits against executives and board members. Most requests are resolved informally, but some end up in court. In March, Delaware enacted a law aimed at limiting the records companies must turn over, which could hamper Tan's request. Lawmakers in the state acknowledged they were under pressure to stop the flight of companies like Tesla to jurisdictions with more business-friendly statutes. Roy Shapira, a professor of law at Reichman University who studies corporate governance in Delaware, says that shareholders trying to hold a company accountable for intentionally violating the law may now find it even more difficult 'to show what directors knew and when they knew it.'


Business Wire
an hour ago
- Business Wire
AI Code Review Pioneer CodeRabbit Recognized in Redpoint's InfraRed 100
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- CodeRabbit, the most advanced AI code review platform, today announced its inclusion on the Redpoint InfraRed 100. This prestigious list highlights the 100 up-and-coming private companies in Cloud Infrastructure, showcasing the future leaders set to revolutionize the market. CodeRabbit, the most advanced AI code review platform, today announced its inclusion on the Redpoint InfraRed 100. CodeRabbit integrates foundational gen-AI models with multiple data sources that enhance the code context, leading to higher quality reviews, cutting down code review time and bugs in half. CodeRabbit's AI code reviews have been rapidly adopted by customers including The Linux Foundation, Groupon, Chegg, Trivago, and many more. Redpoint Ventures, a top-tier venture capital firm with a diverse portfolio including companies such as Snowflake, Twilio, Looker, Nextdoor, Ramp, Stripe, Nubank, HashiCorp, Netflix, Hims, and more, launched this list in 2023 to showcase the exceptional builders in the industry who are creating industry-transforming companies. To commemorate this achievement, CodeRabbit's co-founder and CEO Harjot Gill will join Redpoint at Nasdaq with other InfraRed 100 leaders to discuss the evolving landscape of cloud infrastructure. 'We are honored to be recognized in the InfraRed 100, especially alongside such a distinguished group of cloud infrastructure companies. We founded CodeRabbit with the mission to transform code reviews with AI to help developers automate the tedious parts of software development. We believe that AI, when augmented with appropriate context and implemented with the right guardrails will identify defects that are hard to catch in manual reviews, leading to fewer bugs and faster release cycles,' said Gill. 'We thank the team at Redpoint for this recognition and congratulate all the companies on the list.' For the complete list of companies included on this year's InfraRed 100 list and to read the full InfraRed industry report, click here. About CodeRabbit CodeRabbit is the pioneer of the AI code review category, evolving the historically manual and low-context review process into a more automated, context-aware workflow that's compatible with today's highly dynamic CI/CD pipeline. CodeRabbit enables engineering organizations that use code-gen agents to generate code at a fast pace to identify code quality issues before production, reducing code review cycles and allowing developers to reclaim valuable time. Headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, and funded by CRV, Flex Capital, and Engineering Capital, CodeRabbit is on a mission to transform code quality, security, and developer productivity with AI. Try CodeRabbit free at: About Redpoint Ventures: Redpoint has partnered with visionary founders to create new markets and redefine existing ones since 1999. We invest in startups across the seed, early and growth phases, and we're proud to have backed over 615 companies—including Snowflake, Looker, Kustomer, Twilio, 2U, DraftKings, Duo Security, HashiCorp, Stripe, Guild, HomeAway, Heroku, Netflix, and Sonos—with 183 IPOs and M+A exits. Redpoint manages $8.0 billion across multiple funds. For more information visit:


Vogue
an hour ago
- Vogue
Can AI Replace Therapists? And More Importantly, Should It?
'Can machines think?' It's a question that mathematician Alan Turing first posed in 1950 and became the cornerstone of his experiment, known as 'The Turing Test,' in which a human and a machine are presented with the same dilemma. If the machine could imitate human behavior, it was considered intelligent, something Turing predicted would increasingly happen in the decades to come. He didn't have to wait long: by the 1960s, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum had introduced the world to ELIZA, the first chatbot and forebearer of modern AI—and ELIZA was programmed to imitate a psychotherapist. But Turing's question feels more prescient than ever now, as we find ourselves at a disconcerting crossroads with technology advancing and extending its reach into the various touchpoints of our lives at a rate so quick that the guardrails haven't yet been created to corral it. In 2025, Turing's initial question has evolved into something different though: Can machines feel or understand feelings? Because, as increasing numbers of people turn toward AI in lieu of a human therapist, we are asking them to do just that. The technology has indeed come a long way since ELIZA. Now, you have options like Pi, which bills itself as 'your personal AI, designed to be supportive, smart, and there for you anytime.' Or Replika, 'which is always here to listen and talk.' There's also Woebot, and Earkick, and Wysa, and Therabot, the list goes on if you're just looking for someone—well, thing—to talk to. Some of these chatbots have been developed with the help of mental health professionals, and more importantly some haven't, and it's hard for the average client to discern which is which. One reason that more people are turning to AI for mental health help is cost—sessions with a human therapist (whether virtual or in-person) can be pricey and are often either not covered by insurance or require a lot of extra effort to navigate whether they will be covered. For younger generations, recession-proofing their budget has meant ditching a real therapist for a bot stand-in. Then there's the lingering stigma around seeking out mental health help. 'Many families, whether it be because of culture or religion or just ingrained beliefs, are passing down stigmatized views about therapy and mental health through generations,' says Brigid Donahue, a licensed clinical social worker and EMDR therapist in L.A. And there's the convenience factor: this new wave of mental health tools are available on your schedule (in fact, that's Woebot's tagline). 'Your AI therapist will never go on vacation, never call out or cancel a session, they're available 24/7,' says Vienna Pharaon, a marriage and family therapist and author of The Origins of You. 'It creates this perfect experience where you'll never be let down. 'But the truth is you don't heal through perfection.' That healing often comes with the ruptures, friction, and tension of a therapy session that isn't automated. 'When you eliminate imperfection and human flaws and the natural disappointments that will occur, we really rob clients of the experience of moving through challenges and conflicts,' says Pharaon. The so-called imperfections of a human therapist can actually be reassuring for many clients. 'For anyone who grew up with the intense pressure to be perfect, 'mistakes' made by a therapist can actually be corrective,' adds Donahue.