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Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Aimee Lou Wood and Patrick Schwarzenegger Reunite for Venmo Commercial
A new Venmo campaign has caught the attention of White Lotus fans everywhere. Titled, "You Can Venmo This, You Can Venmo That," the campaign features Aimee Lou Wood and Patrick Schwarzenegger. In the ad, the two are paying for a range of items — from groceries and records to hats and rideshares. At one point, Schwarzenegger says, "Everybody I know uses Venmo. For splitting costs for dinners, concert tickets and vacations so I had to get Aimee Lou on board to make her life easier... As an entrepreneur I'm really serious about my 'rewards game,' so it's a win I can earn cash back when I pay with the Venmo Debit Card. I love a rewards hack.' Wood then pipes in, "Hanging out with my lovely friend, Patrick, I quickly found out that Venmo is a go-to way for people in the States to send money to friends, but it's so much more than that." She continues, 'As an Aquarius, I tend to be quite clever with money, so I love that you can earn some serious cash back when you spend your balance with the Venmo Debit Card – that means another astrology reading for me!' The commercial is set to the Iconic song, "The Choice Is Yours." According to AdWeek, "Seeley's target audience for the new Venmo campaign is Gen Z and younger millennials, which make up the majority of Venmo's 64 million monthly users, who want more functionality from the payments app..." In 2022, as outlined by the outlet, Venmo partnered with Amazon so that customers could pay for their items with the Venmo app. Since then, it has integrated with other stores and companies like Uber, Instacart, TikTok Shop, and Domino's. And what are the perks? Those who sign up for the Venmo debit card can get 15% cash back this summer for select purchases at stores like Sephora, Walmart, Lyft, McDonald's, and Lou Wood and Patrick Schwarzenegger Reunite for Venmo Commercial first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 5, 2025
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Sydney Sweeney's latest viral project is personal: ‘Weird in the very best way'
Sydney Sweeney is giving the people what they want, even if that something is a little unusual. The 'Euphoria' heartbreaker, who bought a house in the Florida Keys last year, has an eyebrow raising project that has nothing to do with movies or TV. The actress teamed up with personal care brand Dr. Squatch to create a soap called Bathwater Bliss, made with a dash of — you guessed it or maybe not — her bath water. OK, that's not as gnarly as it sounds. The used H20, already purified, was reportedly treated, then infused into the $8 bar. The woodsy smelling item, which also contains pine bark extract, launched Friday, and is already sold out. But we have a feeling the powers that be may throw together a few more batches due to the crazy high demand. The idea, 'weird in the very best way,' was actually hatched by Sweeney. Last fall, the 'White Lotus' star appeared in a few ads for Dr. Squatch's men's natural body wash. In one, she promotes the product from a bubble bath. The ad not only went viral, but many of her fans were joking they wanted to buy not just the wash, but the leftover water. 'There was this undercurrent of conversations related to Sydney,' John Ludeke, the brand's VP of global marketing, told AdWeek. 'I don't think they meant it in a literal sense, or maybe now it's apparent they did.' On Wednesday night, in New York for the premiere of her new Apple TV series, 'Echo Valley,' she was, of course, asked about her unexpected success in the male grooming industry (projected to reach $376.4 billion by 2030). 'I think that it's more fun to see everyone else talking about it,' the 27-year-old said cheekily, proudly adding, 'I pitched it.' Despite Sweeney's soap being sold out, you can still shop her favorites on the website.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Scott Jennings' Temper ERUPTS At Former Biden Official On CNN
Scott Jennings turned up the volume Tuesday on CNN. The resident Republican foil on 'NewsNight' lost his temper in an exchange with former Joe Biden adviser Neera Tanden over vandalism at Tesla sites. (Watch the video below.) 'So let me educate you about my position!' he screamed in a rant that had him trending on social media. Even without regular host Abby Phillip, Jennings still ratcheted up the tension with fill-in moderator John Berman trying to play peacemaker. Jennings reportedly is getting a hefty raise for being the political version of a pro wrestling heel on the show, but he presumably is not acting. The friction the former George W. Bush staffer generates appears to be working in terms of ratings. AdWeek reported that 'NewsNight' is CNN's most popular show in the important 25-54 age demographic. Jennings' regular support for President Donald Trump and his DOGE hatchet man Elon Musk is fairly predictable, but viewers might be tuning in for volatile confrontations like Tuesday's. Jennings sided with Trump's assessment that the suspects involved in vandalizing Tesla sites were domestic terrorists protesting Tesla owner Musk's cuts in the federal government. 'That's the American left right now,' Jennings said. 'It is one angry mob after another willing to take things into their own hands, up to and including keying, firebombing, and otherwise vandalizing cars and car dealerships and charging stations.' 'So, when they do it to a Tesla dealership, it's really bad,' Tanden interjected. 'But when they do it to the halls of Congress, we should pardon them? Is that your position?' Amid crosstalk, Jennings said: 'I know you haven't been around for a while, so let me educate you about my position about Jan. 6.' 'I'm so sorry,' Tanden said sarcastically. Rattled by Tanden and the panel din, Jennings could take no more. He warned her about being condescending and then went Vesuvius. 'So let me educate you about my position!' he bellowed. Berman tried to direct traffic as the two mixed it up. 'Guys, let's do this. Jan. 6 and then Neera.' 'I'm sorry you're getting emotional,' Tanden said. 'Yeah, I'm sorry you're a condescending person who hasn't been paying attention to what I do,' Jennings replied. 'So here's the issue. I didn't support what happened on Jan. 6 and was one of the first Republicans to call it out. I don't support the pardons. I have repeatedly ... said that no violence in our political system is acceptable. But this right here, what's going on with a guy who helps our country, who runs successful companies, who doesn't have to be doing this, and now one of his companies is under systematic terroristic threats and violence all over the country. And people seem to be laughing about it or fine with it. It's outrageous. I've sat at this table and had people say we should cut Elon Musk from the government totally. He rescued our astronauts today. Is that what we want? The treatment of this guy is outrageous. These people who are doing this need to be found and put in jail and made an example of. That's my point.' Or perhaps the point is, Jennings got triggered and it's exactly what CNN viewers want to see. Tanden took the liberty of owning Jennings with the last word on X, formerly Twitter: 'Some men are so emotional,' she wrote. CNN Pundit Scott Jennings, Who Regularly Defends Trump, Gets Raise Amid Staff Cuts Abby Phillip's Priceless Look Cuts Down Scott Jennings' Excuse For Trump Scott Jennings Is Dared by WaPo Reporter To Imitate Elon Musk's Salute On CNN
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Volvo's AI-Generated Ad In Saudi Arabia Pulled Because It Was 'Not In Line With Volvo Cars' Global Guidelines'
Volvo has pulled an AI-generated ad made for Saudi Arabia because it is "not in line with Volvo Cars' global guidelines." The ad, titled "Come back stronger," initially received a glowing writeup in AdWeek, but it was also hard to understand how it was ever approved in the first place. Aside from the part where the car ad didn't include any cars, artificial intelligence is incredibly energy intensive and notoriously awful for the planet. Volvo, on the other hand, says it's committed to slashing emissions and saving the planet, so you'd think AI would have been a "no" even before anyone suggested using it. Still, Volvo could have offset the emissions created by the ad that, according to AdWeek, was "[p]roduced by Dubai-based Lion Creative for Volvo's Europe, Middle East and Africa Division and Electromin, the automaker's Saudi distributor." So I did what any respectable journalist would do and asked a Volvo rep about it. They weren't able to answer my questions immediately, presumably since the people who could actually answer my questions live at least six hours in the future. Today, we have Volvo USA's official statement: "We are aware of the ad in Saudi Arabia. It was a local initiative, not in line with Volvo Cars' global guidelines. The ad is being taken down/withdrawn." Read more: Pokémon Go Was A Plot To Use Your Data To Fast Track An AI-Slop Google Maps Competitor While the video was still listed on Volvo KSA's YouTube channel earlier this morning, it has since been taken down. The internet never forgets, though, and conveniently, our friends at CarScoops still have a copy you can watch. Just don't expect anything too exciting. According to AdWeek, our western eyes won't get it because it was made specifically for a Saudi Arabian audience: To a western eye, it can be a challenge to see how this interplay of rhetoric and images might speak to an American car buyer—but of course, that's not the target audience here. Narrated in Arabic (though there is an English version), the ad is a mélange of "technically accurate and culturally resonant renders for Saudi Arabia," Lion's founder and executive creative director Osama Saddiq told ADWEEK. And while I would love to tell you I personally killed a bad car ad in the same way I most likely personally gave the PR rep a headache Thursday night, the ad generated plenty of controversy on its own. In fact, the pushback ended up being strong enough that AdWeek published a follow-up editorial from an ad exec who defended the use of AI. Notably, though, that editorial doesn't include the words, "environment," "sustainability," "emissions" or "carbon." You'd think that would be the top concern here, but maybe it's just more convenient to leave that part out. It's less fun to talk about AI when someone insists on bringing up how terrible it is for the planet we live on. At this point, no one actually believes human-caused climate change isn't real. There will be people in the comments section claiming they do, but they know. Admitting it publicly, though, would mean the other team was correct all along, and they're too Facebook-pilled to ever do that. Better to bury their heads in the sand or buy a spot in an underground city like they had in Paradise. In a world where we'd listened to the scientists and got our energy from sustainable sources, AI's insatiable thirst for electricity would be less of a problem. In reality, though, you simply can't ethically use AI if you care about the planet in the slightest. Still, it can be hard to understand just how much energy AI uses. As a review from the Polytechnic Institute of Paris points out, getting an answer from ChatGPT uses 10 times the energy compared to a regular Google search. Still, that doesn't fully illustrate the scale we're talking about, especially since Fancy Autocomplete is pretty efficient compared to image generation. Creating a single AI image requires about 40 times more energy than text generation does, making an AI video several orders of magnitude worse than asking Grok to steal a recipe for you. It's also difficult to estimate exactly how much energy is used specifically for AI, but over the next couple years, AI will likely end up using between 85 billion and 134 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. And you know what they say — a billion kWh here, a billion kWh there, and pretty soon you're talking real emissions. If that still doesn't put it into perspective for you, the same review cites an International Energy Agency estimate that suggests that between 2022 and 2026, the increase in energy demands from data centers, cryptocurrencies and AI will be on par with the entire country of Sweden's on the low end and Germany's on the high end. The review was also published in November of last year, so if anything, newer models likely use even more energy than the estimates used to arrive at those conclusions. And while some companies work to offset some of those emissions, Google's latest environmental report showed even those efforts haven't been enough, saying, "Our [2023] emissions [...] have increased by 37% compared to 2022, despite considerable efforts and progress in renewable energy. This is due to the electricity consumption of our data centres, which exceeds our capacity to develop renewable energy projects." Ultimately, it's almost impossible to use AI and also limit the damage of global climate change since we need to be reducing our emissions, not increasing them. As Anne-Laure Ligozat, a professor of computer science at ENSIIE and LISN, put it, "None of the arguments put forward by Google to reduce AI emissions hold water." And while models may get more efficient, that will also encourage people to use them more frequently. "This tends to cancel out any potential energy savings," Ligozat's co-author Alex de Vries wrote. "My main argument is that AI should be used sparingly." So while no one working for a company that claims to believe in science and wants to hit net-zero by 2040 should have approved an AI ad, at least the people at the top were willing to retract the ad. And, hopefully, automakers that say they believe in science from using AI ads in the future. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
USA Today
09-02-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Pat McAfee, NFL stars shine in new NFL flag football ad for Super Bowl 59
Pat McAfee, NFL stars shine in new NFL flag football ad for Super Bowl 59 Show Caption Hide Caption Fox releases IndyCar ad featuring Pato O'Ward ahead of Super Bowl Sunday Ahead of its on-screen debut during the Super Bowl, Fox released its latest ad from it's IndyCar promo campaign featuring fan-favorite Pato O'Ward. Flag football has been a major focus of the NFL as of late. Not only has the Pro Bowl turned to flags in order to improve player safety, but the NFL itself has used the Super Bowl and other big events to advertise the rising sport. The NFL's latest ad features a myriad of NFL stars including Marshawn Lynch, Justin Jefferson, and Myles Garrett. It also features a brief appearance from social media superstar and former NFL punter Pat McAfee. Check it out here the NFL Super Bowl commercial spot on YouTube. AD METER 2025: Sign up to rate all the big game commercials McAfee, NFL stars featured in flag football commercial The NFL is looking to make girls' flag football a varsity sport in all 50 states. The ad itself has boys on the fictional high school football team noting that "Girls can't play football" and then growing increasingly frustrated when realizing that the girls at their school are just as good, if not better than them. The NFL's push for girls' flag football has been an immense success. Per AdWeek, NFL CMO Tom Ellis claimed, "Just this week, two more states have sanctioned girls' flag football as a varsity sport, and we have had a 100% increase in sanctioning in just the last year, so this year's spot is on that momentum." AD METER: Vote on Sunday's commercials
