Ben Young
As seen in:
LinkedIn,
Medium,
ABC News (Australia),
Daily Star (UK),
SCMP Style,
South China Morning Post,
Substack,
Flipboard,
Podbean,
The Chronicle
and
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Ben Young
Summer of Quantum: Building momentum for space-based QKD
Glasgow, UK | 21 October 2026 – The pace of development in quantum technologies continues to accelerate, and over the past few months, space engineering company Craft Prospect has been involved in conversations across the UK, Europe, Japan and the United States exploring the future of secure communications. Taking quantum technology from the lab to orbit Senior Quantum Engineer Andrew Kelly presented at two key industry events this year.
bwagy, the blog of Ben Young
there are likely ~100 ppl alive today that deeply understand all of these together: product instinct, what makes good software, design, technical depth, a real model of ai, the psychology of a single user, the shape of culture, team building, the ability to motivate, & the… — signüll (@signulll) April 18, 2026 I like this, I think many time in your life, you are one of those 100 people. It’s just figuring out what is that grouping.
bwagy, the blog of Ben Young
The Age of Machines January 31st, 2026 I think we’ve just entered the Age of Machines. Remember playing Civilization? And your civilization enters a new age and everything gradually upgrades to that new age. Like the Bronze Age, the Modern age etc. What tips us, is ClawdBot, or now MoltBot. But the first consumer (ish) personal agent, that is very capable. Each of us, is going to have our own AI agents, that we take with us to our jobs, in our relationships, in our learning.
Could investing in China’s AI industry prove more lucrative than the US’?
7 hours ago The iPhone may feel ubiquitous, but Apple has consistently lagged behind rival Samsung in terms of global smartphone market share. Tim Cook's newest iteration, though, is breaking through — and returning Apple to the top of the industry. A new report from Counterpoint Research projects that Apple …
bwagy, the blog of Ben Young
Simple solutions October 26th, 2025 “When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there.” -Steve Jobs.
Powering Custom Workflows with the Qlik Answers API
While a powerful, built-in chat interface is a great starting point, the true potential of an enterprise knowledge system is realized when it meets users where they already work. Business doesn’t happen in a single application; it flows through Slack channels, Microsoft Teams, custom internal portals, and bespoke mobile apps. Forcing users to context-switch to a separate tool just to ask a question is a recipe for low adoption.
bwagy, the blog of Ben Young
Spare capacity September 9th, 2025 I really enjoyed this Max Verstappen chat with Chris Harris. In the discussion, it comes about preparation and practice. When he goes out for a lap, he’s on it straight away. Whereas other drivers might do a couple of laps to check out the track. All drivers get the same amount of time on the track, by doing this he’s extending his exposure to race conditions over every other driver.
Looking Back, Planning Ahead
This year we celebrate our 40th Anniversary. It's incredible to think of the legacy Georgia Trend has established over those four decades. Originally modeled after Florida Trend, the magazine soon became - under a succession of canny Georgia owners - something uniquely Georgian: a monthly celebration of the state's success as well as a safe harbor for discussion of wide-ranging, statewide issues.
bwagy, the blog of Ben Young
As good as other forms of entertainment get, nothing beats sliding into a good book. (My eldest has just hit this age where she gets engrossed in a good book. Bliss.) This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2025 at 7:14 am.
Quiet period | Nudge
Edition #501 On quiet periods, AI search (lots there) and a return to brand marketing. Ahead of earnings, public companies enter what is known as a quiet period. Where they won’t comment on stories or make big announcements. This is to clear the air and avoid any unfair releases or advantages. And to give focus to the earnings. Now, savvy reporters and activists will sometimes use this window, to drop news, knowing the firm can’t or won’t respond.
Summertime blues: corporate finance faces a financial reporting reckoning
Summertime blues: corporate finance faces a financial reporting reckoning Borrowers and lenders can plan ahead of the curve amid financial pressures Unlock this content. The content you are trying to view is exclusive to our subscribers. Take a Free Trial or Login Topics Partner Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell Partner Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell
Library edit | Nudge
Edition #499 Huge edit post the Fourth of July, F1 movie sold real sponsorships to the tune of $40m and influencers, do we need them? Huge edition this week after a one week hiatus. I reviewed over 200 stories on the shortlist, so it took a bit. Fill up a cup of coffee and enjoy. There was a bunch of measurement stories this week, one featuring data from Kochava, talking about how MMM’s are uncovering drastic opportunities for brands.
Instagram indexed
Edition #498 Instagram opening up to Google, David Droga on 37 years & is Apple’s branded integration going too far? Apple has really stepped up their brand integrations this year, promoting Severance on Apple.com and the F1 Movie through Maps, Haptic Trailers & Tim Cook joining in with a few tweets. Showing enthusiasm from the top.
UGC | Nudge
Edition #496 UGC/influencer spend surpasses traditional media, Cannes & loads of AI stories. For readers heading to Cannes, you might enjoy this fun/informative guide I put together How to Sound Smart (and Stay Sane) at Cannes. Grab the PDF to read on the go. Safe travels. There’s even a section for those whose partners are going but they aren’t! AdAge has a piece on how e.l.f and Microsoft quickly turned around content collaborations with TikTok influencer Oliver Widger.
Practical measurement
Edition #494 Einstein – “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. Last week I swapped out how we send this, so you may notice some changes as we fine tune the set up. Love your feedback! This makes my process to send a bit easier/streamlined. I really enjoyed Alex Schultz’s post on how to do things you can’t measure, this is my approach or lens on measurement, simple, practical and anchored in the business objectives.
Westpac deploys real-time AI to take on scammers
Westpac has introduced a new AI-powered call assistant aimed at tackling scams as they happen. Currently in pilot with the bank’s specialist scam and fraud team, the tool is designed to identify signs of a scam during live customer calls and support operators in responding swiftly and consistently. The clever tech can detect indications the customer may be about to transfer money to a scam, based on their phone conversation with the bank.
Google Yay/nay | Nudge
Edition #491 On is Google growing or not? AI trends & Linkedin as the new creator spot. So is Google search usage up or down? In questioning Eddie Cue said April was the first time Google searches from the Safari address bar was down. Yet Google said, the queries have only gone up. Google stock dropped on the news. But you have to imagine, that Apple have some incentives here to play down how mission critical Google is with $20b on the line! And highlight the optionality consumers have.
Outposts | Nudge
Edition #490 On the outpost play, zero followers required and Bernard Arnault. Thanks to Ben for his tweets out of Possible this week, he had a couple of Gary Vee bangers. I remember watching Gary in the very early days, where he was mostly focused on the wine (and then some bangers).
Punditry | Nudge
Edition #489 Punditry, Lyft ads & cookies. After a spring break road trip I am back in the hot seat! I am happy to inform you of a couple of milestones, I have now dined at the place which invented the hamburger. And had a pint at the oldest pub in the US. A lot to dig in to this week, some things I might pick up next week and go a little deeper. The surprising news was Google Chrome set to continue to use third-party cookies. With a pending divestiture and CMA in the UK, it is surprising.
Right questions | Nudge
Edition #488 Asking the right questions, the platform generated content era & Quake. One thread of chat at this weeks breakfast was on this idea of the fourth content era, content created by platforms. And that this now, is the aim for brands, to make sure platforms are fed with the right ingredients, to represent your brand when queried by their users. I liked the framing, and asked if they could write it up. So hopefully have something in a week or so.
CHIPS | Nudge
Edition #487 On CHIPS not Cookies, AI driving content quality & new Spotify ad announcements. CHIPS not cookies, CHIPS stands for: Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State. I mean who is in charge of naming these things ha. And it is an interesting novel concept, it enables a ‘third party’ cookie to be set, but partitioned within the site it is shown in. Thus retaining the privacy benefits. This rolled out to Safari 18.4 this week.
Papua New Guinea’s NRL push to bolster economic growth
Rugby League is a national obsession in Papua New Guinea and the award of a team franchise to compete in Australia’s NRL from 2028 will come as a major economic boost for the country, as well as helping to deepen its ties with Australia. The Hunters NRL team was a major topic of conversation among delegates at the CEO100 business summit in the capital Port Moresby in March, contributing to a broader sense of optimism towards the PNG economy.
Play | Nudge
Edition #486 On creating time to play, AI’s impact on agencies & Discord is getting mobile ads. On creating time to play, AI’s impact on agencies & Discord is getting mobile ads. Coming next week I’m going to give readers a preview of a new newsletter from me. It’s called Dux, and it’s a short note, of one marketing idea a week, relevant to senior marketing folks, it can be read above the fold on your phone. So short, snappy but impactful. And it’s on Substack! Which will be fun to explore.
bwagy, the blog of Ben Young
I enjoyed Kevin Kellys travel tips from 50 years of traveling. They’re brilliant, and I think tee up, how to set up a trip for success. My travel philosophy, is to try travel at least once every 3 months. To get away, to reset, to get out of your normal schedule. That doesn’t always happen, but it’s what we aim to do. And now the kids are in New York school with their long summer breaks, something we don’t get in New Zealand, we try to capitalize on that to see the world and work from afar.
Change fatigue | Nudge
Edition #485 On the risk of change fatigue, Perplexity’s Squid Games & Netflix engagement. Had a great breakfast this week, getting folks together to chat on all things media. Funnily enough, a lot was around last weeks topic, how LLMs are driving traffic, getting your company mentioned in them, what are good prompts to have, how to write a good prompt (hint have the LLM help you do that). Fun. We don’t seem to have it yet but I think it is going to lead to a bit of change fatigue.
LLM referrals | Nudge
Edition #484 A rapid uptick in new users from LLMs, brand safety AI agents and Substack goes brand. We all saw it coming, the growth of LLMs as an acquisition source, but interesting to see two businesses in the past week note their growth directly from them. Mercury bank, and Vercel app platform both experienced approximately a threefold increase in their signups, driven from the LLMs. Notably ChatGPT as the biggest source. Mercury noting exponential rise of signups from AI search.
Behavioural interventions to increase uptake of FIT colorectal screening in Scotland (TEMPO): a nationwide, eight-arm, factorial, randomised controlled trial
ArticlesVolume 405, Issue 10484p1081-1092Open access Affiliations & Notes aSchool of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the) bSchool of Medicine, Dentistry, and Nursing, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the) cRobertson Centre for Biostatistics, School of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)...
Search wars | Nudge
Edition #483 Who is winning the AI search wars, newsletter hustlers and AI spending your ad dollars. I wrote on this a while ago, but the thesis was that ChatGPT etc had a huge risk of being undermined by Google itself, because it has the muscle memory and ability to roll out AI products to billions. And this story from BI seems to confirm that, Google said Monday that it now sees more than 5 trillion searches a year.
Cross platform | Nudge
Edition #482 Cold plunges, bug bounties & cross platform measurement. Over New Years, I had the pleasure to stop in Oslo, is it even a city right? The harbour was all frozen over, and dotted around the harbour are these floating havens of warmth. Wood fired saunas. Naturally I had to. After securing a spot, my wife and some friends went along. A two hour slot, gets you a spot in the sauna, stoke it as you wish, and then, if you dare, go dunk yourself in the harbour.
bwagy, the blog of Ben Young
I thought I’d write about some of the things I find exciting about AI. It’s bringing about such a profound rapid change and quickly. One of those bursts where the future happens a bit quicker. But that change isn’t evenly distributed (it never is!) a similar reference, I remember a time where someone surveyed Americans for the broader awareness of Uber and AirBNB – and there was a point in time where everyone in tech knew them but the others didn’t. AI has the same problem, but for actual usage.
Bug Bounties Can Transform Ad Tech
Earlier this month, many of us let out a collective groan as we received that dreaded message: “Have you seen the latest Adalytics report?” Cue the usual discussions of the ad industry’s latest horror story. Making matters worse, the Adalytics report on advertisers monetizing child sexual abuse material came just a week after DeepSee.io’s disclosures about ads lining the pockets of content pirates. In both cases, ads ended up on sites that advertisers don’t want to be on.
Metrics models
This is neat, Graze is helping Bluesky monetize their feeds but also build your own social network in a way. Simple, good execution, I should try out the ad product. Late last week we also had the latest Adalytics report drop, leading to a raft of Friday night messages, from synopsis, cause, who was impacted etc. Not cool to see. Thanks for reading Nudge Note! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
New take | Nudge
Edition #480 On the benefits of our new week, new take culture, Gemini Ads & do we have a Google cookie resolution. New week, new take. The common joke is how the public conversation quickly swaps from one topic to another, meaning the experts now need to recalibrate on a new topic. We’re all guilty of this. i.e. Deepseek to tariffs. It’s an interesting cultural phenomena, whereby everyone has an audience, so wants to be able to speak to it. But have you thought about the byproduct of this trend?
Scotch | Nudge
Edition #479 Internet brain, Meridian is now available and let’s enjoy a glass of scotch with Harrison Ford. Internet brain seems to be a topic bubbling up, I caught this piece via Ben Dietz note, could creativity by the antidote to internet brain? And gives some ideas on giving us all a bit of a reset. It’s a good reminder, do make sure you give yourself time to play, to explore, to learn, to just tinker with new stuff.
Vine 2.0 | Nudge
Edition #478 How AI overviews are democratising search, TikTok is back but is Vine? AI Overviews is democraticising search results. Readers from last week might have caught the datapoint that 63% of sources cited in AI overviews are not found in the traditional top 10 results. Which is super interesting, that information was there before, but it wasn’t in a nice and tidy bundle to be a top 10 result. Which in over optimized keywords was always the case, each page was designed to be there.
TikTok ban? | Nudge
Edition #477 What will we do with all that extra attention? TTD makes an acquisition & LLMs drive influx of traffic. So will TikTok be up by the end of the weekend or not? Who knows. It seems unlikely at time of writing. It’s worth mentioning that India cut TikTok back in 2020. So who benefits? eMarketer suggests that Meta and YouTube could capture about half of the reallocated TIkTok ad dollars. Let’s say, US Ad spend on TikTok is about $1.5b/month (as it was tracking last year). That’s $50m/day.
25 | Nudge
Edition #476 On advertising to agents, CES & programmatic on planes. Welcome to 2025, with CES in full swing, it is a little quieter in the start to the year. Did you go? Thoughts? I hope you all had a good break. ICYMI here was my 2024 recap. This was an interesting take from Perplexity’s CEO, serving ads to agents. “Aravind explains, Instead of showing ads to humans directly, advertisements would be targeted at AI agents that work on users’ behalf.
bwagy, the blog of Ben Young
I’m starting the year with enthusiasm for all the new technology & things we can build. It feels reductive to say that it is like a whole new world of opportunity, the same as when we all first got access to the internet. But it is exactly that. The initial thought with the internet was, you could look up anything, and that access would help you do anything. Or at least that mass opening of information, was the culture and ethos.
Post Thanksgiving
Edition #474 Perplexity ads in the wild, things that make you go MMM and deals galore. The second to last edition of the year! There will be a final note next week, with my schedule a bit jammed these last few weeks. Feels like a world of events have happened since the last note, which was just two weeks ago. I was fortunate enough to spend Thanksgiving upstate, awaking to a day of snow, so naturally we made a snow man, went sledding and soaked it all up.
Batman | Nudge
Edition #473 Batman’s riff on AI, TTD doing CTV operating system & is AI infallible? The Trade Desk announced that they are working on a smart TV operating system. I spent a bit of time a couple of years back exploring the tv operating system space, more to understand the data collection. And it’s an interesting industry, because it’s fragmented but also, the age of devices. Yes, newer tv’s have software updates. But that’s a recent phenomena.
Busy period | Nudge
Edition #472 I’ve heard my first Christmas tune, the business of attention and something new. Adelaide hosted The Business of Attention earlier thisweek, with a full field of speakers sharing their learnings throughout the day. A good dipstick of what it takes to bring a whole industry into a new world of metrics. Jonah Goodhart opened with a compelling talk on attention. But thanks to the March, Zach & the team over there.
Analytics Agent | Nudge
Edition #471 On the agent’ifying of everything (or will it), playful ads and programmatic audio can be problematic? AI Agents are suddenly all the rage, Salesforceis leading the charge with Agentforce. Yet Ari Paparo commented a while back that adtech world has been a bit slower to ‘AI’, so I thought I’d touch on the topic. Here’s what I shared with a colleague downunder earlier this week: Seeing a few clients very early thinking about ‘AI Agents’ – Sequoia piece on it is worth a read.
Hallows earnings 🎃
Edition #470 What an earnings week, there’s a new search engine in town & PAAPI. Halloween edition! This week, we saw YouTube surprise, surpassing $50b in revenue in the last twelve months! Imagine that as a standalone business. Snap, hit new highs on subscribers (12m) and Reddit feels the Google traffic bump with a 68% year on year growth in revenue. What’s driving YouTube?
CAC LTV | Nudge
Edition #469 On my surprise in finding which industry this vernacular has gone into, branded content announcements & dark traffic. I spent some time looking at food ads this week, that is DoorDash & Uber Eats and co-incidentally was able to speak with a restauranteur about it. One thing that surprised me was about this space is, the vernacular! As long as your CAC is below your LTV, you’re gravy! Wait, what.
Branded audio | Nudge
Edition #468 Digg, gamification of leisure and audiobook growth at Spotify, will it lead to branded audio? I enjoyed this bit of internet history with TheVerge‘s interview of Digg founder Kevin Rose, they even made the story Digg themed. This was like the last year of university when Digg was at its prime, the whole Web 2.0 era was upon us! I remember using rails to build my own ‘Web 2.0’ app fun.
LLM Ads | Nudge
Edition #466 On what LLM ads could look like, Outbrain brings Moments to their publishers and who makes $1m/year on Substack? As promised I put some thoughts down on what LLM advertising could look like. I think the big variables in whether there is a whole net new ecosystem/platform does still come down to two variables, 1) how big each of them get with sustained usage. Alphabet, Meta & Microsoft are all exhausting the potential use cases and growth by implementing them in their own eco-systems.
Trump vs Harris: what it means for the Australian economy
Trade is the first area where Clarke says Australia could be vulnerable. Trump has set himself apart from Harris on trade policy with tough talk on China, including the threat of punitive tariffs. That could have knock-on effects for Australia’s relationship with our biggest trading partner.
Event week | Nudge
Edition #465 Cloudflare comes to the creators rescue, conversational podcast on demand & Spotify giving out big deals. A huge week in stories, bare with us, and do take your time, there’s some goodies in there. One thread I picked up on Twitter was talking about how LLMs ads might look/work. So I think I’ll put together a piece on that, would love your thoughts/feedback. A question I am lingering on is, how is this an opportunity to do something new/different? What do you think?
Real AI | Nudge
Edition #464 Viant launch something tangible to point at, Perplexity posters and will the Google breakup be everything everyone wants? This week we have Joe Zappa joining us for the intro, he’s been a sage voice of recent on adtech marketing & positioning and I’ve been enjoying how he shines the light on the good stuff in the industry. Joe here. Monday Viant launched ViantAI, an “autonomous advertising” platform that automates a great deal of the media buying process.
Brand vs Performance
Edition #463 A great example of brand vs performance from ANZ, AI fraud on Spotify and 007. How could I not touch on this Mark Ritson piece, featuring ANZ bank in New Zealand. It lifts the veil on how a brand campaign, got stretched into other areas and lost its way. “And you try to build brand and achieve customer acquisition all within the same ad, you end up not doing either one particularly well.” Not that this is news to those in the hot seat.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Ben
Contact Ben, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack