The Weekly 10: marketing, media and industry statistics to know now — July 23, 2025 edition

From the share of Gen Z that thinks private labels are as good as national brands, to the rise in early back-to-school shopping, these are the data points we’re paying attention to right now.

The share of digital video ads that were made with generative AI in some capacity (from “built from scratch” to “adjusted” with AI), according to a new Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) survey. The study, which queried 368 ad buyers, indicates this figure will increase to roughly 2 in 5 next year, with small- and mid-sized brands seeing the highest rates of adoption.

The number of Emmy nominations that “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” has received since it premiered in 2015. Last week, CBS announced that it would cancel the program at the end of the 2025-2026 broadcast season, underscoring an industry-wide shift away from the late-night talk show format. (Advertising revenue for “The Late Show” has declined from $121.1 million in 2018 to $70.2 million last year, according to data from ad-tracking firm Guideline, as Reuters reports.)

The net profit for Netflix during Q2, as reported during its latest earnings call. The streamer also upgraded its fiscal forecast for H2, noting that advertising revenue is “on track to roughly double” year over year.

The share of Gen Z consumers who believe that private labels offer the same or worse value than national brands, per a new study from Numerator — the least favorable sentiment among surveyed cohorts. Interestingly, Gen Z is also tracking to become the category’s largest customer demographic, directing an estimated 18.5% of their total CPG and merchandise spend toward store brands in 2026, according to the research.

The amount of caffeine in Liquid Death’s new line of energy drinks, as The Wall Street Journal’s Katie Deighton reports — roughly half as much as other challenger brands in the space, such as Celsius and Prime. Liquid Death’s rollout plan, leading to a nationwide launch in January, will rely on viral marketing that juxtaposes its tongue-in-cheek, macabre branding with the “unextreme” caffeine level, Deighton notes.

The estimated number of global web users considered “dark” — unmeasured and unmonetized, due to ad blockers — per new research from Ad-Shield. Only 43% of these users electively block ads, according to the report; most intervention comes from third-party cybersecurity stakeholders, such as IT departments and public Wi-Fi providers. All told, the report indicates that nearly 20% of all web traffic is effectively invisible to marketers.

The number of U.S. homes listed for $1 in June of this year — an increase of 24% compared to the same month last year, and up nearly 83% since June 2023 — per the latest Realtor.com data. The increasing popularity of this tactic has spurred discussion about false advertising, lead generation and the larger real estate marketing ecosystem.

The claimed incremental return on ad spend (ROAS) during a campaign test of Hewlett Packard’s forthcoming media network, according to a new report from Adweek. This hardware-integrated platform is designed to allow marketers to serve ads directly through HP personal computers, with the ability to target users based on first-party data collected from the device, per Adweek.

The retail price of Callaway’s new novelty hockey stick putter, part of a merchandising tie-in for “Happy Gilmore 2,” the long-awaited sequel to Adam Sandler’s 1996 cult-classic golf comedy. The film, slated to start streaming on Netflix this Friday (July 25), has springboarded several nontraditional activations for high-profile brands, including U.S. Bank and Subway.