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Direct Message News

Direct Message News is the byline under which DMNews publishes its editorial output. Our team produces content across psychology, politics, culture, digital, analysis, and news, applying the Direct Message methodology of moving beyond surface takes to deliver real clarity. Articles reflect our team's collective editorial process, sourcing, drafting, fact-checking, editing, and review, rather than a single writer's work. DMNews takes editorial responsibility for content under this byline. For more on how we work, see our editorial standards.

Zeta Global tracked what AI shoppers do before they buy — seven in ten still complete the purchase on the brand’s own site, but the data suggests AI has already shaped which brand that would be

Illinois directed its economic development agency to stop processing new data center tax deals starting this July, after lawmakers left Springfield without passing the reforms the governor asked for

Indiana disclosed this year that more than 93 percent of its data center tax exemption went to a single company, with that one recipient’s share increasing by 1,011 percent in a single year

Virginia projected its data center tax exemption would cost $1.5 million a year when it was created in 2008. In fiscal 2025, the state’s own report put the actual cost at $1.9 billion — a gap that has become a reference point in data center tax debates in more than a dozen other states.

AI has not solved marketing’s measurement problem, it has raised the stakes, because boards now expect proof of ROI at the same time as the tools that were supposed to provide it have made attribution harder to defend

Ohio suspended its data center tax break after the cost to the state hit $1.6 billion — eleven times what legislators had approved — making it the first major US state to pull back on AI infrastructure incentives over actual fiscal cost

In 2016 roughly 45 out of every 100 Google searches sent someone to a website, and by the first four months of 2026 that number had fallen to 32, a loss of 13 clicks per hundred that happened quietly enough that most marketing dashboards are still measuring the channel as though it hadn’t

Starbucks is now selling almost as much protein cold foam as flat whites, which means customers are paying two extra dollars to make their coffee taste a little more like a protein shake

Nearly 150,000 tech workers have been laid off so far in 2026 with AI cited as the reason, at companies that are simultaneously posting record revenues, and the gap between those two facts is starting to show up in public opinion data about every brand associated with the industry

Research on influence shows that expert opinion is most likely to be ignored precisely when the stakes of ignoring it are highest

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