TikTok x UMG Has a New Deal.
TikTok and Universal Music Group have signed a new multi-year global licensing deal, keeping UMG's roster, including Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, and Sabrina Carpenter, on the platform after their high-profile three-month split. Beyond music rights, the agreement adds e-commerce integrations, giving artists new tools to sell merchandise and promote tours directly on the platform.

Amazon Cuts Affiliate Commissions.
Amazon has quietly slashed commission rates in its affiliate program by up to 50% across multiple categories, publishers only found out through account manager conversations this week. The cuts haven't landed evenly: long-standing partners have largely kept favorable terms, while paid-media-driven affiliate businesses are taking the biggest hit.

USPS Shipping Changes.
USPS has updated how it calculates shipping costs for large, lightweight packages, rounding dimensions up to the nearest inch and dropping its dimensional weight divisor. That divisor change matters because a lower number produces a higher billable weight from the same box size, meaning most e-commerce shippers will pay more even if their product weight hasn't changed.

Meta Ads AI Connector Rollout.
Meta's open beta for third-party AI connectors, which allows tools like Claude and ChatGPT to interface with ad accounts for the first time, is off to a rocky start, with access currently limited to roughly 10% of advertisers. Many eligible advertisers are hesitant to connect, citing fear of account bans after reports emerged that early adopters were flagged before the official program launched.

David, the brand that managed to take protein bars and pair it with the energy of a luxury fragrance campaign, is now applying the same logic to frozen desserts. The ice cream reportedly clocks in at 30 grams of protein, 260 calories, and 2 grams of sugar, numbers that would have seemed like a typo three years ago.

The secret is EPG, David's patented plant-based fat substitute that looks and behaves like fat but passes through the body largely undigested, which is how they keep the calories low without sacrificing the texture that makes ice cream worth eating in the first place. A Fortune reporter who sampled the prototype described it as creamy and dense, with the slight chemical aftertaste that comes with the territory on anything engineered this aggressively. A trade-off most gym-goers will take without hesitation.

The bars changed what people expected from a protein snack. The ice cream will tell us whether the brand has enough power for a category expansion like this.

The idea is straightforward enough: a single cart that persists across Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail, so the jacket you spotted in a YouTube haul, the gadget that came up in a Gemini chat, and the refill you were reminded about in an email can all live in the same place without any app-switching or lost tabs. What makes it interesting isn't the convenience, though. It's what happens once something lands in the cart. Google's AI runs quietly in the background tracking price history, surfacing deals, flagging restocks, and warning you when two items in your cart aren't actually compatible with each other.

Google Wallet integration means the system will recommend whichever card or payment method gets you the best outcome at checkout, whether that's cashback, loyalty points, or a merchant-specific offer. The practical effect is that Google positions itself as actively working on your behalf, which is a different kind of relationship than a search engine has historically had with its users.

Now brand discovery, price comparison, and purchase consideration have a natural home inside Google's surfaces before a shopper ever reaches a product page.

Universal Cart launches across Search and Gemini in the U.S. this summer, with YouTube and Gmail to follow.

Each week we feature recent hires, showcasing top brands partnering with human brilliance to build their brand. This week’s hires include: