Last month, PayPal released a brand refresh, discarding the long-running blue logo in its wordmark and simplifying its look—and it didn’t take long until the jokes started rolling in on social. The Verge summed up the new logo as “flat, black, and generic,” and “just like everything else,” while one X user was a bit more blunt in their critique: “graphic design is illegal now i think.”

Discussions around brands’ move to minimalism in logos aren’t new—at least not in the last 15 years. The trend, sometimes referred to as “blanding,” is often characterized by sans-serif typefaces, muted colors, and flat, simple graphics, and it’s been embraced across industries. Johnson & Johnson, Facebook, BMW, Pinterest, Spotify, Google, and Saint Laurent are on the laundry list of brands that have flattened and modernized their wordmarks and logos.

While some brands, like Burberry, have walked back their minimalist rebrands and returned to a more heritage look in recent years, the PayPal refresh shows that the trend is still going strong—and, despite criticism from some consumers, branding experts we spoke with say that may be okay.

“​​Just because you’re using a sans-serif font, that doesn’t mean you’re blanding,” Marlee Bruning, creative director at branding agency Design Bridge, told Marketing Brew. “Just because you’re using a limited color palette, that doesn’t mean you’re blanding, unless you’re doing it because you didn’t want to think of something else to do.”

Continue reading here.—KH

Google has rolled out ads in AI Overviews on mobile in the US, the company announced on Thursday.

Google Director of Global Search Rachel Melgaard said earlier this year that ads could appear above, below, and within AI Overviews in search results, and that future is officially here. In an example shared in a press release, a mobile search for “how do I get a grass stain out of jeans?” returned shopping ads for products like a Tide To Go stain-remover pen and Oxiclean stain-remover spray embedded within the AI Overview results.

Ads are also coming to Google’s visual search tool, Google Lens, by the end of the year, the company announced. That means that, in an example provided by Google, a photo of a backpack in a store window could return search results that include shopping ads for the “exact item in your photo,” the company wrote in the press release.

Ad-ons: Google is already running plenty of ads above and below AI Overviews in Search, and the additional mobile ads embedded within Overviews will offer advertisers yet another batch of inventory as Google looks to continue keeping its ultra-lucrative Search business churning. In Q2, Google’s Search business pulled in $48.5 billion in revenue, making it the company’s most profitable line item.

Read more here.—RB

Pinterest is the latest social platform to remind us that automation is not going anywhere, particularly when it comes to ads.

“Ad innovation on Pinterest has been at an all-time high,” Pinterest Chief Revenue Officer Bill Watkins said on Oct. 1 at its advertiser summit.

Pinterest announced it is rolling out a new set of AI and automation features dubbed the Pinterest Performance+ suite. This includes both automation and AI features to enable faster creatives, optimize targeting, and manage ad budgets.

“We’re still the place for brands to drive discovery, but we’re now delivering on lower funnel and creative too,” Watkins added. “Brands are increasing Pinterest in their media mix and they no longer need to choose between awareness or lower funnel performance. Now they can have both,” he said. To be sure, lower funnel ads target shoppers that are ready to make a purchase.

On the creative side, Pinterest is now making it easier for advertisers to give product images a quick makeover and transform them into lifestyle imagery.

• Walgreens, an early tester, Pinterest said, used the creative tool from the Performance+ ad suite for close to 50 products, and the pharmacy chain saw a 55% higher clickthrough rate and 13% lower cost-per-click using Pinterest-AI-generated backgrounds.

Read more on Retail Brew.—VC

Executive moves across the industry.

• Vimeo named Charlie Ungashick, a former software marketer, as its CMO.
• JCPenney hired a consulting chief marketing officer, Marisa Thalberg, who joins from SeaWorld.
• Barry’s brought in Jackie Lamping as CMO.
• Warner Bros. Discovery is in the market for a new ad sales chief. Its current head of advertising sales, Jon Steinlauf, will leave the company by the end of the year.