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September inflation jumps to 3.7%, with heating oil up 74% and Wall Street bracing for a possible Fed rate hike, while Netflix cuts roughly 1,000 jobs. Meanwhile, Japan finances two New York chip factories, and the Supreme Court considers whether websites can share your video-viewing history without consent.
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Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads
Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:
After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.
The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.
“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”
Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.
The Big Read
Consumer Prices Climb 3.7% as Energy Costs Push Inflation Higher
Consumer prices rose 3.7% from last year in September, the Labor Department said Wednesday, a bigger jump than August as Iran war energy prices kept surging. Prices climbed 0.6% from August alone, while core inflation, which strips out food and energy, rose to 2.6%, also up from the prior month.
Heating oil has jumped 74% in a year, a painful hit for New England families who rely on it, while wages rose just 3%. Investors now see a 50-50 chance the Federal Reserve raises rates in October, with policymakers weighing the new numbers when they meet in two weeks.
Netflix Lays Off About 1,000 Workers in Its Deepest Cuts Since 2022
Netflix will lay off about 6% of staff, roughly 1,000 workers, co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said, with product, tech, legal and HR teams hit hardest. The cuts are its steepest since 2022, arriving weeks after Sarandos told a Bloomberg conference Netflix was not growing as fast as he wanted.
The co-CEOs wrote that the business remains strong and on track for its full-year forecast, with Netflix still investing aggressively ahead of Oct. 20 earnings. Rivals are consolidating after Paramount's merger with Warner Bros., while free platforms like YouTube and TikTok keep drawing viewers away from traditional streaming services.
Japan-Financed Deal Brings Two GlobalFoundries Chip Plants to New York
GlobalFoundries said Wednesday it plans two upstate New York factories, in Malta, financed by up to $21 billion from Japan under the Trump administration's trade deal. Roughly $10 billion will speed construction of a plant opening in 2029, and another $10 billion will fund a second factory at the same site.
President Trump posted that the U.S. government will receive GlobalFoundries shares, as it did with Intel, expanding his policy of taking stakes in private companies. Federal funding the company previously received under a Biden-era chip program will now go toward other semiconductor manufacturing investments, a GlobalFoundries spokesperson said.
World View
A Singapore-flagged container ship sank in the Strait of Hormuz after a projectile hit it, Singapore says, though all 21 crew aboard the GFS Pride were safely evacuated without injuries.
Kenya has confirmed a second Ebola case, a close relative of the first victim who was already in quarantine, while health officials say there is no evidence of community spread.
Students rioted across Albania's capital for hours, as protesters attacked ministries and banks throughout Tirana for more than eight hours while riot police answered with tear gas and water cannons.
Need To Know
Six people, including one child, died when a small plane crashed near Wisconsin Dells Tuesday after the pilot reported ice building on the wings while flying through a thunderstorm.
Americans finally have a new sunscreen option, with the first new ingredient in decades, bemotrizinol, now reaching store shelves in Neutrogena and other formulas following FDA approval in June.
Government auditors urged ICE to standardize body cameras, but the agency rejected the GAO's automatic-activation recommendation, saying cameras that switch on when officers draw weapons could raise privacy concerns.
Money & Markets
Wall Street posted its worst day since July, as the S&P 500 fell 1.1% Wednesday and the Nasdaq sank 1.9% as hotter inflation raised expectations of a Fed rate hike.
Fannie Mae sharply raised its mortgage forecast, now expecting the 30-year fixed near 7.5% through all of next year, well above the 6.7% it had previously projected for 2027.
Fox's $22 billion Roku acquisition cleared a key vote by both companies' shareholders Wednesday, and Fox expects to close the deal in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory clearance.
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Future Frontiers
Bleached coral recovered within just days when scientists placed it against healthy fragments, researchers reported in Science Advances, a finding that offers fresh hope for reversing widespread reef decline.
People with active brown fat fared better, according to a study of over 100,000 people linking the calorie-burning tissue to lower rates of type 2 diabetes, depression and anxiety.
Merck's chief executive expects its cancer vaccine with Moderna to get faster to manufacture over time, shortening a six-week process that tailors each shot to a patient's tumor mutations.
The Score
The Houston Astros parted with Joe Espada, declining to renew the manager's contract after Houston won the AL West at 81-81, then got swept in the wild-card round.
Falcons quarterback Michael Penix Jr. should start, coach Kevin Stefanski said, despite his rib injury against Baltimore, as long as he suffers no setbacks before Sunday's home game against Chicago.
The Phillies removed Don Mattingly's interim tag, giving the manager a two-year deal despite a late collapse that nearly cost them a playoff spot before a wild-card exit against Atlanta.
Thursday's ALCS Game 3 moved to 1 p.m., as MLB shifted the Rays-Guardians start five hours earlier because of rain threatening Cleveland, keeping the series on its original schedule.
Life & Culture
Paul McCartney has one complaint about Sam Mendes' Beatles films: Paul Mescal's height, insisting the four bandmates were all the same height, except Ringo, who was a bit smaller.
Paramount's "Street Fighter" should lead the weekend, with a projected opening of $25-$35 million from 3,500 North American theaters as four new movies try to lift October's box office.
Fans will soon sit on Paul Atreides' throne, as "Dune: The Experience" opens Nov. 20 in downtown Los Angeles with real props and sandworms ahead of December's "Dune: Part Three."
Deep Dive
Supreme Court Weighs What Websites Can Share About the Videos You Watch
What it is: The Supreme Court heard arguments over a 1988 law on Wednesday protecting the privacy of video rentals, weighing how that Blockbuster-era statute applies to today's online video and digital commerce.
The detail: Congress passed the law after a reporter published a list of 146 movies rented by then-Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, and today's case targets Paramount Global's free sports website 247Sports.com. Subscriber Michael Salazar says Paramount shared his video viewing history with Facebook without consent to enable targeted ads, while Paramount argues he is not a protected "consumer" under the law.
Why it matters: Appeals courts have split over who counts as a consumer, so the ruling could decide whether people watching free clips on ordinary websites can sue over their shared viewing data. Critics call the law a relic that plaintiffs' lawyers are exploiting, warning that a broad reading would cut companies off from a vital source of revenue in targeted online advertising.
What to watch: Justice Elena Kagan told Paramount's lawyer, Paul Clement, that companies have two simple options going forward, getting consent or no longer selling people's private information, and to take his pick. Justice Samuel Alito pressed Salazar's lawyer from the other side, asking why so many lower court judges had rejected the very literal reading of the statute he presented to them.
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Today's Trivia
The Rosetta Stone let scholars finally decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 1820s because it contained:
Extra Bits
An Austin estate sale shopper got a surprise, finding a box of live WWII grenades among the purchases, which the police bomb squad confirmed were active before safely removing them.
A giant inflatable pumpkin escaped its tethers, rolling down a North Carolina road from a Cary farm's Pumpkinfest until an Uber driver and other witnesses helped corral the runaway decoration.
A 26-year-old Finnish chef set a record, chugging 16.9 ounces of orange soda in 3.16 seconds to become the first person ever to hold that particular Guinness World Records title.
On This Day
The Chicago Cubs beat the Detroit Tigers to win the World Series (1908) · A U.S. spy plane spots Soviet missiles in Cuba, starting the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) · Apollo 7 sends the first live TV broadcast from a crewed U.S. spacecraft (1968) · Wayne Gretzky scores his first NHL goal (1979) · "Pulp Fiction" opens in U.S. theaters (1994) · Felix Baumgartner jumps from the edge of space (2012)
"Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are." — Felix Baumgartner, moments before his record jump, 2012
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—The Five Minute Daily Team



