The Brief – Monday 16 February – Dentsu announces new CEO, Meta plans to add facial recognition to smart glasses, Pinterest & Roku earnings

❗Dentsu has appointed Takeshi Sano to replace outgoing president and global CEO Hiroshi Igarashi upon his resignation next month. The advertising giant posted its biggest-ever loss for the year ended December 2025, forcing the company to suspend its dividend. (Ad Age)

👓 Meta is planning to add facial recognition features to its line of smart glasses. The feature, dubbed “Name Tag” internally, would let wearers identify people and get information about them via Meta’s AI assistant, raising severe privacy concerns. An internal memo said the political tumult in the US could make for good timing for the feature’s release, as “many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.” (New York Times)

💰 Pinterest reported 16% year-on-year revenue growth in fiscal year 2025 to $4.2bn. Global monthly active users also increased 12% year on year to 619m in Q4. Adjusted Ebitda, the company’s measure of profit, was $1.3bn in 2025. (Pinterest)

💴 In its full-year earnings, Roku reported 15% year-on-year total net revenue growth to $4.7bn. Gross profit also grew 15% to $2.1bn, as did streaming hours (+15% to 145.6bn). While Roku does not delineate its ad revenue, the company claimed that video advertising on its platform grew faster year on year than the US OTT and broader digital ad markets. (Roku)

⁉️Australia’s under-16 social media ban is seemingly having little effect on social media companies’ bottom lines. Meta has shut down just half a million users across Instagram, Facebook and Threads; Snap has similarly removed just 400,000 accounts — rounding errors relative to its total user base. (Bloomberg)

⏳Google is facing another EU antitrust probe over allegations that it rigged search ad auctions by “artificially increasing the clearing price,” according to a letter sent to affected businesses. (Adexchanger)

💻 Spotify is relying heavily on vibe coding. Co-CEO Gustav Söderström said in the company’s Q4 earnings call that its best developers “have not written a single line of code since December”, instead using an internal AI system called “Honk” and Claude Code to speed up coding efforts. (TechCrunch)

🤖 Google has unveiled WebMCP, a protocol designed to help websites keep up with the shift in AI agents which are now starting to complete more complex tasks like booking flights or making purchases. The protocol is necessary because it provides the connection that AI agents need to do these tasks. (Adweek)