By Elena Vasquez

Block Blast!, a Tetris-like puzzle game, earned $127 million in ad revenue this year through August — about $46 million more than Candy Crush. New AI-driven analysis of its code shows part of that money comes from a mechanism that deliberately makes players lose.

Ayomide Omolewa, a data scientist and founder of the AI game coding platform a0.dev, has gone viral for videos that decompile popular mobile apps such as Duolingo. His examination of Block Blast!, first reported in the trade press, shows the game ranks players by advertising value and then adjusts the difficulty to maximize ad views.

How does the ad-manipulation mechanism work?

Omolewa found a rule in the code called "high value ad harvest." It works in three steps:

• It identifies players who tend to watch ads.
• It helps them beat their high scores.
• It then triggers a "death algorithm" that makes the next round impossible to win.

At that point the app readies a rewarded video ad (a voluntary ad view exchanged for an in-game reward) that revives the player. Performance in the game, in short, depends on how valuable the player is to advertisers.

The pattern extends beyond one title. Omolewa also decompiled a game called Dicero, which sends five separate conversion signals to its ad trackers when a player makes a purchase. Those signals help Dicero generate roughly $100,000 in ad revenue per day. Omolewa's findings raise an obvious question: how many other algorithmic advertising tweaks remain hidden inside app code, waiting to be uncovered by AI agents.

Why are brands buying into microdramas?

On the content side of the industry, a different advertising model is scaling fast. Social media microdramas — short-form serialized shows, all produced under SAG-AFTRA union contracts — have matured quickly, and advertisers are now following.

Poppi, e.l.f. cosmetics and the skin care startup Sol de Janeiro are among the early sponsors of Hoorae, the microdrama studio founded by Issa Rae and backed by TikTok, according to Ad Age. Two factors drive the appeal. A breakout hit offers home-run reach potential, and the inventory sells at a relative bargain.

Poppi has moved early on the format before. The brand took a ground-floor position in American pickleball leagues, and it takes the same approach in microdramas: the soda becomes an inextricable part of the show. Hoorae's branded entertainment studio, Ensemble, also puts paid media behind its content, extending visibility for brand partners beyond the organic feed.

The format carries a measurement advantage. Because the shows run on social networks, mostly TikTok for Hoorae, commenters react live while content airs. Brands can interact with those users directly and use the conversation data to gather real-time feedback and other marketing insights.

What did the ESPN gambling story reveal?

In sports media, a former ESPN producer has gone public with criticism of gambling advertising's grip on coverage. Viewers now see gambling ads or logos every 13 seconds during a game, yet mainstream coverage underplays the problem — and marketing partnerships may bear the blame.

Nicole Noren quit ESPN in 2024 after 24 years at the network. She told the Columbia Journalism Review she grew disgusted by ESPN's partnership with DraftKings, having watched gambling addiction ruin the lives of multiple family members, including her brother, who died homeless on the streets of Las Vegas.

ESPN once held a hard line against promoting gambling, Noren said. After the 2018 Supreme Court decision loosened sports betting restrictions, the network reversed course and launched its own gambling app by 2023. The app flopped, but it was the last straw for Noren.

After ESPN began working with sportsbooks, Noren said, the wall between business and editorial got "a little more penetrable," and there was "a rocky path to report some stories that involved stakeholders." Her account echoes a 2024 case in which a Publicis employee with a family history of opioid addiction quit after the holding company paid a $350 million settlement for marketing opioids on behalf of Purdue Pharma.

What else moved this week?

• Fox's $22 billion acquisition of Roku is approved by shareholders and on track to close in the first half of 2027. (The Wrap)
• Netflix lays off roughly 1,000 employees, or 6% of its workforce. (Variety)
• Polymarket launches its first ad campaign to promote political markets ahead of the midterm elections. (Adweek)
• Two unnamed minors sue OpenAI for allegedly training models on sensitive data from ChatGPT conversations, including children's personal secrets and health information. (Futurism)
• Swedish social company W Social exposed its verified users' personal data in plain text.
• Adam Gerhart is promoted to global chief client officer at WPP, after holding the same role at WPP Media. (Adweek)

The through-line across these stories is visibility: AI tools now expose ad algorithms brands never intended to explain, while new formats like microdramas hand advertisers richer, faster feedback than traditional media ever did. Marketers who understand both forces will know exactly what they are buying.