Good morning. Waymo today plans to start running TV commercials nationwide as it aims to calm concerns about its technology and stand out in an increasingly crowded field, the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Katie Deighton reports.

Its first national ad campaign is set to begin during coverage of the FIFA World Cup on Fox, in a match pitting Team USA against Paraguay.

The commercials aim to ease fears surrounding self-driving cars, with a gentle reminder of how human drivers can be flawed, but their focus is more on people riding in Waymos than the technology itself. “Now the Waymo driver is safer than a human one,” a voice-over says, “…Not because humans aren’t enough, but because they’re everything.”

Many people “have a healthy skepticism in the era of AI,” said Waymo CMO Suzanne Philion. “I think it was a moment for us to showcase the humans behind the robots at Waymo, to showcase empathy.”

I asked Katie for more on the strategy.

Why would Waymo run national ads when it's only selling rides in 11 locations?

Katie: Because its footprint is likely to increase fairly rapidly. The company says it’s currently in the process of getting its cars into 21 more cities, including Chicago and Detroit but also smaller cities like Sacramento, Calif., and Charlotte, N.C. Convincing those locales to sign off on permanently allowing its driverless vehicles on the roads will depend on support from the public and politicians. The ads, which focus less on convenience and more on safety, will lay the groundwork for Waymo’s future lobbying efforts.

How healthy is the Waymo brand right now?

Katie: Brand awareness has increased over the past year, from 34.7% in June 2025 to 48.4% today, according to research firm Morning Consult. But Waymo’s net favorability score, which reflects the percentage of respondents with a positive view minus the percentage with an unfavorable view, is 1.5.

Uber has 95.5% brand awareness, by comparison, and net favorability of 38.2.

The company in recent months has faced greater criticism as splashy, national stories about accidents, near misses and glitches start to pile up alongside the expansion of its fleet. Meanwhile, only half a million people ride in its cars a week. I’m sure the company hopes this ad campaign will go some way to addressing the public’s perception.

A prolific group of spammers is using Google Gemini to simulate phone-company websites so they can steal unsuspecting consumers’ credit card numbers, according to a lawsuit filed Friday by Google.

The use of AI companies’ tools in scams is fueling some of the backlash against the tech, Robert McMillan and Amrith Ramkumar write.

This group of scammers sends messages telling people that they have soon-to-expire rewards points to use up on items like free headphones or Apple Watches, Google said. A link in each message goes to a website modeled after a real site run by a familiar phone brand.

The group allegedly developed an internal guide for using Gemini to create such websites. It has deployed more than 8,000 phishing sites to steal an estimated 3.87 million credit card numbers from victims in dozens of countries, leading to $1.9 billion in losses since July 2023, the FBI said.

Google is asking a New York federal court to halt the activity of the alleged cybercriminals so the websites and communication channels can be taken down, arguing that the use of its products and logos hurts its public image.

Adobe plans to focus on its “freemium” artificial-intelligence offerings in an effort to grow its user base at the expense of short-term annualized recurring revenue growth. [WSJ] 

Recreations of the custom “Stevie Knicks” T-shirt worn by Taylor Swift at the NBA Finals on Wednesday are already all over Etsy. [NYP]

Levi’s is moving away from a creative agency-of-record model to use agencies on a project basis. TBWA\Chiat\Day, Levi’s creative shop since 2023, said it looks forward to doing more work for the company. [Ad Age] 

WNBA players with Under Armour deals are wearing tape over their sneakers’ logos during games after the brand didn’t renew its partnership with the league. [Front Office Sports] 

Alex Cooper’s media company Unwell has introduced a biweekly Substack called UnSaid. [Variety] 

A lawsuit accuses the Washington Post of charging its most loyal subscribers higher prices via “surveillance pricing.” [Mediaite] 

You can’t win if you don’t play: The rise of interest-based algorithms has brands and their agencies churning out more video from more accounts, whether they’ve got followers or not. [Fast Company]