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Duolingo launches attention guarantees for advertisers, powered by Adelaide. Adelaide's AU metric will power guaranteed media quality thresholds across Duolingo's in-app advertising inventory. Duolingo is launching AU guarantees powered by Adelaide, giving advertisers a contractual commitment to a minimum level of media quality across its in-app inventory using AU, Adelaide's omnichannel metric that predicts a placement's likelihood of capturing attention and driving business outcomes. With the launch, Duolingo joins a growing group of publishers using AU guarantees to bring media quality into the buying process. The offering follows a March 2026 audit of Duolingo's online video (OLV) inventory, which used Adelaide AU to assess the quality of its media placements. The audit found that Duolingo's mobile in-app OLV inventory scored 34% above Adelaide's benchmark. Longer-form formats delivered the strongest AU scores, offering additional insight into how ad experience and format can influence an ad placement's ability to capture attention and drive outcomes in in-app environments. Duolingo is using these findings to inform how it structures its ad offerings, including packages that group higher-attention placements and give advertisers clearer visibility into media quality before they buy. Duolingo also plans to incorporate AU reporting into campaign delivery, enabling advertisers to evaluate media quality alongside other campaign performance insights. "People come to Duolingo to learn, which means they are actively listening, thinking, and responding - not passively scrolling," said Andrew Guendjoian, head of sales, Duolingo. "This research gives advertisers independent proof of the quality of that attention, while AU Guarantees make it easier to buy our inventory with confidence. As we grow the business, we're focused on creating advertising that delivers results for brands, fits naturally into the Duolingo experience, and helps keep learning free for millions of people." "Guarantees are the clearest signal a publisher can send about the quality of its inventory," said Marc Guldimann, co-founder & CEO, Adelaide. "In-app environments like Duolingo can offer some of the most engaged experiences on mobile, but advertisers haven't always had a consistent way to compare their quality with the broader market. With access to AU insights and Guaranteed-AU packages, advertisers can make investment decisions based on a predictive measure of media quality and its likelihood to drive results." Adelaide AU is an omnichannel media quality metric that measures a placement's likelihood of capturing attention and driving business outcomes, based on a combination of placement signals, eye-tracking data, and full-funnel outcomes. Adelaide. Adelaide is the leader in attention-based media quality measurement. Our mission is to bring increased transparency and fairness to advertising by supplying the market with a precise, omnichannel media quality metric connected to business outco... Powered by PressBox

The Duolingo way of speaking fashion. 4 minutes ago For years Duolingo has mainly been a reminder, the iconic green owl that appeared on screen to remind Collater to do its lesson. Today the Duolingo character seems to have different ambitions: with the new fashion campaign, Duo steps into territory apparently far removed from digital education, showing just how powerful a visual identity can become once it stops being confined inside an app. The Phonetic Collection is Duolingo's new campaign created with designer Megan O'Cain for New York Fashion Week. The capsule turns some of fashion's most difficult names into wearable graphic elements. Hermès becomes "air-mess," Givenchy turns into "zhee-vahn-shee," while other major names of the fashion system are rewritten according to how they are pronounced. It is therefore not the logo that becomes the protagonist, but the way that name is spoken. The result is a collection that spans tailoring, sportswear, and accessories, playing with recognizable silhouettes, deliberately exaggerated proportions, and a typography that seems to have come straight out of a language lesson. Duolingo has long been working on building a real universe around its characters. The company considers Duo the brand's central visual element and has developed around him a cast of characters and a precise aesthetic grammar. Fashion thus becomes another space in which to bring this universe to life. It is not simply a matter of putting the Duolingo logo on a sweatshirt: the brand has already developed its own apparel line, with hats, T-shirts, hoodies, and garments directly inspired by Duo. The new campaign takes this reasoning a step further, Duo is no longer just something you look at on your phone: it becomes an image, an attitude, almost a character to style. Duolingo understood before many other digital brands that a mascot can have an independent cultural life. The company's campaigns have often turned Duo into the protagonist of improbable situations, playing on his ironic and recognizable character. In 2024, for example, the brand openly recounted how its creative team had developed campaigns in-house built around the community's reactions and memes. Fashion, then, does not seem to be a change of identity, but a natural extension of the Duolingo language. The brand does not try to make Duo more serious in order to enter the fashion system; it does exactly the opposite, bringing into the world of fashion that ironic, pop, and immediately recognizable aesthetic that made him one of the most recognizable mascots in digital culture. The collection will be presented in New York during Fashion Week, with an outdoor campaign and a pop-up at Null Object on September 9 and 10. And here too Duolingo keeps up its game: to try to win one of the pieces, you don't use money, but your own streak, meaning the series of consecutive days spent on the app. In the end, the campaign does something very simple: it takes one of the most common fears when entering the world of fashion, mispronouncing a name, and turns it into something to wear. With Duolingo, even getting it wrong becomes part of the look.

The syllabus of style: how Duolingo and Megan O'Cain are decoding luxury at New York Fashion Week. In a move that blends the pedagogical rigor of language acquisition with the high-octane aesthetic of the runway, Duolingo, the world's most downloaded education app, has unveiled an unconventional collaboration for New York Fashion Week (NYFW). Partnering with designer Megan O'Cain - a standout talent from the second season of Next in Fashion - the brand has introduced a capsule collection titled "Phonetic Fashion." The seven-piece collection serves as a wearable masterclass in linguistics, transforming the often-intimidating nomenclature of luxury fashion houses into accessible phonetic guides. By merging classic silhouettes with playful, education-focused typography, the collaboration seeks to demystify the elite world of high fashion, proving that learning can be as stylish as it is informative. The core concept: decoding the runway. The "Phonetic Fashion" collection is more than just a marketing stunt; it is a conceptual project designed to address a common cultural insecurity: the fear of mispronouncing the names of iconic design houses. From Loewe to Comme des Garçons, the names of luxury brands often serve as gatekeepers, creating an air of exclusivity that can feel alienating to the uninitiated. Duolingo's approach was to turn these "hard-to-pronounce" names into the primary design element of the garments. Utilizing embroidery, puff paint, 3D printing, and distressing, O'Cain has emblazoned the phonetic spellings of these labels across tailored sportswear and accessories. The result is a collection that feels simultaneously high-fashion and irreverent - a signature balance for the Duolingo brand, which is known for its meme-centric social media presence and "unhinged" corporate persona. Chronology of a collaboration. The genesis of this partnership began with a desire to bridge the gap between classroom-style learning and the global cultural phenomenon of Fashion Week. * Phase 1: Research and Insight: Duolingo commissioned a study via YouGov, surveying 2,600 American adults to gauge their confidence - and accuracy - regarding the pronunciation of luxury brands. The results were telling: while 62% of respondents claimed confidence in pronouncing "Hermès," only 15% were actually correct. Similar gaps were found for names like Jacquemus, Issey Miyake, and Givenchy. * Phase 2: Creative Ideation: Recognizing that the fashion industry was already a hotbed for linguistic debate, Duolingo reached out to Megan O'Cain. The designer, known for her vibrant, quirky, and highly detailed work on Next in Fashion, was tasked with bridging the gap between her aesthetic and Duolingo's mission. * Phase 3: Design Development: O'Cain and the Duolingo creative team worked in a feedback loop, selecting pieces that felt like quintessential fashion staples - trench coats, structured tops, and accessories - and subjecting them to the "phonetic" treatment. * Phase 4: The NYFW Activation: The project culminates this week at the Null Object pop-up space at 146 E. Broadway in Manhattan. Open to the public, the space serves as an interactive hub where visitors can view the collection, engage with the phonetic puzzles, and participate in a silent auction for the pieces. Supporting data: The "pronunciation gap" The impetus for this collection is rooted in real-world data. The Duolingo/YouGov survey highlights a psychological barrier that exists in the luxury retail space. When consumers feel they cannot correctly pronounce a brand's name, they are less likely to discuss the brand in social settings or feel "at home" in a luxury boutique. The list of "hard-to-pronounce" brands targeted by the collection includes: * Hermès (Air-mez) * Jacquemus (Zhack-moose) * Issey Miyake (Ee-say Mee-yah-keh) * Givenchy (Zhee-vahn-shee) * Comme des Garçons (Kohm-deh-gar-sohn) * Loewe (Lo-eh-veh) This data is supported by recent trends in pop culture. In 2024, Loewe gained significant viral traction when a promotional video featuring Aubrey Plaza and Dan Levy focused entirely on the correct pronunciation of the brand, signaling that the industry is finally ready to poke fun at its own pretension. Official responses: bridging two worlds. The Duolingo perspective. Manu Orssaud, Chief Marketing Officer at Duolingo, emphasizes that the brand's strategy is rooted in "cultural relevance." "The best Duolingo marketing is entertaining but still has a real connection to learning - fashion gave us both," Orssaud stated in an interview with WWD. "We wanted to help people learn a few pronunciations while making fashion feel a little less intimidating. People may love a designer's work but still hesitate before saying the name out loud. That gave us a credible way to join the fashion conversation while doing something that is unmistakably Duolingo." The designer's vision. For Megan O'Cain, the project was an exercise in semiotics. "It made me look at things I had seen a million times in a completely new way," she explained. "I wanted the pieces to draw you in first and then make you look a little closer, recognize the references, decode the spellings, and engage with familiar fashion in a new way. As I was designing, the process felt very similar to learning a new language: taking something that may seem familiar and suddenly seeing, hearing, or understanding it differently." Implications: the democratization of luxury. The "Phonetic Fashion" collection arrives at a pivotal moment for New York Fashion Week. In recent years, the event has shifted from a closed-door industry trade show to a global, digital-first spectacle. The inclusion of an education brand like Duolingo into this ecosystem signals a broader trend: the democratization of luxury. 1. Breaking down barriers. By turning pronunciation into a fashion statement, the collaboration actively lowers the "entry fee" for participating in luxury culture. It signals that high fashion does not have to be a closed circle of elites, but rather a language that can be learned and shared. 2. The gamification of culture. Duolingo has mastered the art of "gamifying" the mundane act of learning a language. By applying this logic to fashion, they have created a new category of "edutainment." This shift suggests that future brand collaborations may focus less on pure aesthetics and more on utility - providing the consumer with a tangible "skill" or insight. 3. Fashion as a community space. Orssaud noted that fashion is no longer just about the clothes on the runway; it is about the debates, the social media discourse, and the communities formed around specific designers. By entering this space during NYFW, Duolingo is positioning itself as a participant in these global conversations, moving the brand beyond the confines of the mobile application and into the physical world of cultural consumption. Conclusion. The "Phonetic Fashion" pop-up at Null Object serves as a microcosm of where marketing and culture are heading in the mid-2020s. By acknowledging the insecurities of its audience and meeting them with humor, design, and a touch of pedagogy, Duolingo has managed to turn a simple language lesson into one of the most talked-about activations of the season. Whether one is a fashion devotee or a casual language learner, the collection invites a closer look at the world around Fashionshots. It serves as a reminder that every label, every word, and every silhouette has a story - and a pronunciation - waiting to be decoded. As the fashion world continues to evolve, collaborations like this demonstrate that the most stylish thing one can do is remain curious. The collection will be on display at 146 E. Broadway, Manhattan, through Thursday, offering a unique opportunity for fashion enthusiasts to bid on these "literary" garments and perhaps, in the process, learn something new. Subscriber