Digital marketing has become the largest media channel by spend for the first time, a development that will challenge marketers, platforms and agencies to step up with truly engaging experiences tailored for customers and different delivery mechanisms or risk frittering away their investment. Following a year fraught with scandals and broken trust, marketers will buckle down in 2017 and do the hard work required to improve metrics and business relationships while focusing on creating engagements that are not intrusive, but rather personalized, contextual and enriching. Without these steps, consumers are likely to increasingly turn to ad blockers and premium ad-free services. "In 2017, digital will become the single largest media investment channel, passing television for the first time," Scott Symonds, managing director of media at AKQA, told Marketing Dive. "This will be a symbolic turning point for a trend that has been building for years and will make it that much more obvious to all marketers that digital is no longer just a test or an innovation budget. It needs to be expected to work as hard or harder vs. every other investment channel."

Multiple weaknesses were exposed in public institutions in connection with last year's election. First, cybercriminals tried to hack the outcome, then pollsters failed to read voter sentiment accurately. Finally, fake news crept into our news feeds, distorting our collective view of the real world. Can big data technology and artificial intelligence put us back on the straight and narrow? We'll soon get to find out.

After an action-packed Season 12 premiere, Fox series "Bones" aired an episode with its regular case-of-the-week format. Season 12, episode 2 kicked off with the FBI investigating the death of tech genius Ian Goldberg. Goldberg owns a company called Social Cybernetics which makes robots that help kids suffering from autism. His body was found in the woods. The crowning glory of Goldberg's work is an artificial intelligence robot named AMI that can speak eight languages. The AMI is also a lot like Brennan (Emily Deschanel).

A couple of bickering trainers at a dog show lose track of their animals, who run into the woods and start feeding on a corpse. There is evidence all over the place, as well as indications of multiple scavengers. Based on tissue decomp, Saroyan puts time of death at about three to four days prior. Brennan estimates the victim was male based on the rugged linea aspera of the femur and in his 40s based on the degeneration of the femoral head. There is no sign of a struggle, but there is plastic fused to his wrist. Back at the Jeffersonian, Brennan and Daisy, who is now Dr. Wick, go over the body.

Now you can use Chatbots to get news and information in a personalized pattern. Famous media companies like CNN and Fox news have already launched their News Chatbot on platforms like Facebook Messenger, Line and Kik as well as on voice-activated devices like Amazon's Alexa. Facebook has unveiled new capabilities for businesses and publishers on Messenger, enabling users to chat with CNN to get breaking news and personalized stories. People will now be able to chat with the companies and publishers like they would do with their friends. CNN is using chatterbots for Facebook Messenger to interact with users in a natural and human-like way.

Since its founding nearly 15 years ago, Sonos has amassed a devoted following among audio enthusiasts for its high-end, WiFi-connected speakers. But now its business is endangered by a new breed of speakers powered by artificial intelligence assistants from the likes of Google and Amazon. They're starting to eat into the company's bottom line. In the midst of that change, Sonos cofounder John MacFarlane is stepping down as CEO after leading the company since 2002. Sonos president Patrick Spence will be taking over as CEO.

Whether they're in marketing or some other discipline, it's odds-on that when artificial intelligence in the workplace is mentioned to somebody, one of the first thoughts to leap into his or her head is, "Will it take away my job?" And people have been asking it for a really long time. The tension between machine learning and human intellect has been routinely reflected in popular media: In our past two entries in this series, we did call-outs to an Avengers movie, Star Trek and Mad Men for their takes on AI as a nefarious change agent who'll suck the humanism out of our lives. But as far back as the 1950s, the notion that computers might supplant us in the workplace was very much on people's minds. So much so it was a comic premise of a 1957 Tracy-Hepburn comedy, Desk Set.

After 14 years at the helm, Sonos CEO and co-founder John MacFarlane has stepped down. He has also resigned from the company's board or directors, but will remain with Sonos to work on other projects and serve as a mentor to employees. MacFarlane's transition is the latest in a handful of personnel moves that began last year. Sonos announced layoffs last March shortly before product head Marc Whitten left the company. Former president and chief commercial officer Patrick Spence will take over as CEO.

I found this clip of Elon Musk geeking out about Deus Ex because Deus Ex designer Harvey Smith re-tweeted Deus Ex director Warren Spector's video share. Think they're psyched about their high-profile fan? Musk can hardly contain his enthusiasm for the classic action-RPG from Eidos Interactive when he's asked about his favorite video games. He also mentions Overwatch -- not for the first time -- with noticeable reverence. Stephen Colbert demands a'Million Meryl March' in response to Donald Trump

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD returns from its winter break on Jan. 10, and after a fiery batch of fall episodes courtesy of Ghost Rider (Gabriel Luna), the next story arc is taking an altogether more chilling turn. Starting with episode 409, the focus shifts to Life Model Decoys -- lifelike androids that are designed to be indistinguishable from humans, like Aida (Mallory Jansen). Unbeknownst to our heroes, they already have another LMD in their midst, after the midseason finale revealed that Agent May (Ming-Na Wen) had been captured and replaced with an LMD duplicate by Aida. Since we still have no idea why Aida made the switcheroo, the implications are pretty worrying -- but they're even more disconcerting in light of the final moments of episode 408, which saw the LMD version of May sharing an intimate drink with Coulson (Clark Gregg). During a recent Agents of SHIELD set visit, Jansen was cagey about Aida's motivations for kidnapping May, teasing reporters, "I was made a specific way and anything I do is really what I think is right, or what I'm programmed to do." Was she acting under her own burgeoning free will -- if she has it -- or is her creator, Dr. Radcliffe (John Hannah) calling the shots?