Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Editor’s Note: Live at POSSIBLE
We came out swinging during Day One of POSSIBLE in Miami! We interviewed media buyers and marketing leaders on the ground about the main things on their radar this year and we clocked the top industry trends taking over the show. What are they, you ask? AI and consumer connection – because, obviously.
I also had in-depth conversations with folks on the buy side this week about the critical questions the industry should be asking before celebrating itself with yet more AI-related announcements.
Those questions are: How can we get consumers to trust AI? How do we hand off more complex or high-stakes tasks to AI without sacrificing creativity and control? And how should ads on AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT actually work?
Stick with us as we gather answers to those important questions throughout the week.
– Alyssa Boyle, senior editor, AdExchanger
Transparency On The Beach
POSSIBLE in Miami, like most ad tech conferences, serves as a petri dish for product launches and press releases about partnership deals.
On Monday, Integral Ad Science (IAS) used POSSIBLE to unveil IAS Total TV, a new product suite aimed at improving transparency. It’s not the flashiest theme at the conference – especially next to AI – but it’s something marketers and media buyers feel passionately about. They’ve been demanding more transparency into their streaming ads for years.
IAS is pitching its product as a way to bring “linear-like” transparency to streaming. In linear TV, advertisers always knew where their ads ran. But in streaming, that visibility is much harder to come by because media fragmentation and walled garden business structures make show-level data much harder to come by.
Marketers can use Total TV to access genre, rating, language and show and program-level data in aggregate from Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Prime Video and other publishers that use Publica, IAS’ ad server. IAS says the product complies with the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law passed in 1988 that streamers frequently point to when withholding basic ad placement data.
AdExchanger is at POSSIBLE, so we’ll be asking media buyers what they make of the industry’s ongoing transparency challenges. Stay tuned.
Another Pivot To Video
Looks like Pinterest isn’t the only company trying to expand from social media to CTV.
According to Digiday, Meta is also laying the groundwork for a similar move by extending its audience demand into existing third-party CTV inventory.
Last year, Meta held a series of exploratory meetings with SSPs and TV manufacturers, suggesting the company is more interested in plugging its data into existing CTV infrastructure rather than developing its own product from scratch.
The focus on plug-and-play over developing new tech makes sense, given that Meta just cut 10% of its global workforce last week. Per NYT, that translates to roughly 8,000 workers, which is on top of plans to close an additional 6,000 open roles.
The move does align, however, with Meta’s core strength as a performance engine, especially for small and medium-size businesses – but that space is getting a little crowded. There are lots of CTV vendors competing for SMB clients these days, including MNTN, streamr.ai (a subsidiary of Magnite), Universal Ads (another Comcast product), Vibe.co and Roku, to name just a few.
Creator Crowding
The creator economy isn’t short on cash, but they are a little short on big brand advertising commitments, The Wall Street Journal reports.
US advertisers are expected to spend as much as $43.9 billion on sponsored posts this year, up from $37.1 billion in 2025, according to the IAB. But the rate of ad spend growth on creator campaigns doesn’t quite match. In other words, while advertising spend is growing, the number of creators competing for those ad dollars is growing way faster.
The mismatch is starting to show. “Every creator wants to work with brands. There’s just not enough volume of brands coming in,” said Sam Beres, known as Sambucha to his millions of followers on TikTok and YouTube.
Even as 48% of marketers now call creators a must buy, most budgets still favor short-term deals. Think quick, campaign-style bursts that look more like repurposed ad buys than true partnerships.
Advertisers remain hesitant because measurement is still a little murky, and brands expect TV-style certainty, like predictable reach and clear attribution. But creator performance depends on platform algorithms and audience behavior, which makes ROI harder to guarantee.
There are outliers, of course. Unilever has scaled to 300,000 creators, betting on long-term relationships over one-off posts. In general, though, demand isn’t keeping up with supply and the creator economy is starting to feel like a very crowded casting call.
But Wait! There’s More!
Disney is restructuring its streaming data product teams. [Business Insider]
Roku launches Roku Curate, which gives advertisers access to more types of first-party data from partners like Best Buy, Fandango and Kroger Precision Marketing. [Variety]
Meanwhile, Walmart unveils Connect Select, a new marketplace that makes TV ads available for small businesses to buy through Walmart’s DSP. [Adweek]
A joint study by researchers from Stanford, the Imperial College London and the Internet Archive suggests that one-third of the websites created since 2022 are AI-generated. [404Media]
You’re Hired!
Marketecture Media hires Jackelyn Keller as chief commercial officer. [Variety]
Former Netflix research veteran Julie DeTraglia joins Nielsen as its new head of content and strategic insights. [Variety]
Parker Bohlen joins Criteo as SVP and managing director of performance media for the Americas. [LinkedIn post]
Media company Radial Entertainment appoints Pluto TV, Paramount and Telly TV vet Matt Katrosar as EVP of global advertising and partnerships. [Deadline]
Consumer health care company Haleon, which makes over-the-counter products like Advil and Sensodyne, brings on former Google exec Richard Manso as its US CMO. [Fierce Pharma]
Verve appoints David Simon as CRO and president of Verve Marketplace. [release]
