Artificial Intelligence

2024’s most popular guest columns offer a snapshot of an industry in flux – and one that’s grown cynical due to repeated promises of unrealized change.

The IAB gave us new retail media standards for Christmas. But will the industry actually adopt them? Plus: how AI will be used in advertising in 2025.

Publisher C-suite drama has been making headlines recently. Plus, there are now 27 different active lawsuits against various AI content generation companies.

Sports betting comes under fire over dubious ad claims and problematic targeting; Forbes says Google’s SEO crackdown on affiliate marketing caused it to cut freelancers; and SCOTUS takes on the TikTok case.

This year has been a series of highs and lows for Zeta Global. It acquired LiveIntent for $250 million – a high. And it was the subject of multiple withering short seller reports – a low. But CEO David Steinberg says he’s not sweating it.

Marketers are already beginning to prepare for a world without TikTok. Plus, the TV manufacturing industry is more focused on user tracking and monetizing with ads.

AppLovin’s ecommerce advertising beta program has sparked optimism and speculation. Plus, the results of YouTube’s auto-reply program have been mixed.

Omnicom is acquiring IPG. We unpack the proposed deal with ad agency expert Brian Wieser, founder of the constancy Madison and Wall.

Rival browsers raise an objection to Google being forced to sell Chrome; ad agencies pivot to software and services; and people are turning to chatbots instead of search, with error-filled results.

Before first-party data can save us all from signal loss, advertisers need tools that make first-party data more accessible and easier to use, said fullthrottle.ai CPO Amol Waishampayan.

Publicis outperforms its agency holding company rivals because of three primary factors: technology strategy, leadership and deal-making.

Black Friday ecommerce continues to surge, mainly on mobile; social platforms pull optimization features for health and beauty brands; and Google’s antitrust lawyers subpoena info about rival AI search startups.

Call it a Glitchmas miracle. Maybe. Meta finally appears to have resolved a glitch in its ad platform that prevented new financial services advertisers from running campaigns.

Nikki Bhargava, a partner at law firm Reed Smith, spoke with AdExchanger about knowns – and unknowns – on the privacy as we gear up for the next four years.

A creative director shares his favorite use cases for generative AI, his favorite AI tools (and the ones he won’t trust yet) and best practices for refining outputs.

Bluesky’s user count is booming, but it lacks the scale marketers crave; “individual-level prices” are ruining airline rewards programs; and Meta details its fight against forced-labor camps that perpetuate online scams.

When social media platform Nextdoor launched advertising in 2017, CEO Nirav Tolia declared it would be a $1 billion business by 2020. That didn’t happen. Nextdoor generated $66 million overall in Q3 of this year, and Tolia chides himself for his hyperbole. But Nextdoor has an ambitious plan for advertising growth.

What’s the best way for advertisers to get the most performance possible out of their Meta campaigns? The answer, according to Meta, is to buy more ads on Meta.

The New York Times is investing in generative AI for the same reason it’s been investing in first-party data for years. It wants to be self-sufficient.

Perplexity AI, the generative AI search engine trying to out-Google Google, began rolling out its ads products last week. Plus, An AI-powered shoppable ad platform is causing problems for readers of BuzzFeed Australia.

Why the agency pivot to alternative payment models is good for M&A; Zeta Global responds to a short-seller’s explosive claims; and X sees a mass exodus after the election.

Former Dentsu CEO Wendy Clark, current president of consulting group Consello, sees the renewed controversy around principal-based buying as a symptom of a more fundamental issue: the lack of open dialogue between brands and their agencies.

Threads will introduce ads to capitalize on users fleeing X; Perplexity tests ads and sponsored queries; and Amazon pulls the plug on Freevee.

Meet Evertune AI, a startup that helps advertisers understand how their brands and products appear in generative AI search responses.

Can Netflix do live programming? Plus, efficiency gains from generative AI are causing some ad agencies to rethink how they bill clients.

One priority for Republicans once Donald Trump is back in the White House is to reduce regulation and, specifically, to replace FTC Chair Lina Khan. Plus, Microsoft Bing has a new claim to relevance.

Opera Ads – the online ad platform Opera released in 2019 – doesn’t use third-party cookies for targeting. Opera monetizes its browser using other signals, including search intent and context.

A Google breakup could lead to a more fragmented market, with multiple smaller entities competing for ad space. This will almost certainly result in increased competition and higher ad rates for publishers.

Walmart’s latest data play: an app for unlocking barricades on store shelves; training generative AI may rely more on scraping big-name sites than previously thought; and tracking the issues that mattered most to Trump and Harris, based on ad spending.

When banner ads were introduced in 1994, pundits proclaimed that this new approach to advertising was going to ruin the world wide web and kill creativity as we know it. Others were worried about their jobs. Sound familiar?