Content Studio

Advertising has never been richer in data. With the right tools, marketers can now track competitor spend, campaigns and performance across media and markets, often in near-real time.

Coming back from POSSIBLE last month, one thing stood out to me: Streaming TV has entered a much more operational phase. The conversation has evolved from where streaming is headed to how marketers drive better performance today. The content and conversations focused on how AI can improve campaign execution, how data can sharpen targeting and measurement and how channels work together within broader omnichannel strategies.

The mass adoption of LLMs is shifting internet search for consumers from following blue links to synthesized answers from LLMs. Zero click is here. As generative engines and personal AI agents begin searching, comparing and acting on our behalf, discovery will no longer happen on a search page. It will happen inside the answers with personalized information and preferences.

The last decade of app marketing drove massive success in downloads thanks in large part to preloads, install campaigns and carrier partnerships. But the app download is just the beginning. EMarketer warns that 90% of new users stop using an app after seven days.

As connected TV (CTV) matures, advertisers aren’t just raising expectations; they’re resetting them. And increasingly, transparency isn’t a value-add, it’s the cost of entry.

Brands have gotten adept at finding and following their audiences across the media landscape. Today, that means everywhere: linear TV, CTV, YouTube and the open web, often in the same evening.

The Measurement Gap in B2B Advertising Campaign Sophistication Is Increasing, but Performance Visibility Remains Limited B2B advertising is undergoing a major transformation. Campaigns now span multiple channels, target entire buying committees, and draw on richer audience data than ever before. Yet most marketers are still struggling to answer a fundamental question: are these investments actually […]

When it comes to identity, most marketers moved past third-party cookie concerns a long time ago. Identity today is not about a single technology or solution; it is about learning how to combine different signals in ways that allow campaigns to reach real people across channels while respecting privacy and maintaining performance.

In the rush to scale globally, US brands are often content with “accidental attention.” But attention isn’t a lottery; it’s a strategy that requires a deep familiarity with context in real time.

For years, programmatic advertising has operated on the assumption that most buyers didn’t really want to know how the system works. That’s changing. More advertisers are asking harder questions about where their media dollars actually go, and those questions are increasingly come from mid-market agencies that would historically rely on DSPs to manage the complexity of supply for them.

AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In advertising, however, that foundation is often flawed.

When Apple launched AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) in 2021, access to deterministic identifiers fell sharply as roughly 80% of users opted out of tracking. User-level feedback loops became sparse and biased, and iOS performance marketing shifted into a different measurement environment under SKAdNetwork (SKAN). Apple’s AdAttributionKit (AAK) later delayed postbacks, compressed conversion values and set privacy thresholds that made signal availability dependent on campaign structure and scale.

No one in programmatic advertising needs another reminder about fragmentation. This complexity stands in sharp contrast to the original promise of the open internet. Programmatic was supposed to give marketers the freedom to reach audiences anywhere online by combining data, automation and inventory from across the web.

It’s widely reported that anywhere from 20% to 30% of programmatic video spend is lost due to supply-side misrepresentation, invalid traffic and low-quality inventory. That’s billions in wasted ad spend – not to mention billions in ad revenue siphoned away from premium publishers – further eroding high-quality video inventory.

Retail media is booming.
Spend is climbing, new networks are launching and every platform seems to deliver strong returns. And yet many marketers are asking the same uncomfortable question: How do we know what’s actually driving growth?

In 2011, three media devices captured 87% of consumer attention. Today, that figure has dropped to 65%, according to McKinsey. The fragmentation isn’t slowing down; it’s accelerating. Streaming services, social media, podcasts and gaming now compete for eyeballs, making traditional media planning feel like navigating with an outdated map.

When Truthset revealed that IP-to-postal matches are accurate only 13% of the time, it exposed an uncomfortable truth about connected TV advertising: The industry has been optimizing for the wrong metric.

If you buy CTV advertising, you’ve likely encountered two approaches to securing premium inventory: programmatic guaranteed (PG) and buying direct, also referred to as direct IO (DIO).

Marketers are projected to have invested nearly $400 billion in US media in 2025, based on estimates from MAGNA and eMarketer. About half of that will go toward finding new customers. Yet, as marketing investment grows, clarity on what actually drives ROI and growth continues to shrink. The loss of third-party identifiers, rising privacy restrictions and closed ecosystems have made it harder to see what’s working.

When marketers get too fixated on measuring short-term performance, they miss opportunities to capitalize on TV’s strength as a brand-building channel.

Consumers today switch between screens and viewing interfaces to seamlessly view content. Now it’s time for advertisers to catch up to this convergence, so they can make ad experiences better – not worse, said Cadent CEO Doug Rozen.

Marketers who want to remain competitive need to reexamine the way they view, plan and measure performance across video and streaming platforms. If they’re still debating programmatic vs. direct or linear vs. streaming, then they’re missing out on the real meaning behind convergent TV, according to Mike Fogarty, head of client development, brand and agency […]

As the video landscape evolves, one thing is clear: CTV is no longer operating as a standalone line item. It is now a foundational component of fully converged, total video strategies. The implications are especially significant for regional and local advertisers.

For most of the last decade, performance marketing was rewarded for momentum. Spend efficiently. Scale quickly. Optimize continuously. If the line went up and to the right, few questions followed. But that era is ending, because performance without accountability is no longer credible.

AI in advertising has gone from a buzzword to a full disruptor in what feels like just a few months. If CES was any indication, there is no sign of this slowing down.

Programmatic’s biggest promise was never automation for its own sake. It was accountability. But today, the industry is moving from reporting performance to steering performance.

When measurement systems are optimized for transactions rather than enterprise value, marketing is forced to justify spend instead of leading growth.

Political advertising has always evolved alongside media consumption. But the shift from linear television to streaming has introduced challenges that campaign managers are still working to navigate. While connected TV (CTV) promises precision and flexibility, the reality facing political advertisers today is far more complex and less standardized.

Viewers aren’t just watching streaming content anymore; they’re living in it. And while they’re streaming, they’re telling us something important about how they want to experience advertising. They want to do more than watch; they want to engage.

Programmatic media buying is expected to account for the majority of growth in the CTV market in 2026. This year alone, over 90% of CTV ad dollars were transacted through programmatic pipes. That data isn’t surprising. Programmatic has solved a real problem by helping brands reach TV viewers with targeted precision at much lower costs.