Content Studio

What is the future of curation in 2025? On the CES conference floor, PubMatic Chief Revenue Officer Kyle Dozeman talks about why curation is such a hot topic in ad tech.

Back in 1966, McKinsey astutely observed, “Change gets costlier every day, yet not changing can be costlier still.” This statement rings truer than ever in today’s rapidly evolving advertising landscape.

Generative AI is quickly becoming the bedrock of the digital advertising landscape.

That might sound like a bold statement—after all, generative AI only hit the mainstream two years ago. But while many industries are just beginning to explore the potential of generative AI, advertisers have been leveraging AI and machine learning for years.

In 2025, connected TV (CTV) will revolutionize advertising yet again, offering marketers a blend of massive reach and performance-driven results. Its power to connect broad audiences with lower-funnel impact makes it the ultimate game-changer in modern marketing.

The customer journey is complex, with consumers interacting across 20+ channels and exposed to 4,000-10,000 ads daily before making a purchase. This fragmented landscape challenges advertisers to effectively measure impact across touchpoints to understand: How do marketing efforts across all stages of the customer journey contribute to overall business outcomes?

Here’s a call to action that all advertisers should hear: If your advertising strategy doesn’t include streaming TV, you’re missing out. And if you’re stuck in the mindset that TV is just for brand awareness, it’s time for a serious rethink.

The ad tech industry is great at creating new buzzwords, but less successful at defining them.

Take curation: Every major ad tech platform claims to do it, but there are conflicting definitions of what it is or how it works.

CTV advertising is experiencing a power shift as original content manufacturers (OEMs) position themselves at the intersection of audiences, advertisers and content providers.

As the deprecation of third-party cookies accelerates and consumer demand for privacy intensifies, brands need new ways to reach their ideal audiences. Enter retail media, a rapidly growing channel offering a lifeline in a privacy-first world.

As we close the books on 2024, we’ve noticed some trends over the past twelve months. Any of these could summarize the “theme” of 2024: the rise of AI, the debate over supply curation, the “will they, won’t they” around cookie deprecation. Together, these trends have laid the groundwork for what’s to come in 2025: It will be the year of empowerment for buyers through choice and control.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and new automation tools has disrupted the programmatic advertising industry, stoking fears among some marketers about the future or scope of their roles.

Throughout the CTV market, there is an ongoing push for higher levels of transparency and control – and for good reason. Advertisers need deeper insights into the audiences and types of content surrounding their ads if they want to drive maximal interest.

One key to successful advertising is showing ads to people at just the right moment. Advertisers understand the typical smartphone user moves seamlessly between apps and websites throughout the day, and this makes showing ads on both crucial to reaching their audience.

Retail may have a classic, old-school image, but it’s leading the charge in AI adoption. While, historically, retailers have been slow to embrace new technology, the latest Marketing AI Institute research tells a different story.

For years, the pervasive uncertainty surrounding cookies pained publishers.

DSPs used cookies to reach defined audiences without meaningful involvement from publishers. This dynamic disintermediated publishers, disconnecting them from their ability to drive better results for advertisers through their robust understanding of their site’s experiences, contexts and audiences.

In the age of streaming services, it’s easy to overlook the enduring power of linear TV. But even though platforms like Netflix and Hulu have captured a significant portion of the market, traditional television still reaches a massive and valuable audience.

How do we create a more agile system while still respecting the privacy of our audience? Let’s start by talking about what’s broken in the status quo, writes Ted Sweetser, VP of ad sales at PurpleLab.

For years, connecting TV advertising to mobile performance – like app downloads or purchases – was a guessing game. But with the evolution of CTV, advertisers can now link TV ad exposure directly to mobile actions, bridging the gap between the biggest screen in the home and the smallest.

Seven years ago, some people believed targeting on connected TV (CTV) wouldn’t be possible without cookies. Fast-forward to today, and cookieless CTV targeting is not only possible but commonplace. We’ve entered an era where precision targeting is the norm, even as the traditional methods of tracking have evolved.

The holiday season is here, and understanding how different generations plan to shop can help you tailor your messaging, media planning and creative based on the generation you’re targeting.

Could Google’s antitrust cases change how we use the internet? The short answer: possibly.

Marketers are on edge, as the remedies for this case could disrupt the bedrock of marketing. Search marketing, for example, is a linchpin of acquisition strategies that commands nearly 40% of US ad spend. Google’s ad tech commands a massive share of the online display market. If the cornerstone that is Google marketing crumbles, the ripple effects would be massive. Traditional search and acquisition strategies could falter.

The streaming landscape is rapidly expanding, with over 2,000 streaming services vying for US consumers’ attention. This surge has not only increased content availability but also heightened competition and subscriber churn. Samsung Ads’ data shows that, for every active user on a streaming app, eight users churned last year. This poses a significant concern, complicating media planning and monetization.

Identity chaos – that’s what a customer recently called the current state of identity management (or lack thereof). It became clear that the customer’s plethora of options, methodologies and use cases – all with their own trade-offs and a lack of interoperability – resulted in significant confusion and limitations.

At the risk of sounding like “the year of mobile,” we’re at the beginning of a new phase in ad tech with the rise of AI. Advertisers and ad tech partners alike are overwhelmed with AI opportunities, eager to implement it in meaningful ways. But when seemingly everything is powered by AI, how can you make sure you’re using it successfully?

The controls and measurement for performance advertising keeps getting more granular, more precise and more sophisticated. Yet brand advertising – even on digital channels – may feel like it’s stuck in the 1950s. Advertisers blanket broad audiences with high-level brand messages, accepting that the value and impact of these efforts may be largely intangible or […]

The TV industry has come a long way from the early days of cord-cutting skepticism. Today, consuming entertainment on the living-room screen over the internet is the norm.

Despite Google’s recent decision to continue support for third-party cookies on Chrome, the ongoing degradation of legacy identifiers and data signals within the digital marketing ecosystem continues at an impressive pace.

If your marketing strategy isn’t data-driven, you’re not alone. Data has played a role in advertising for decades, going back to market research focus-grouping to understand feedback on branding. In the health care space, however, data is often underutilized due to fragmented systems and a lack of integration between marketing and clinical data. With over 97% of health care data still untapped, vast opportunities for creative, targeted solutions remain undiscovered.

The distribution of live sports on CTV is driving one the biggest disruptions to traditional linear TV advertising. For the first time, NBCUniversal Olympics inventory was made biddable on Peacock. With over 4.5 billion minutes of coverage streamed during opening weekend – and the second-best day of engagement ever for Peacock – advertisers reaped the rewards of digital viewership.

We live in interesting times. Between a slew of evolving regulatory changes, Google’s back-and-forth stance (and ultimately unsurprising decision) on third-party cookie deprecation and ongoing signal loss, marketers are forced to operate with reduced access to consumer data.