Commerce

Criteo has an optimistic pitch for future growth, but Wall Street doesn’t see the money yet from LLMs, commerce agents and social shopping.

What people need is an independent agent that peers across retailer and is entirely focused on ecommerce services. At least that’s the conclusion driving Wizard Commerce, a personal shopping agent that emerged from beta on Wednesday.

Amazon teases an AI licensing marketplace for publishers; not every country is fine with targeted gambling ads; and YouTube’s ad revenue share isn’t enough for its entrepreneurial creators.

The OAAA’s new content taxonomy introduces new subcategories that OOH media owners can use to classify their inventory in OpenRTB bid requests.

“Performance CTV” oversimplifies how television actually drives value, and the focus on performance all but guarantees that campaign results will be misinterpreted.

Prebid is on a roll: It will take charge of a seller agent, part of AdCP, and Amazon’s integration with Prebid is in beta. But there’s one sticking point: Microsoft is not going to cache video ad creatives anymore that come through Prebid, leaving publishers scrambling for an alternative.

Big TV’s shift to programmatic brings in the performance brands; Meta rolls out premium subscriptions for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp; and Yahoo enters the crowded AI search market.

AdMonsters is officially joining AdExchanger, unifying content under one site on AdExchanger’s domain to further connect our audiences.

This Wednesday marks the beginning of Hershey’s first major brand marketing campaign since 2018

Retailers court luxury goods to compete with Amazon; indie agency Tombras acquires Opinionated; and talk of an AI bubble dominates discussion at Davos.

Retail’s Big Show, the annual NRF event in New York City, was big on agentic commerce, unsurprisingly, as well as influencer and creator marketing, which was an eye-opener.

The year ahead in commerce, with insights from the NRF Big Show conference, where retailers congregate every January. Plus, the 2026 privacy policy cheat sheet.

Fraud is eating into retail profits. A new startup called Pinch AI just launched with $5 million in funding to fight back.

On Wednesday, retail and CPG data company SPINS added a new piece with its acquisition of MikMak, a click-to-buy ad tech and analytics startup that helps optimize their commerce media.

Meta cuts its metaverse investment by 30%; Netflix makes a renewed push in the gaming market; and the rush to slap an AI label on everything is placing existing ad tech under renewed scrutiny.

Believe it or not, car oil change service company Valvoline is in the midst of a fascinating retail marketing transformation.

Retail media gets its own special kind of AI agents; xAI has a CSAM problem; and Discord might be trying to go public.

Amazon touts its Marketing Cloud, but buyers have concerns; OpenAI’s ad biz may face challenges; and in-chat shopping isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Publishers have been losing 20%, 30% and in some cases even as much as 90% of their traffic and revenue over the past year due to the rise of zero-click AI search.

The generative AI trend generated endless hot takes this year, but the ad industry also had plenty to say about growing competition between DSPs and SSPs. Here are AdExchanger’s top 10 most popular guest columns of 2025 and why they resonated.

Private equity finds ecommerce publishers aren’t worth what they used to be; Salesforce rethinks its faith in agentic AI; and CBS News accidentally encourages people to pirate its content.

Agencies are shifting away from third-party ad tech; ChatGPT is throwing all kinds of monetization spaghetti at the wall; and Axel Springer is looking to buy.

Attribution measurement is still a mess; video podcasting struggles with effective advertising; and NIL deals are taking off for student athletes.

Jay Richman, Amazon’s VP of product and technology, on how AI-generated ad creative can still stand out at scale without becoming generic or too samey samey. Plus: The risks brands face if they wait too long to embrace AI.

Inside Coca-Cola’s pivot from TV advertising to influencer marketing; Netflix inks another exclusive video podcast deal with iHeartMedia; and Madison & Wall predicts slow US ad spend growth in 2026.

The grocery chain Albertson’s is trying to reduce the time and number of clicks it takes to add an item to an online shopping cart. It’s new click-to-cart product should help.

AI shopping agents are breaking the traditional attribution loop. Marketers must ensure that AI is aware of their brand and track how that awareness influences ecommerce outcomes.

Auctions aren’t just for programmatic ads anymore; fashion influencers are turning to Substack; and AI-generated recaps continue to get the facts wrong.

An important part of developing the in-house creative group at HexClad is to prove the return on investment, according to Head of Content Matt Duckor.

People tend to think of digital-native product brands as a single bucket. But there’s a huge difference between companies that are social natives, for instance, rather than an Amazon-based brand.