Commerce

Over the past few years, driven primarily by AI adoption, there has been a truly radical change to how quickly and easily brands will abandon old standards of quality ­– or even decency – in the name of performance.

The programmatic intelligence layer is owned by the same parties that are extracting margin from it. That structure is now being dismantled by an AI-underpinned protocol that moves the intelligence layer into the open.

Meta wants to own online communities; Ecommerce brands face old-school advertising scrutiny; Omnicom wants fewer ad tech middlemen.

Agentic shopping is the next big thing. At least that’s the message from Google’s big annual conference for ad product updates.

AI can’t handle complex media plans; Retail media lands under the CMO; Airbnb flirts with ads, cautiously.

Tale of Two Webs As AI answer engines reshape how audiences discover journalism, The Economist is quietly preparing for what Josh Muncke, VP of generative AI calls “two versions of the web.” The publisher is testing stripped-down, agent readable content built for ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, Digiday reports.  “We want our marketing content to be […]

Podcasts are becoming broadcasts; your kid’s college scholarship might be a data mining venture; and states are getting wise to false advertising from non-profits.

This year’s TV Upfronts buzzwords are in: performance, dynamic, AI and fandom We explain why this quartet of phrases wove their way through the presentations.

“If we only are looking at ROAS, we’re being fairly myopic about how we understand the actual relationship between the retailer and the brand,” says Liz Roche, VP of media and measurement at the grocery chain Albertsons.

Amazon Ads expects this year’s television upfronts to be an outcomes-focused affair. That may explain why the company preempted its Monday evening presentation by announcing the launch of a new ad product called Dynamic TV Creative.

For companies like Shopify, Criteo and Instacart – and even for giants like Amazon and Walmart – figuring out if the agentic oasis is real or a mirage is their priority No. 1.

Criteo shares dropped by 20% Wednesday morning after the company reported shaky Q1 earnings and revised its guidance downward for the rest of the year.

Programmatic enemies make better friends in the AI era; social video projected to outgrow CTV this year; and apps are integrating into chatbots, but where are the users?

Amazon has packaged a handful of upgrades to its ads measurement solutions, obviously catered to TV and streaming media advertisers.

Going viral isn’t great; AI search is a nightmare; and CTV is forcing everyone to get along.

Amazon is optimistic about agentic commerce; the costs of AI may soon outweigh profits; and AMC Global Media thinks old shows deserve new ads.

With its new funding, commerce data platform Chord plans to help brands access their data more easily by unifying it within one platform.

The two longest-standing names in the affiliate and partnership marketing category, Rakuten and Impact.com, have decided to stop fighting each other and will instead fight together. 

The Trade Desk announced that it will begin allowing mutual clients to use its DSP within the Pacvue or Skai platforms.

If you thought programmatic didn’t have room for yet another advertising ID graph, then you’d be wrong. On Monday, PayPal launched the PayPal Ads ID, a new identity product tied to PayPal and Venmo’s customer base.

Dappier’s new ad format allows advertisers to insert a custom brand agent into AI chat sessions on publisher sites.

The Amazon advertising boycott last week wasn’t really about Amazon’s ad platform as much as it was a dispute over evolving seller economics, which raises a fundamental question: Can you even build a brand on Amazon anymore?

With RFPs in flux, diverse-owned media companies are finding ways to use their data to improve reach. Plus: Why we’re in retail media’s “potty-training” phase.

OpenAI has its own tracking pixel; Amazon sellers are boycotting the platform; and DirecTV hops on the CAPI bandwagon.

The IAB’s Connected Commerce event in New York City this week felt to me like the retail media industry’s first sit-down explanation to a child who is now a “big kid” and must act accordingly.

In-store audio ads grow, but attribution and headphones raise doubts; Hidden fees persist as drip pricing draws scrutiny; World Cup ad costs surge.

Mula’s AI native content feed helps On3 keep its engagement and RPS consistent amid traffic drop-offs to publisher sites and the growing scarcity of online attention.

If a brand wants to improve its search visibility, there are all sorts of well-understood mechanisms – paid, organic and earned – to do so. But for a brand marketer whose CEO says, “We need to appear in these customer journey recommendation engines, and we’re willing to pay for it,” what can they do?

Pepsi cut ads, raised prices, and now must reverse both; YouTube is bringing interactivity to TV content; Instagram kills “link in bio,” sidelining publishers.

A new marketing intelligence platform helps brands like nutpods address fragmentation by unifying data and inventory across the digital ecosystem.