Commerce

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.

Shopify launched its latest advertising business line on Wednesday, called the Shopify Product Network.

Instacart tried dynamic pricing for groceries; AI companies aim for an open-source agentic AI standard; and Tinder digs into users’ camera rolls for data.

You are not immune to shopaganda; AI responses are more limited than retailers would like; and FIFA is forcing ad-mandated water breaks.

Criteo recently debuted new AI tech and pilot programs to a group of reporters – including a backend shopper data partnership with an unnamed LLM.

Consumer spending on Black Friday Cyber Monday was up 7%. But prices are high, and it’s affluent customers who are doing the most spending in the US. Plus: the challenge of being an ad buyer managing campaigns on Meta during “Glitchmas.”

On Google and Meta platforms, AI search becomes the default; TTD might cut its costs; and apparently, toddlers like AI slop on YouTube.

Grocery TV’s Marlow Nickell joins AdExchanger’s Inside the Stack to explain why in-store retail media is “inevitable” and what brands miss when they overlook the shelf.

Broadsign may actually be building a platform that will make an attractive acquisition target down the road. And one of the major cross-platform Big Tech players feels like the most likely buyer.

America’s biggest department stores are changing, and changing fast.

AudienceMix, a new curation startup, aims to make it more cost effective to mix and match different audience segments using only the data brands need to execute their campaigns.

Is TJX recession proof?; Amazon is blocking OpenAI; and Meta is in hot water with the US Senate.

Omnicom revamps its revenue reporting; Amazon will now charge for access to its Selling Partner API; and brands seek sponsorship deals with all sorts of social creators.

A former exec sues WPP over an alleged retaliatory firing; Jolt acquires Volta Media from Shell; and AI defamation litigation is on the rise.

“We just constantly hear how complex it is right now,” Kelly MacLean, Amazon Ads VP of engineering, science and product, tells AdExchanger. “So that’s really where we we’ve anchored a lot on hearing their feedback, [and] figuring out how we can drive even more simplicity.”

Jeff Cohen, Skai’s new chief business development officer, unpacks why the smartest retailers and brands are already connecting the data dots and rethinking their playbooks for the AI era, even though the shopping bots aren’t quite there yet.