Commerce

Wouldn’t it be great to enact standards rather than talk about them?; Amazon wants to go fully automated; and revenue doesn’t seem to drop like search traffic does.

As the pendulum swings hard toward 1:1 personalization, a critical question emerges: Just because we can personalize every interaction, does it mean we should?

Walmart’s AI shopping deal with ChatGPT might ding its retail media biz; the MRC shares updates on which platforms won and lost accreditation; and kids’ sports streaming is becoming a real media channel.

AdExchanger caught up Milani CMO Jeremy Lowenstein about how the beauty brand fits into mass-market retail, in contrast to DTC and social-based brands.

Apple TV is losing its plus; Agentic AI is ruining the ad tech equilibrium; and Google insists that search is still solid.

The fate of the open web will be decided on who controls the data that drives monetization and the AI that determines distribution. Google controls both, and proposed remedies to its ad tech monopoly do not address this imbalance.

Retail media has broken through some critical threshold, and is no longer the straightforward digitalization of shopper marketing budgets.

Ask advertisers, not Meta, how best to use Meta’s ad platform; holdcos and big brands are pressuring Big Tech to self-regulate; and how data-driven animal husbandry is impacting marketing.

ChatGPT and others continued the fragmentation of the search journey, which today hops between platforms and intents. The funnel no longer exists. Here’s how to pivot your brand’s SEO/GEO strategy.

Judge Leonie Brinkema is ready to be done with the DOJ v. Google saga; Amazon DSP comes out on top; and Mozilla brings programmatic ads to to the Firefox browser.

Mastercard launched an ad network; Meta plans to sell targeted ads based on engagement with its AI products; and the Washington Post is in trouble if Ad Chief Johanna Mayer-Jones departs.

Delivery apps are launching social networks now; Google is the latest Big Tech company to write a huge check to Trump; and ad agencies of all sizes apparently aren’t big enough.

Principal-based buying isn’t inherently bad. When incentives are aligned, clients get more precision and speed than traditional agency models often allow. The issue isn’t the mechanism; it’s the incentives.

Marketing films is one battle after another; AI gets stymied by the cloud; and bots are causing brand backlash.

Private equity firm Novacap acquires IAS; many large online retailers are seeing an uptick in referral traffic from ChatGPT; and the IAB downgraded its US ad spend projection for the rest of the year.

Marketing has long struggled to prove itself as a growth engine. What if agentic AI isn’t the threat many fear but the breakthrough marketing always needed?

The fundamental shift from traditional search to AI chatbots has major implications for the entire marketing organization, says Bluefish CEO Alex Sherman. If brands want control over how they appear in AI search results, they must think about the content they feed to large language models.

In today’s digital advertising landscape, first-party data and clean rooms remain highly relevant. However, artificial intelligence (AI) has also been dominating much of the conversation lately.

Kimmel’s back, baybee; would ads make Wikipedia better, actually?; and Amazon gets accused of dark patterns.

Advertising using AI-doctored images could spark legal issues if the images are misleading. Plus: the commerce reckoning.

Last year, Shipt went hunting for a DSP, eyeing new programmatic reach and hyper-local targeting down to the ZIP code.

On Wednesday, Amazon introduced an agentic AI tool that brings all the image, video and audio generation capabilities of the company’s Creative Studio into its ad platform creative setup.

On Tuesday, Amazon DSP announced an expanded integration with satellite radio company SiriusXM.

The FTC probes Google and Amazon over transparency in their search businesses; Walmart will only allow authorized sellers; and Perplexity’s ad business garners criticism.

Concrete findings on how effective QR codes are at driving ad interactions are now available, and some industry best practices are emerging.

Morgan Stanley downgrades The Trade Desk; Warner Bros. Discovery and Nielsen announce a new deal; and brands aren’t sold on virtual influencers.

Retail media is entering what might be called its Socratic phase. The closer we to get to understanding an ad campaign’s real impact and business results, the clearer it is that we have no idea how this thing works.

Criteo announced a partnership with Google Search Ads 360 (SA360), Google’s enterprise search advertising platform, making Criteo the first third-party vendor to integrate with Google for on-site retail media supply.

GAM’s dinner with ad agencies sparked speculation that Google is preparing to spin off its bundled SSP and ad server as a remedy to its ad tech monopoly. But Google says it’s just part of the trend of SSPs going direct to buyers.

Google can’t stop catching fines in Europe; Roblox game developers might finally get a cut of a revenue; and eBay is getting into the AI game.