Marketers

Agentic media buying may cut middlemen or add more chaos; Grocers are remodeling for retail media amid rising costs; Peacock is betting on the booming microdrama trend.

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.

PubMatic has run more than 30 fully autonomous, end-to-end agentic campaigns through the SSP’s AgenticOS platform, in addition to more than 1,000 direct publisher deals.

TTD CEO Jeff Green laid out the DSP’s plan for winning in a new world of advertising that – AI aside – necessitates major changes in how marketers behave.

Clipping can be lucrative, but can – and should – it last?; AI Max raises the stakes for advertisers; and the ANA introduces a new fee to fund Aquila.

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.

There is a clear set of capabilities that CTV OEMs and streamers can offer advertisers that the original content owner cannot. Here are the most material gaps that the buy side experiences between supply sent from the publisher and supply sent from distributors.

Behind the scenes with Manscaped CMO Marcelo Kertész on the brand’s first Super Bowl spot – a musical ad starring singing hair balls (just watch it) – and how he’s shifting Manscaped’s marketing from performance-heavy DTC to a broader, brand-led strategy.

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

Instead of optimizing for raw reach, the social platform Spill is trying to build a business around trust, safety and tight-knit fandoms. As the platform grows, it begs the question: Is there room in global media plans for a smaller, high‑touch platform like this?

I find it useful on occasion to interview people who are marketing-adjacent, and thus possess a different and perhaps more highly clarified perspective on the tools we use for data-driven online advertising. One such recent briefing was with Joe Torreano, VP of product and UX for outdoorsy gear and clothing online retailer Backcountry.

Generative AI search has pushed traffic off a cliff across most of the internet, but not on social platforms. Reddit included.

Alphabet earned $109.9 billion in Q1 this year, up from $90.2 billion a year ago. And that’s not even the truly gobsmacking number.

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

We can’t simply trust AI to make up for bland creative with sheer volume. The real performance shift happens when we use AI to push creativity further.

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. 

Last week, I went to LeadsCon in Las Vegas. After sitting through sessions on customer lifetime value and creator-led video performance, it became clear to me that lead gen and programmatic folks are trying to solve the same problem, just from different angles.

NBCUniversal successfully called its shot with the nickname “Legendary February.”

Partnerize has developed an an industry-wide standard to measure AI search performance and compensate publishers accordingly.

In the rush to scale globally, US brands are often content with “accidental attention.” But attention isn’t a lottery; it’s a strategy that requires a deep familiarity with context in real time.

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.

Reward Apps faces data broker allegations; Apple bolsters its advertising business; Comments are all the rage in social media marketing.

Surprise! Platforms ignore users opting out of ad tracking; the marketing machine claims credit for Geese’s popularity; and Meta’s MAGA-friendly moderation makes an unforced error.

Measurement and performance are expected to dominate convos at upfronts; Tubi doubles down on AI; and Meta takes down ads encouraging anti-Meta lawsuits.

When Apple launched AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) in 2021, access to deterministic identifiers fell sharply as roughly 80% of users opted out of tracking. User-level feedback loops became sparse and biased, and iOS performance marketing shifted into a different measurement environment under SKAdNetwork (SKAN). Apple’s AdAttributionKit (AAK) later delayed postbacks, compressed conversion values and set privacy thresholds that made signal availability dependent on campaign structure and scale.

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.

The effect wasn’t just limited to news content. The Reuters.com/lifestyle vertical also had some of its brand-suitable pages blocked.

I’m keenly interested by emerging grocery aisle trends, snacks especially. So, I was quick to grab an interview with Andrew Thomas, head of marketing for the meat snack brand Archer, who was being offered to speak to a case study with GumGum regarding CTV pause ads.