Opinion

Almost a decade ago, running multiple retargeters across the same user base was a recipe for inefficiency. But the landscape shifted, and the data makes that clear.

As the advertising industry races forward, core technology providers – particularly ad servers, dynamic creative platforms and attribution or measurement companies – play an increasingly critical role in powering the infrastructure that enables targeted, data-driven and performance-optimized campaigns at scale. But one outdated pricing model is becoming an obstacle to innovation, efficiency and effectiveness: CPM-based pricing.

As the quality of answer engines improves, people will click through to publisher websites less often. The solution isn’t to wage war against AI. It’s time to build a sustainable future for all stakeholders.

As marketing fails to speak the language of business outcomes due to an overemphasis on vanity metrics, it is increasingly losing its seat at the decision-making table.

With over $200 billion in programmatic spending on the table next year, maximizing yield is the name of the game for publishers in 2026. Capturing that opportunity demands maximum optionality across demand paths and signals. And with AI reshaping the landscape (referrals from ChatGPT to news publishers saw a 25x increase from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2025, while traditional search traffic heads in the other direction) it is more important than ever for publishers to optimize their monetizable inventory.

Brands spend millions activating around Coachella. Then they spend the next three months trying to figure out if any of it actually worked. It’s a reflection of our industry’s broken approach to measuring media effectiveness.

For advertisers, the holiday season poses an optimal opportunity to reach a new and broader audience, boost sales and foster brand loyalty with customers. And this season, CTV should be a core area of focus.

AI agents and so-called “super signal aggregators” are being framed as the saviors of premium publishers and advertisers who prioritize high-quality media. But these technologies could perpetuate programmatic’s worst practices.

Overreliance on performance channels in pursuit of short-term gains creates fragility in the growth model, especially when brand equity is underfunded and unable to drive demand. 

The return of in-banner video has resulted in a deluge of cheap video supply flooding the open web, driving down CPM rates for dedicated video inventory and creating user experience and ad quality concerns.

TV audiences are rallying around CTV, and advertisers are following suit . But with this shift comes a persistent challenge: How can advertisers ensure brand safety, campaign efficiency and audience relevance in a fragmented, opaque streaming ecosystem?

Marketers today are operating in an outcome-obsessed world. For mobile app marketers, especially, the smallest screen in the home – the mobile phone – has become the default choice for driving lower-funnel outcomes.

Curated deals were once seen as a smart way to bring structure to programmatic chaos. Today, they’ve become table stakes.

With Amazon Prime Day in full force, marketers are navigating one of the biggest retail events of the summer. But this Prime Day isn’t just a moment to drive sales; it’s a critical opportunity to test and learn.

CTV advertisers have carried over one-to-one programmatic logic from display and online video into a channel that behaves nothing like them. We need to stop chasing CTV impressions and start chasing impact.

Measuring media quality is just the first step. A bigger challenge looms: assessing media quality against a marketer’s short-term and long-term goals.

Michelle Urwin, Chief Marketing Officer of Skai, joined Sarah Sluis at Cannes Lions 2025 to share the biggest shifts in commerce media . From Amazon’s expanding DSP and full-funnel capabilities to the rise of Agentic AI in campaign optimization, this conversation dives into how retail media is evolving fast, and how advertisers can keep up. […]

In this fast-paced and insightful conversation from Cannes, Michelle Urwin, Chief Marketing Officer at Skai, breaks down the top three trends shaping Amazon Ads and how advertisers are successfully targeting their rich data across platforms and devices driving more revenue and maximizing campaign performance.

The demise in recent years of legacy DSPs is not a glitch in the matrix; it’s a business model failure, leaving SSPs and publishers to pick up the pieces. 

In an omnichannel environment, managing and selling ads is becoming too complex for humans to handle alone. That’s why many are turning to AI tools to maximize ad inventory

Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out the obvious: There was a lot of talk about AI in Cannes, but where is the real ad tech innovation?

In a world where privacy regulations are tightening and third-party cookies are increasingly unreliable, first-party data has emerged as a cornerstone of modern marketing strategy.

In a media landscape that’s more fragmented than ever, brands face mounting pressure to prove ROI and outmaneuver competitors, especially as budgets tighten. Nielsen’s Matt Devitt breaks down how marketers can gain a competitive edge by leveraging accurate, comparable data across channels and understanding their share of voice in the broader market. He also tackles […]

Dave Helmreich, CEO of TripleLift, joins Lynne d Johnson of AdExchanger and AdMonsters at Cannes 2025 to explore how TripleLift is redefining what it means to be a supply-side platform. Helmreich shares how TripleLift isn’t just connecting inventory to demand—they’re innovating through creative technology, dynamic ad formats, and real-time personalization across mobile, CTV, and retail […]

PayPal Ads SVP and GM Mark Grether joins Allison Schiff at Cannes 2025 to reveal how PayPal is leading a new category with financial media networks (FMNs). Unlike traditional retail or commerce media, PayPal Ads leverages its powerful “transaction graph” to deliver seamless, high-frequency campaigns across the open web. Grether discusses the recent launch of […]

Marketing measurement is broken, and everyone knows it. Every week, I talk to marketing leaders who are desperate to quantify the revenue that marketing is incrementally delivering to the business. Many of them have some kind of marketing mix model (MMM) in place, yet still rely almost exclusively on last-touch attribution (LTA) to optimize their marketing investments on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

In this timely conversation at Cannes 2025, Allison Schiff sits down with Eddie Ishak, Head of User Experience at Yieldmo, to unpack the challenges and future of programmatic advertising. They explore how the disconnect between media and creative impacts performance and why alignment is more critical than ever. Eddie explains how managed services can deliver […]

With a growing array of platforms and channels competing for consumer attention, advertisers have been increasingly looking for ways to understand which ads and placements drive engagement and sales – not just engagement and sales that would have happened anyway but true incrementality.

AI is transforming advertising by empowering brands—especially small businesses—with tools to scale high-quality visuals, videos, and messaging quickly to reach diverse audiences, from retail shoppers to live sports viewers. Jay Richman, VP of Products & Tech at Amazon, highlights how AI enables more emotional, contextual, and personalized ad experiences, helping brands stand out across diverse […]

After a reenergizing week at the Cannes Lions festival, here are six observations on how our industry is changing to meet its new challenges.