Platforms

It can be hard to measure the effect of advertising on in-person sales. Men’s Wearhouse partnered with measurement agency Ovative to see what was working.

Sallie, the major issuer of US education loans, is getting into the retail media network business.

Netflix unveils a conversion API; some publishers are using AI tools to expand their footprints; and CFOs are getting more involved in marketing decisions.

As audiences spend more time with creator-led video on YouTube and TikTok, the traditional publisher video stack looks out of touch. Donut Media, a hybrid creator collective and media company, is reworking that ad model.

Ad platforms are nixing credit card payments; LLMs are getting really good at unmasking online users; and McDonald’s offers a case study in how not to do organic social media.

Meta will now measure social interactions like likes, shares and comments under a new “engage-through attribution” category, replacing click-through as the default.

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

59A develops brand algorithms by looking at both online and offline data points to determine who to reach and where to target them.

What’s the deal with viral apps?; Dentsu and WPP are off of OpenPath; and AI coding has its downsides.

Agentic commerce can’t stop, won’t stop; Perplexity is officially done with its ads business; and AppLovin may launch its own social media platform.

A 2004 statute prevents owning enough TV stations to reach 39% of households. But without the scale afforded to other digital content companies, local TV is at a competitive disadvantage.

Why influencer marketing is all the rage; Target forays into ChatGPT ads; and Paramount Skydance’s difficult week.

Brands allocating a sizable chunk of their marketing budgets outside of Google and Meta achieve the best customer acquisition costs, proving that diversification is a performance strategy.

Twitch gets into pause ads; CEOs would love to stop talking about AI agents; and so would brands and publishers, actually!

The kids companies Hasbro and Animaj have formed a co-venture for selling their ads on YouTube and streaming media.

TikTok may be doubling down (again) on Shop; bots are scraping content they’re banned from; and Walmart is allegedly selling counterfeit products.

Amazon teases an AI licensing marketplace for publishers; not every country is fine with targeted gambling ads; and YouTube’s ad revenue share isn’t enough for its entrepreneurial creators.

It’s hard to break into the ad platform big leagues; AI platforms debate the value of ads; and vibe coding isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Reddit reported on Thursday $690 million in ad revenue for Q4 2025, a 75% YOY increase. But the company’s stock is down 38% over the past month.

Describing Google’s revenue growth has become a problem, it so vastly outpaces the human capacity to understand large numbers and percentage growth rates. The company earned more than $113 billion in Q4 2025, and more than $400 billion in the past year.

People Inc. is offsetting a 50% decline in Google search traffic through off-platform growth and its highest digital revenue gains in five quarters.

CloudX CEO Jim Payne – of MoPub and MAX fame – has a new startup that uses AI agents to take the pain (sorry, had to) out of mobile ad monetization.

On stage at the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting, IAB CEO David Cohen tore into AI companies, accusing them of “free riding” on publishers’ work – and calling it “stealing.”

The MRC’s auction transparency standards aren’t intended to force every programmatic platform to use the same auction playbook – but platforms do have to adopt some controversial OpenRTB specs to get certified.

Q4 earnings reports are heating up; Private equity firms get squeamish; and AI data centers are harder to build than ever.

ICE is going ad tech; Streaming television is more original than ever; and YouTube wants to keep all its data to itself.

All of Cadent’s SSP’s CTV supply paths are now direct; Netflix is thriving on repurposed YouTube content; and the Washington Post continues to struggle.

To those who knew him, John “JG” Gentry wasn’t just a CEO. He was a colleague who showed up with genuine care and curiosity.

The group that turned header bidding software into an open standard is bringing the same approach to publisher-side AI agents.

Meta is channeling its booming ad revenue into a $135 billion AI drive to power its “personal superintelligence” future.