Historically, non-human traffic was viewed on a spectrum from benign to intentional fraud. But AI agents represent a legitimate audience that brands will have to understand and engage.
In a world being agentically orchestrated at scale, human judgment is the indispensable guardrail preventing us from optimizing right over the cliff.
Roblox is making its under-13 audience available to advertisers for the first time. And it named youth-focused ad marketplace SuperAwesome as its exclusive advertising partner for under-13 users.
LLM environments introduce new dimensions to brand safety and suitability. Understanding them is the starting point for testing ChatGPT ads.
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.
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?
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.
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.
The effect wasn’t just limited to news content. The Reuters.com/lifestyle vertical also had some of its brand-suitable pages blocked.
If a buyer wants real control, “domain rationalization” alone will never be enough. Buyers need “bid rationalization,” shaping the supply at the bid-request level so they see fewer, better, more outcome-relevant opportunities.
Amid a federal crackdown and local unrest, Minnesota’s biggest newsroom is proving brand safety and hard news can coexist.
Google faces another antitrust investigation; Americans want free, ad-supported news; and the K-shaped economy dings mass-market manufacturers.
As brand safety standards evolve and oversight shifts from platforms to third-party vendors, Brittany Scott, SVP of global partnerships at Zefr, explains what the rise of generative AI – and Meta’s decision to step away from MRC brand safety audits – means for the future of media quality.
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.
For years, MFA was a mostly web-based problem. Now, generative AI has supercharged the made-for-advertising model, and it’s infecting social media feeds and vertical video platforms.
After pulling back on moderation, Instagram gets flooded with antisemites; BidSwitch builds a programmatic way for AI bots to pay to crawl websites; and nearly half of Gen Z dislikes AI content.
Most of what’s sold as “contextual” today still runs on the same keyword logic we used a decade ago. The industry didn’t reinvent contextual targeting; it simply replaced one keyword with a cluster.
The real challenge is drawing a clear line between the AI-generated content that adds value and the kind that erodes trust and leads to significantly lower ad effectiveness.
Social CPMs have risen. The ability to find incremental audiences on social platforms has declined. Add the growing brand-safety concerns, and the equation looks even worse.
CTV has become a powerful full-funnel channel, attracting advertisers of all sizes – and the momentum isn’t slowing.
CTV ad spend is projected to rise another 16% this year to $26.6 billion, according to the IAB. But with rapid growth comes complexity. Advertisers now face a maze of platforms, apps and channels, each with different buying models, audience access and inconsistent measurement. For SMBs without large teams or budgets, this fragmentation is especially challenging to navigate.
Advertisers are still having a lot of the same brand-safety problems today as he did years ago – and it’s pretty damned frustrating.
Alvaro Bedoya shared his qualms with digital advertising’s more controversial targeting tactics and how kids use gen AI and social media.
YouTube backpedals on banning COVID and political misinfo; Tylenol pushes back against Trump’s claims that it causes autism; and Disney doubles down on linear TV and raises Disney+ prices after its Kimmel boycott threat.
Publishers like News Corp are walking a fine line—suing AI companies for scraping their work while cutting multimillion‑dollar licensing deals with others.
Protected by Mediaocean, Mediaocean’s ad verification division, is partnering with the Internet Watch Foundation to crack down on CSAM and ensure children’s online safety.
Television advertising has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years, with connected TV (CTV) emerging as a powerful channel for marketers seeking the impact of traditional television with the precision of digital targeting.
New social media content moderation policies will enable connections with audiences that reflect a broader range of perspectives, expand inventory, and provide opportunities for contextual alignment.
In today’s digital advertising landscape, speed, scale and sophistication have become both a promise and a problem. Innovation has accelerated – but so too has fragmentation. Marketers are expected to drive performance across an ever-expanding universe of platforms, formats and data streams – often without the clarity or confidence they need to succeed.
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?
Curated deals were once seen as a smart way to bring structure to programmatic chaos. Today, they’ve become table stakes.
