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Marketers debate whether to build or buy their tools; Meta is shutting down the VR version of Horizon Worlds; and influencer marketing strives for authenticity.

Publicis recommends some clients ditch The Trade Desk; ChatGPT reconsiders its “unlimited” enterprise subscription; and how NYC’s Washington Square Park became an influencer hub.

Criteo joins OpenAI’s ad pilot; Google considers making its own AI landing pages; and the Supreme Court passes its own judgement (kinda) on AI.

The surveillance state targets state employee’s vehicles; Belgium targets Google’s ad tech business; and brands embrace being targeted by trolls.

The problems with FAST’s rapid growth; streaming viewers get a bot-powered alternative to subscriptions and ads; and IAS uncovers a mobile app fraud network that infected millions of devices.

Buyers dig Netflix’s ad platform changes; OpenTable puts the “restaurant” in “RMN”; and Google and Amazon blame human error even when it’s AI’s fault.

WPP airs some dirty laundry; HubSpot buys itself a media brand; and data centers are more politically unpopular than ever.

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.

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.

Google faces another antitrust investigation; Americans want free, ad-supported news; and the K-shaped economy dings mass-market manufacturers.

For brands, this opens a new lever beyond impressions. For publishers, this is a business problem, as their first-party data and on-site inventory could become less valuable for targeting.

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.

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.

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.

Big TV’s shift to programmatic brings in the performance brands; Meta rolls out premium subscriptions for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp; and Yahoo enters the crowded AI search market.

AirOps’ new Page360 platform helps brands update their content to better perform across traditional search, AI search and online forums.

YouTube is finally delivering on the promise of shoppable CTV ads. Starting Thursday, they’ll roll out to all of Google’s Performance Max and Demand Gen campaigns, YouTube confirmed to AdExchanger.

A Google divestiture is still in the cards; the IAB’s new framework lays out exactly when to disclose use of AI; and Hershey’s doubles down on marketing.

Human-made creative is in again; The Atlantic accuses Google of (another) monopoly; and it turns out brands like to have a say in their sponsorships.

Meta cuts its metaverse investment by 30%; Netflix makes a renewed push in the gaming market; and the rush to slap an AI label on everything is placing existing ad tech under renewed scrutiny.

Amazon touts its Marketing Cloud, but buyers have concerns; OpenAI’s ad biz may face challenges; and in-chat shopping isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

From afar, it looks like Google had a rough year in antitrust court. But zoom in a bit and it becomes clear that the past year went about as well as Google could have hoped for.

This year, programmatic companies faced tough decisions about privacy, awkward acquisitions and the cookie die-off that never quite happened.