CTV’s growth will hinge on randomized experiments that prove premium video advertising delivers incremental business results, writes measurement expert Rick Bruner.
The FTC sues Amazon, alleging ad auction manipulation; some agencies are hyping that their ads are made by humans; and more people are paying for ad-free streaming.
Why does the buy side remain so smitten with handing control to autonomous systems owned by companies whose economic interests are not its own?
This documentary streamer found new life as an AI trainer; the NFL is taking public shots at Nielsen, but is it a negotiating tactic?; and Nielsen’s new focus on 18+ audiences dings streaming viewership.
The potential for ads in robotaxis; Crocs is back to seeing year-over-year growth; and ad-free streaming tiers continue to grow more expensive.
Google’s Spirit Airlines data stockpile is feeding AI; ChatGPT’s advertiser switcheroo; and X’s rage-baiting isn’t the engagement signal advertisers are looking for.
Spotify’s ad-skipping has podcasters freaking out; Steaming growth is saving the TV upfront; and OpenAI wants some SMB clients.
AI agents could replace direct sales. And a beta product tied to Google’s ad server, dubbed Buyer Direct, could solve this problem better than anyone else, according to our guest Gareth Glaser, co-founder of Gamera and co-host of the podcast Ad Tech Ad Talk.
Freewheel will begin reporting show-level data; Xbox will let users stream games for free if they watch ads; and Meta and Google can develop AI ads without even a prompt.
Some holdcos will pay AI costs in exchange for principal inventory commitments; Google will require Ads API customers to have passkeys; and microdramas struggle with the ethics of AI likenesses.
Agentic AI shows promise for direct deals. But if Google has its way, Buyer Direct could put an end to all sorts of agentic direct sales opportunities while they’re still in the cradle.
Google’s changing up Max; CTV buyers are “addicted to siloing;” and Bluesky’s AI investments may be moot.
Sports are where the money is; Reddit’s rethinking its AI licensing strategy; and data targeting has its darker sides.
Investors didn’t bring up Google’s advertising business or ads in general once during the Q&A portion of Alphabet’s earnings report call on Wednesday.
The purported best ways to counter ad fraud; CPG brands struggle in the face of GLP-1s; and the open web might be meeting its end.
We’re witnessing the end of the pageview era. But the interesting question isn’t how publishers replace their lost search traffic; it’s what they do with the audience they already have.
Google has to hand over some of its AI features to competitors; when LLMs will (or won’t) be critical; and publishers are productizing GEO offerings.
Google and Meta are quietly rewriting the rules of ad measurement, and they’re doing it with open-source marketing mix modeling tools that many marketers don’t even realize they’re using.
Advertising in AI-native destinations and experiences is already starting to look less like a series of experiments and more like an emerging market.
Instead of relying on rigid audience segments, modern systems can interpret a real-world moment in real time, combining layers of information to better predict what someone might actually care about right now.
Criteo has two potential buyers; publishers consider blocking Google’s joint AI-scraping/search-indexing bot; and Microsoft’s billion-player gaming goal might make sense for mobile.
In a world being agentically orchestrated at scale, human judgment is the indispensable guardrail preventing us from optimizing right over the cliff.
Everyone’s investing in AppsFlyer; NBCU launches Rock Studios, a creative studio for brand integrations; and Meta wants to hop on the TV bandwagon.
Ask Ad Manger offers instant troubleshooting help when a campaign isn’t delivering as expected, ideally by diagnosing the problem and suggesting how to fix it.
Where will OpenAI put its ads?; YouTube may or may not be considered TV; and Uber and Lyft deals really are too good to be true.
Viant creates a direct pipeline between its DSP and media companies; Google and TTD won’t renew their TAG accreditations; and OpenAI may lower the cost of tokens.
The pitch for dynamic take rates is reasonable. Total volume goes up, and the publisher sees more impressions clearing. But the problem is where the extra volume comes from.
Amazon has third parties selling some of its ad inventory; Scope3 selling Adloox to Peer39 suggests sustainability is out; and “fabric” is the new AI-related buzzword for ad tech.
The programmatic intelligence layer is owned by the same parties that are extracting margin from it. That structure is now being dismantled by an AI-underpinned protocol that moves the intelligence layer into the open.
Agentic shopping is the next big thing. At least that’s the message from Google’s big annual conference for ad product updates.
