Technology

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.

AdMonsters joins its sister brand AdExchanger, strengthening its position as the leading platform for the ad tech, publisher and ad ops community.

On Wednesday, retail and CPG data company SPINS added a new piece with its acquisition of MikMak, a click-to-buy ad tech and analytics startup that helps optimize their commerce media.

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.

Bold, accountable leaders who publicly embrace conflict and challenge industry fraud are essential to spark innovation in digital advertising and ad tech, writes Alessandro De Zanche.

For years, interactive CTV advertising was the star of industry demos – promising, flashy and mostly theoretical. In 2025, they finally made the leap from proof of concept to practice.

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.

Omnicom unveils the latest version of its ID and analytics tool; there’s a new Google Search update in town; and Omnicom Media addresses CTV ad frequency.

A few years ago, “data clean rooms” were all the ad tech trades could talk about. Fast-forward to 2026, and maybe advertisers don’t need to know what a data clean room is after all.

Agentic Alphabet Soup Another day, another attempt at making sense of agentic AI. On Tuesday, the IAB Tech Lab released its Agentic Roadmap, a framework designed to help the industry scale agentic buying and selling without rewiring existing workflows. Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur says the new road map will minimize fragmentation and confusion across […]

NBCU is testing agentic systems that can automatically activate campaigns across its entire portfolio – including live sports on linear.

OpenX’s new API suite provides ad buyers with a more detailed view of the bidstream and, as a result, more accurate targeting.

Ring In The New Year The “everything is an ad network” trend will live forever.  There are always new advertising canvases and data sources to be plumbed. For instance, consumer wearables are primed to go off in 2026, Bloomberg reports, especially accessories and rings. That said, smart watches remain the top wearables choice by far, […]

Publishers can reach relevant audiences at scale and with greater specificity through Optable’s new planner agent.

If any single event can be considered the jumping-off point for TV upfronts, it’s the Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES), which kicks off this week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

It’s been 15 years since this comic first ran in January 2011, and there’s something both quaint and timeless about it. Here’s to more (and more) transparency in 2026, and happy New Year!

From headline to punchline, AdExchanger’s weekly comics distill ad tech industry news into something our readers can laugh about. These are our faves of the year.

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

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.

AI is fueling advertising, and AI agents are running ads. As we close out 2025, take a moment to listen to this AdExchanger Talks interview with Paul Longo, GM of AI in ads for advertising, for his POV on both of those topics.

Private equity finds ecommerce publishers aren’t worth what they used to be; Salesforce rethinks its faith in agentic AI; and CBS News accidentally encourages people to pirate its content.

FAO Schwarz is getting into data; ChatGPT is better at driving traffic than we thought; and Honey’s bad behavior might go beyond affiliate hijacking.

Agencies are shifting away from third-party ad tech; ChatGPT is throwing all kinds of monetization spaghetti at the wall; and Axel Springer is looking to buy.

First, the VAB clashes with Nielsen over Big Data, and Pinterest teams up with tvScientific. Plus, Google Ad Manager rolls out major EU changes, from ditching Unified Pricing Rules to deeper data sharing with publishers.

Anthropic’s AI-operated vending machine sparks chaos; ad revenue should remain a top priority; and Roblox has potential for in-game ads – and concerns.

The film and TV studio Lionsgate has chosen Comcast’s FreeWheel as its exclusive ad server to help manage and sell the growing volume of ad inventory Lionsgate creates with new FAST channels.

Unauthorized ID stuffing, rampant reselling and misaligned signals inflict incredible damage on the programmatic ecosystem. If publishers want to compete with the walled gardens, we must raise our standards. 

Jay Richman, Amazon’s VP of product and technology, on how AI-generated ad creative can still stand out at scale without becoming generic or too samey samey. Plus: The risks brands face if they wait too long to embrace AI.

Fluency plans to invest its new funding into AI and engineering to bring more automation into the platform.