Today's Advertising Pulse
X’s ad revenue plummets to $2.3 bn, far below Twitter’s peak
X reported advertising revenue of $2.3 bn in 2023 and projects $1.7 bn for 2024 and $1.8 bn for 2025, a sharp decline from the $4.7 bn generated in Twitter’s final public year. Its share of the U.S. digital‑ad market slipped to roughly 1% in Q1 2026, down from a near‑10% peak in 2016, and former NBCUniversal sales chief Linda Yaccarino exited the CEO role in July 2025 after modest performance.
Campaign Retail & Commerce Media Briefing: Maximising Agentic AI, Closed-Loop Outcomes & Creator-Led Commerce
Campaign Middle East’s Retail & Commerce Media 2026 briefing gathered nearly 200 marketers to examine AI‑assisted shopping, agentic commerce, retail‑media orchestration, and creator‑commerce convergence. Speakers warned that AI assistants now shortlist products, shrinking the shelf to a handful of recommendations and making machine‑readable content, clean taxonomy and trust signals essential. They called for common KPIs, cross‑platform measurement and a move beyond last‑click attribution to capture full‑funnel impact. The event emphasized that creators must be treated as full‑funnel partners, not merely media inventory, to sustain trust and drive conversion.
Dstillery Elevates Evan Hills to COO as AI Ad Platform Scales
Dstillery announced the promotion of Evan Hills, its chief commercial officer since 2014, to chief operating officer. The move comes as the New York‑based adtech firm expands its DS‑1 AI platform, which it says cuts audience‑activation cycles from days to...
AI Needs Humans In The Lead, Not Just In The Loop, Says JPMorgan Chase Programmatic Lead
JPMorgan Chase’s programmatic lead Melissa Bonnick argues that AI in financial‑services marketing must operate under explicit human leadership, not merely a human‑in‑the‑loop model. Strict industry regulations provide clear guardrails that tell the machine where it can and cannot operate. While...
Triple Whale Rolls Out Moby 2 AI Operating System for 60,000+ Ecommerce Brands
Triple Whale announced the general availability of Moby 2, its next‑generation AI operating system, now serving more than 60,000 ecommerce and retail brands. The platform adds autonomous execution tools to the company's measurement stack, aiming to shrink the gap between insight...
CIMM Calls for Industry-Aligned Frameworks Around Media Quality
The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) released its paper "Quality Matters," arguing that Media Quality (MQ) signals—such as attention and context—are essential for valuing ad placements in a signal‑constrained ecosystem. The authors contend that traditional metrics like viewability are...
The Times Introduces AI-Generated Audiences for Better Ads
The Times has launched a product that allows advertisers to use AI-generated audiences to improve ad effectiveness. They laid out how it works to me for The Current https://t.co/UXFE7hq9qk
Philipp Schindler at Google Marketing Live 2026
Philipp Schindler opened Google Marketing Live 2026 by unveiling a suite of AI‑driven products that promise to reshape advertising, search and creator ecosystems. He highlighted Gemini Omni, a new model that fuses advanced reasoning with generative media, and introduced Gemini...
Create, Capture and Convert Demand on Google and YouTube
A short promotional video urges marketers to proactively create, capture and convert consumer demand using Google and YouTube advertising. It emphasizes that modern consumers expect perfect solutions without compromise, using ‘Q audio’ disrupting the vinyl market as an example of...
How Gap Is Turning Culture Into Commerce with Google and YouTube
The video explains how Gap is using Google’s ecosystem—search, YouTube, and AI‑driven ad tools—to turn cultural relevance into measurable commerce. By partnering with creator KATSEYE and embracing both 3‑minute hero videos and 6‑second bites, Gap positions its brand where audiences...
Ads Measurement Explained by Neil Patel
In the video, digital‑marketing expert Neil Patel walks through Google’s three‑part framework for measuring advertising performance, arguing that fragmented data and outdated attribution are the root of many marketers’ uncertainty. He stresses three pillars: data strength—consolidating all signals in Google Tag...
YouTube Shorts: Hooks and Curiosity Loops That Explode Your Views
The discussion centers on YouTube Shorts as a high‑ROI marketing tool, emphasizing that vertical short‑form video is the future and that Shorts must be treated as independent pieces of content rather than mere teasers for longer assets. John Scott warns marketers...
GumGum's Travis O'Neil on the Mindset Graph & Relevancy Spaces
The interview spotlights GumGum’s Mindset Graph, an evolution of its contextual and attention‑based ad‑tech platform. Travis O’Neil explains how the tool aggregates real‑time signals—device type, weather, recent user actions—to create a unified view of each viewer’s mindset at the exact...
Inside Google’s Creative Frontier with Josh Woodward & Robert Wong
Google’s Creative Frontier event in Mountain View showcased how the company’s engineers and creatives, led by Josh Woodward and Robert Wong, are redefining AI as a true creative partner rather than a mere efficiency tool. The session highlighted the philosophy...
Samba TV Launches Project Gravity, an Independent Data Activation Platform for the Agentic Era
Samba TV unveiled Project Gravity, an independent data‑onboarding and activation platform that matches advertisers' first‑party data to its proprietary Identity Graph. The service assigns a universal identifier that can be deployed across more than 40 major DSPs, SSPs and walled‑garden...
Google Explains How It Will Infuse Ads Into AI Answers
Google announced new AI‑driven ad formats as part of its Gemini 3.5 Flash upgrade to Search. The company will embed Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers within AI Mode responses while keeping traditional SERPs as the default. Advertisers will use...
Google Rolls Out AI Ad Agents, Sparking Marketer Trust Concerns
At Google Marketing Live, the company introduced a suite of Gemini‑driven AI ad agents, including the “Ask Advisor” tool that can set up campaigns and surface insights automatically. Marketers responded with caution, citing opaque decision‑making and a need for manual...
Meta Under Fire as Report Finds $14 M in Medicare Scam Ads Reached 215 M Seniors
A new Center for Countering Digital Hate study reveals that scammers spent $14.3 million on Medicare‑related ads on Meta’s Facebook, generating 215 million impressions—mostly to users over 65. Meta disputes the findings but the report has sparked regulatory attention and calls for...
Google Testing New AI-Generated Ad Formats in AI Mode and Standard Search Results, but Not yet in Gemini
Google announced a test of AI‑generated ad formats across standard search and its new AI Mode at I/O 2026. The "conversational discovery" ads are created by Gemini using brand website content, appear below AI‑Mode responses, and are clearly labeled as...
Prog AI Live: AI’s Slippery Slop
At the Prog AI Live event in Las Vegas, AdExchanger editors debated how AI‑generated content is reshaping the notion of “premium” media. They noted that viral, low‑production “slop” often garners higher engagement than traditional high‑budget entertainment, forcing brands to reconsider where they allocate...
Google's New AI Search Ads Are Designed to Look Like Helpful Answers
Google is rolling out AI‑driven search ads that appear as conversational answers within its new AI Mode. The ads will be labeled as sponsored but blend with AI‑generated responses, including short product descriptions for shopping queries. Users will still see...
Veritonic Launches Instant Insights: AI-Powered Creative Intelligence
Veritonic unveiled Instant Insights, an AI‑powered self‑service platform that delivers immediate creative performance feedback across audio, video, podcast, CTV, social and digital media. Built on more than a decade of proprietary benchmark data, the tool evaluates emotional resonance, engagement potential...
DoubleVerify Delivers Global Media Quality Measurement for LinkedIn Audience Network, Elevating Transparency for B2B Advertisers
DoubleVerify has launched global post‑bid media quality measurement for the LinkedIn Audience Network, giving advertisers independent visibility into invalid traffic, viewability, brand suitability and geographic delivery. The new offering complements pre‑bid avoidance controls, allowing brands to block unsuitable inventory before...