Petri Kokkonen Appointed Co-Lead of IAB Europe’s Programmatic Working Group
Petri Kokkonen, CEO of Relevant Digital, has been appointed co‑lead of the IAB Europe Programmatic Working Group alongside Sportradar’s Ralf Ollig. The group unites European ad‑tech stakeholders to shape standards, drive research, and improve transparency as AI reshapes programmatic buying. Kokkonen brings over 20 years of industry experience and will inject a practical, publisher‑focused perspective into the 2026 agenda, which includes auction mechanics research and sell‑side decisioning. His role underscores the push toward a more sustainable, AI‑enabled programmatic ecosystem in Europe.
Data Dominion: How Zeta Global Cracked the AI Code for the Next Generation of Martech
Zeta Global, led by CEO David A. Steinberg, has positioned its AI‑first data platform as a core infrastructure for marketers, now serving 51% of the Fortune 100. The company launched Athena, a voice‑enabled AI copilot built with OpenAI, after proving that...
Google Tests AdSense Privacy Updates In Two Phases
Google is piloting a two‑phase update to AdSense that begins on April 20 and rolls out a second wave in June, targeting the European Economic Area, the U.K. and Switzerland. The rollout introduces a shortcut list of ad‑technology partners, letting publishers...
fullthrottle.ai® Expands Into Audio With Premium Inventory, Streamlined Activation, and Unified Measurement
fullthrottle.ai has added audio advertising to its platform, giving marketers direct access to premium streaming and podcast inventory, including iHeartMedia. The new capability lets brands plan, activate, and optimize audio campaigns within the same workflow used for CTV and display,...
In-Store Marketplace Launches New Framework for In-Store Media Success
In-Store Marketplace (ISM) partnered with Catalyst Media Consulting to publish research exposing a critical measurement gap in in‑store media, where brands, retailers, agencies, and retail media networks (RMNs) use divergent metrics. The study argues that applying digital‑style attribution to physical...
Video Innovation Drives 2x Higher Purchase Intent, Study Finds
A new "State of Video Technology" study of 2,500 U.S. and U.K. adults finds 80% of consumers want more brand video, yet 46% say they never receive it. Personalized video content makes shoppers twice as likely to buy, and AI‑generated...
Why Brand Size No Longer Determines Visibility in AI Answers
The rise of AI answer engines is reshaping how brand visibility is earned, shifting focus from sheer scale to the clarity, credibility, and structure of content. Traditional PR tactics that rely on reach and long‑standing narratives no longer guarantee inclusion...
AI Digital Relaunches Elevate: The AI-Powered Intelligence Platform Built to Break Open the Black Box
AI Digital has relaunched Elevate, an AI‑powered marketing intelligence platform that unifies research, planning, optimization and reporting across the digital ecosystem. The tool promises up to 90% reduction in manual research and planning time and 70% faster reporting, while remaining...
Inside Walmart’s Creator-Driven Social Commerce Playbook
Walmart is building a creator‑driven social commerce engine that blends shoppable ads, influencer networks, and AI‑powered trend tools. The retailer treats social platforms as search venues, targeting Gen Z and millennial users who spend hours daily online. Its Walmart Creator program,...
Sell-Side Decisioning for Media Owners: How To Create More Value in Programmatic
Sell-side decisioning is reshaping programmatic advertising by giving media owners direct control over inventory, data and pricing at the moment an impression is generated. Index Exchange’s recent Live event highlighted that the top 100 owners using its Index Marketplaces saw...
Happydemics Launches ‘In-Flight Mode’ to Optimise Brand Outcomes While Campaigns Are Still Airborne
Happydemics has introduced “In‑Flight Mode,” a real‑time brand‑lift measurement tool that embeds outcome tracking directly into live campaigns. Marketers can now monitor consideration, purchase intent and other brand KPIs as ads run, and instantly tweak creative, targeting or media mix....
Social Media Editor
The Axis, a podcast production agency serving aesthetic medicine, plastic surgery, and addiction‑recovery clients, is hiring a freelance Social Media Clip Editor for $50 per episode. The remote‑US role focuses solely on editing 1‑3 short‑form clips per episode for YouTube...
Clarvos Unveils AI-Driven Workflow Platform to Streamline Marketing for Smaller Businesses
Marketing tech startup Clarvos LLC launched an early‑access AI‑driven workflow platform aimed at small and midsized businesses. The agentic system integrates audience discovery, creative generation and multi‑platform campaign execution across Google, Meta and TikTok, allowing users to move from concept...
Dairy-Free Creamer Brand Nutpods Is Cracking Fragmentation With AI-Powered Insights
AI Digital launched Elevate, an AI‑powered marketing intelligence platform to combat ad tech fragmentation. Nutpods, a dairy‑free creamer brand, used Elevate to unify data across channels and receive near‑real‑time insights. The platform revealed audio ads outperformed other placements, allowing Nutpods...
Dairy-Free Creamer Brand Nutpods Is Cracking Fragmentation With AI-Powered Insights
Nutpods, a non‑dairy creamer brand, partnered with AI Digital to use its new Elevate platform, an AI‑powered marketing intelligence suite designed to dissolve ad‑tech fragmentation. The tool slashed Nutpods’ reporting lag from weeks to roughly one day, delivering real‑time performance...
Instagram Now Lets Creators Tag Affiliate Links Directly in Reels
Instagram is rolling out a new feature that lets creators tag shoppable products directly in Reels, supporting up to 30 items per video. Creators can add products by pasting affiliate URLs or selecting items from a brand’s Meta commerce catalog,...
Affiliates, To Stay Relevant, Move Beyond Mere Execution
Artificial intelligence is rapidly automating routine tasks in affiliate marketing, from matching affiliates to offers to generating performance dashboards. While AI boosts efficiency, it also exposes limits, requiring human oversight to correct errors and prevent fraud. The article argues that...
Flamel.ai Launches Luna to Fix Franchise Marketing Execution
Flamel.ai unveiled Luna, an AI‑powered agent that executes, analyzes, and optimizes franchise marketing across all locations, completing a broader platform expansion that unifies paid media, local SEO, social and review tools. The system lets corporate teams build a single campaign...
Lucozade Woos ‘Believers’ for Grafruitti Flavour Relaunch
Lucozade is re‑launching its Grafruitti flavour, first introduced as a limited edition in 2015, with a community‑centric campaign aimed at the brand’s self‑identified “Believers.” The rollout, crafted by We Are Social, began with teaser posts and a logo swap before...
From T-Shaped To M-Shaped: The PPC Career Evolution Nobody Is Talking About
The article argues that the traditional T‑shaped PPC professional—deep in one specialty with a broad supporting base—has become the industry floor due to AI‑driven skill inflation. It introduces the M‑shaped model, featuring two or three deep pillars built on a...
How Reuters Unlocked 58% More Suitable Inventory with IAS Context Control
Reuters partnered with Integral Ad Science to replace traditional keyword blocklists with IAS’s Context Control semantic solution. By analyzing meaning, sentiment, and entity relationships, the platform identified safe articles previously flagged by keywords, especially on the Lifestyle subdomain where 13.4%...
Volkswagen Appoints Global Social Media Agency
Volkswagen has appointed a new global social media agency to steer its digital presence across markets. The agency won the account following a rigorous, multi‑stage pitch that evaluated creative, data, and technology capabilities. The partnership is intended to refresh Volkswagen’s...
KFC Takes a New Step with Its Marketing: An Entire Music Track
KFC launched a 90‑second music single titled “Finger Lickin’ Machine” to promote its new Value Feast menu, featuring bundled meals priced at $7, $9 and $11. The ad, produced by agency Highdive and music house Heavy Duty, showcases Colonel Sanders...
When Fashion Influencer Campaigns Go Wrong: How Bad Briefs Break Influencer Collaborations (and How to Fix Them)
Fashion influencer campaigns often stumble not because of the wrong creator, but due to poorly crafted briefs. Vague prompts, over‑scripted captions, and conflicting instructions lead to off‑brand, inauthentic content that frustrates both brands and influencers. The article outlines common brief...
5 Content Marketing Ideas for May 2026
May 2026 presents ecommerce marketers with five timely content ideas—from the historic Freedom 7 anniversary to Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, National Paper Airplane Day, and Miles Davis’s centennial. Each theme is positioned to generate organic search traffic, feed‑algorithm visibility, and AI‑readable snippets that...
Google Explains Why It Doesn’t Matter That Websites Are Getting Larger via @Sejournal, @Martinibuster
Google’s Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt clarified that growing page weight isn’t inherently harmful, emphasizing that page size depends on what’s measured—HTML alone or the full bundle of assets. They highlighted how compression, especially Brotli, can mask the true amount...
How Marketing Leaders Are Getting Unstuck From Salesforce by Stitch
Stitch is hosting an April 14 fireside chat for brand‑side marketers who feel trapped by Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The session will explore why many enterprises view their data as tangled, contracts as restrictive, and email programs as stagnant. Attendees will learn...
How Marketing Leaders Are Getting Unstuck From Salesforce by Stitch
Stitch is hosting a fireside chat for brand‑side marketers who feel trapped by Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s complexity and contractual lock‑ins. Attendees will hear why data entanglement, repetitive email flows, and patchwork solutions are common complaints. The session outlines how moving...
Ex-Organic Chiefs Launch Digital Transformation Start-Up
Two former Organic executives, Ben Scoggins and Tim Burley, have launched Committed Citizens, a marketing consultancy aimed at eliminating the operational drag that hampers campaign performance. The firm uses six‑week, results‑focused cycles instead of open‑ended digital‑transformation programmes, promising measurable outcomes...
Turning Engagement Data Into Content that Gets Results
St. Stephen’s Episcopal School’s communications team uses weekly engagement data to shape its editorial calendar, focusing on student‑centered stories that resonate with families. By tracking open rates, click‑throughs and social interactions, the team pivots content themes toward high‑performing topics such...
How Meta’s AI Push Is Changing Ad Creation
Meta is pushing to automate ad creation, targeting a fully AI‑driven process by the end of 2026. The rollout includes the Andromeda ad retrieval system and expanded Advantage+ tools that handle creative, targeting, and budget decisions. Marketers report mixed results:...
Do Behavioural Biometrics Solve the Fraud Problem, or Blur Brands’ Vision?
Lead fraud—automated bots, disposable emails, and human‑staffed farms—drains marketing budgets and sales capacity. Traditional static checks like email validation and IP tracking struggle to differentiate genuine prospects from fabricated ones. Behavioural biometrics, which monitor typing cadence, mouse movements, and form‑completion...
Google’s Mueller On SEO Gurus Who Are “Clueless Imposters” Via @Sejournal, @Martinibuster
Preeti Gupta argues that the term “guru” is being diluted in the SEO industry, turning a culturally sacred title into a marketing buzzword. John Mueller reinforced this view, labeling self‑declared SEO gurus as “clueless imposters” and emphasizing SEO’s ever‑changing nature....
Stream of Consciousness: How CTV and Household Targeting Keeps Brands Top of Mind
Streaming television overtook broadcast and cable in May 2025, capturing 44.8% of U.S. TV viewing and climbing to a 47.5% peak in December 2025. The surge has accelerated ad‑supported models, with Netflix’s ad tier rising from 26% to 40% of...
Leveraging SGAI for Longtail Live Sports
FloSports is piloting Server‑Generated Ad Insertion (SGAI) to tackle quality and revenue challenges in long‑tail sports streaming. The platform gains end‑to‑end observability of its video pipeline, allowing it to monitor performance without blind spots. SGAI also enables side‑by‑side programmatic ads...
Adtelligent Ranks Among the FT’s ‘America’s Fastest Growing Companies 2026’
Adtelligent Inc., a full‑stack advertising technology firm, has been named to the Financial Times and Statista ‘America’s Fastest Growing Companies 2026’ list, which spotlights firms with the strongest revenue growth from 2021 to 2024. The ranking underscores Adtelligent’s rapid expansion, driven by...
Indie Agency Wpromote Dishes On How It’s Testing New Agentic SSP Tools
Wpromote is piloting Kargo’s Project Kera, a chat‑based, agentic SSP that translates campaign briefs into automated, cross‑channel media plans. The closed‑beta tool lets buyers upload assets, set goals, and receive a budget‑split recommendation across Meta, TikTok, CTV and the open...
Google Says Its AI-Powered Ads Helped Aritzia Lift Online Sales by 80%
Google announced that its AI‑powered ad suite, particularly AI Max, helped fashion retailer Aritzia boost online revenue by 80%. The company is expanding AI‑driven ad formats in its new AI Mode and testing “direct offers” that deliver real‑time promotions. Google’s fourth‑quarter ad...
Content Summit Australia Reminded Me Why I Got Into This Industry
The Content Summit Australia (31 Mar‑1 Apr) broke through typical conference fatigue by delivering immediately actionable insights for content marketers. Speakers emphasized three core themes: distilling brand ideas into a single sentence, leveraging one creative platform for multiple executions, and placing human...
'The American Prospect' Says It Will No Longer Run Programmatic Ads
The American Prospect announced it is removing all programmatic advertising from its website, citing concerns over reader privacy, site performance, and security vulnerabilities. The outlet said personal data deserves greater respect and that programmatic ads slow pages and disrupt the...
Kargo Launches Closed Beta For Agentic Media Buying & Creative Engine
Kargo has opened a closed beta for Project KERA, an AI‑driven media‑buying and creative engine that turns a single campaign brief into a fully executed, performance‑ready plan. The platform unifies planning, creative development, activation and real‑time optimisation across CTV, mobile,...
Stax Burger Co’s ‘Customer From Hell’ Skits Deemed Too Sweary for Ad Standards
Australian fast‑food chain Stax Burger Co’s social media skits featuring a profanity‑laden “customer from hell” have been found in breach of the Advertising Standards Board’s anti‑profanity guidelines. Four Instagram and Facebook videos, starring the founder’s father, repeatedly used slurs such...
TPB Wins WeThinkMedia to Streamline Trans-Tasman Programmatic Buying
The Programmatic Bureau (TPB) has named WeThinkMedia as its exclusive Australian sales representative, giving Australian advertisers a single gateway to New Zealand programmatic inventory across DOOH, CTV, audio and display. The partnership aims to cut the fragmentation that has traditionally complicated...
AWARD Lab GenAI Sprint Launches with Leonardo.ai and OMA
AWARD has teamed with Leonardo.ai and the Outdoor Media Association to launch the first AWARD Lab GenAI Sprint, a competition for AWARD Crash and Uni alumni that runs May 7‑9. Teams use Leonardo.ai to generate creative concepts for a non‑profit brief...
From Priming to Performance: The Omnichannel Multiplier
Atomic 212° demonstrated that pairing digital audio with programmatic digital out‑of‑home (DOOH) creates a measurable priming effect, boosting long‑term memory encoding by roughly 17‑18%. The combined media sequence drove a 5.2‑times increase in conversion efficiency when retargeted through Yahoo DSP....
Questions Linger About the Long-Term Viability of X
X’s ad revenue has slumped to $2.26 billion in 2025, down from $4.14 billion in 2022, while active users in Europe fell 15% in the second half of 2025. The platform survives thanks to a March 2025 merger with Musk’s AI venture xAI,...
Meta Looks to Grow Threads in Japan
Meta has launched an official Japan‑specific Threads profile to share localized updates on Threads, Instagram, Meta AI and Meta Quest, signaling a direct challenge to X’s dominance in the country. X currently enjoys the highest daily active users and time‑spent metrics globally,...
Instagram Chief Debunks Popular Engagement Hack
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri clarified that reposting feed content to Stories does not meaningfully increase a post's reach, debunking a widely circulated engagement hack. He emphasized that the Feed algorithm offers broader exposure through the Explore page and permanent visibility,...
Panasonic Uses TikTok Videos to Fight Fakes in China, Southeast Asia
Panasonic Holdings has launched a TikTok‑based campaign to expose counterfeit products across China and Southeast Asia, complementing a broader effort that monitors roughly 1,000 e‑commerce sites for dangerous fakes. The videos highlight specific hazards, such as low‑quality air‑conditioners, and direct...
Trust In AI Search Could Drop With Ads, Survey Shows via @Sejournal, @MattGSouthern
A February 2026 Ipsos Consumer Tracker survey of 1,085 U.S. adults found that 63% say ads in AI‑driven search results would erode their trust, while only 24% disagree. The same data show a majority (52%) doubt ads would simplify the...