Curation Is Changing Programmatic — But Not Always For The Better
Programmatic curation is rapidly gaining traction among mid‑market agencies seeking greater control over inventory, pricing, and performance. While self‑service platforms promise real‑time supply‑path optimization and reduced manual effort, many still operate as opaque black boxes that shift rather than eliminate lack of visibility. The article warns that without clear reporting on margins, data application, and publisher sources, agencies risk trading one layer of opacity for another. Ultimately, true progress will require shortening the transaction chain between advertisers and publishers and embedding transparency into the core mechanics of programmatic buying.
Sports Publisher On3 Tries AI Recommendations To Keep Engagement In Its Home Court
On3, a sports‑focused publisher with 15 million monthly visitors, has deployed Mula’s AI‑powered recommendation engine across about 20 of its sites to sustain engagement and revenue per session (RPS). The system leverages first‑party data to surface articles, vertical video and Fanatics‑linked...
How Advertisers Can – And Cannot – Get In Front Of Chatbot Shoppers
Advertisers face a stark reality: there is no paid gateway to appear in most LLM‑driven shopping chats. Google’s AI Overview (AIO) ads are the sole open‑market option, automatically surfacing in search results without exclusion controls. ChatGPT’s ad pilot remains a...
Hearst Built A Unified Ad Marketplace To Simplify Omnichannel News Buys
Hearst announced a unified programmatic ad marketplace that bundles inventory from its TV stations, newspapers and digital news sites into a single offering. The new Hearst News network lets agencies buy across the company’s local‑news footprint using their existing DSPs,...
AI Is Nothing Without Data Fidelity. Here’s A Four-Step Approach to Protect It
AI’s effectiveness in advertising hinges on the fidelity of the data that fuels it. The industry often relies on inferred or fragmented signals, which degrade model accuracy and erode trust. A four‑step framework—starting with quality inputs, building low‑degradation infrastructure, demanding...
Primed For Upfronts; How Much AI Is Too Much AI?
The upcoming TV upfront season will be dominated by performance measurement as advertisers push for outcome‑based analytics, spurred by Nielsen’s delayed integration of the DASH TV Universe Study and a recent dip in reported streaming viewership. At IAB NewFronts, Tubi...
5 Years Of ATT: What We’ve Learned, And What The Future Of iOS Performance Looks Like
Apple's AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) rollout in 2021 saw roughly 80% of iOS users block IDFA tracking, forcing marketers onto the aggregated SKAdNetwork (SKAN) and later Apple’s AdAttributionKit (AAK). The industry split between short‑term probabilistic workarounds and early SKAN‑centric optimization, with the...
Inside RTL’s Plan To Aggregate Europe’s Fragmented TV And Video Supply
RTL AdAlliance, the sales arm of Luxembourg‑based RTL Group, is consolidating Europe’s fragmented TV and video inventory into a single "total video" offering. By partnering with national broadcasters, streamers and online publishers, it aggregates over 400 million monthly viewers across linear,...
Liquid Death Lets Incrementality Decide What Tactics To Kill And What To Keep
Liquid Death, the metal‑themed canned water brand, has adopted Ibotta’s LiveLift platform to measure the incremental sales impact of its promotions in near real time. By comparing shoppers exposed to offers with a control group, the brand can identify which...
Who Needs ‘Corrosive Intermediaries’ Anyway?
The Ozone publisher alliance, founded by UK titles such as The Guardian and The Telegraph, is tackling the broken programmatic supply chain by pooling inventory and data to push back against what its COO Danny Spears calls “corrosive intermediaries.” Spears...
The Creativity Trade-Off: What Marketers Risk Losing In The Age Of AI
AI has become ubiquitous in advertising, with 83% of ad executives now using it in creative workflows, up from 60% in 2024, and 86% of video‑ad buyers planning AI‑generated content. While generative tools accelerate idea prototyping, studies from Wharton and...
Northbeam Adds The Third Leg Of The Attribution Stool With Incrementality Testing
Northbeam has launched an incrementality testing feature, completing its promised "triad" of attribution tools alongside multitouch attribution (MTA) and marketing mix modeling (MMM). The new product adds a calibration layer that estimates cross‑platform conversion influence without tracking individual users, addressing...
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...
Keyword Blocking Demonetized More Than Half Of Reuters’ Brand-Safe Stories
A joint study by Integral Ad Science (IAS) and Reuters found that over half of Reuters' brand‑suitable news pages would be demonetized by typical keyword blocklists, despite meeting IAS' Context Control Targeting standards. In the news section, 54% of URLs...
AI Has Already Decided: First-Party Data Will Define Advertising’s Agentic Era
AI decision engines now require deterministic identity, making first‑party data essential for advertising. A recent IAB report shows 71% of brands, agencies and publishers are expanding first‑party data, nearly double the rate from two years ago. Retail media spend is...
Boathouse’s New Chief Strategy Officer Says It’s Time For Agencies To Take The Reins Of Measurement
Boathouse appointed Sonia Chung as its first Chief Strategy Officer, tasking her with dismantling data silos that tie marketers to Big‑Tech platforms. Chung argues agencies should build their own measurement infrastructure, using AI to fuse structured and unstructured signals across paid,...
How Samsung Ads And Crumbl Got Their CTV Campaign To Perform Like Social
Crumbl partnered with Samsung Ads for a seven‑week CTV acquisition campaign in Q4, leveraging Samsung’s integration with AppsFlyer to track performance. The effort generated over 16,000 app installs and a 23% conversion rate, slightly higher than the brand’s typical social‑driven...
The Agentic Marketplace Is Here. Where Does That Leave DSPs and SSPs?
Swivel and CTV platform Olyzon have partnered to create an agentic marketplace that uses the open‑source AdCP protocol for buy‑side and sell‑side communication. The system lets AI‑driven agents handle trafficking, yield optimization, and seller functions, allowing advertisers to access inventory...
Basis Wants To Help Marketers Bring Agentic AI Into Media Planning
Digital‑ad platform Basis unveiled Compass, an agentic campaign‑planning tool that integrates with its DSP and other buying platforms. The solution synthesizes advertisers’ first‑party data with broader market signals to generate omnichannel media strategies, while allowing a conversational back‑and‑forth with the...
Jones Road Beauty Is Using A New Type Of MMM To Reset Its Media Measurement
Jones Road Beauty teamed with ad‑measurement startup Haus to pilot a new causal media‑mix model (MMM) that anchors forecasts in real experiment lift rather than historical correlations. By testing spend levels on Google Demand Gen, Meta Advantage+, and branded search, the...
Local Publishers Hit By AI Traffic Drops Collaborate For Revenue Relief
Local news publishers are seeing 25%‑50% traffic drops as AI‑generated answers replace clicks and social platforms lock users inside walled gardens. The Local Media Consortium (LMC) is countering the loss by pooling resources, launching the NewsPassID single‑sign‑on marketplace and other...
Why Scripps Is All In On Women’s Sports
The E.W. Scripps Company is pivoting to make women’s sports a core part of its portfolio, broadcasting WNBA, NWSL and PWHL games on its ION network and a new FAST channel. Leveraging its local‑TV stations and streaming inventory, Scripps offers...
CIMM Is Out To Prove That All Media Isn’t Equal
The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) is releasing a paper that challenges the industry’s assumption that all media is interchangeable, especially in the fast‑growing CTV space. It argues that media quality can be objectively measured using probabilistic signals such...
Retail Media’s Measurement Problem Is A Trust Problem – And Incrementality Is The Way Forward
Retail media spending is surging, yet marketers struggle to prove true performance because attribution models often credit sales that would have happened anyway. The industry’s fragmented measurement standards make cross‑platform comparison unreliable. Incrementality—measuring the causal lift of ads—offers a clearer...
Wyndham And Goop Are Using AI To Scale Creative And Avoid Burnout
Wyndham and lifestyle brand Goop have partnered with Adora, an AI‑driven performance‑marketing platform, to automate creative generation and real‑time ad optimization. The system produced over 90 ad variants for Wyndham, tailoring imagery and messaging to 15 audience segments and boosting...
Why Ad-Blocking Browser Brave Introduced Its Own Ads
Brave, the privacy‑focused browser that launched in 2016, has shifted from pure ad‑blocking to running its own ad inventory through search results and new‑tab takeover ads. The ads are delivered without third‑party cookies, using only the user’s search query and...
Vizio Helps Walmart Cut A Bigger Slice Of The CTV Ad Pie
Walmart and Vizio announced that new Vizio smart‑TVs will require a Walmart account for activation, creating a unified login and identity framework across devices. The integration centralizes streaming data on Vizio’s OS, giving Walmart a foothold in the connected‑TV (CTV)...
AdExchanger and The Women in Programmatic Network Renew Partnership for 2026 Events to Elevate Women’s Voices in Ad Tech
AdExchanger has renewed its partnership with the U.S. chapter of The Women in Programmatic Network (TWIPN) for its 2026 flagship events, including Programmatic AI, Programmatic I/O, and the AdExchanger Awards. The collaboration will feature TWIPN‑led education sessions, networking meet‑ups, and...
America’s Test Kitchen Puts Direct And Programmatic Access On Its Menu
America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) has launched direct and programmatic buying for its free ad‑supported FAST channels, allowing advertisers to purchase inventory as a standalone product rather than through genre bundles. The move follows a 30% year‑over‑year rise in streaming audiences...
The End Of Easy Measurement: Building An Evidence-Based System For Marketing ROI
Marketers face a $400 billion US media spend in 2025, yet privacy restrictions and loss of third‑party IDs erode clear ROI measurement. The article argues that the era of last‑click attribution is over, advocating a deterministic‑first, closed‑loop system that combines experiments...
What Does A Beta Test Of A Sell-Side Agent Look Like?
Publishers are piloting AI‑powered sell‑side agents that use large language models to negotiate and package ad inventory on behalf of sellers. Early adopters such as The Weather Company and Optable have built prototypes leveraging the open Prebid framework and Anthropic’s...
Why Programmatic Quality Control Needs To Focus On The Bid Request, Not Domains
Programmatic buyers are shifting from traditional domain‑based inventory cleanup to bid‑request level rationalization. The article argues that domains are merely containers and that real quality resides in the signals of each bid request. By focusing on bid rationalization—prioritizing specific request...
MyFitnessPal Wants To Start The Health And Wellness Subsector Of Retail Media
MyFitnessPal has launched a data‑driven advertising business, expanding beyond its legacy mobile display unit to include video, interstitials, full‑screen takeovers, newsletter sponsorships and branded recipe integrations. The platform will leverage its opt‑in food‑logging data—averaging 16 items per user per day—to...
Future Is Training Its AI On Publisher First-Party Data
Future Media unveiled Helix, an AI‑powered audience platform that builds on its first‑party data assets. Helix replaces the legacy Aperture system in the U.S., adding predictive modeling and real‑time audience segmentation for outcome‑based campaigns. Early tests across 20 fashion, retail...
Perion Is So Over The AI Hype Cycle
Perion CEO Tal Jacobson says the AI hype is merely a re‑branding of technologies the company has used for 15 years, and the firm is now building an AI media‑trading agent called Outmax. The platform allocates spend across CTV, DOOH,...
To Succeed With Paid Media, This Indie Agency Advises Nailing Organic First
LV8, a social‑first agency founded in 2024, has launched a dedicated paid‑media practice led by Ian Hiscock. The firm treats content creation and media buying as a single workflow, amplifying high‑performing organic posts with paid spend. By using organic insights...
Hot Takes From FTC Commissioner Mark Meador On Cookies And The Limits Of Self-Regulation
FTC Commissioner Mark Meador told a Marketecture Live audience that industry self‑regulation can still play a role, but only if a neutral third party with enforcement authority, such as the National Advertising Division, oversees it. He warned that poorly designed...
Why ads.txt Needs To Evolve For Connected TV
The article argues that the ads.txt specification must evolve to accurately reflect the complex, multi‑partner supply chain of Connected TV. Current ads.txt was built for linear, single‑owner markets and cannot distinguish between ownership, inventory management, technology enablement, or delegated selling...
MMM Platform Mutinex Brings On TransUnion’s Mike Finnerty To Head Its US Business
Mutinex, an Australian‑origin marketing mix modeling platform, announced that former TransUnion SVP Mike Finnerty will become its US president to accelerate the company’s expansion stateside. Finnerty, who oversaw marketing solutions after TransUnion’s $3.1 billion Neustar acquisition, will lead Mutinex’s push to...
Are CAPIs The Next Phase Of Performance TV?
Streaming giants are adding conversion APIs (CAPIs) to bring performance‑driven measurement to connected TV. Netflix unveiled its CAPI alongside new targeting options, while Roku and Comcast have introduced self‑serve APIs aimed at SMB advertisers. CAPIs promise to bridge the attribution...
Viant Had A Good Q4, But Still Needs To Punch Up At Bigger Platforms
Viant posted a strong Q4 and full‑year 2025, delivering $110 million in revenue, a 22% increase, and net income of $24.1 million, nearly double the prior year. CEO Tim Vanderhook noted that growth would have been 28% without the 2024 election‑driven ad surge....
Why OUTFRONT Invested $20 Million In AdQuick (Hint: It’s About More Than Money)
Outdoor media giant OUTFRONT invested $20 million in programmatic OOH DSP AdQuick, securing exclusive three‑year access to its cloud‑based sales platform. The integration will let OUTFRONT’s sales team generate proposals and transact campaigns faster across its inventory, aligning with agency and...
How Realtor.com Is Using AI Creative To Expand Its Ad Footprint
Realtor.com has partnered with AI‑powered startup BrandComms.AI to automate ad creative generation, enabling faster campaign rollout across multiple channels. The platform draws on 30 years of proprietary data to predict which imagery and messaging will perform best. This capability lets...
How Molson Coors Keeps Creative Effectiveness On Tap
Molson Coors has shifted its creative strategy from chasing awards to driving sales and brand health, led by North America CMO Sofia Colucci. The company introduced an internal framework called MUSCLE—magnetic, unexpected, crafted brilliantly, long‑term platform, essence of brand—to align...
Healthy Growth In The Age Of AI
Thorne’s Chief Growth Officer Mary Beech reports that AI engines now drive roughly 5% of new customer discovery, up from zero a year ago. To capitalize on this shift, she has reorganized the marketing function into a "growth laboratory" that...
The Boring Infrastructure That Could Make Agentic AI Happen For Ad Tech
MadConnect has made its Intelligent Connectivity Layer (ICL) generally available, offering a neutral infrastructure that links CRMs, CDPs, clean rooms, DSPs and other ad‑tech systems for AI agents. The ICL natively supports the open‑source Model Context Protocol (MCP), acting as...
Behind NYT’s First Foray Into In-Game Advertising
The New York Times launched Crossplay, its first two‑player word game, as a standalone app that embeds ads directly within gameplay. The ad‑supported model applies to non‑subscribers, while a Games subscription removes the ads. JPMorgan Chase partnered on the launch, using...
The Best Way To Embrace Convergent TV? Break Down The Silos Between Linear And Streaming
Marketers must dissolve the linear‑vs‑streaming divide and adopt a convergent TV approach, blending programmatic and direct buying. At Convergent TV World, Tatari’s Mike Fogarty highlighted the $70 billion U.S. TV market, noting that only $30 billion is streaming‑focused and still largely direct‑sold....
AI-Driven Software Startup Mega Raises $11.5 Million In Funding To Help SMBs Drive Sales
Mega, an AI‑driven marketing platform for small and medium‑size businesses, announced a $11.5 million Series A round led by Goodwater Capital. The startup, originally a gaming venture, pivoted after building a ChatGPT‑based SEO agent that drove massive traffic. Its current suite offers...
The Privacy ‘Zealots’ Were Right: Ad Tech’s Infrastructure Was Always A Risk
The article argues that ad‑tech’s reliance on granular identity data created an inherent privacy risk, a point long raised by privacy advocates. Real‑time bidding and massive data extraction expose location and behavioral signals to a sprawling ecosystem of unknown parties....