Luma AI’s AI Agents Promise to End the Multi-Tool Mess
Luma AI, a Palo Alto‑based startup, unveiled a new class of end‑to‑end “creative agents” that unify text, image, video and audio generation for brands and agencies. The platform stitches Luma’s proprietary 3D, image and video models with third‑party tools such as Veo, DeepSeek, ElevenLabs and Kling, letting teams toggle models on or off. Beta testing with more than 100 clients—including Serviceplan Group and Publicis Groupe Middle East & Turkey—demonstrates early adoption. Backed by $1.1 billion in funding and a $4 billion valuation, Luma aims to replace fragmented, linear creative workflows with a non‑linear, multimodal AI layer.
Ad Agencies Are Embracing ‘Vibe Coding’ to Build GEO Products for Clients
Ad agencies such as Havas, Broadhead and Supergood are rapidly creating generative engine optimization (GEO) tools by "vibe‑coding" on top of large language models, often within a single work session. Havas’ Brand Insights AI, built with Anthropic’s Claude Code and Replit,...
Havas Bets on AI Veteran Sharona Sankar-King to Lead Proprietary Tech Push
Havas Media Network North America has hired Sharona Sankar‑King as chief data and product officer to steer its proprietary AI platform, Converged.AI, and the broader analytics practice. Sankar‑King arrives from Harte Hanks after more than 25 years in agencies, consultancies...
Brands May Actually Benefit From Advertising Next to AI Content, Per Study
A new OM Media Trials and Zefr study of nearly 5,000 U.S. and Canadian consumers finds that ads placed after certain AI‑generated videos can actually enhance brand perception, especially when the content is satirical, youthful, or artistic. Conversely, ads next...
Third-Party AI Agents Can Now Plug Into LiveRamp’s Platform
LiveRamp announced that third‑party AI agents can now plug directly into its data collaboration platform, removing the need for custom API calls. The integration enables agents to automate audience planning, segmentation, measurement and to interact with partner and proprietary agents....
Plurio Raises $3.5 Million to Bring Agentic AI to Performance Marketing
San Francisco‑based Plurio announced a $3.5 million seed round to accelerate its AI‑driven performance‑marketing agent. The platform ingests cross‑channel campaign data, forecasts downstream results and can automatically apply approved changes on Meta, Google and TikTok. Plurio already oversees more than $100 million...
Stagwell and Emberos Launch Agentic Tool to Help Brands Navigate AI Search
Stagwell, together with AI‑visibility startup Emberos, has launched Stagwell Search+, an AI‑agent‑driven platform designed to boost brand discoverability in AI‑generated search results. The solution, built by Assembly, combines monitoring, predictive strategy, workflow automation, e‑commerce focus, and governance across paid, owned,...
AnswerLab Rebrands As Research Moves Into the AI Era
AnswerLab announced a full rebrand and the launch of a 5,700‑square‑foot innovation space in New York, signaling a move beyond traditional UX research. The agency now positions itself as a strategic partner that helps clients test, refine, and invest in...
EXCLUSIVE: These Super Bowl Ads Won With AI, but Not Social Media
Emberos’ AI Influence Index reveals that several Super Bowl 60 commercials are ranking highly inside AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok, even when their social‑media engagement lags. The study shows social activity accounts for only 30‑45 % of...
Pinterest’s Kate Hamill on Visual Search, AI, and the New Path to Purchase
Pinterest is shifting from a pure inspiration platform to a measurable commerce driver, according to VP of North America enterprise sales Kate Hamill. The company is leveraging visual search and AI to compress the funnel between discovery and conversion, enabling...
Drivers Wanted (Again): Volkswagen Balances Automation With the Human Side of Mobility
Volkswagen is reviving its iconic "Drivers Wanted" campaign as a cultural statement that champions personal mobility in an era of ride‑sharing and autonomous tech. The brand’s recent Super Bowl spot reinforces this narrative, uniting dealers, employees, and partners around a...
Super Bowl Hot Take: Microsoft Shows Copilot’s Power, But Not Its Personality
Microsoft aired a 30‑second Super Bowl‑adjacent ad highlighting Copilot’s real‑time data and reasoning features within Excel. The spot shows recruiters using AI‑driven filters, charts, and predictive models to pick ideal linebackers. Unlike rivals’ emotionally‑charged AI ads, Microsoft’s message is purely...
Wix Hails New Era of Web Design in Super Bowl Return
Wix returned to the Super Bowl after a seven‑year break to unveil a hybrid AI‑drag‑and‑drop website editor. The 30‑second ad, “The New Way to Create,” shows a woman building a handmade‑furniture site using simple prompts, emphasizing AI as a creative...
EXCLUSIVE: 6AM City Is Swapping Reporters for AI in Markets It Can’t Afford
6AM City, the newsletter‑driven local media publisher, is trimming its footprint to chase profitability after a decade of rapid growth. The company reduced its core markets from roughly 30 to 19 and cut about 35 jobs, leaving a staff of...
How CMOs and CEOs Are Rewriting the Rules of Leadership in the AI Era
ADWEEK convened a select group of CMOs and CEOs at Davos for its inaugural Marketing Vanguard Inspiration Excursion, partnering with Adobe and Microsoft. Over two days, participants explored agentic AI, ethical governance, brand evolution, and the necessity of C‑suite alignment...
Google Bets on ‘Helpful AI’ to Push Gemini Into the Zeitgeist in Super Bowl Ad
Google is debuting a 60‑second Super Bowl commercial titled "New Home" to promote its Gemini generative‑AI assistant. The ad follows a mother using Gemini’s image‑generation tools to visualize a move, emphasizing the platform’s "helpful AI" narrative. The spot anchors an...
Chris Hemsworth Thinks AI Is Trying To Kill Him in Amazon’s Super Bowl Ad
Amazon debuted its new generative AI voice assistant Alexa+ in a 60‑second Super Bowl spot starring Chris Hemsworth. The ad humorously imagines Alexa plotting lethal scenarios, from decapitating Hemsworth to trapping him underwater, before ending with a benign massage booking....
Gemini Set to Bring Significant Improvements to Google’s Ad Business
Google's parent company sees AI bringing major benefits across all areas of marketing.
Publicis Expands Working With Cancer Initiative With New Research and AI Coach
Publicis Groupe expanded its Working With Cancer initiative on World Cancer Day, unveiling peer‑reviewed research and an AI‑powered coaching tool. The study, led by Memorial Sloan Kettering and Mayo Clinic, analyzed 25 years of data across 20 countries, showing that...
Base44’s Super Bowl Debut Is As Simple As Its App Building Platform
Base44, an AI‑powered no‑code app builder, debuted a Super Bowl commercial just a year after its launch. The platform, part of the emerging "vibe coding" movement, lets users create live apps from simple text prompts without programming. In June, website...
Brand Building: How Lowe’s Is Transforming Into a Culture-Driven, AI-Powered Lifestyle Brand
Lowe’s is repositioning from a traditional home‑improvement retailer to a culture‑driven, AI‑enabled lifestyle brand. The shift reflects a broader view of the home as a space for personal expression, supported by AI tools that help associates and shoppers visualize projects....
Svedka Bets on AI and Its Fembot to Make Super Bowl History
Svedka, now owned by Sazerac, launched “Shake Your Bots Off,” the first primarily AI‑generated Super Bowl commercial and the inaugural vodka ad in the game. The spot revives the brand’s Fembot after a 12‑year hiatus, adds a new Brobot character,...
Publicis CEO: We Won’t ‘Marry’ Our Business to One Single AI Player
Publicis Groupe posted strong Q4 and 2025 results, with organic growth of 5.9% and net revenue reaching $17.18 billion, up 5.6% year‑over‑year. The firm generated $8 billion in new business, adding major accounts such as Coca‑Cola North America, Mars, and Nespresso. AI...
Amazon Opens Its Ad Stack to AI Agents With MCP Rollout
Amazon announced an open‑beta of its Ads Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server, a unified gateway that lets AI agents connect to Amazon Ads with a single integration. The MCP translates natural‑language prompts into structured API calls, turning multi‑step advertising tasks...
Ring Reunites Lost Dogs in New Super Bowl Spot
Ring, an Amazon subsidiary, debuted a 30‑second Super Bowl ad unveiling its new Search Party for Dogs feature. The tool leverages AI‑driven image recognition and opt‑in Ring cameras to coordinate neighborhood searches for missing pets. The spot, Ring’s first linear‑TV...
Anthropic’s Claude Is Williams F1’s ‘Thinking Partner’ as AI Brands Race Into Sports
Anthropic has signed a multi‑year deal with the Atlassian Williams Formula 1 team, naming its Claude chatbot the “Official Thinking Partner.” Claude will be used by engineers and strategists for race strategy, car development, and operational decisions, with branding appearing on the...
EXCLUSIVE: X’s Memelord Product Chief Has a Plan to Save the Platform—If Grok Doesn’t Destroy It First
X’s product chief Nikita Bier unveiled a multi‑phase strategy at CES 2026 aimed at reviving the platform by leveraging meme‑centric content and AI‑enhanced advertising. The plan introduces AI‑curated meme feeds, new short‑form ad formats, and tighter integration with the upcoming...
Salesforce President Ariel Kelman’s 25-Year Playbook for Marketing at Scale
Salesforce President and CMO Ariel Kelman shared his 25‑year marketing playbook on the Marketing Vanguard podcast, emphasizing trust‑driven storytelling, AI grounded in first‑party data, and executive‑led AI experimentation. He illustrated the “show, don’t tell” approach with the AgentForce City exhibit,...
Meet the $1.3 Billion Startup Behind Madonna and Will Smith’s AI Video
Higgsfield, a generative‑AI video platform founded in October 2023, has raised an $80 million Series A extension, pushing its valuation past $1.3 billion. The startup reports $250 million in annual recurring revenue and a creator base exceeding 15 million, with 85 % of usage now driven...
Pitchdeck: How Flora Sold Investors on Its $42M Plan to Build ‘the Next Adobe’
Flora, a creative‑AI startup founded in 2024, closed a $42 million Series A round led by Redpoint Ventures. The platform consolidates text, image and video generative‑AI tools into a single workspace aimed at professional creatives. Its early‑stage customers include Nike, Levi’s, AKQA,...
ADWEEK to Debut the Super Bowl AI Influence Index
ADWEEK is partnering with AI‑search startup Emberos to debut the first Real‑Time AI Influence Index on Super Bowl 60 day, displaying the top seven advertisers based on their visibility in generative search engines. The index, embedded on ADWEEK.com’s sidebar, updates live...
Oakley Meta Readies Super Bowl Debut to Sell AI Glasses to Athletes
Oakley Meta is making its Super Bowl debut with a high‑profile commercial that showcases its AI‑powered performance glasses. The ad, created by Mother LA, features Spike Lee, streamer iShowSpeed, NFL star Marshawn Lynch and several Olympians, highlighting how the eyewear...
EXCLUSIVE: YouTube Overtakes Reddit as Go-To Citation Source on AI Search
Recent analysis shows YouTube has become the most cited social platform in AI-generated answers, surpassing Reddit. Over the past six months, large language models referenced YouTube in 16% of responses versus 10% for Reddit. The shift stems from YouTube’s rich...
What the Agentic Web Means for Brands
OpenAI’s launch of Atlas signals the rise of an agentic web where AI completes tasks and represents users, reshaping how brands are discovered online. Gartner predicts traditional search traffic could fall up to 25% by 2026 as AI‑driven intermediaries grow....
TechMagic: AI Ads, Data Center Labor, Skilled Trades, XR Training, and Spatial Web
TechMagic hosts Cathy Hackl and Lee Kebler examine how AI is transitioning from pure text generation to agentic, physical systems that act in the real world. They warn that embedding advertising in conversational AI threatens trust, while engagement‑driven metrics could...
ElevenLabs Enlists Liza Minnelli, Art Garfunkel, and Others to Create an Album of AI-Generated Music
ElevenLabs announced "The Eleven Album," an AI‑generated music project featuring legends such as Liza Minnelli and Art Garfunkel. The album is produced using ElevenLabs’ AI Music model, which synthesizes original compositions while the artists provide creative direction. The initiative rests...
Ex-Pinterest Marketer Andréa Mallard Named Microsoft AI CMO
Microsoft AI (MAI) appointed former Pinterest global CMO Andréa Mallard as its chief marketing officer. Mallard announced the move on LinkedIn, emphasizing AI’s transformative impact and the need for trustworthy technology. MAI, led by DeepMind co‑founder Mustafa Suleyman, recently rebranded...
TikTok Turns to Pixels to Show Advertisers What Happens Beyond Its Walled Garden
TikTok has introduced an Off‑site Performance Analysis tool that uses a tracking pixel to follow user actions beyond the app. Launched on December 24, the feature links organic posts, TikTok Shop activity, live streams, and paid ads to purchases on...
OpenAI Says It Is Bringing Ads to ChatGPT
OpenAI announced it will begin testing advertisements in the free and Go tiers of ChatGPT within the next few weeks. Sponsored messages will appear at the bottom of AI‑generated answers, clearly labeled and separated from the organic response. The ads...
The Proven Playbook for Cultural Relevance at Georgia-Pacific With Laura Knebusch
Georgia‑Pacific’s SVP of CPG marketing, Laura Knebusch, outlines a proven framework for keeping century‑old brands like Brawny, Angel Soft and Dixie relevant in a fast‑changing market. She emphasizes grounding any refresh in immutable brand fundamentals, using continuous consumer pulse checks,...
EXCLUSIVE: Former Perplexity Ad Exec Taz Patel Joins AI Video Startup
AI video startup Higgsfield has hired former Perplexity ad executive Taz Patel as vice president of platform partnerships. Patel, who joined this week, will report to CEO Alex Mashrabov and focus on converting self‑serve AI video users into formal agency...
Digital Glow-Up: Unilever Blends AI, Creators, and Culture to Build Desire at Scale
Unilever’s beauty division is overhauling its marketing by fusing AI tools, creator partnerships, and cultural insight to generate “desire at scale.” Selina Sykes details how the company built an AI‑driven content engine, the Brand DNAi framework, and digital twins to...
Bausch + Lomb’s John Ferris on Making Science Approachable
John Ferris, consumer president of Bausch + Lomb, explained how the company is using education‑led strategies to motivate eye‑care purchases before problems arise. He highlighted partnerships with eye‑care professionals as credible influencers and stressed the need to tailor brand content for AI‑driven...
For Brands and Agencies, AI Exits the Pilot Phase in 2026
AI has moved out of the pilot stage and is becoming a foundational layer of marketing for brands and agencies, according to insights shared at CES 2026. The technology now governs production, media buying, brand discovery, and consumer‑trust initiatives, shifting focus...
What a New AI Disruption Index Can Tell You About Your Brand’s Future
Moloco and BCG introduced the AI Disruption Index, a framework that evaluates 15 industry verticals on customer relationship strength and AI‑driven disruption risk. The model places travel, retail, education and news in the most vulnerable quadrant, while financial services and...
The Best AI Is the Kind You Never Actually See
Cadent has rebuilt its entire ad‑tech stack—audience platform, DSP and SSP—on a single, AI‑ready foundation, partnering with Google Gemini to embed intelligence at the core. Rather than layering AI on legacy systems, the company adopted a ground‑up approach that normalizes...
Apple Taps Google’s Gemini to Power Siri in AI Catch-Up Move
Apple announced a multi‑year partnership with Google to embed Gemini’s large‑language models and cloud infrastructure into its next‑generation Siri. The deal marks a rare collaboration between two historic rivals and signals Apple’s acknowledgement that external AI expertise is needed to...
As Adult Anxieties Around AI Grow, Lego Hands the Conversation to Kids
LEGO Education has introduced the “We Trust in Kids” campaign to give children a voice in AI education, unveiling new computer‑science and AI teaching kits for K‑8. The initiative is based on research showing 65 % of students feel excluded from...
72andSunny Will Build a Brand Around Qualcomm’s Compute Power
72andSunny has secured the agency‑of‑record role for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Compute platform, winning a competitive pitch that ends McCann Worldgroup’s eight‑year tenure. The creative firm will craft a global brand campaign that spotlights the chip’s AI‑driven processing power, with the first...
Google and Walmart Join Forces to Shape the Future of Retail
Google and Walmart announced a deep AI partnership at the NRF Big Show, enabling shoppers to buy Walmart and Sam’s Club products directly through Google’s Gemini chatbot. The collaboration also introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol, a joint effort with other...