Shaping Supply: Is Curation the Antidote to Ad Wastage?
Connected TV (CTV) ad spend in the U.S. is set to near $38 bn this year, cementing its role as a core media channel. However, the rapid expansion of premium SVOD, FAST channels, and OEM interfaces has fragmented the supply, making it harder for advertisers to balance scale with waste. The article argues that proactive curation—shaping inventory before it reaches programmatic bids—can restore transparency, cut unnecessary supply‑chain hops, and improve brand safety. It highlights YouTube as a prime example where curated inclusion lists can capture premium, broadcast‑quality content while avoiding low‑quality, brand‑unsafe inventory.
The Stack: Ads, Accountability, and AI
Meta is under fire in the UK after the FCA uncovered 1,052 illegal high‑risk financial ads in a single week, many from previously flagged accounts. Whistleblowers allege Meta and TikTok deliberately amplified harmful, outrage‑driven content to boost engagement. Trust issues...
The Last Mile Problem: Why Publishers Need Independent AI/ML Infrastructure for Yield Optimisation
Publishers are still using manual, weekly rules for ad‑yield while buy‑side platforms have leveraged real‑time machine learning for years. The gap, called the "last mile" problem, stems from the complexity of building impression‑level data pipelines, feature engineering, and sub‑50 ms inference...
Venatus Delivers 5x Higher Video Ad Attention by Activating Audiences “In the Zone”- Lumen Research Finds
Venatus Media, in partnership with Lumen Research, reports that its video‑ad platform achieves up to five times higher attention by targeting audiences "In the Zone"—users deeply engaged in gaming, sports or entertainment. The technology assesses mindset, context and timing to...
Digest: Publicis Advises Clients to Avoid The Trade Desk; Meta Misses Illegal Financial Ads; Alibaba Forms New AI Business Group
Publicis Groupe told select clients to pause work with The Trade Desk after an independent audit flagged questionable fee applications and opaque cost reporting. The Trade Desk rejected the allegations, citing confidentiality constraints on the auditor’s data requests. Meanwhile, Meta...
UK Programmatic DOOH Spend to Rise 41% as It Becomes Core to Omnichannel Planning
VIOOH’s 2026 UK programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) report shows the channel now appears in 34% of campaigns, up from 31% in 2024, and is projected to reach 47% within the next 18 months. Marketers anticipate a 41% increase in pDOOH spend,...
Thrad Extends Its Partnership with Betadine Through iNova Pharmaceuticals
Thrad has extended its partnership with Betadine through iNova Pharmaceuticals to launch digital‑first, AI‑native advertising campaigns for healthcare brands. The first effort is a Betadine Feminine Care initiative that aims to create supportive, informative spaces for women. By combining Betadine’s...
Hamnet Is UK’s Most Read-About Oscar Film, Despite Missing Out on Best Picture Award
Chloé Zhao’s *Hamnet* attracted 1.4 million UK pageviews, making it the most read‑about film of the 2026 Oscar season despite missing the Best Picture award. The actual winner, *One Battle After Another*, recorded only about 10 000 pageviews. Close competitors *Marty Supreme*...
The Five-Minute Internet (Estimated Reading Time: Five Minutes)
The article argues that the internet has become obsessed with delivering content in five‑minute, low‑effort packages. Platforms highlight reading times, AI tools summarize reports, and short‑form video dominates, reflecting a “mini‑max” principle of maximum stimulation with minimal effort. While podcasts...
MarkApp Joins IAB MENA
MarkApp has joined IAB MENA, reinforcing its commitment to transparent, standards‑driven digital advertising in the Middle East and North Africa. IAB MENA is a leading industry body that shapes programmatic standards, best practices, and education across the region. MarkApp brings...
Shifts in Streaming: Competition, Collaboration, and Consolidation
Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros creates a streaming powerhouse that combines HBO Max, Paramount+, Discovery+ and legacy cable brands, targeting roughly 200 million global subscribers. The merger boosts negotiating leverage against rivals like Amazon and Netflix but saddles the new entity...
Limelight Inc Report Calls for “Efficiency Reset” In Ad Tech to Tackle Environmental Costs & Waste
Limelight Inc. released a whitepaper urging an “efficiency reset” across programmatic advertising, highlighting that operational waste now threatens economic performance, brand reputation, and the environment. The report details how practices such as circular trading, over‑intermediation, and bid duplication inflate costs...
“Demand Doesn’t Disappear. It Relocates”: Jessica Saunders, Eyeota
Jessica Saunders of Eyeota warns that AI‑driven search is compressing the traditional click economy, with daily AI search usage more than doubling and click‑through rates softening. Marketers are shifting spend from intent‑heavy search to discovery‑focused channels such as CTV and...
Digest: OpenAI Tests Ads Manager and Prepares Agentic Storefronts Feature; Meta Plans Layoffs While Publishers Back Its Expulsion From IAB...
OpenAI is expanding its commercial toolkit, testing an Ads Manager dashboard with a select partner group while preparing the Agentic Storefronts feature that will surface Shopify merchants’ products directly inside ChatGPT. In Sweden, major publishers have backed Meta’s expulsion from...
SBTi Approves Adform’s Near-Term Science-Based Emissions Reduction Target
Adform’s near‑term science‑based emissions‑reduction targets have been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). The company pledges a 42% absolute cut in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse‑gas emissions by 2030, using 2024 as a baseline, and a 51.6% intensity reduction in...
The Stack: Ad Prices Rise, Retail Dominates, and Moderation Falls Short
Meta announced a 2‑5% fee increase for advertisers in Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the UK, effective July, to offset Digital Service Taxes and other location‑based levies. At the same time, the Meta Oversight Board criticised the company’s deep‑fake...
Digest: Meta Hikes Ad Prices; AI Agents Cannot Act on Your Behalf Without Platform Permission, Rules US Judge; IPA Unveils...
Meta announced a 2%‑5% fee increase for ads delivered in Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the UK, citing local digital service taxes. A California federal judge ruled that AI agents cannot access a platform’s systems without the platform’s explicit...
FreeWheel Launches AI Agent Infrastructure for Premium Video Ads, Pilots with PMG
FreeWheel unveiled an AI agent infrastructure built on its Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server and a suite of Intelligence tools, embedding artificial intelligence directly into premium video ad transactions. The platform enables real‑time workflow automation, performance monitoring, and decision‑making for...
OpenX & TVision Launch First Supply-Side Attention Targeting Solution for CTV
OpenX and TVision have introduced OpenX Attention Targeting, the first supply‑side solution that lets advertisers bid on CTV inventory based on real‑time viewer attention scores. The offering merges TVision’s passive, person‑level panel data with OpenX’s bid‑stream signals, delivering predictive engagement...
Seedtag Launches Liz Agent, the Agentic AI Platform for Faster, Smarter Media Strategy
Seedtag unveiled Liz Agent, an agentic AI platform that fuses its proprietary Neuro‑Contextual intelligence with large language models to automate media planning and campaign activation. The conversational interface lets brands move from brief to execution in a single dialogue, delivering...
Digest: Anthropic Sues US Defence Department; Meta’s Deepfake Moderation Falling Short; Barb Adds Pre-Campaign Functionality
Anthropic has filed two lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Defense after being labeled a “supply chain risk,” alleging the designation infringes its First Amendment rights. The company maintains its willingness to work with the government on national‑security AI projects...
Stonegate Group Appoints Fifty as Strategic Media Partner Ahead of World Cup
UK’s largest pub operator, Stonegate Group, has appointed Fifty as its strategic media partner to manage media strategy and buying across its 4,500‑venue portfolio. The partnership, chosen for Fifty’s AI‑enabled audience‑intelligence platform, will cover more than 15 addressable channels, including...
Perion’s AI Agent Outmax Now Available for TikTok, Delivering up to 25% Greater Media Performance in Early Results
Perion Network announced the launch of its Outmax AI agent on TikTok, reporting up to a 25% lift in media performance during early trials. The integration brings Perion’s AI‑native infrastructure to TikTok’s 1.6 billion‑user ecosystem, allowing advertisers to move beyond platform‑standard...
Limelight Inc Hires Programmatic Heavyweight Oshri Raz as VP USA Strategic Alliances
Limelight Inc has appointed Oshri Raz as Vice President of USA Strategic Alliances to accelerate the rollout of its white‑label programmatic tools across the United States. Raz brings deep ad‑tech experience from his senior roles at EX.CO, where he helped...
RAAS LAB & The Trade Desk Partner to Bring Real-Time Relevance to Programmatic Advertising
RAAS LAB announced a partnership with The Trade Desk, integrating its AI‑driven contextual intelligence into the demand‑side platform. The joint solution lets advertisers evaluate tone, sentiment and placement environment at the impression level, backed by URL‑level reporting. Brands and agencies...
Digest: Retail and Grocery Brands Dominate ChatGPT Ads Trial; Walmart to Phase Out Vizio Accounts; New US AI Guidelines Challenge...
OpenAI’s month‑long ChatGPT ad trial is now 44% retail and grocery ads, led by brands like Target, Sephora and Wayfair. Walmart announced it will phase out standalone Vizio accounts, requiring new TV buyers to link or merge into a Walmart...
VIOOH Partners with OUTFRONT to Add Expansive US Inventory to Its Global Programmatic Platform
VIOOH, the leading global digital out‑of‑home supply‑side platform, announced a strategic partnership with US media giant OUTFRONT. The deal brings more than 7,600 digital screens and roughly 18 billion monthly impressions onto VIOOH’s programmatic marketplace, covering highways, transit hubs and urban...
Azerion Promotes Roxanne Harley to VP Strategy & Growth
Omnichannel advertising platform Azerion has created a new executive position, appointing Roxanne Harley as Vice President of Strategy & Growth. Harley, who previously headed UK growth, will now oversee strategic planning, product development, go‑to‑market roadmaps, and the company’s creative studio,...
Picnic Launches ‘Quality Video’ to Bring Transparency to Open-Web Video Buying
Picnic has launched Quality Video, an extension of its PIQ platform that evaluates open‑web video inventory based on real‑time behavior rather than static DSP labels. The solution measures signals such as pause on scroll, simultaneous playback, auto‑play and audio settings,...
Nano Interactive Launches NanoQ Agentic Media Planner Built to Transform Programmatic Planning
Nano Interactive unveiled NanoQ, an agentic AI media planner that automates audience creation and activation. Built on the company’s intent data and the continuously refreshed Intent Library, NanoQ translates natural‑language briefs into custom and off‑the‑shelf segments. In internal tests the...
Digest: Axel Springer Acquires Telegraph for £575m; Indonesia to Implement Social Media Ban for Under-16s; UK Delays AI Copyright Rule...
Axel Springer agreed to buy the UK’s Telegraph for £575 m, ending a three‑year ownership limbo and fending off a Daily Mail bid. The deal marks the first change of hands in the paper’s 168‑year history. Meanwhile, Indonesia announced a phased...
DigitalAudience Accelerates UK Expansion with Local Leadership
digitalAudience is accelerating its UK footprint in 2026 by appointing Paul Smith as Managing Director and Cristina Ghiuta as Customer Success Manager. The hires aim to drive market development, partnership growth, and customer onboarding for the company’s privacy‑first data‑collaboration platform....
Thrad Joins AgenticAdvertising.org as Founding Member
Thrad, a leading AI advertising infrastructure provider, announced its entry as a founding member of AgenticAdvertising.org (AAO), an initiative to develop open standards for AI‑powered ads through the Ad Context Protocol. The move comes amid OpenAI’s launch of a high‑cost,...
Lumen Launches New Attention Measurement Solution for Advertisers with Netflix
Lumen Research has teamed up with Netflix to launch an attention‑measurement solution that tracks how viewers engage with ads across Netflix’s ad‑supported CTV, desktop, and mobile platforms. The offering is initially available to advertisers in the UK, Germany, France, Italy,...
EXTE Joins Forces with HUMAN Security to Protect Ad Inventory Quality & Integrity
EXTE announced a strategic integration with HUMAN Security, embedding the MediaGuard Ad Fraud Defence solution into its programmatic platform. The joint offering combines pre‑bid mitigation and post‑bid reporting to verify impressions, block bots, and curb invalid traffic in real time....
The Wires 2026: What Makes an Award-Winning Entry?
ExchangeWire’s The Wires 2026 marks a decade of ad‑tech awards and unveils a globally diverse judging panel spanning EMEA, APAC, MENA and the US. Judges from brands, agencies and publishers emphasize consumer‑centric insight, AI‑driven measurement, and clear ROI as hallmarks...
AppHarbr by GeoEdge Launches the First Index Ranking In-App Ad Networks on Ad Quality & Safety
AppHarbr, GeoEdge’s in‑app ad quality platform, released the first In‑App Network Ad Quality & Safety Performance Index, benchmarking 45 ad networks across 25 billion ads. The study found half of the networks fell short of basic safety standards, with iOS apps...
Vudoo Announces Partnership with PubMatic to Simplify Activation of Commerce-Enabled Advertising
Vudoo has partnered with PubMatic to embed its commerce‑media technology into PubMatic’s AI‑powered programmatic platform, enabling shoppable ad experiences across verified inventory. The integration lets agencies and brands activate commerce media with a single deal ID, supporting display, video and...
The Survival of the Scarcest: Why AI Favours the Premium Publisher
AI is reshaping digital publishing by replacing the traditional search‑driven model with an answer‑focused economy. Premium publishers stand to gain as users shift from utility‑mode queries to trust‑mode consumption, where source credibility matters. The emergence of agentic media buying will...
Digest: Meta Trials AI Shopping Tool; Google to Fill 150 Tech Roles in Singapore; eBay Cuts 800 Jobs
Meta Platforms is piloting an AI‑powered shopping assistant within its Meta AI chatbot, offering product recommendations with images, pricing and merchant links. The tool, currently limited to select U.S. users, tailors suggestions using location and inferred gender data but does not...
IAB Europe Publishes 2026 Readiness Report Highlighting AI, Regulation & Sustainability Challenges in Digital Advertising
IAB Europe released its 2026 State of Readiness – Sustainability in Digital Advertising report, the fourth edition covering both environmental and social dimensions. The study’s double‑materiality analysis finds social issues such as privacy and media plurality outweigh environmental impacts. AI...
Seedtag Welcomes Brendan McCarthy as Chief Marketing & Communications Officer
Seedtag announced the appointment of Brendan McCarthy as Chief Marketing & Communications Officer. McCarthy, former CMO of Criteo, brings over 20 years of marketing leadership at Fortune 500 firms. He will oversee global marketing, brand, demand generation, and communications to...
FirstPartyCapital Announces Corporate Innovation Model to Facilitate Strategic Investment in Ad Tech
FirstPartyCapital unveiled a corporate innovation model aimed at brands, agencies, publishers and ad‑tech leaders, offering a hybrid of outsourced R&D, market intelligence and equity investment. The model tackles the high cost and opacity of building proprietary ad technology by providing...
Taboola Names Krishan Bhatia as Chief Business Officer; Amazon Ads & NBCUniversal Veteran to Lead Global Sales & Partnerships
Taboola announced Krishan Bhatia as its first chief business officer, tasked with leading global sales and partnerships. Bhatia previously built Amazon’s global video‑advertising business and led NBCUniversal’s digital advertising division. He will oversee the Realize performance‑advertising platform, CTV, generative‑AI products...
Digest: Paramount to Take Over Warner Bros as Netflix Drops Bid; Dentsu Names New Global CEO
Netflix withdrew its $82 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, clearing the way for Paramount‑Skydance’s revised $111 billion offer. The deal would give Paramount control of Warner’s film studio and TV networks, reshaping the media landscape. Meanwhile, Dentsu named Takeshi Sano global CEO...
Matt Weston Outpaces Teammates as Britain’s Most-Read-About 2026 Winter Olympian
Matt Weston, Britain’s double‑gold medalist at the 2026 Winter Olympics, attracted 667,000 pageviews on Taboola’s network over the past three months, far outpacing his teammates. His teammate Tabby Stoecker recorded only 56,000 pageviews, while the overall Games generated more than...
Mortar AI & DAIVID Partner to Integrate Creative Effectiveness Into MMM
Mortar AI has partnered with creative‑data specialist DAIVID to embed creative effectiveness metrics into its Marketing Mix Model (MMM). The integration brings DAIVID’s AI‑driven emotional analysis—covering 39 distinct emotions and predictive metrics—directly into Mortar’s MMM engine. Advertisers can now quantify...
Shinka Strengthens Industry Positioning by Joining the World Out of Home Organisation as a New Member
Shinka announced its membership in the World Out of Home Organisation (WOO), the premier global association for out‑of‑home advertising. The move gives Shinka access to a worldwide network of media owners, agencies, and research that shapes OOH standards and policy....
AdPlayer.Pro Introduces New Results-Driven Features in Its Ad-Enabled Video Player
AdPlayer.Pro has rolled out new configuration capabilities for its ad‑enabled video player, targeting both instream and standalone video placements. The updates expand ad‑interval settings and aim to boost performance amid a market slowdown reported by over 40% of its users....
Adform Becomes First-Ever DSP to Join ISBA’s Partner Programme, Championing Digital Sovereignty for British Advertisers
Adform announced it is the first demand‑side platform to join the Institute of Shared Business Advertising (ISBA) Partner Programme, positioning itself as a champion of digital sovereignty for UK brands. The partnership aims to give advertisers greater visibility, accountability and...