Digiday

The upfront is no longer just a shop window for content Amazon owns, it’s now one for its ad tech too.  That’s a shift from how this period usually works. The tech pitch used to come after the content deal was done — a separate conversation, often with different people. Not anymore.  “There’s this big shift from these content-first decisions into more of this integrated approach, where you have premium content, deterministic signals and AI-driven technology all

Ad tech’s shift from an industry littered with point solutions to one built around integrated stacks has been underway for a while. It was only a matter of time before the acronyms followed.  Unified advertising platforms (UAP) is one such term. It hasn’t fully landed in the industry’s vocabulary yet, but give it time. It may be the clearest indication yet of where ad tech is headed: fewer players, more consolidation and a structural power shift that makes the current debate over supply

Last month, a U.S. Special Forces soldier was indicted for insider trading — not on stocks, but on a prediction market. He had detailed knowledge of a military operation. He bet on it. The platform where he placed those bets responded to the indictment with something close to a shrug. That shrug tells you everything about the world marketers are only beginning to understand. It’s one where a meme can move a market, and a market can become a meme. Where the internet’s lingua franca — iro

The Trade Desk’s Q1 revenues of $689 million may suggest holding-company spats are a mere bump in the road, but confirming the exit of CSO Samantha Jacobson hours before its market disclosure shows complications can come from all directions. The demand-side platform’s earnings release came as supply-side platform PubMatic reported revenue of $62.6 million for the period, while The Trade Desk also forecast Q2 revenue of “at least $750 million.” This capped off a seven-

OpenAI’s ads business is going global. Over the coming weeks it will start testing ads in its ChatGPT AI-powered chatbot in the U.K., Brazil, Japan, South Korea and Mexico. Those countries join the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand as markets where advertisers can buy ads in the app, though not all markets are equal. In the U.S., for instance, capabilities are more advanced and advertisers can reach logged-out users as well as logged-in users. Moreover, they can do that themselves after

This is an excerpt from our Digiday+ Research report “The marketer’s guide to AI applications, agentic AI, AI search and GEO/AEO in 2026,” which explores how marketers are navigating the opportunities and challenges AI brings as it becomes an indispensable part of marketing. The report is based on a survey of 142 brand and agency professionals, as well as individual interviews with marketing and technology executives responsible for AI investments and applications development. AI adoption soa

What works structurally for an individual creator doesn’t automatically translate into a scalable media company, and more founders may be running into that reality. Late last month, reports emerged that Unwell Network, the media company founded by “Call Her Daddy” mega creator Alex Cooper, faced high employee turnover because of an allegedly dramatic and frenzied work environment. Around the same time, a lawsuit was filed against Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson’s Beast Industries, accusing the comp

In our last update on Possible 2026, held last week in Miami Beach, its founders and owners declared their intention to launch a European installment of the conference, to be held in Lisbon in October of 2027. Both Christian Muche, co-founder and president of Possible, and Mark Shashoua, CEO of The Hyve Group, which owns Possible, offered little more detail, hinting instead that more news will be announced in the coming weeks. In a video interview (see below), Muche said the event in Lisbon

This week’s Media Briefing will examine how AI licensing revenue is starting to emerge as a meaningful growth driver for publishers this year, even as traffic declines continue to put pressure on some advertising businesses. Licensing lifts publishers in Q1 James Murdoch eyes Vox Media assets, newsrooms are using the World Cup to test editorial strategies, and more Licensing lifts publishers in Q1 As publishers continue to reposition their businesses to be less reliant on traffic-d

Even though Omnicom’s commerce media unit Flywheel has been operating in close proximity to Omnicom Media since the parent company acquired it in 2023, the holdco quietly acknowledged on Monday that Flywheel has formally been moved under control of Omnicom Media global CEO Florian Adamski. Alongside Flywheel, Omni — the holdco’s operating system that connects all units to its data and intelligence gathering — is also moving back into Omnicom Media. A representative for Omnicom confirmed the m

The buzz around Criteo’s groundbreaking partnership with OpenAI was palpable during the ad tech company’s first-quarter earnings call earlier today, but an earlier-tipped lag in retail media spend, plus slowed performance media spend, impacted its revenue during the quarter.  Despite Criteo’s leadership assuring the markets that it would return to growth by the end of the year, the immediate result was a slide in its share price based on an even more conservative 2026 revenue forecast fr

This story was originally published on sister site, Modern Retail. Ace Hardware is a unique retailer, being a cooperative with more than 5,200 stores that are operated independently. As a result, its executives and development team took a careful approach in designing and implementing its new AI assistant to work throughout the chain. Last week, Ace Hardware announced that it has launched an AI assistant for employees in more than 2,300 stores. The tool is called “Hey ARMA,” re

With year four of the Possible conference in Miami said and done, the time has come to focus on Cannes Lions — a festival that Possible is often compared to, somewhat unfairly. But the conversations that came out of the conference, which is headed by Christian Muche but owned by The Hyve Group, still resonate across several levels of marketing and media strategy. Digiday, which is a media partner to Possible, sat down with several speakers and executives across a wide swath of the industry t

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at the terms on the tips of ad buyers’ and sellers’ tongues when talking about the upfront market. The upfront, defined Amazon’s upfront pitch, Roku’s outcomes pitch, AMC’s upfront pitch and more The upfront, defined TV and streaming advertising’s upfront cycle has its own patois. Everyday words like “flexibility” and “fluidity” take on new meaning. And each upfront sees certain buzzwords come to the fore. So on the eve of this year’s annual

Three months into testing ads, OpenAI has significantly changed. An ads manager is now up and running, pricing has come down and ad tech partnerships have been struck. What hasn’t shifted is the pitch to advertisers: we want test budget ad dollars, not search. That’s a notable position for a platform that just made performance-based buying available. Marketers can now buy ads based on if they’re clicked on inside ChatGPT. When that option was reported by Digiday last month, the as

In the 12 months since Google debuted AI Max for Search, brands have increased their search budgets and seen cost-per-clicks (CPCs) rise, while compounding search’s transition into a media channel ruled by automation. For some clients, search costs increased by as much as 15% in the last year, according to four media buyers who spoke with Digiday. Unlike traditional methods of targeting search campaigns, AI Max generates target keywords and queries using a brand’s chosen landing page, crea

Third-party measurement and cost-per-action bidding are both in the works at OpenAI, which has now opened its self-serve ads manager to advertisers of all sizes in the U.S. To attract smaller advertisers, it has also dropped its $50,000 minimum spend requirement. The company’s ads and monetization lead, Asad Awan, sketched out what comes next at a press briefing. That includes third-party measurement, he said, but the company doesn’t have partners or an exact timeline. Securing bo

This year’s Future Leaders winners show how a new generation is redefining business impact. They are turning once-tactical roles into growth engines, using data and performance insights to drive measurable results while applying innovation to solve practical challenges. Just as importantly, they are building trust through authenticity and audience-first thinking, while leading beyond their formal roles through collaboration, mentorship and cultural influence. Together, these winners reflect a mo

The pendulum is swinging back to the feed, signaling that the crown of digital video dominance is going to social media. Brand spending on social video is set to outpace media investments on connected TV (CTV) ad inventory, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). While CTV spending is projected to grow year-over-year to 11% in 2026, spending on social video — which includes video on apps like Instagram, YouTube and Reddit — is set to rise faster for the first time, at 13%. Base

What happens when MrBeast isn’t MrBeast anymore, and the hype has died down? It’s the question Colin Rocker found himself asking before inking his first ever investor deal earlier this month with Favikon, a creator platform.  Related Insights The Creator Economy MrBeast is so big, Beast Industries turns down eight-figure brand deals if they aren’t the right fit Read More Rocker is a full time content creator focused on career