Ad tech rebuilt itself around identity resolution and clean rooms once third-party cookies disappeared. Coverage here spans SSAI, programmatic CTV, ad-supported tier economics, frequency capping, and the measurement approaches replacing the old playbook.
At the Cannes Lions 2026 festival, the advertising and media industry is shifting its focus from generative AI experimentation to demanding measurable ROI and practical workflow orchestration. Major holding companies like Publicis and WPP are working to monetize their massive AI infrastructure investments, while ad-tech vendors navigate identity resolution, signal loss, and the preservation of platform neutrality.
MNTN has integrated its Connected TV advertising platform with HubSpot, allowing B2B marketers to feed TV ad interaction data directly into CRM workflows. The integration enables tracking of TV ad exposure down to individual contacts to provide search- and social-style performance attribution for video campaigns.
Executives from Xperi/TiVo, Stingray, and Magnite speaking at the StreamTV Show's TVREV Summit highlighted automotive screens and autonomous vehicles as the next major growth sector for video distribution and ad monetization. The discussion emphasized early rollouts with automakers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz, alongside development in alternative formats like ambient TV programming and interactive home-screen ads.
The Audio Measurement Protocol (AMP) task force has proposed a new cross-platform measurement framework designed to standardize podcast ad-performance tracking across publishers. While the standard aims to unlock programmatic ad spend, industry analysis suggests it may exacerbate a margin squeeze for independent creators facing high multi-format production costs. The shift highlights a growing divide where the top 10 percent of network-backed shows capture over 95 percent of total podcast ad revenue.
The Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) business is growing rapidly, but many channels attract fewer than 6,000 viewers per hour, leading to over-inventory and repetitive advertising. This issue, termed "zombies" by Fastmaster, negatively impacts viewer perception of both ads (76%) and platforms (70%). The article suggests advertisers should prioritize quality over quantity in ad placements.
Adobe has partnered with The Trade Desk to integrate Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform with The Trade Desk's Raw Event Data Stream. This collaboration enables brands to enrich their first-party profiles with impression-level programmatic advertising signals and automate audience activation using Unified ID 2.0 framework across CTV and other digital channels.
A survey by subscription bundling platform Bango reveals that roughly half of young US sports fans are increasingly replacing live games with highlights, clips, and social updates. The study highlights significant subscription fatigue, with over 70% of viewers aged 18-34 needing multiple paid services to follow their teams and nearly 40% viewing piracy as the best access method.
Sell-side ad platform Magnite has partnered with Viasat Aviation to introduce programmatic video advertising capabilities to Viasat's in-flight entertainment and Wi-Fi networks. The collaboration allows real-time dynamic ad targeting across 60 airlines and approximately 4,000 aircraft worldwide, opening a premium captive-audience inventory channel.
Smartly has partnered with Roku to integrate its creative advertising and campaign management platform with Roku Ads Manager via a direct API connection. The partnership enables advertisers to easily extend existing social media advertising assets and performance strategies directly onto the Roku CTV platform. This integration aims to streamline hybrid social-CTV creative workflows and performance measurement.
Ad-tech startup Precise.ai has secured $7 million in seed funding to commercialize its "decisioning economics" platform. Led by CTV ad-tech veterans, the company aims to ingest log-level programmatic data to help buyers audit the specific performance and cost contribution of individual targeting elements, bid modifiers, and supply paths.
Video advertising platform Pixability has launched a Model Context Protocol (MCP)-enabled agent for YouTube ads, allowing clients to integrate its proprietary video intelligence data into their own AI platforms. Tested by advertising agency PMG, the integration allows natural language queries to bypass traditional, manual API steps, reportedly reducing campaign planning time by 25% to 30%.
TelevisaUnivision is addressing a projected 50% undercount of Hispanic audiences by third-party measurement systems by building its own proprietary U.S. Hispanic household graph. The first-party database merges internal and external data signals to give advertisers more precise targeting capabilities across its streaming platforms and live sports broadcasts.
Databricks has launched CustomerLake, an AI-agentic Customer Data Platform embedded within its Lakehouse platform to unify automated marketing and data operations. This solution challenges standalone CDP giants like Salesforce, Adobe, and Twilio Segment by enabling native data governance and eliminating the need for data duplication. The platform aims to streamline complex customer data workflows, which are critical for streaming media personalization and ad-targeting strategies.
FreeWheel's 2025 report highlights streaming comprising 47.5% of multiscreen TV viewership and a 21% year-over-year increase in programmatic advertisers. The article details how programmatic advertising and AI are simplifying TV ad buying for a fragmented audience, with FreeWheel's technology acting as a central hub for ad decisioning and delivery. Interoperability and the use of Generative AI for ad creative are also noted as key developments.
Entravision's programmatic ad platform, Smadex, experienced a 204% revenue growth to $154.6 million in Q1 2026, making the ad-tech segment the majority of the company's total revenue. The article highlights how this fast-growing, profitable ad-tech business is overlooked due to its embedding within a traditional Hispanic broadcaster, presenting a mispricing opportunity in the market. It argues that market analysts focusing on broadcasters are missing the significant value of the ad-tech component.
Google will integrate AI-generated voice-overs into its Performance Max video ads, utilizing advertiser headlines and descriptions for silent or music-only videos. This automated feature aims to increase creative testing volume for advertisers, with an opt-out option available. The technology uses Google's latest large language models and generative AI to create realistic spoken audio tracks.
A study by Ledger Bennett and StackAdapt revealed that 77% of B2B marketers believe AI scrutiny in RFPs is inadequate, with over 60% unable to distinguish genuinely useful AI capabilities from hype. The research also highlighted challenges in cross-channel measurement and a lack of unified reporting, leading to dissatisfaction with the current B2B RFP process. Marketers emphasized the need for more integrated partners, transparency in AI benefits, and simplified measurement approaches.
HireClix has expanded its Employer Brand Network with a new Connected TV (CTV) advertising solution, enabling employers to run recruitment marketing campaigns directly on major streaming platforms. This solution allows companies to target passive candidates on services like Netflix and Hulu through highly targeted video ads. The offering aims to help organizations build awareness of their employer brand using consumer advertising tactics in streaming environments.
Brand Metrics launched Predictive+, which it claims is the industry's first predictive brand lift solution specifically for connected TV. The solution enables independent brand lift reporting even with limited survey responses by combining real campaign data with predictive modeling, addressing a key measurement challenge in CTV advertising. Visoon, Germany's leading CTV advertising sales house for Paramount+, Pluto TV, and MTV, was an early validation partner.
Exclusio, an international content monetization platform, announced its global expansion to new markets. The platform offers creators up to 95% of their earnings and a suite of monetization tools, including subscriptions, premium content, and secure payment processing. This expansion aims to strengthen Exclusio's presence in the growing creator economy.
Harmonic has launched new in-stream advertising capabilities within its VOS360 Ad SaaS, enabling premium ad inventory for live sporting events. This technology integrates server-side, targeted ads with formats like double box and L-shape squeeze, boosting publisher revenues and advertiser reach. The ads are blended and rendered into standard streaming formats and delivered via CDN, with the in-stream Ad Creative Format transparent to the video player on the client side.
Channel Factory's Nate Turner argues that political advertisers need to move beyond simple impression counts and prioritize contextual ad placement. He emphasizes the importance of measuring contextual resonance, attention quality, and persuasion lift to amplify ad messages rather than just avoiding unsuitable content. Turner believes that better ad adjacency will lead to more effective campaigns and better-informed voters.
EA is launching a dedicated ad platform, EA Advertising, to integrate in-game ad experiences in titles like Madden NFL and The Sims, following a broader trend of video game companies seeking ad revenue. The platform will sell ad experiences visually similar to real-life sports sponsorships, such as in-game billboards and branded uniforms, alongside standard display banners during gameplay.
Papa Johns partnered with NBCUniversal and Instacart to target streaming ads on NBCU platforms like Peacock, leveraging Instacart's first-party grocery data. The campaign aimed to reach consumers when their fridges were likely empty, serving custom creatives with QR codes to drive incremental sales. This marks the first time Instacart's data was used for a non-CPG brand on NBCU's streaming inventory for behavioral targeting.
Kristi Argyilan, global head of advertising at Uber Advertising, discussed her career journey from retail media at Target and Albertsons to defining "delivery media" at Uber. Her work focuses on leveraging first-party data and contextual moments to build advertising propositions for the streaming industry. Uber Advertising recently launched new capabilities, including Uber Intelligence with LiveRamp and JourneyTV Presents with premium content partners, expanding their advertising offerings.
MiQ has launched its AI-powered programmatic media platform, Sigma, in Latin America to help advertisers manage fragmented data across various digital channels. The platform has successfully supported over 40,000 campaigns globally, generating $2.22 in value for every $1 invested by advertisers. Sigma offers capabilities like Watching Intelligence for video consumption analysis, Browsing Intelligence, and an AI-driven analytical model called Total Measurement.
The article discusses the mobile advertising market, highlighting its growth to $288 billion in 2021, a 26.6% increase from the previous year. It defines mobile advertising as programmatic advertising running on mobile devices, emphasizing advanced targeting tools and various ad formats. The piece also indicates it will present a list of top mobile advertising companies.
Titan OS, an ad tech and content discovery platform based in Barcelona, is seeking a CTV Media Sales Manager for the German market to boost advertising revenue. The company has shown significant growth, powering devices from major brands like Philips, AOC, JVC, and Sony Android TVs. This role focuses on driving CTV advertising spend and building relationships with media agencies in Germany.
Tegna's Premion is expanding its connected TV advertising platform with a new subscription-style model, explicitly targeting regional and mid-market brands. This offering bundles premium CTV inventory, data, and managed services to help local businesses shift ad spend from linear TV to streaming. The platform reaches over 125 million US households and integrates third-party data for audience targeting and measurable performance.
Adwave outlines four strategies for converting Connected TV (CTV) ad impressions into sales, including QR codes, branded search, pixel retargeting, and synchronized social media campaigns. This guide aims to help streaming video professionals bridge the "conversion gap" between CTV ad exposure and consumer action. The article provides a sequencing playbook and measurement approach for these conversion paths.
Innovid has launched InnovidXP Connected TV Analytics Platform, designed to provide marketers with real-time, transparent data on CTV campaign performance. The platform aims to bridge the accountability gap in streaming advertising by linking ad impressions to business outcomes across various CTV environments. InnovidXP will allow marketers to analyze incremental reach, site visits, and sales data to optimize campaigns.
Following Fox Corp's US$22 billion bid for Roku, the article highlights three stock picks related to the connected TV (CTV) market: PubMatic, Paramount Global, and Integral Ad Science (IAS). It analyzes each company's operations, market cap, and investment potential within the evolving CTV advertising landscape, emphasizing their exposure to programmatic tools, ad verification, and streaming platforms.
CIMM has released a "Quality Matters" white paper that provides a framework for evaluating video ad quality, aiming to create a shared language for buyers, publishers, and platforms. The initiative promotes treating media quality as a measurable input for buying, pricing, and optimization decisions, moving beyond simple pass/fail filtering. The paper suggests three principles to reshape video ad buying: recognizing quality variations within channels, using quality to influence pricing, and measuring both short-term and long-term value.
Media Partners Asia (MPA) forecasts the APAC screen economy will reach $200 billion by 2031, with monetization shifting from traditional subscriptions and linear ads to retail media and commerce. The transition highlights pressing regional trends including connected TV (CTV) fragmentation, shoppable TV integrations, and the challenges of multi-platform measurement.
Ad-tech platform Magnite has joined the Databricks CustomerLake ecosystem as an initial launch partner. The collaboration aims to streamline audience activation and identity solutions natively within Databricks for mutual publisher and advertiser clients.
A report from Nielsen's Gracenote emphasizes a persistent 'CTV Data Gap' where 95% of programmatic traders cite the lack of show-level content data as a primary barrier to increasing CTV spend. Despite commanding over 20% of media consumption time, CTV only captures 7.7% of total ad spending, a disparity compounded by high CTV bot fraud rates. The report highlights the need for standardized content intelligence to provide the transparency required to transition linear TV ad budgets to streaming platforms.
The connected television (CTV) market is projected to reach $33.28 billion by 2030, driven by advanced display technologies and ad-supported models. Key trends include the growth of CTV advertising and AI-powered content optimization. Mediaocean acquired Innovid in February 2025 to enhance its CTV advertising capabilities, while LG India introduced new OLED and QNED TVs with AI features in July 2025.
Fox and Telemundo achieved record US viewership for the 2026 FIFA World Cup opener, with Fox's English-language coverage drawing 15.99 million viewers and Telemundo's Spanish-language coverage reaching 8.9 million. Fox briefly breached FIFA advertising rules by returning to play 10 seconds late after an ad break, but FIFA accepted their explanation and will not take further action. The article highlights the potential of new commercial inventory, like hydration break ads, to boost future World Cup media rights deals for broadcasters as divergent strategies for monetization emerge.
A Harris Poll commissioned by Tubi found that 74% of streamers appreciate brands that advertise during free streaming, indicating higher trust for ad-supported streaming among consumers. The study, cited by Tubi VP Chris Grillo, also revealed a 4-to-1 ROI for CPG advertisers on Tubi, with ad-supported streaming being the second-most-trusted ad source behind a brand's own website. The article highlights that free streaming is gaining significant reach and trust, offering CPG marketers an effective environment for advertising, especially with co-viewing. The Nielsen February 2026 Gauge report notes that 45.6% of US TV viewing time is ad-supported streaming.
MNTN, a technology platform for Connected TV performance marketing, announced a new integration with HubSpot. This allows B2B advertisers to directly link CTV ad campaigns to revenue reporting within their CRM workflows, providing full-funnel attribution and measurable outcomes.
tvScientific by Pinterest has launched Creative Advisor, an AI-powered tool designed to optimize CTV ad creatives. This new solution analyzes video ad elements and performance data, providing predictive recommendations to improve campaign performance, leading to an average 13% improvement in campaign results for early testers. The platform aims to maximize the effectiveness of media investment for advertisers by predicting and refining ad creative before and during campaigns.
Reddit's research, commissioned with TransUnion and Samba, indicates that Media & Entertainment (M&E) ad campaigns on its platform achieve an average $6.85 return on ad spend (ROAS) and an 18% incremental tune-in lift for content. The study highlights Reddit's effectiveness across the ad funnel, outperforming other paid social platforms in ROAS and driving increased viewership and retention for exposed households.
BIScience has expanded its AdClarity CTV ad intelligence platform to 19 new countries, bringing its total market coverage to 20 with $70 billion in tracked CTV ad spend. The platform offers unified cross-media competitive intelligence and AI-driven automation for global advertisers, including major brands and advertising agencies. This expansion aims to provide total visibility across various screens with a consistent methodology.
IAS has launched its Total TV product in the US, designed to bring linear-like transparency to CTV advertising by aggregating and normalizing data from direct publisher partnerships. This initiative aims to solve industry fragmentation and inconsistent measurement, with major publishers like Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Prime Video supporting its rollout. IAS is also leveraging AI to enhance media quality, brand suitability, and overall ad performance for its clients.
New studies from Samsung Ads and Rakuten TV suggest that Connected TV (CTV) has reached a tipping point for advertisers in Europe, redefining retail media. The growth of CTV creates demand and influences consumers earlier in the purchase journey, with home screens becoming a new discovery environment for advertisers. This shift presents both opportunities for brands to influence consumers and challenges around fragmentation and measurement for retailers and ad-tech providers.
WPP Media's midyear forecast projects an 8.9% global ad revenue growth for 2026, up from previous estimates due to stronger Q1 performance and significant investments in AI by top ad sellers. The report highlights generative search as a nascent but rapidly growing ad channel, expected to reach $100 billion by 2030, profoundly impacting digital advertising strategies. This growth is heavily driven by the US market and the leading ad sellers like Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon, all heavily investing in AI for their advertising products.
Walmart Connect is expanding its retail media offering by integrating its audience data into YouTube's streaming inventory via Display & Video 360. This allows advertisers to target Walmart audiences more precisely across connected TV (CTV) environments using real purchase data. The move broadens Walmart Connect's video footprint and aligns with the trend of retail media networks extending shopper data to the broader open web and CTV ecosystem.
Adtelligent compiled a list of 20 influential ad-tech voices to follow in 2026, including CEOs, analysts, and social media accounts. These individuals are recognized for shaping discussions around privacy, AI automation, and monetization models in CTV and retail media. The list highlights key figures from companies like The Trade Desk and Google, as well as independent analysts and meme creators.
This article discusses how ad-tech's shift towards AI-powered 1:1 personalization creates significant measurement challenges and risks fragmenting brand messaging. It argues that while hyper-personalization can be effective for short-term, bottom-funnel performance campaigns, it undermines long-term brand building and introduces a multivariate nightmare for scientific measurement. The piece advocates for a strategic shift from hyper-personalization across the entire media mix to focusing on the right messages for the right population over time.
Connected TV (CTV) in India is transitioning from experimental to a central screen, with marketers increasing spend 56% year-over-year. However, fragmented data, lack of ownership within media organizations, and limited transparency in ad inventory and content context hinder sustained growth for CTV advertising. The industry requires collaboration on standards and deeper content-level understanding to build advertiser trust and unlock CTV's full potential.
