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.
AdsWizz and Barometer have introduced an automated pre-release evaluation workflow for podcast publishers to analyze content suitability, sentiment, and context before publication. By tagging assets within the Simplecast CMS, the system allows networks like National Public Media to monetize episode-level inventory immediately upon release.
Advertising agency Butler/Till is utilizing Claude as an AI buyer agent to automate campaign planning and activation by integrating DoubleVerify's DV Neura engine and PubMatic's AgenticOS. The workflow leverages interoperability standards like MCP and AdCP to embed verification, brand suitability, and fraud protection directly into the programmatic bidding process.
TiVo has partnered with OpenGlass to integrate programmatic advertising into its TV home screen interface, allowing advertisers to reach viewers through high-impact video formats. This initiative extends TiVo's ad inventory across its pay TV operator footprint and expands access to diverse advertising verticals like retail and automotive.
Addressable linear TV advertising spend has stagnated at $1.8 billion between 2021 and 2026, failing to outpace inflation as pay-TV subscriptions continue to decline. Meanwhile, streaming TV advertising spend experienced significant growth during the same period, establishing itself as the primary vehicle for addressable video advertising.
A group of Amazon merchants, known as Million Dollar Sellers, organized a boycott against the platform to protest changes such as fuel surcharges, delayed payment policies, and limited control over advertising placements. The sellers specifically raised concerns regarding transparency in ad delivery and the use of AI-generated creative within Amazon's advertising ecosystem.
Infolinks Media CEO Bob Regular discusses industry limitations regarding strict supply path optimization (SPO), arguing that it can exclude high-value media. He advocates for a shift toward a primary impression model that leverages predictive contextual data and AI to capture inventory value beyond deterministic signals.
This article outlines the engineering architecture behind ad-tech audience segmentation, detailing how distributed systems like Spark and Kafka are used to process and resolve anonymized identity data. It provides a technical high-level overview of the pipelines required to ingest, validate, and activate audience segments for programmatic advertising.
Broadcasters are beginning to integrate interactive iGaming elements into the CTV ecosystem by leveraging programmatic ad-tech, first-party data, and low-latency infrastructure. This shift aims to transition mobile-first interactive gaming experiences to the big screen through standardized UI/UX and high-fidelity content porting.
This article explores the tension in the digital advertising landscape between YouTube's performance-based model and the branding-heavy approach favored by traditional TV distributors. It suggests that both sides must evolve their infrastructure and metrics to cater to brands that require a hybrid of reach and conversion capabilities.
Warner Bros. Discovery is rolling out shoppable pause ads by late 2024, aiming to move beyond direct deals toward programmatic standardization via the IAB Tech Lab. The initiative focuses on creating interactive ecommerce storefronts triggered when viewers pause content, with a specific push to align industry signals for automated ad buying.
AdGood, a startup founded by Wurl alumni, provides a platform for nonprofits to access discounted CTV advertising inventory donated by publishers such as LG, Samsung, and A&E. The company utilizes an AI-driven ad management tool to facilitate campaign creation and targeting for organizations that previously found linear television advertising cost-prohibitive.
Microsoft is trialing an ad-supported tier for its Xbox cloud gaming service, allowing users to stream digital library titles for one-hour increments after viewing advertisements. This test, currently limited to Xbox Insiders, signifies a shift toward diversified monetization models for cloud-based gaming infrastructure.
The linear TV advertising sector is shifting toward 'digitally delivered linear' (DDL 2.0), incorporating APIs and agentic transaction architectures to automate planning and execution. This evolution aims to bring digital performance optimization and audience-based targeting capabilities to the scale of traditional linear television.
OpenAI has signed a data-licensing agreement with Yelp to incorporate business reviews and 'Request a Quote' features into ChatGPT. This partnership aligns with recent industry analysis suggesting OpenAI is developing an ad-tech infrastructure, including self-serve buying and ad-serving integrations, to support a platform driven by semantic intent.
An unnamed programmatic advertising platform terminated a signed agreement with the watchdog group Check My Ads after raising concerns about the potential for outside audit-like research into its supply chain. The incident underscores a conflict between the ad tech industry's stated commitment to transparency and the reluctance of platforms to allow independent parties to scrutinize their supply partner protections.
Adwave has launched Waverunner, an AI-powered platform designed to help small businesses automate creative production and cross-platform campaign management for streaming TV, mobile, and web. The tool uses direct trade-desk access to provide small advertisers with streaming inventory and performance optimization without the need for agency retainers.
Alphabet reported a 14% year-over-year increase in quarterly ad revenue to $81.6 billion, fueled by Gemini AI-driven search improvements and a 13% rise in YouTube ad sales. The company is emphasizing its push for shoppable connected TV (CTV) ad formats and AI-powered sponsorships to increase engagement during major global sporting events.
Sensor Tower reports that mobile games generated $12 billion in ad revenue across 19 markets in 2025, with ad-supported titles accounting for 84.1% of downloads by May 2026. The data highlights a market shift toward hybrid monetization models, led by dominating ad networks like AppLovin and Google AdMob.
The podcasting industry is increasingly integrating video and programmatic ad-delivery workflows, reflected in the IAB Tech Lab's updated measurement standards and Comscore's deployment of transcript-level ad targeting. Concurrently, streaming-adjacent companies like Acast and Lalal.AI are expanding their technical stacks to handle video distribution and automated audio refinement respectively.
Walmart Connect is extending retail media data to the open internet via its Connect Select marketplace, developed in collaboration with Index Exchange. The initiative leverages Vizio TV inventory to allow advertisers to link streaming ad campaigns with in-store and online sales data for closed-loop measurement.
Yahoo DSP has integrated Truthset’s Data Rated Audiences into its ConnectID platform to improve targeting accuracy and reduce media waste in CTV campaigns. Concurrently, Charter’s Spectrum Reach announced the dissolution of the New York Interconnect joint venture, taking over local ad sales for Comcast and Optimum inventory in the New York market.
Media publishers are increasingly using 'match spending' tactics to bundle marquee sports inventory with non-sports content commitments during upfront negotiations. Meanwhile, major publishers are evaluating blocking AI crawlers like Google's, weighing the risk of lost referral traffic against the value of their data for AI training models.
Dstillery and agency partner Canvas Worldwide have launched an in-flight agentic AI optimization capability for programmatic advertising campaigns. The DS-1 platform automates campaign monitoring and refinement, aiming to reduce manual labor for media traders while maintaining human control over investment decisions.
Pharmaceutical brands are increasingly shifting advertising budgets from connected TV to social vertical video platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Industry experts and data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau suggest that success requires social-native content strategies, such as creator partnerships, rather than repurposing traditional TV commercials.
Disney has launched a closed beta for 'Disney Ad Creative Studio,' a feature within its Campaign Manager platform that utilizes AI to automate the production of CTV video ad assets for small and mid-sized businesses. The tool enables advertisers to generate multiple creative variations from existing brand assets, aiming to lower the barrier to entry for programmatic CTV advertising.
Cadent President Doug Rozen argues that current agency silos and display-centric ad tech architecture are causing excessive frequency and poor viewer experiences in CTV. He calls for a unified 'total video' buying strategy that integrates linear, streaming, and YouTube metrics into a single planning framework.
Yospace reported delivering 11.57 billion addressable ads across 14 broadcasters during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, marking a 41% daily increase in ad volume compared to the Paris 2024 Olympics. The company cited increased connected TV viewership and its Advanced Prefetch technology as primary drivers for maintaining fill rates during high-demand live sporting events.
Google and The Trade Desk have allowed their Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) anti-fraud certifications to expire, reflecting a broader trend toward skepticism regarding static, process-based audit standards in the face of modern AI-driven programmatic ad fraud. The move suggests a shift in industry preference from annual compliance stamps toward real-time, evidence-based ad verification methodologies.
Cloudflare data indicating that bot traffic now exceeds human web traffic has prompted industry attention on how ad tech must distinguish between fraudulent activity and legitimate AI agents. AdExchanger and DoubleVerify emphasize the need for new measurement standards to account for these agents as intermediaries in the consumer purchasing funnel.
Walmart Connect has expanded its retail media reach by partnering with Magnite and Yahoo DSP to enable programmatic purchasing of Vizio connected television inventory. The integration aims to bridge the gap between CTV viewing, search engagement, and in-store purchases through a unified omnichannel measurement framework.
Google has updated its Display & Video 360 (DV360) platform to include household-level frequency management and an Overlap Reach Report for CTV and YouTube. These features provide tools for advertisers to track and limit ad exposure across multiple devices within a single household.
Shoppable has released a Universal Checkout plugin for ChatGPT in the U.S., enabling users to build multi-retailer carts through AI discovery. The technology acts as a middleware transaction layer that connects conversational AI platforms to merchant-controlled fulfillment systems.
Comscore has expanded its Proximic transcript-level intelligence tools to integrate with streaming platforms including Spotify, SiriusXM, Triton Digital, Acast, and Libsyn. The integration allows advertisers to perform episode-level ad targeting and brand safety analysis by moving beyond traditional genre metadata to evaluate actual audio content.
Comscore has expanded its Proximic contextual targeting tool to include automated episode-level transcription for major audio platforms, including Spotify and SiriusXM. This integration provides advertisers with standardized brand safety and programmatic targeting capabilities across podcast inventory, similar to CTV and display channels.
A report from Media Dynamics indicates that creator-led video content now commands 26% of total time spent with video, attracting a significantly younger audience than linear television. Advertiser interest in this segment is growing rapidly, with spending estimated to hit $44 billion in 2026.
Jamloop has integrated new household-level holdout measurement into its CTV advertising platform and established a partnership with Recast to provide geographic-based lift testing. These tools allow performance marketers to validate incremental business outcomes like subscriptions and revenue by comparing exposed treatment groups against suppressed holdout groups directly within the bidding workflow.
Media agencies are shifting away from viewing creator content as experimental influencer marketing toward integrating it into formal paid media infrastructure. Supported by new measurement tools and projected spending growth to reach $24 billion by 2026, brands are increasingly utilizing creators as strategic partners for cross-channel distribution and performance-based advertising.
Tangoo executives presented a case study at MAD//Fest London describing how lastminute.com integrated first-party retail data into its Connected TV campaigns. The strategy combined CTV inventory with retail shopper profiles to improve conversion tracking and achieve a 40% year-over-year increase in bookings.
The IAB Tech Lab has finalized new signaling standards for the CTV Ad Portfolio through updates to OpenRTB, AdCOM, and VAST protocols. These updates aim to standardize the programmatic signaling of emergent CTV ad formats, such as pause and home-screen ads, to improve inventory transparency and reporting consistency.
Cineverse has integrated its recently acquired Indiqu and Giant Worldwide technology stacks into its MatchPoint platform, launching a new SSAI dashboard to improve ad infrastructure control and transparency. The company also announced Vaudeville, a new product aimed at automating infrastructure and monetization for audio-visual podcast content.
Google has implemented new transparency features allowing users to identify generative AI usage in advertisements through its "how this ad was made" panel. The system uses SynthID digital watermarking and C2PA metadata standards to automatically verify and label AI-generated content, while providing manual controls for advertisers using third-party tools.
Major media agencies have committed 75-80% of upfront advertising spend to top streaming sellers, prioritizing bundles of sports inventory and entertainment content. While total dollar amounts remain slightly down, media sellers are successfully utilizing package-based demand strategies to maintain stable pricing in a complex market.
Epsilon has launched 'Brand Pages,' a self-serve platform feature that allows brands to build customizable, shoppable templates for retail media sites. The service aims to improve onsite campaign measurement and provide structured data to influence offsite AI-driven shopping and search responses.
Comscore has integrated Spotify, SiriusXM, Triton Digital, Acast, and Libsyn into its Proximic contextual targeting platform, using AI-based transcription to enable episode-level ad targeting. This integration allows advertisers to purchase podcast inventory programmatically using the same standardized brand safety and semantic targeting tools applied to CTV and display campaigns.
Broadsign and the agency Draft Digital have deployed a fully autonomous agentic AI system to manage an end-to-end out-of-home advertising campaign for the charity Lot of Happiness. Utilizing the AdCP protocol, the agents automated audience targeting, media selection, creative workflow, and execution on the Global Netherlands network.
Seattle-based startup MediaPact has raised $200,000 to launch an AI-driven marketplace designed to automate flat-fee direct media buying, including newsletters and sponsored podcast reads. The platform aims to replace manual email and spreadsheet workflows with a standardized, searchable marketplace for publishers and advertisers.
Media platforms and sportsbooks are increasingly integrating betting markets directly into streaming interfaces to create unified user experiences and combat latency. These integrations leverage technologies like account linking and low-latency streaming to move beyond passive ad banners toward interactive betting ecosystems.
Amazon has expanded its location-based interactive video ad capabilities to Canada, Mexico, and Brazil, allowing advertisers to localize creative elements based on postal codes. The suite works across Prime Video and Amazon Studios content, providing Managed Service and Self-Service advertisers with tools to automate regionalized ad experiences.
Brands on TikTok Shop are increasingly using AI-generated influencers to create low-cost, scalable shoppable video content to reduce commissions and production costs. Platforms like TikTok are facilitating this transition through automated ad tools like GMV Max and Symphony Agent, though content quality and regulatory compliance regarding synthetic testimonials remain significant hurdles.
Google has updated its Google Ads platform to allow reach and frequency settings at the video campaign group level rather than at individual campaign levels. This change aims to simplify multi-part campaign management, automate frequency capping, and improve ROI through centralized performance reporting.
James Varndell · Bitmovin
