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.
Smart TV platform developer V has partnered with Mexican media company Grupo Multimedios to manage and monetize advertising inventory across the VIDAA platform in Mexico. Under the agreement, Multimedios will represent VIDAA's display, video, and FAST channel advertising assets to local advertisers and agencies.
A Consumer Reports survey of 2,183 U.S. adults reveals that 63 percent of streaming subscribers use ad-supported tiers, but many report severe frustration with ad repetition and poor ad insertion timing. The study underscores a clear need for streaming platforms and ad-tech providers to improve frequency capping, ad load management, and programmatic ad placement technologies.
Podscribe's Q2 2026 performance report indicates that podcast ad retargeting campaigns drive significantly higher conversion rates compared to traditional buys. The data also reveals a shift toward audience-based and programmatic purchasing strategies, which now account for a larger share of overall podcast ad impressions.
This interview discusses the shift in digital out-of-home (DOOH) from a reach-based to a performance-based medium, necessitated by programmatic buying and AI-driven optimization. The article highlights the requirement for increased data collaboration, clean room infrastructure, and standardized measurement to allow DOOH to compete with other digital advertising channels.
Madison & Wall Managing Director Luke Stillman and host Tim Hanlon discuss the shift in ad spending from traditional Designated Market Areas (DMAs) toward location-based programmatic targeting. They analyze how regulatory pressure on third-party location data indirectly benefits major digital 'walled gardens' and what this implies for the long-term viability of local broadcast advertising models.
A report from iHeartMedia and Omnicom Media Intelligence reveals that host-read audio advertisements significantly increase ad recall and purchase intent compared to standard formats. Despite the performance gains, analytical data from Magellan AI indicates that brands are currently underutilizing host-read inventory in favor of programmatic and pre-produced spots.
Capgemini analyzes the adoption of composable CDP architectures, such as those enabled by Hightouch and Databricks, to facilitate secure, warehouse-native identity resolution and data activation. The report argues that financial services institutions are increasingly moving away from third-party data movement toward 'zero-copy' activation models to navigate strict regulatory compliance while maintaining identity graph precision.
France-based Concord has raised $3 million in seed funding to scale its agentic media execution platform designed for ad campaign activation. The platform integrates directly with third-party ad platforms via API to automate media execution while focusing on a headless architecture strategy.
OpenAI formally announced its entry into the advertising market at Cannes Lions, detailing a new ad product and management toolset currently in a pilot testing phase. The company aims to monetize its AI platform while subsidizing access for free users, emphasizing intelligence-based targeting over traditional attention-based metrics.
Asda has announced a partnership with Amazon Ads to implement the Amazon Retail Ad Service across its online retail platforms starting in Q4 2026. This integration aims to provide brands with access to Amazon's ad technology, measurement tools, and shopper signals to enhance advertising relevance and performance on Asda's digital properties.
Agentio has expanded its AI-driven creator advertising platform to support Meta's Facebook and Instagram, enabling brands to automate the launch of partnership ads. The move builds on the company's existing YouTube-focused infrastructure and follows a successful beta phase for the new integration.
Google has launched Ask Ad Manager, a Gemini-powered AI assistant designed to help publishers troubleshoot delivery issues, generate reports, and navigate platform settings. The tool, currently in beta, transitions Google's AI agent strategy from advertiser-facing campaign management to publisher-side ad operations.
Omnicom Media and Disney Advertising are implementing a dynamic sequential CTV ad solution using Innovid technology to reduce ad fatigue. The initiative allows brands to deliver evolving creative narratives across both live sports and VOD content, with matching powered by Acxiom and Omni data.
Cloudflare reports that bots now account for 58% of global HTML page traffic, surpassing human activity for the first time. Ad-tech firms and agencies are responding by integrating traffic verification tools to combat fraud, particularly in high-value sectors like financial services.
Albertsons Media Collective has integrated Criteo's platform to enable sponsored product advertisements within its AI-powered conversational search interface. This partnership allows brands to display shoppable product carousels based on natural language customer queries.
Amazon has launched 'Alexa+ Agentic Ads,' a new AI-driven ad format that allows users to make transactions directly within LLM-powered interfaces. The product is currently in beta with partners including Papa Johns and The Orchard, as the industry evaluates how conversational commerce may replace traditional click-based metrics.
Omnicom Media and Disney Advertising have partnered to launch a dynamic sequential ad delivery solution across VOD and live streaming environments. Powered by ad-tech vendor Innovid, the system rotates coordinated creative messages within a single viewing session to reduce repetitive ad fatigue. The integration leverages clean room data connectivity between Disney's identity graph and Omnicom's Acxiom platform.
Hub Entertainment Research's latest study shows US Gen Z viewers are reaching record-high levels of ad tolerance, preferring ad-supported tiers to reduce streaming subscription costs. The study also highlights that younger audiences are open to using generative AI tools to optimize the viewing experience through improved ad relevance and reduced repetition.
LiveRamp has integrated its Curation service with Google Ad Manager in a closed beta to support addressable and cookieless programmatic advertising. The integration utilizes LiveRamp's RampID and Authenticated Traffic Solution to allow marketers to leverage first-party and market segment data for forecasting and targeting.
LiveRamp and Magnite have integrated LiveRamp's RampID identity solution into the Magnite Streaming CTV SSP. This global partnership allows publishers to pass privacy-conscious identifiers to Magnite, enabling advertisers to execute cookieless, omnichannel targeting campaigns and closed-loop measurement across CTV.
LiveRamp implemented a scheduled, CRON-based infrastructure pre-heating strategy to handle DAZN's massive authentication surges during the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup. Rather than relying on reactive Kubernetes metrics, the proactive scaling successfully managed traffic spikes of up to 200,000 requests per second with zero failures. The technical setup also utilized Google Cloud Armor rules as a multi-tenant safeguard to isolate DAZN's traffic and protect other platform users.
LiveRamp has expanded its partnership with Microsoft Advertising to integrate its Clean Room technology, facilitating privacy-centric connected TV (CTV) measurement. The collaboration leverages Microsoft Azure Confidential Compute to allow joint customers to securely connect first-, second-, and third-party data across Microsoft properties.
LiveRamp and OpenX have expanded their partnership to integrate LiveRamp's Conversion API (CAPI) into OpenX's supply-side platform. The integration resolves first-party online and offline transaction data to RampIDs, allowing programmatic advertisers to buy and optimize based on actual business outcomes rather than proxies.
LiveRamp has integrated Apache DataFusion Comet to accelerate Apache Spark performance within its clean room architecture for cross-media data collaboration and ad-tech analytics. By transitioning Spark from JVM-based row-level execution to native columnar execution via Apache Arrow and Rust, the company achieved up to a 50% runtime reduction on complex queries. This technical optimization aims to lower resource overhead and infrastructure costs for brands, publishers, and platforms operating multi-terabyte ad measurement and attribution workloads.
LiveRamp has updated its Data Collaboration Platform, incorporating conversational AI capabilities for natural language audience segment generation and secure data orchestration. The release also expands LiveRamp's global network with over 25 new integrations, including first-party segment activation on Netflix Ads via RampID and partnerships with AI optimization firms like Chalice AI and Scope3.
LiveRamp outlines 12 transition points redefining connected TV (CTV) advertising, highlighting shifts toward automated in-flight measurement, identity resolution, and clean room data collaboration. The piece references real-world implementations, including NBCUniversal's Performance Insights Hub co-developed with LiveRamp, and Netflix's programmatic expansions.
DoubleVerify has partnered with Roblox to integrate its media quality and performance measurement suite across Roblox's advertising inventory. The collaboration provides advertisers with fraud, viewability, and brand safety verification for display, in-game video ads, and upcoming Rewarded Videos.
DoubleVerify has released a formal rebuttal to Adalytics' March 28 report, refuting claims that advertisers are being billed for General Invalid Traffic (GIVT). DoubleVerify asserts that its post-bid systems accurately filter these impressions in compliance with MRC and TAG standards, and argues that Adalytics' methodology relied heavily on mischaracterizing URLScan bot traffic.
DoubleVerify released findings from its global insights report revealing that CTV advertisers risk losing $700,000 per billion impressions due to unviewed ads playing while TVs are turned off. The study notes that nearly two-thirds of marketers struggle to verify whether their streaming ads actually reach viewers, highlighting the need for better detection and viewability standards.
DoubleVerify has exposed methods used by fraudsters to bypass and exploit the IAB Tech Lab's ads.txt standard, highlighting vectors such as site scraping, domain spoofing, and programmatic impersonation via AI-generated 'Synthetic Echo' networks. The article details best practices for both publishers and programmatic platforms to tighten ads.txt parameters and maintain ad supply chain integrity.
DoubleVerify reports a critical surge in AI-powered fraudulent mobile and CTV apps in 2025, with classifications of fraudulent iOS apps growing nearly three-fold and Android apps nearly six-fold compared to five-year averages. Fraudsters are leveraging generative AI to build realistic fake apps, synthesize reviews, and imitate human behavior, bypassing app store review mechanisms to falsify ad impressions. The report warns that these schemes infiltrate all programmatic channels, including direct and Private Marketplace (PMP) deals.
DoubleVerify has detailed its 'Authentic Streaming TV' solution, which utilizes licensed IMDb metadata to deliver program-level content intelligence to CTV advertisers. The tool incorporates an AI-powered assistant to help media planners build custom content lists and control ad placements based on granular genres, ratings, and release dates. Additionally, Charter Communications' Spectrum Reach has joined as the first partner leveraging the platform for post-bid show-level reporting.
Spectrum Intelligence Ventures, a unit of Charter, has launched Latis, an AI-powered household intelligence platform built on data from 30 million US households. The platform models digital, video, and device signals to generate insights for media targeting, data clean room collaboration, and personalization. Selected partners are entering beta testing, with a wider commercial rollout scheduled for the second half of 2026.
TikTok debuted its new Symphony Agent at Cannes Lions 2026, a suite of agentic AI tools integrated into its existing creative and content platforms to streamline ad production and creator discovery for advertisers. The launch aims to reduce the time from ideation to campaign execution by leveraging platform-wide content trends and performance data.
Fox Sports is leveraging FIFA-mandated hydration breaks at the 2026 World Cup to generate estimated advertising revenues between $250 million and $600 million. This tactical use of natural game-stoppage windows provides a workaround for monetizing live sports content that typically lacks traditional ad-friendly intervals.
Smartly has integrated Horizon Media's proprietary Blu Audience API, becoming the first SaaS platform activation partner to bring Horizon's audience segments directly into campaign workflows. The partnership allows programmatic data to flow directly into social, commerce, and connected TV (CTV) campaign execution without manual translation, minimizing workflow friction.
Xumo, the joint venture between Comcast and Charter, has expanded its integrations with Gracenote and IRIS.TV to bring program-level metadata and frame-level AI analysis to its free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) inventory. The integrations cover Xumo's global footprint of 2,000 channels across more than 30 platforms. This technical deployment aims to solve historical FAST metadata gaps and enable programmatic advertisers to execute standardized, brand-safe contextual targeting at scale.
Warner Bros. Discovery is expanding its ad tech stack on AWS with a new agentic AI-driven platform designed to automate media planning, audience forecasting, and inventory allocation across digital and linear channels. Built on AWS services like Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker, the platform unifies previously siloed buying workflows to offer real-time optimization for advertisers.
Claire Wyatt, GM at The Trade Desk, discussed the persistent challenges of data fragmentation and measurement inconsistency within retail media networks. Wyatt highlighted that establishing true incremental return on ad spend (ROAS) remains a roadblock as these networks increasingly look to integrate their first-party data into programmatic CTV and streaming ecosystems.
Samsung Ads has officially integrated Amazon Ads’ remote-enabled interactive video ad technology into the Samsung TV Plus FAST service, enabling new shoppable TV capabilities. Flagship brand partners, including Logitech and Reckitt, are launching the first remote-driven ad experiences to connect viewing attention directly with commerce. This integration allows advertisers to access Samsung's CTV inventory through the Amazon DSP using native shopping signals.
UK broadcaster Channel 4 has expanded its programmatic advertising reach by partnering with Amazon Ads, FreeWheel, Hawk, PubMatic, and Yahoo DSP. The agreements will integrate its streaming video-on-demand inventory into multiple demand-side and supply-side platforms, including Amazon DSP, during Q3 2026. This expansion follows a previous agreement with Google Display & Video 360, aiming to scale automated connected TV ad campaigns.
PwC's Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2025–2029 forecasts industry revenues to reach $3.5 trillion by 2029, propelled by digital advertising spending outgrowing consumer subscriptions. The report highlights massive growth in AVOD, connected TV (CTV) advertising, and generative AI workflow integration as traditional pay TV and subscription growth flatten.
At the StreamTV Show, executives from Tastemade, Fuse Media, 24i, Revry, and Wurl argued that the FAST market must transition from increasing channel counts to improving search discovery through contextual data. Panelists emphasized that standardized ad measurement, audience-intent targeting, and scene-level artificial intelligence analysis are essential to scale modern streaming ad revenues.
European footwear retailer Deichmann has brought its media planning in-house by deploying the AEOS OS platform from All Eyes On Screens, replacing its long-term agency partner Mediaplus. The AI-driven platform utilizes Vodafone household viewing data from over one million German households to optimize and balance advertising spend across linear television and streaming services in real time.
The trade roundup details an industry-wide shift toward agentic AI in advertising ahead of Cannes Lions 2026, highlighting frameworks and automated trading tools from WPP, Yahoo DSP, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Additionally, Amazon Ads and FreeWheel have integrated to launch Outcome Optimizer, using predictive AI to connect retail signals directly to premium streaming inventory.
The Roku Channel has grown to capture over 6% of U.S. TV streaming time, becoming a primary driver of the company\'s financial transition from hardware sales to platform monetization. In Q1 2026, Roku\'s platform revenue reached $1.13 billion, representing 90% of total net revenue, fueled by gains in advertising and subscription billing. This shift highlights the powerful role of device-level OS integration in scaling ad-supported streaming ecosystems and owned-and-operated inventory.
Amazon is promoting new Fire TV home screen interface upgrades and custom ad formats, including a dedicated 2026 FIFA World Cup hub, to capture more CTV ad budgets. The initiative aims to capitalize on high user engagement during the content discovery phase, where Amazon pitches strong performance metrics to advertisers.
PubMatic has launched its Creator Marketplace, a programmatic connected TV (CTV) marketplace designed to connect independent creator-led media companies with automated advertising campaigns. Developed in partnership with Holmes Media and supporting FreeWheel as its initial ad-serving partner, the platform aims to bridge the gap between scale programmatic buyers and highly-engaged creator-driven audiences.
Omnicom Media has updated its cross-platform clean room with new capabilities to measure ad reach, frequency, and performance across multiple CTV platforms and linear TV. Leveraging identity tech from Acxiom and telemetry from VideoAmp, the solution is designed to tackle the industry's persistent CTV ad-frequency capping issues by tracking Creative IDs across major publishers including Disney, NBCUniversal, and Paramount.
This newsletter digest outlines the technical setup of header bidding using Prebid.js and Google Ad Manager, designed to help publishers maximize ad inventory yield. It also covers Disney's upcoming July beta for an AI-powered self-service TV ad tool and Microsoft's latest advertising updates from Activate 2026.
