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.
Nexxen announced the expansion of its TV Home Screen platform, integrating with TCL FFALCON and TiVo Ads. This expansion will make native Smart TV ad inventory from TCL (globally) and TiVo (North America and UK) programmatically accessible to advertisers through the Nexxen DSP, with some U.S. and Canada TCL placements being exclusive to Nexxen.
Netflix's ad-supported tier now reaches over 250 million global monthly active viewers, a figure the company presented at its fourth Upfront presentation. While advertising revenue grew more than 2.5 times to over $1.5 billion in 2025, representing about 3.3% of total revenue, membership fees continue to be the primary revenue driver. Netflix plans to expand its ad plan to 15 additional countries and introduce new ad inventory across podcasts and vertical video in 2027.
OpenAI has expanded its ChatGPT advertising program by introducing new ways for advertisers to buy and manage campaigns, including a beta self-serve Ads Manager for US advertisers and the launch of cost-per-click (CPC) bidding. The company is also working with agency partners like Dentsu and Omnicom, and technology partners such as Adobe and Criteo, to facilitate ad purchases, while rolling out enhanced measurement tools like Conversions API and pixel-based tracking for performance insights.
DataCops distinguishes between two types of GDPR compliance platforms: Privacy GRC suites for legal teams and Marketing-Data Trust platforms for CMOs and ad ops, arguing that the latter is crucial for managing Google Consent Mode v2 and avoiding significant conversion losses by June 2026. The article details offerings from various vendors in both categories, citing shifting enforcement actions and OneTrust's market turbulence.
OpenAI's ChatGPT ad pilot generated $100 million in six weeks before May 5, when self-serve advertising was opened to all US advertisers, removing a previous $50,000 entry barrier. The expanded ad platform now includes CPC bidding, pixel-based measurement, and a Conversions API, with planned expansion to the UK, Mexico, Japan, Brazil, and Korea. The company targets $2.5 billion in revenue this year and $100 billion by 2030, raising concerns about transparency as sponsored content becomes integrated into AI recommendations.
Viant Technology Inc., a programmatic advertising platform for CTV, reported Q1 2026 revenue of $88.54 million, a 25% year-over-year increase, driven by CTV demand and new client acquisition. The company recently acquired TVision Insights for $40 million (cash+stock) to enhance TV attention measurement and precision targeting capabilities, with Q2 revenue guidance set at $98.5M–$101.5M.
Marketecture Live discussions indicate that the advertising business is primarily in 'Stage 1' of AI adoption, focusing on AI-assisted user interaction within single systems like DSPs. Major ad tech vendors such as Freewheel Buyer Cloud, The Trade Desk, and Zeta are rolling out AI integrations to automate campaign setup and data entry. The article also highlights continued skepticism about the AdCP protocol fundamentally changing media buying by enabling AI-driven transactions between different customers.
The article discusses the evolution of the television upfronts, highlighting how major broadcasters and streaming platforms are adapting their offerings to meet advertisers' demands for precision, flexibility, and accountability in a fragmented media landscape. It details initiatives from NBCUniversal, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox, Paramount, and Roku to provide advanced audience targeting, unified measurement, and programmatic buying options.
Santa Clara County Counsel has filed a civil prosecution against Meta Platforms, Inc., alleging that Meta knowingly facilitates and profits from billions of scam advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, generating an estimated $7 billion annually. The lawsuit claims Meta’s internal systems identify scam ads but the company charges premiums for them to run, and its AI tools actively target vulnerable consumers with deceptive ads. The county seeks injunctive relief, restitution, and civil penalties, including enhanced penalties for affecting senior citizens.
An advertorial from The CS Company argues that unmanaged Connected TV (CTV) advertising campaigns, particularly those run on self-serve platforms, often lead to negative brand sentiment due to excessive ad frequency across fragmented platforms. The article highlights that a small percentage of overexposed households can consume a significant portion of ad budgets, leading to diminishing returns and actively hurting brands. Effective CTV management requires cross-publisher frequency unification, creative rotation, and outcome-linked frequency analysis to prevent this.
Koddi and Comcast's Universal Ads announced a partnership to enable advertisers to target streaming ads using commerce data. This integration makes streaming inventory from over 20 publishers, including DirecTV, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Roku, and Warner Bros. Discovery, available to advertisers buying through Koddi, allowing for audience targeting based on first-party retail and commerce media client data.
Research commissioned by CIMM and Go Addressable found that IP-to-postal address matching is accurate only 13% of the time, revealing a significant problem for open-internet CTV targeting that costs billions. In response to this lack of deterministic identity, 78% of advertisers now consider addressable TV a factor in their Upfront negotiations, an 11-point increase from the prior year. Go Addressable, a trade organization, is working to simplify, socialize, and scale addressable advertising through education and by adding new members like DoubleVerify, Mastercard, OpenAP, Philo, and Veeva Crossix.
Netflix's Standard With Ads plan now has over 250 million monthly active users, an increase from 190 million in November 2025. The company expects its ad business to double this year, reaching $3 billion in revenue, and will expand the ad-supported plan to 15 more countries next year.
The article explains Upfronts Week 2026 as a crucial period where media companies secure advertising commitments for upcoming programming across broadcast and streaming. It highlights the continued convergence of traditional TV, streaming platforms, and creator-driven media, alongside trends in automated buying, measurement debates, and technical advancements like addressable ads and virtual product placement. The piece serves as a guide for understanding the business side of content financing and advertising in the evolving media landscape.
Nine major media companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal, have partnered through OpenAP to launch an initiative standardizing cross-TV campaign measurement. This initiative introduces a standardized Conversion API (CAPI) and new campaign workflows to link advertiser first-party data to TV exposure, aiming to improve performance measurement and increase advertiser spend confidently. Netflix also expanded its NFL deal to include four exclusive games and became the exclusive streaming home for the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in a "massive live-sports acquisition."
Compete Everywhere has launched Version 1.0 of its Media Buying Tool, an integrated planning platform for linear TV, streaming TV, and digital media. The updated tool includes features like a Campaign Manager, refined budget controls with custom frequency and budget setter modes, and multi-track and multi-DMA planning capabilities, building upon its Beta version released last September. The platform aims to help campaigns create more efficient media programs, especially for the 2026 general election cycle.
Viaccess-Orca will exhibit its advertising, analytics, and retention solutions at BroadcastAsia 2026. These offerings are aimed at assisting operators in the APAC region.
The IAB has released its Campaign Data Standards 1.0 for public comment as part of Project Eidos, aiming to standardize campaign data to improve measurement, comparison, and optimization across the digital advertising ecosystem. These proposed standards provide consistent classifications for placements, formats, and media types, along with required data fields to reduce reconciliation efforts and foster a common language for the industry.
DIRECTV Advertising launched a multi-channel out-of-home and digital campaign during Upfront Week to promote its converged TV advertising platform. The campaign, which included DOOH, experiential activations, and digital video, aimed to demonstrate DIRECTV's capability to unify live TV, streaming, and OOH advertising for brands and media buyers. Developed with TBWA\Chiat\Day LA and Starcom US, the initiative sought to position Upfront Week itself as a metaphor for DIRECTV's value proposition of bringing diverse TV content together in one place.
FreeWheel's Viewer Experience Lab research indicates that disruptive ad breaks in streaming content lead to negative viewer experiences, with 71% of viewers bothered by unnatural ad breaks and 39% significantly so. The study also found that brands appearing in disruptive ad breaks experienced 14% lower unaided recall and 15% lower aided recall, along with a 5% decrease in perceived brand quality. FreeWheel suggests AI and machine learning can help identify optimal cue points for ad breaks to mitigate these issues.
Google's GA4 and Google Ads tracking mechanisms are undergoing changes, with Consent Mode becoming the primary control layer for ad data. This shift will directly impact attribution, audience segmentation, and campaign performance, particularly for analytics and compliance teams utilizing these platforms.
AIP Hub announced its intention to build a comprehensive ad stack, detailing components such as identity and consent inputs, intent detection, auction and ranking, recommendation delivery, and settlement and attribution. The company stated its focus is on providing infrastructure for AI commerce rather than isolated solutions.
Microsoft Xandr has announced the deprecation of its public Prebid Cache, formerly AppNexus, effective April 30, 2026. This change requires implementers using this cache for video creatives with Prebid.js and Prebid Server to migrate to alternative local client-side or server-side caching solutions. Microsoft recommends local caching for improved customer experience and reduced bandwidth, and will continue to support the Prebid.js community.
A report on the AdTech & Performance Media talent market in APAC indicates that 77% of employers struggle to fill key roles, despite significant market growth. This talent gap is attributed to a disconnect between employer offerings and evolving candidate expectations across different generations, as well as shifts in required skillsets due to automation and offshoring.
Most active Netflix subscribers in Japan and South Korea are now using ad-supported plans, according to Digital i's research. Between December 2024 and December 2025, the percentage of Netflix subscribers on ad-supported tiers increased from 47.6% to 64.3% in South Korea and from 44.3% to 57.6% in Japan, indicating a growing consumer acceptance of lower-cost, ad-supported streaming options in these markets.
FreeWheel's Viewer Experience Lab, in collaboration with MediaScience, released research indicating that while ads themselves do not reduce program enjoyment, poor ad experiences such as latency, unnatural ad breaks, and slate negatively impact viewer perception of content, ads, and brands. The study, which is the third report from the Viewer Experience Lab, highlights that nearly 80% of viewers are bothered by ad latency and 71% by unnatural ad breaks. FreeWheel plans to announce new tools to address these issues, including enhancing creative approval, managing ad frequency, and reducing blank ads.
Amagi has launched an In-Content Ads Marketplace within its ADS PLUS platform, enabling programmatic access for advertisers to place unique ad formats like overlays, squeezebacks, and picture-in-picture (PIP) ads directly into live linear video content. This expansion, powered by Amagi's THUNDERSTORM SSAI platform, aims to boost campaign performance and ad revenue for content owners on hundreds of streaming channels, including partners like Plex and TCL.
Samsung Ads has launched "Performance TV," a full-funnel performance platform with AI-powered ad products, at IAB NewFronts 2026. This includes a partnership with Amazon Ads to integrate Amazon's interactive video ad technology into Samsung TV Plus, allowing for shoppable ads with "Add to Cart" functionality for Amazon sellers and other calls to action. The platform also utilizes AI for contextual targeting and audience collectives to enhance ad performance on the Samsung connected TV ecosystem.
This article analyzes the current state of digital advertising in 2025-2026, highlighting the dominance of walled gardens (Google, Meta, Amazon) and the persistence of guaranteed deals (upfronts, programmatic guaranteed) even as new CTV and AI platforms emerge. It argues that the 'open internet' is a half-truth due to consolidated ad revenue among a few players and the lack of independent, verifiable measurement across the ecosystem. The piece concludes with five recommendations to improve transparency and accountability in ad tech.
Julie Selman, SVP, Head of EMEA at Magnite, discussed the evolution of digital advertising, streaming, and CTV at Advertising Week Europe. She highlighted how the new TV ecosystem and programmatic trading are creating new opportunities for brands, broadcasters, and publishers, with a focus on data and automation.
A critical Prebid Cache endpoint located at prebid.adnxs.com/pbc, historically used for video ad delivery, is scheduled to be switched off on April 30, 2026. The change, originating from AppNexus (later Xandr and Microsoft), is expected to cause a silent drop in video ad revenue for many publishers using header bidding, as the cache will no longer provide ad creatives, despite auctions continuing to function normally.
Wurl launched BrandDiscovery, a GenAI-powered CTV advertising solution designed to precisely match ad creatives with the emotional sentiment and context of programming in real-time. This solution offers scene-level contextual targeting across over 300 premium CTV publishers, including FAST channels and streamers, with 60 billion monthly available ad impressions. Early campaign results with Media.Monks, activated through FreeWheel, showed significant lifts in aided brand awareness and purchase intent for a financial services client.
Amazon Ads launched a new capability enabling dynamic changes to CTV commercials running across Connected TV (CTV) to personalize content based on viewer data. This 'Dynamic TV creative' utilizes shopping and browsing history, Prime Video activity, product availability, and geography to adjust ad details and interactive options. The initial rollout targets select U.S. advertisers on Prime Video, with plans for broader inventory access including live sports and Prime Video Channels in Q3.
OpenAI has introduced a cost-per-click advertising format within ChatGPT, allowing advertisers to promote their products and services directly to users. This new ad product marks OpenAI's initial foray into monetizing its chatbot platform through direct advertising.
LinkedIn has expanded its advertising reach to Connected TV (CTV), allowing B2B brands to utilize its professional targeting data (job roles, industries) within OTT and smart TV environments through adtech integrations. This move aims to combine precise targeting with high-attention large-screen formats, with validation and challenges noted by industry experts regarding execution, measurability, and consumer experience in fragmented markets like India.
At its 2026 Upfront presentation, NBCUniversal announced several new advertising technology initiatives, including the full-scale rollout of its Performance Insights Hub in Q4, which provides unified campaign delivery and audience insights across linear and streaming. The company also added Instacart as its exclusive CPG outcomes partner for the platform, reported on the results of its LIVE Total Impact capability, and detailed new AI-powered Live Contextual advertising tools and an Agentic AI strategy to automate and optimize TV ad buying.
YouTube announced several new advertising features at Brandcast 2026 aimed at connecting brands with audiences across various screens. Key updates include AI-powered custom sponsorships, an enhanced masthead with a custom content shelf, two-click CTV purchasing via Google Pay, affiliate partnerships to boost shoppable content, and multimodal AI for video ad creation using Gemini, Nano Banana, and Veo.
Rita Ferro, Disney's president of global advertising, previews the company's approach to leveraging cross-platform scale for advertising at the upcoming Upfronts. The discussion focuses on Disney's strategy for its May 12 presentation.
IAB Australia's Video Summit 2026 highlighted that Australian video ad spend grew 19.8% in 2025 to $5.4 billion, with programmatic CTV adoption at 60%, significantly higher than the US. Marketers expressed a desire for greater consolidation for frequency capping and harmonized cross-channel measurement, while economic uncertainty is identified as the primary concern. The event also noted the growing importance of the creator economy for ad strategies and ongoing technical infrastructure needs for live sports and frequency management.
Nexxen's 2026 FIFA World Cup Australian Outlook report finds that Australian audiences for live sports are growing and increasingly fragmented across multiple platforms, including linear TV, BVOD, streaming, and digital devices. The report advises advertisers to adapt multi-platform strategies, as viewers' engagement is less dependent on the Australian national team's performance, indicating a broader entertainment appeal for the event.
Streaming platforms are significantly capturing the TV advertising market, with projected advertiser spending on streaming reaching $20 billion by 2029, nearing linear TV ad spending. This shift is driven by increasing consumer adoption of cheaper ad-supported streaming plans, which now account for nearly 50% of premium SVOD sign-ups in the U.S. and 78% of net subscriber additions over the past nine quarters across major streamers.
Disney has sold some Super Bowl commercial slots for $9 million each, but still encounters resistance from large ad buyers. This indicates a high valuation for premier advertising access despite challenges in securing broader advertising commitments.
Anura launched Anura IPDB™, a downloadable IP intelligence database designed to combat ad fraud. This database provides organizations with real-time fraud IP intelligence.
Santa Clara County is suing Meta, alleging the company knowingly facilitated and profited from scam advertisements on its Facebook and Instagram platforms. The lawsuit claims Meta made billions of dollars from these ads.
Streaming platforms are absorbing an increasing share of television advertising expenditure, with advertiser spending on streaming projected to reach nearly $20 billion by 2029. This trend, driven by expanding streaming audiences and the popularity of ad-supported streaming models, is expected to be a major focus at upcoming upfront ad-selling events. Advertiser spending on streaming is nearing parity with traditional linear TV ad spending.
Duluth, a brand, is using AI agents for automated ad bidding, but is retaining human oversight for brand storytelling. This strategy highlights a split in how brands are adopting AI, leveraging it for efficiency in ad operations while keeping creative control over brand messaging.
Ad Age provided a recap of the first day of the 2026 TV upfronts, highlighting presentations from NBCUniversal, Fox, and Amazon. The recap identifies key takeaways and initial reactions from media buyers regarding the advertising strategies and inventory offered by these major streaming and broadcast entities.
Amazon has introduced "Dynamic TV Creative" for Prime Video ads, leveraging shopping data to tailor repeat advertisements programmatically. This feature aims to convert CTV ad reach into retail actions for advertisers.
Microsoft is reportedly planning to introduce an ad-supported tier for its Xbox Cloud Gaming service, expanding access beyond current Game Pass subscribers. This initiative would allow non-subscribers to play games on the cloud, leveraging advertising for monetization. The move signals a shift towards broadening the accessibility and revenue streams for Xbox Cloud Gaming.
The Trade Desk, a demand-side platform in programmatic advertising, is reportedly benefiting from growing digital ad spending within the US market. The article highlights its position as a key player in this sector.
