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.
Corus Entertainment is focusing its 2026 Upfront pitch on Canadian original programming, aiming to attract audiences and offer advertisers integrated opportunities across linear, streaming, and shoppable TV. This strategy emphasizes connecting advertisers with viewers through diverse platforms and ad tools.
Amazon Prime Video's NASCAR coverage is effectively driving sales for sponsors, with Logitech seeing a twofold increase in branded searches and a 73% rise in purchase rates among exposed viewers. This data highlights Prime Video's increasing ad effectiveness as a sports streaming platform, leveraging its audience to generate significant returns for advertisers.
JioHotstar has secured partnerships with 50 brands, including 11 major sponsors like Pidilite Industries, Samsung, and Pepsi, for the digital premiere of "Dhurandhar The Revenge." This collaboration underscores increasing advertiser interest in major OTT film releases, creating premium digital advertising opportunities.
Adobe's Doug Wyatt discusses how leveraging 'travel intent' provides marketers with a high-value signal for engaging consumers before, during, and after events, offering a model for integrated advertising beyond single ad impressions. This strategy involves partnering with various entities along the consumer journey to create emotional connections. Wyatt also highlights AI's role in personalization and scaling messaging while emphasizing the enduring need for human emotion in storytelling.
Prebid President Mike Racic and Product Director Christian Janelli are departing from the organization to join Knower Tech, while Chairman Garrett McGrath is also stepping down. Despite these leadership changes, Prebid aims to continue its membership growth, support publishers, and develop agentic protocols. Prebid also continues its work on agentic protocols like AdCP and faces evolving challenges in the ad tech landscape.
Indian marketers are facing significant challenges with Made-For-Advertising (MFA) websites draining programmatic ad budgets, leading to concerns about campaign effectiveness. These sites exploit programmatic buying incentives by generating large volumes of low-value, ad-centric inventory rather than meaningful content. The article highlights the growing awareness among advertisers and agencies in India to prioritize media quality over quantity, urging a shift in how success is measured in programmatic advertising.
Studio Blo CEO Dipankar Mukherjee predicts that, by 2027, 90% of global ad films will be AI-enabled, citing cost reductions of up to 90% compared to traditional production. The studio emphasizes human-led creativity alongside its proprietary AI tech stack for celebrity cloning and performance capture. Mukherjee discusses the impact of AI as an infrastructure, not just a tool, for transforming filmmaking processes while maintaining cultural authenticity.
Nielsen has expanded its partnership with Marketing Architects, integrating its national television measurement tools into Marketing Architects' proprietary media-buying platform, Annika. This collaboration aims to provide faster and more detailed viewership data for national broadcast campaign planning and performance analysis. The expanded agreement builds on their existing relationship, which previously focused on local television measurement.
Nine will launch an advertising-supported tier, "Basic with Ads," for its Stan streaming service later this year, priced at $9.99 per month with HD streaming. This initiative expands Stan's commercial offering beyond Stan Sport, allowing advertisers to utilize Nine's first-party data and audience intelligence across its integrated media portfolio. The new tier aims to broaden access to Stan and support continued investment in premium content.
AMC Global Media, Disney, Paramount, TelevisaUnivision, and Warner Bros. Discovery are unifying their linear TV and streaming ad inventory for the upcoming upfront market. This strategy aims to provide increased flexibility to advertisers by consolidating sales across platforms. The move signifies a shift towards integrated ad sales practices in the TV and streaming industry.
Publishers are increasingly using paid traffic to acquire new readers and offset declining organic referrals, balancing audience growth with the risk of being misclassified as Made-For-Advertising (MFA) sites. This strategy, while crucial for some, can lead to reduced ad revenue due to the negative perception of arbitrage tactics by advertisers and ad tech vendors. The industry is grappling with defining clear lines between legitimate audience building and problematic arbitrage.
Different Minds has announced Equativ, Seedtag, and InMobi as its founding partners ahead of its formal launch. The initiative aims to raise awareness and promote support for neurodiversity within the creative industries, including advertising, marketing, and technology sectors. The partners are backing the launch to highlight the importance of diverse thinking for innovation and problem-solving in ad tech and digital media.
A report by IAB Australia highlights a significant talent shortage in the Australian digital advertising and ad tech industry, with only 1% of open roles being entry-level and nearly half requiring over six years of experience. This talent crunch is exacerbated by a shift towards AI and automation, requiring professionals with both AI fluency and commercial judgment. The report calls for increased investment in early-career talent, leadership development, and AI-for-advertising training pathways to address this issue.
Publicis' acquisition of LiveRamp has sparked widespread skepticism among ad industry leaders in the U.K. and Europe, who argue it compromises LiveRamp's essential neutrality. This concern is leading advertisers and retailers to re-evaluate their ad-tech strategies and seek alternative data solutions. The industry anticipates increased fragmentation and a push for rival agency groups to develop their own identity solutions.
Amazon is reportedly engaging external advertising agencies to sell ad inventory across its growing media properties, including Prime Video. This strategic move aims to scale Amazon's advertising business and increase its competitiveness within the connected TV (CTV) ad market.
PubMatic has launched "Decision Fabric" on AgenticOS, a containerization layer enabling partners to run decisioning models directly within the programmatic supply path. This move follows Index Exchange's "Index Cloud" and aims to reduce operational costs, lower latency, and improve signal fidelity by moving compute closer to where ad impressions are created. The article highlights an industry trend towards re-architecting the ad tech supply chain to address inefficiencies.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) launched a new digital ad against Republican Ashley Hinson, airing on connected TV platforms like Hulu, Roku, and Peacock. The ad targets persuadable voters in Iowa regarding political issues. This highlights the use of CTV platforms for political advertising campaigns.
FreeWheel and Outernet have partnered to deliver CTV out-of-home advertising campaigns on Outernet's large screens in London. Outernet will use FreeWheel's SSP and its proprietary PIAMS system to monetize its premium inventory and provide real-time behavioral data to brands. This collaboration aims to provide new ways for brands to reach audiences and reflects a broader trend in converged TV strategies for out-of-home advertising.
Wurl research indicates that brand safety risks in CTV news are concentrated and predictable, suggesting a more targeted advertising approach. Separately, Ofcom found that video podcasts linked to TV shows improve the UK viewing experience for over half of weekly podcast listeners. Additionally, Ampere Analysis highlighted that the average gap between seasons for streaming originals has nearly doubled, potentially increasing subscriber churn.
Indian companies are reducing ad spending as elevated crude prices and geopolitical tensions lead to cautious consumer sentiment and increased input costs. This trend is accelerating a shift towards digital media, performance marketing, and ROI-focused campaigns, with Connected TV (CTV) advertising projected to double by 2026 in India.
A Redseer report indicates that AI is significantly transforming the global advertising industry, with India positioned to become a major AdTech hub. India's digital ad market is projected to grow to $33-42 billion by 2030, driven by AI-led innovation in areas like media buying, creative production, and targeting. Indian AdTech firms are evolving into global product companies, leveraging AI to rebuild advertising infrastructure.
Nestlé Philippines, in collaboration with WPP Media and Magnite, achieved an 11% brand awareness uplift and 97% brand consideration for Nescafé Sugar Free using programmatic video ads targeting streaming platforms like WeTV and Spotify. The campaign leveraged genre-targeted pause ads and audience data from Lotame to precisely reach health-conscious consumers in a fragmented media landscape. This case study highlights the successful application of ad tech innovation for brand uplift and sales growth in Southeast Asia.
Research by Gameloft for Brands indicates that in-game video advertising significantly outperforms YouTube pre-roll ads in brand recall and sustained attention. The study, combining eye-tracking and emotional response measurements, found in-game ads resulted in 25% higher brand recall and 18.1% more sustained attention. These findings suggest new opportunities for advertisers to achieve greater engagement and purchase intent within gaming environments.
Frequency has launched its new In-Scene Advertising solution, which allows broadcasters and streaming services to embed ads directly into video content using AI. This technology identifies natural placement opportunities within scenes and dynamically replaces them with targeted advertising. The offering aims to provide new monetization avenues beyond traditional commercial breaks.
A guide from REPLUG explores how mobile app marketers are now allocating 20-40% of their budgets to "open internet" channels for user acquisition, moving beyond traditional platforms like Meta and Google. The guide focuses on diversified and resilient acquisition strategies, including OEM advertising, DSPs, rewarded user acquisition, and CTV. It aims to help mobile-first apps optimize their channel mix, measure quality, and scale user acquisition effectively.
Amazon Ads showcased new ad formats and AI-powered creative tools for Prime Video, Twitch, and sports viewing at its Canadian Upfront, including the launch of "Complete TV." The company emphasized its DSP's leading CTV reach in Canada and new strategic content integrations to simplify ad-buying for marketers. New features like 'Ads Agent', 'Creative Agent', 'Dynamic TV Creative', and 'Location-based Interactive Video Ads' were introduced.
The article discusses how online misinformation, including AI-generated fake news, is driven by profit-seeking actors leveraging social media algorithms for monetization. This market dynamic leads to significant ad revenue for platforms and challenges for content moderation. Experts argue for better regulation of the digital advertising market, such as 'Know Your Customer' regulations, to prevent legitimate brands from inadvertently funding disinformation.
Connected TV transforms sports media into a lucrative digital advertising ecosystem, enabling programmatic advertising to tailor messages during live events. This shift is turning sports into a key testing ground for the future of television monetization and audience engagement. The article emphasizes how accuracy in ad targeting helps justify the high costs of sports inventory and attracts new advertiser categories.
Ampersand, Fandango, and Kochava have partnered to create a closed-loop TV-to-ticket sales solution for theatrical marketing. This new solution allows film studios to plan, activate, and measure TV advertising campaigns directly against verified ticket sales, utilizing precision audience creation and attribution.
StreamGuys has launched a new AI-powered ad tagging service designed to automatically identify and place ad markers in podcasts and on-demand audio content, including archival libraries. This enables content producers to monetize existing audio libraries and automates the identification of ad insertion points. The service supports content ingestion from various sources and returns ad marker data compatible with a wide range of hosting and publishing systems.
Assertive Yield, an AI-powered yield management platform, has partnered with The Media Trust, a Digital Trust & Safety leader. This collaboration aims to enhance publishers' ad quality and revenue by combining Assertive Yield's optimization capabilities with The Media Trust's malvertising prevention and digital governance. The partnership is designed to protect audiences from harmful ads while preserving publisher revenue and operational control.
Google is integrating AI across its marketing workflow, including Gemini-powered ad experiences and agentic commerce, indicating a central role for AI in future ad operations. OpenAI is expanding its ad stack within ChatGPT, rolling out CPA buying and ads for advertisers, pushing it towards a performance marketing platform. Netflix unveiled a new "Binge Ads" format at its Upfront, allowing sequential storytelling across episodes in a single viewing session to leverage viewing data for brands.
Google has integrated its Demand Gen campaign type into the Commerce Media Suite, allowing brands to leverage retailer first-party audience and catalog data across YouTube, Discover, and Gmail for ad placements. This expansion provides closed-loop reporting for ad exposure linked to retailer purchase outcomes, extending retailers' ad reach beyond their owned platforms. The move aligns with the industry trend of off-site retail media activation.
EDO CEO Kevin Krim highlighted at POSSIBLE 2026 that TV serves as both a brand and demand medium, driving mid-funnel actions like searches and web visits after ad exposure, particularly during live sports. EDO uses AI, including its ChatEDO interface, to optimize ad creative production and provide real-time performance data to agencies for Upfront planning. This approach aims to shift the industry from basic share-of-voice metrics to optimization and ROI.
Billions Network CEO Evin McMullen warns that AI agents pose an existential threat to the display advertising models of major tech companies like Google and Facebook, as these agents do not respond to visual ads. This disruption could lead to a collapse of primary revenue streams for media and telecommunications conglomerates. Billions Network is positioned as a key on-chain infrastructure provider for accountable AI agents, with its cryptographic tools used by various corporate and sovereign developers.
Peer39, a contextual data platform, acquired Adloox from Scope3 to enhance its ad verification and measurement capabilities, particularly within Meta and Google's walled gardens. This acquisition provides Peer39 with MRC accreditation and aims to expand its brand suitability offerings to better compete with industry leaders in verifying media quality and outcomes across programmatic advertising.
AI agents are predicted to fundamentally disrupt the $900 billion advertising industry by autonomously managing campaigns through real-time strategy optimization. This shift, dubbed "agentic advertising," moves beyond current programmatic models to dynamically adjust strategies without direct human intervention. The change threatens traditional ad agencies by automating campaign planning, media buying, and creative execution, necessitating a pivot towards overseeing AI ecosystems.
Google, Meta, and ByteDance are rapidly expanding AI-driven advertising systems that personalize ads and leverage generative AI for content creation. This development is blurring the lines between ads and organic content, making ad disclosures harder to recognize. The article highlights the public accountability and regulatory challenges this poses, advocating for clearer disclosure obligations.
YouTube has launched a public directory listing 17 agencies and platforms that are part of its Creator Partnerships program, making third-party firms using verified creator data more visible to advertisers. These partners gain access to creator-consented first-party data like audience demographics and interests via the Creator Partnerships API, ensuring controlled access to enhance advertiser campaign effectiveness. The directory aims to help brands select partners for YouTube creator campaigns, as direct API access is not self-serve.
Nine announced that its streaming service, Stan, will launch an ad-supported tier called "Basic with Ads" for $9.99/month later this year. This expansion aims to broaden Stan's reach and provide advertisers with more opportunities to engage audiences across Nine's media portfolio, utilizing first-party data for integrated campaigns. The new tier will feature a light ad load to maintain a premium viewing experience while supporting continued investment in content.
A new Antenna report indicates that ad-supported SVOD subscriptions have reached 110 million in the U.S., making up 48% of the market. Ad-supported tiers were responsible for 59% of gross additions in Q1, highlighting them as the primary growth driver for streaming platforms. The report suggests that platforms are successfully encouraging users towards these tiers.
Amazon has contracted outside partners to sell advertising inventory on Twitch and Alexa, a departure from the typical in-house strategy of major tech companies. Separately, Peer39 acquired ad verification specialist Adloox from Scope3, with Scope3 shifting its focus towards agentic AI applications.
American Home Shield (AHS) reported an 18% increase in cost-per-action efficiency by revamping its programmatic targeting strategy for streaming audio and online video. This improvement resulted from utilizing real-time audience segmentation data from Experian and Audigent, following Experian's acquisition of Audigent in late 2024. The strategy focuses on using purchase behavior and contextual data to optimize bids across fragmented media channels.
Magnite is enabling programmatic access for advertisers to premium live streaming inventory in Australia, including major sports and broadcast events across multiple streaming platforms. This initiative provides greater flexibility for brands to reach engaged audiences and complements traditional sponsorship deals by scaling campaigns across various live environments. The company also introduced Live Scheduler to coordinate programmatic campaigns around live programming efficiently.
TESTA conducted real-world testing of Brazilian sportsbooks, including Bet365, Betano, Betsson, and EstrelaBet, across the PIX payment ecosystem to assess their readiness for the 2026 World Cup. The testing identified challenges in withdrawal speeds, verification processes, and overall operational user experience that can impact player satisfaction, with Betano showing the fastest average withdrawal times.
StreamGuys has introduced a new AI ad tagging service designed to automate the placement of ad markers in digital audio content. This service aims to increase monetizable ad inventory across back catalogs and new productions for broadcasters and podcasters, while reducing manual effort. It integrates via API and supports multi-language content, building on prior AI workflow innovations from StreamGuys.
Frequency has introduced In-Scene Advertising, a new suite of ad formats (L-shape, double box, picture-in-picture, overlay) designed to place contextually targeted ads directly into streaming content without increasing traditional ad load. This technology uses AI-driven scene intelligence for brand safety and contextual targeting and supports programmatic activation through a partnership with OpenGlass across FAST and vMVPD platforms. The offering aims to create new revenue streams for content owners and distributors, integrating with existing workflows and infrastructure.
TripleLift identifies a $25 billion online sales opportunity for advertisers during Cyber Week across CTV, native, and video formats. The company projects approximately 63% of consumer spend during this period will occur via mobile devices, according to data from Transunion.
TripleLift published an article marketing advertising opportunities for Summer Prime Day across CTV, video, and display platforms. It highlights data points from TruAudience and Transunion, noting a 99% Video Completion Rate and a 115% traffic increase during the sales event.
Nielsen and Marketing Architects have expanded their partnership to integrate Nielsen’s Media Data Engine with Marketing Architects' Annika platform for national TV measurement. This collaboration aims to deliver faster and more detailed viewership data to advertisers for national linear TV buys, particularly around live events and premium inventory. The goal is to improve campaign planning and analysis by addressing the historical data lag in television advertising.
James Varndell · Bitmovin
