News

The sign appeared in a Boston storefront days before the Boston Marathon.

A deep-dive analysis of how retail media networks are maturing into a consolidated landscape, with major retailers competing on data quality and measurement standards. The piece examines how IAB and MRC standardization efforts are reshaping advertiser expectations and budget allocation across Walmart Connect, Amazon Ads, and emerging regional players.

Ben Thompson analyzes the downstream consequences of Google's abandonment of the Privacy Sandbox initiative, arguing that the identity resolution market is now fragmenting into competing proprietary graphs rather than converging on open standards. The piece evaluates winners and losers among ID resolution vendors and clean room operators.

An in-depth competitive landscape assessment of the ongoing battle among measurement companies to become the dominant currency for CTV advertising transactions, covering upfront negotiation implications and advertiser frustration with fragmented data. The analysis includes perspectives from major agency holding companies on which measurement partners they are backing for 2026-2027 deals.

McKinsey's marketing technology practice publishes a research report examining how agentic AI systems are beginning to automate media buying decisions end-to-end, potentially disintermediating traditional DSP interfaces. The report includes survey data from 200 enterprise advertisers on their readiness and concerns around autonomous AI media buyers.

Forrester's latest Wave evaluation ranks the leading data clean room vendors across criteria including interoperability, privacy-enhancing technology integration, and ease of use for non-technical marketers. The report identifies a widening gap between Leaders and Contenders as enterprise adoption accelerates and use cases expand beyond audience matching to attribution and incrementality measurement.

A detailed regulatory analysis of how the EU AI Act's provisions on high-risk AI systems and transparency obligations apply specifically to programmatic advertising algorithms, audience targeting models, and real-time bidding systems. The piece outlines a compliance timeline and flags which AdTech capabilities may require conformity assessments or fundamental redesign.

An analytical piece examining how podcast advertising is finally developing sophisticated measurement infrastructure beyond download counts, including attention metrics, brand lift studies, and pixel-based attribution. The article surveys the competitive landscape of podcast measurement vendors and evaluates whether the medium is ready to compete for larger brand budgets.

A comprehensive investor-oriented analysis of Q1 2026 earnings results across publicly traded AdTech companies, examining revenue growth trends, take rate compression, and management commentary on AI-driven product differentiation. The piece identifies which companies are successfully navigating the shift to AI-mediated buying and which face structural headwinds.

MIT Technology Review examines the scientific and commercial tensions underlying the attention metrics movement in digital advertising, questioning whether biometric-derived attention scores can be standardized across formats and contexts. The piece evaluates competing methodologies from attention measurement vendors and the role of the IAB and ARF in arbitrating standards.

Technology analyst Benedict Evans maps the emerging programmatic infrastructure being built within the creator economy, examining how platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are developing automated creator-brand matching systems that parallel traditional programmatic buying. The analysis considers whether this creator ad layer will eventually converge with or disrupt conventional display and video programmatic.

A deep analytical piece examining how the proliferation of retail media networks has created measurement chaos for advertisers, with over 200 networks now operating in the US alone. The article explores IAB and MRC efforts to standardize metrics and argues that consolidation is inevitable as advertisers demand unified reporting. It draws parallels to the early programmatic era and offers a framework for brands evaluating RMN investments.

Following Google's decision to abandon the Privacy Sandbox initiative, this analysis examines the cascading effects on the broader identity ecosystem and what it means for publishers and independent ad tech vendors. The piece interviews identity resolution vendors and privacy advocates to map out competing post-cookie solutions including universal IDs, clean rooms, and first-party data strategies. It argues the collapse has paradoxically strengthened walled gardens.

Ben Thompson's detailed analysis of why connected TV advertising measurement remains fundamentally broken despite years of industry promises, examining the structural incentives that prevent true cross-platform measurement from emerging. The piece dissects the conflicting interests of streaming platforms, measurement companies, and advertisers, and argues that no neutral third party has the leverage to impose standards. Thompson concludes that outcome-based buying is the only pragmatic path forward.

A comprehensive investor-focused analysis of Q1 2026 earnings from major digital advertising players, examining revenue growth rates, margin expansion, and guidance signals. The piece highlights the divergence between platform advertising growth and independent AdTech stack performance, noting that AI-driven optimization is compressing margins for mid-tier DSPs and SSPs. It identifies Zeta Global and Moloco as outperformers while flagging structural headwinds for open-web display.

MIT Technology Review's explainer on how agentic AI systems are beginning to automate end-to-end campaign management, from brief interpretation through creative generation, media buying, and optimization. The article maps the emerging vendor landscape and examines where human oversight remains essential versus where full automation is viable. It raises important questions about accountability and brand safety when AI agents make autonomous buying decisions.

Forrester's latest Wave evaluation of the B2B advertising technology landscape scores 14 vendors across 28 criteria, with particular focus on AI-driven intent data, account-based measurement, and cross-channel orchestration. The report finds a significant capability gap emerging between vendors who have deeply integrated generative AI into their platforms and those who have bolted on AI features superficially. 6sense and Terminus are highlighted as Leaders while several legacy players drop to Contenders.

An academic research study quantifying the financial flows sustaining the made-for-advertising site ecosystem in programmatic advertising, based on analysis of over 50 million ad impressions. The study finds that MFA sites still capture an estimated 15-20% of open programmatic spend despite industry cleanup efforts, and identifies the structural DSP incentives that perpetuate the problem. The research proposes a supply path transparency scoring framework as a potential industry remedy.

Pew Research Center's examination of how podcast advertising measurement has evolved from simple download counts toward attribution-based outcome measurement, drawing on surveys of 1,200 podcast advertisers and listeners. The study finds that 67% of advertisers now require some form of conversion tracking for podcast buys, up from 31% in 2023, and examines how this is reshaping the competitive dynamics between hosting platforms and independent measurement vendors. Podscribe and similar pixel-based solutions are examined in depth.

A regulatory analysis assessing the concrete changes in the European digital advertising ecosystem six months into active DMA enforcement, examining how Google, Meta, and Apple have restructured their ad products for EU compliance and whether the changes have meaningfully benefited independent AdTech competitors. The piece interviews European publishers, DSPs, and privacy regulators to assess whether interoperability requirements are working as intended. It concludes that structural remedies have been more impactful than behavioral requirements.

A critical analysis of the attention measurement movement in digital advertising, examining whether the industry's embrace of attention metrics represents genuine progress or a rebranding of old viewability problems with new complexity. The piece surveys methodological differences between eye-tracking, scroll-velocity, and panel-based attention vendors and finds significant inconsistency in how attention is defined and measured across providers. It calls for MRC accreditation of attention measurement before widespread adoption.

On today’s episode of Variety podcast “Strictly Business,” Aleen Dreksler, CEO and founder of Betches Media, details the digital media brand’s origin story and why it blossomed into a hub for comedy and community designed for women. The episode also features a separate conversation from the SXSW festival that highlighted Variety‘s recent 10 Creators to Watch […]