News

‘The bridge between intuition and ROI’: The M&A race to own advertising’s last unmeasured lever

The ad industry’s hottest M&A target isn’t what you think.

Podcast engagement drives brand audio spending ahead of World Cup

Sport radio, streaming audio and especially podcasts are being used to amplify summer media plans around soccer's big moment.

OpenAI Crawl Activity Tripled Since GPT-5, Data Shows via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

OpenAI crawl activity roughly tripled after GPT-5, with OAI-SearchBot now generating more log events than GPTBot. The post OpenAI Crawl Activity Tripled Since GPT-5, Data Shows appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Omnicom Has An AI-Powered Plan To Cut Out Ad Tech Middlemen

Back in 2018, Omnicom passed on buying Acxiom for $2 billion, which went to IPG instead. In retrospect, that was a good move twice over, CEO John Wren told investors during the holding company’s Q1 earnings call on Tuesday, which was also its first full quarter with IPG folded in. Seven years after IPG bought […] The post Omnicom Has An AI-Powered Plan To Cut Out Ad Tech Middlemen appeared first on AdExchanger.

POSSIBLE 2026 Tops 7,500 Attendees, Announces Lisbon Expansion

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — POSSIBLE 2026 drew more than 7,500 attendees this week, up from 5,400 last year, as organizers used the event’s momentum to announce an international expansion to Lisbon, signaling ambitions to turn the fast-growing marketing conference into a global franchise. The Portugal launch marks the first overseas edition of POSSIBLE, which has [...]

The Trade Desk’s Jeff Green Tells Agencies ‘We Want to Help’ After Months of Tension

The exec extended an olive branch to ad agencies after fallouts with Publicis, WPP, and Dentsu.

Ahold Delhaize adds another digital shopping capability

Click2Cart lets customers add products from online platforms not run by the grocery company to their digital shopping cart.

Snowflake helps unlock data collaborations with consent signals from OneTrust

AI exacerbates challenges around data privacy because the only remedy for having unconsented data in AI models is rolling them back.

The Coooors Call – Launch - 27s

The Coooors Call – More goals. More celebrations. - 30s

Mastercard Is Building for a World Where AI Makes the Decisions

Plus, how experiential marketing builds brand equity that traditional advertising no longer can.

The Funnel Is Dead: Now What?

Conversations with Sephora, SmartCommerce, Liquid Death, and more.

FCC Orders Early Renewals for ABC TV Licenses Following Scrutiny Over Kimmel Joke

The FCC directed eight of Disney’s owned-and-operated television stations to file their broadcast license renewals early.

Omnicom Focuses Investors on ‘Core Operations’ in Q1 as It Plans to Offload Agencies

The holding company is disposing of businesses that account for $3.2 billion in revenue within the next year.

HUMAN Security’s Stu Soloman: What Does It Mean for Advertisers When Half of Online Traffic Is ‘No Longer Human?’

NEW YORK — The artificial intelligence summary is the first thing anyone sees after conducting an online search. The content that follows those summaries are increasingly AI-driven. That creates complex trust scenarios where artificial intelligence agents act autonomously on behalf of humans while learning and adapting to anticipate user preferences without direct oversight. “Over 50% [...]

AI Shopping Agents are Still in Beta, Need More Training: Mirakl’s Amelia Van Camp

NEW YORK – At the IAB Connected Commerce Summit, Amelia Van Camp, head of agentic commerce at AI firm Mirakl, offered a timely reminder for anyone convinced AI shopping agents are already buying socks, cereal and patio furniture on humanity’s behalf: not so fast. “So agentic commerce is in concept, in theory,” Van Camp said [...]

GMMB’s Erica Monteith: Political Campaigns ‘Can’t Afford to be Locked Into a Single Workflow’

Political advertising is completely unrecognizable from past generations’ expectations of whistle stops and seasonal local TV buys. The always-on nature of politics in an era of intense polarization, razor thin margins in Congress, and now the influence of artificial intelligence tools requires flexible open architecture that integrates multiple data partners, verification tools, and measurement systems [...]

Bed Bath & Beyond CEO: AI will lead to ‘significant reduction in headcount’

Areas impacted at the retailer could include supply chain, IT, accounting, marketing and merchandising, Marcus Lemonis told analysts Monday.

Birdy Grey taps Stanley 1913 vet as chief growth officer

In the newly created role, Anthony Potgieter will lead the company’s growth across brand, marketing, digital product, partnerships and customer experience.

Macro and a16z’s Cultural Leadership Fund Announce Inaugural Class for the Epigraph Creator Fellowship

Macro and Andreessen Horowitz’s Cultural Leadership Fund (CLF) announced the inaugural class for The Epigraph Creator Fellowship, a unique program that pairs filmmakers with frontier AI tools to integrate into their creative process. The selected fellows are Bianca Lambert, Chazitear Martin, John Burr, Justice Whitaker, Nick Barili, Sulayman Tahir and Tedra Wilson. Their projects have been featured in […]

LISTEN: Writer Aaron Tracy Explores the Life of the Author Who Excited Children’s Imaginations With ‘The Secret World of Roald Dahl’

On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, writer-producer Aaron Tracy discusses his hugely popular Imagine/iHeart Media podcast “The Secret World of Roald Dahl.” The author of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Matilda,” “The BFG” and many more classics lived an extraordinarily wild life that Tracy unpacks in his 10-part series. […]

Pitch Deck: How This Creator-Founded Energy Drink Brand Raised $6 Million

Three-year-old energy drink brand Neutonic has raised $6 million to fund expansion across the U.S., U.K., and other international markets.

YouTube TV Launches Customized Multiview Across the Full Channel Lineup

After years in development, YouTube TV is finally rolling out a customizable multiview feature for subscribers, letting you view up to four channels on one screen. Previously, YouTube TV’s multiview, first introduced in March 2023, was limited to a pre-set list of sports and news channels, or a lineup of feeds for special events like […]

Henkel appoints WPP to global creative account

Omnicom was the incumbent.