Advertising Perspectives

Advertisers aren’t feeling the direct blow of generative AI on traffic the way publishers are. But they see what’s coming. Tripadvisor, for one, is already adjusting its strategy as the foundation of search starts to ... read more

Interested in sharing your perspectives on the media and marketing industries? Join the Digiday research panel. TV and streaming are one and the same in the eyes of today’s consumers, and, therefore, marketers. As a ... read more

Welcome to the era of the ad network arms race. Over the past year, retail media and other ad networks have been pulling out all the stops to convince media buyers that they’ve evolved from ... read more

Sources tell Digiday that Integral Ad Science has entertained suggestions of splitting from Publica, amid further speculation of take-private plans. At the same time, there is consistent speculation that Criteo is considering a potential ... read more

Michael Silberman, evp of media strategy, Piano Between AI search summaries and declining referrals from social media, publishers are feeling the pressure when it comes to site traffic. Piano’s data backs this up: Between 2022 ... read more

While TikTok’s U.S. lifespan remains uncertain, the entertainment app is firmly focused on its future. “When I met with TikTok last week, they were talking me through their product roadmap for the rest of the ... read more

Two years after its launch, The Trade Desk’s Kokai tool has acquired a mixed reputation among the agency media buyers it was designed for. Kokai was supposed to be the DSP titan’s next shield against ... read more

Integral Ad Science, a publicly listed ad tech company with a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion, is the subject of a potential takeover by private equity, according to recent reports — but interest is wavering. ... read more

Today’s teens and twentysomethings are the future of TV audiences. So it’s always worth keeping current on what’s keeping — or has lost — their attentions. At this year’s VidCon — the annual Comic-Con for ... read more

Roblox is officially the home of the most popular video game of all time — but marketers are still unsure of the platform’s value as an advertising channel. This is despite a recent boom in ... read more

Faceless creators are taking over social media. Now, they’re coming for brands’ influencer marketing dollars. Influencer and creator marketing is steadily gaining ground in ad budgets — Unilever, for example, plans to significantly boost spending ... read more

The latest round of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected next week (July 3), with more recent statistics indicating the upcoming numbers are unlikely to cause much positivity in the space, as the wider ... read more

This story was originally published on sister site, Modern Retail. Last October, when Sam’s Club opened the doors to its first store without checkout lanes in Grapevine, Texas, chief finance officer Todd Sears was on ... read more

The Omnicom-Interpublic merger remains on track for completion later this year, following a qualified approval granted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Related Insights Advertising around Politics Here are some ... read more

Golf is having a cultural moment — and golf creators are taking advantage by signing more brand deals than ever. Once viewed as the territory of boomers and the rich, golf has surged in the ... read more

Melinda Spence, head of measurement and insights, Activision Blizzard Media At a time when audience attention is increasingly difficult to hold, brands that incorporate gaming into their omnichannel strategies enjoy a significant advantage. A robust ... read more

Eight months after quietly rolling out Performance+, Pinterest is now turning up the volume. The platform’s bid to automate more of its ad business is moving from test phase to full-throated sales pitch.  CEO Bill ... read more

This week’s Media Briefing looks at how execs at BBC, The New York Times and Reuters are grappling with younger audiences turning to social platforms and news influencers for information. News publishing execs are ... read more

The U.K.’s Competition Markets Authority is taking up publishers’ fight against Google’s search grip.  The watchdog said on Tuesday that it wants to set more binding rules around how Google operates search in the U.K. ... read more

TikTok still faces a ban in the United States. But based on the signals they’re getting from the platforms’ agency reps and their own risk calculations, media buyers and brand marketers are willing to bet ... read more

It seems the ad networks have finally hit their maturation curve, inking partnerships with ad tech and off-site platforms to prove their value beyond lower-funnel conversions.  Last week, a flurry of product, measurement and partnership ... read more

Omnicom and Interpublic Group’s (IPG) $13.5 billion super-merger took a giant leap toward completion this week, following a qualified approval granted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The conditions attached to the FTC’s green light ... read more

This week’s Future of TV Briefing recaps a VidCon session during which YouTube executives and creators unpacked the video platform’s recommendation engine. The “You” in YouTube Let’s talk CTV in NYC Netflix’s traditional TV ... read more

As the ad industry barrels head first into AI for its efficiency, scale and automation, the topic of sustainability — or even the energy it takes to use AI — seems to be forgotten. Artificial intelligence has ... read more

This piece was first published by Digiday sibling WorkLife The AI revolution is happening at work whether people admit it or not. While leadership teams debate AI policies, employees are already using these tools, often ... read more

Platforms are having an identity crisis. Or maybe, it’s a rebrand.  Whether they built their businesses on social graphs, short-form video or niche communities, the story from Cannes last week was the same: they’ve always ... read more

This State of the Industry report, sponsored by Klaviyo, explores how DTC brands and agencies are responding to rising costs and tech complexity by renewing their focus on data and ROI. The direct-to-consumer landscape has ... read more

LGBTQ+-focused publishers faced a tougher-than-usual Pride month this June, as ad dollars failed to materialize.  Some saw fewer new advertisers and lower ad spend this Pride month compared to last year.  Execs at four LGBTQ+-focused ... read more

CTV ad spend is up. CPMs? Not so much. Midway through the year, buyers and sellers say CPMs are sliding. Depending on who you ask, they’re down anywhere between 10% to over 30% year over ... read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify Social platforms like TikTok and YouTube — which hates to be called a social platform, but I digress — are no longer the sole domains for creators. Streaming services ... read more

TV ad buying is increasingly driven by ad tech, as shown by activity during the 2025 upfront negotiations, where programmatic, CTV, and data-fueled pitches took center stage. This theme continued last week at the media ... read more

AI was the buzzword of the week at Cannes Lions but platforms behind it were largely out of the public eye. CMOs suspect that won’t be the case for long. Perplexity, ChatGPT and others may ... read more

When podcast networks started using AI to translate shows into other languages last year, media buyers were skeptical. Voices ranged from awkwardly robotic to wildly inaccurate. The tech has come a long way since then ... read more

Digital ad spend is plateauing, with growth rates slowing considerably between now and 2028, especially when compared to the boom times such as the immediate post-pandemic era. EMarketer research further predicted the days of double-digit ... read more

Much of the chatter at Cannes Lions last week (heard and overheard by my colleagues) fixated on AI’s ability to generate content faster or reduce production costs. That’s all well and good, but timesheet and ... read more

Spotify’s video podcast partner program is gaining traction with smaller creators drawn to its direct payouts — but major podcast networks remain hesitant, citing the lack of dynamic ad support for subscriber-only content. Spotify launched ... read more

Here and gone before you know it, here’s what you might have missed from Cannes Lions 2025 across our coverage areas. A fun thing: compare the themes to how they were discussed last year. Media ... read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify Amid the AI hype, increasingly fragmented media marketplace and economic headwinds, marketers this year came to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity looking for answers.  For Carly Carson, ... read more

What started as a weekend experiment is now a fully-fledged AI voice assistant on Hearst’s recipe site Delish, helping home cooks follow recipes hands-free. Hearst’s senior director of AI initiatives, Alexandria Redmon wanted a personal ... read more

As more ad dollars become digital dollars, brands are changing how they use more traditional marketing methods. Marketers at Coca-Cola’s Sprite have been relying on digital out-of-home (DOOH) to cut through the summer heat, for ... read more

Creators are increasingly turning to agentic AI to streamline communication with fans — saving time and money — but raising new questions for brands and influencer marketers. The term “agentic AI” refers to artificial intelligence tools ... read more

To receive this daily Cannes briefing over email, please subscribe here. After a week defined by contradictions — lavish $10 million beachfront activations against a backdrop of economy anxiety, AI buzz alongside quiet budget cuts ... read more

Snapchat is betting that AI-powered ad tech might finally help it shrink the distance between itself and the platforms that have long outpaced it. Last month, the mobile messaging app launched its first major iteration ... read more

2017 called. It wants its keyword blocklists back. Ask a publisher a few weeks ago what kept them up at night, and it wasn’t (just) AI-powered search eroding their traffic or ad tariffs squeezing margins ... read more

Mere months away from closing the ultimate partnership in an acquisition of Interpublic Group (so long as the deal isn’t derailed), holding company Omnicom instead this week at Cannes Lions rolled out a series of ... read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify We’ve reached the halfway point of this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and Rachel Lindsay has already lost her voice — not from inhaling sand kicked up along ... read more

There’s one major way in which Google’s AI-powered search feature AI Mode differs from its traditional search engine — a complex technique used to answer a user’s question called “query fan-out.” AI Mode started rolling out ... read more

To receive this daily Cannes briefing over email, please subscribe here. At Cannes, AI is the loudest topic no one wants to talk about publicly. Everyone has an opinion. Few want their names attached to ... read more

Chris Feo, Chief Business Officer, Experian Marketing Services Marketers are under more pressure than ever to deliver personalized, high-performing ad campaigns — all while navigating tighter budgets, shifting privacy expectations and fragmented technology stacks.  Despite ... read more

Having decided that the value of live — be it live sports, live shopping, live-streaming, live events or live conversations — is of essential importance to its clients, Omnicom is partnering with several major platforms ... read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify A few years ago, Twitter Beach was one of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity places to be. Before it became X, the platform brought marketers from the ... read more

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at the question of how TV and streaming audiences watching in a bar or other public places should be counted — and, more importantly, charged for — compared ... read more

As publishers face shrinking open web opportunities, The Guardian is unifying its programmatic advertising operations to capitalize on curation and offer global buyers scale with simplicity. The publisher announced last week that it has unified ... read more

To receive this daily Cannes briefing over email, please subscribe here. When Chris Hassell’s agency Ralph last made the trip to Cannes several years ago, building a business around branded entertainment felt like a creative ... read more

Bradley Keefer, Chief Revenue Officer, Keen Decision Systems Consumer sentiment just hit its lowest levels since 2022 as tariffs and the threat of rising inflation cause shoppers to think twice about making purchases. As brands ... read more

Lobby group Movement for an Open Web has issued fresh calls for the Justice Department to coordinate its proposed remedies to address Google’s monopolies in the ongoing separate search and ad tech cases. Related ... read more

Omnicom this week is in the midst of announcing several of what it says are first-mover partnerships with major platforms, having just unveiled ones with Disney and Walmart yesterday. The mission is to build expertise ... read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify If there was any doubt that everything is an ad network, this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity proves otherwise. Ad networks, retail media networks and the bevy of ... read more

Related Insights The Programmatic Publisher Disney is rolling out DRAX Direct, a direct integration with the industry’s largest DSPs Read More On the second official day of the ... read more

The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority has opened a consultation on potentially releasing Google from Privacy Sandbox commitments imposed in 2022. Some are concerned this represents ‘a W’ for corporate conjury.   The move, announced June ... read more

Reddit is quietly becoming a more important source of referral channel for some news publishers. While the traffic Reddit is sending to publishers’ sites is still very small and isn’t going to replace declining search ... read more

To receive this daily Cannes briefing over email, please subscribe here. For a brief moment, it felt like the old Cannes was back.  Olympic icon Michael Johnson was spotted over at Dentsu beach. Sir Martin ... read more

There’s a threat to the creative side of the agency business, and it’s called generative AI. News announcements in the past few weeks have drilled that home, as Meta and other publishers announce ways to ... read more

Cannes Lions is officially underway, and holding company Omnicom is wasting little time forging ahead with unveiling partnerships with major publishers and platforms as it digs deeply into harnessing the power of ‘live’ — be ... read more

Related Insights Member Exclusive Future of TV Briefing: A Q&A with Roku’s Sarah Harms about streaming ad measurement Subscribe To Read Read More Amazon Ads and Roku have ... read more

Unik Ernest doesn’t exactly fit the mold of Cannes’ archetypal power broker. Tall, reserved, more listener than talker — he doesn’t shout status. But on the Croisette some call him the fixer. Spend five minutes ... read more

Cannes Lions used to be the place to see and be seen for creative excellence. But for the last 15 years or so, media companies and platforms have steadily muscled their way onto the beaches ... read more

YouTube is expanding its internal brand partnership tools and its relationships with third-party creator monetization vendors — all part of a broader effort to create new revenue streams for Shorts creators. In recent months, YouTube ... read more

To receive this daily Cannes briefing over email, please subscribe here. Cannes has always thrived on the blur: part conference, part fever dream, part reputation management exercise with a rosé chaser. But this year, before ... read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify If you’re looking for Patricia Corsi, Kimberly-Clark’s chief growth officer, along the French Riviera during this year’s Cannes Lions Festival, don’t expect to find her sipping rosé. While Cannes ... read more

This story was first published by Digiday sibling ModernRetail In an email to employees in May, after pulling back on some diversity, equity and inclusion goals, Target’s CEO tried to reassure employees that its values ... read more

Related Insights Member Exclusive Ad Tech Briefing: Public companies’ first loyalty is to shareholders — why do advertisers give them an easy time? Subscribe To Read Read More ... read more

As thousands of agency folk grab their passports, sunblock and antacids to head to Cannes next week for the annual Lions fest, Omnicom has quietly hammered out its strategy and message it take to the Croisette. ... read more

It’s no secret that retail media networks are seeing a boon in business and viewed as a bright spot in advertising. Financial institutions are chasing those dollars now, too, from the likes of Chase and ... read more

To receive this daily Cannes briefing over email, please subscribe here. If this is your first time (or if you want a refresher on what you might expect), here’s what we can tell you about ... read more

The job market has never been easy to navigate. But right now — between tightened marketing budgets, agency consolidation and economic headwinds — it’s as convoluted as ever. Job seekers say they’re seeing hundreds of roles for ... read more

Next week’s Cannes Lions festival in the south of France will bring CMOs, holding company execs and consultants together for the industry’s biggest bazaar. While the creative shops are there exclusively to gather up armfuls ... read more

This video is sponsored by Index Exchange. For more information about sell-side decisioning, check out this report. A lot of decisions are made between the time someone shows up on a website and when an ... read more

This WTF guide, sponsored by Index Exchange, explores what sell-side decisioning is, how it is reshaping the programmatic supply chain and how both publishers and marketers can benefit from applying inventory, audience and quality insights ... read more

The decision to leave was already on the table. For months, senior marketers at one of WPP’s clients had grown frustrated with the holding company’s pace of change. WPP had been trying – streamlining teams, ... read more

The folks at independent agency Known have always done things a little differently. Digiday first wrote about Known as having built an Iron Man suit it would put to use for clients, developed under the ... read more

This week’s Media Briefing looks at Reddit becoming a top referral channel for some news publishers (although the audience coming from the social media platform isn’t big enough to replace declining search referrals). ... read more

Pinterest is going all-in on programmatic, and its newest hire is the tell. Chip Jessop, Amazon’s former director of global accounts and North America ad tech sales, joined the visual search platform on May 27 ... read more

Interested in sharing your perspectives on the media and marketing industries? Join the Digiday research panel. Marketers, ad executives, publishers, tech companies — pretty much every conceivable member of the ad industry — they’re set ... read more

Dave Taylor, Chief Product Officer, Alliant The days of influencer marketing as an auxiliary tactic, rather than an integrated part of a broader omnichannel marketing mix, are over. Now, with industry power player Omnicom Media ... read more

Index Exchange’s investment arm, IX Labs, has announced a “multimillion-dollar” partnership deal with investment fund First Party Capital, a further sign of scaled ad tech companies looking to startup investments to future-proof their strategies. The ... read more

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how the transition to Nielsen’s big data plus panel measurement currency is complicating price negotiations in this year’s TV and streaming ad upfront market. Currency exchange ... read more

The Mark Read era at WPP is winding down with little spectacle. The company announced he’ll exit at year’s end, closing a chapter on a tenure marked by quiet pragmatism and market erosion. Read inherited ... read more

This article was first published by Digiday sibling ModernRetail With the NBA Finals between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder in full swing, brands are getting in on the excitement.  Athletes and sporting events ... read more

Last year at the Cannes Lions festival, TikTok execs were peppered with questions about the app’s future in the U.S. This time, advertisers want to know about its future, full stop. Whether it’s querying TikTok’s ... read more

The Future Leader Awards, presented by Digiday, Glossy, Modern Retail and WorkLife, honor the next generation of leaders leaving their mark in their industry, with 10 years of experience or less. The winners demonstrated an ... read more

The Future Leader Awards, presented by Digiday, Glossy, Modern Retail and WorkLife, honor the next generation of leaders leaving their mark in their industry, with 10 years of experience or less. The winners demonstrated an ... read more

This State of the Industry report, sponsored by PadSquad, explores how brands and agencies deploy interactive videos for more relevant and engaging advertising experiences. The digital video advertising market surpassed $191 billion in 2024, yet ... read more

Related Insights Brand Safety How ‘The Godfather of ad tech’ aims to ‘reimagine’ brand safety and challenge the status quo Read More Three months since the unveiling of ... read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Spotify Next week, thousands of marketers and ad execs are expected to once again brave the French Riviera’s heat, rosé-laden soirees and back-to-back meetings that make the annual Cannes Lions ... read more

WPP hasn’t just lost its CEO Mark Read — it’s also about to lose Mars, one of its biggest media accounts. The CPG giant is shifting its media account to Publicis, according to two sources ... read more

Fortnite’s copycat culture might finally be on its way out. Fortnite creators’ habit of copying other creators’ popular experiences, rather than developing original games, has long frustrated both fellow creators and brands looking to invest ... read more

As the multiple antitrust cases this year attest, Google’s place at the top of the digital advertising market is clear (if under threat). The same can be said of its demand-side platform, DV360, although it’s ... read more

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away from the parent company, WPP Media has downgraded its forecasts for global ad spend growth by 1.7%, a consequence of clients responding en masse to U.S. President Donald ... read more

Michael Rubenstein, co-founder and co-CEO, Firsthand The old model is breaking. Digital media’s foundational ad model — capturing attention and monetizing it through volume — is no longer sustainable. Publisher site traffic is declining, consumer ... read more