Platforms

How can companies put ads in new places without hurting the user experience? Smart TV makers, like Samsung, are adding programmatic ads to the home screen, and Roblox will now show ads to users under 13. We examine the trade-offs as platforms expand their ad footprint.

With an anticipated viewership of more than 1.5 billion people, the 2026 World Cup is expected to represent the most-watched live event in history. For advertisers, that creates an obvious opportunity to reach soccer fans around matches, highlights, team coverage and tournament content.

Bending Spoons bets on the old web; more publishers start blocking bot scrapers by default; and Apple introduces app bundles.

By partnering with GrowthLoop, GoPuff has beefed up its retail media offering with more specific audience targeting.

Communications leaders are reshaping the C-suite; Executive turnover continues at The Trade Desk; TikTok Shop earns dedicated RFP budgets.

YouTube’s remix tool sparks creator concerns; AI fuels World Cup ticket scams; Anthropic warns AI is moving too fast.

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

Liftoff’s COO explains why the company hit pause on its first IPO attempt, what changed in the market and why ad tech is already proving AI’s value at scale.

There’s a lot of healthcare data out there. The challenge is knowing how to access and make use of it while complying with privacy regulations.

Verizon Value President David “DK” Kim digs into the lingering stigma around prepaid wireless – and how reframing customers as “prepaid by need” versus “prepaid by choice” changes the way Verizon markets and measures its eight-brand portfolio of prepaid plans.

Amazon has third parties selling some of its ad inventory; Scope3 selling Adloox to Peer39 suggests sustainability is out; and “fabric” is the new AI-related buzzword for ad tech.

Performance CTV tech company Keynes launched an AI-powered platform. Tuckernuck says it can finally “pop open the hood” and see what’s working.

Meta AI is opening the door for hackers; Does performance marketing work for luxury brands?; and advertisers still don’t trust their agencies much.

Meta wants to own online communities; Ecommerce brands face old-school advertising scrutiny; Omnicom wants fewer ad tech middlemen.

How does Spotify translate quirky Wrapped labels, like “divorced dad hipster,” into ad audiences? And is AI-generated content safe for brands? Spotify’s Global Head of Ad Product Katie English weighs in.

Rather than fighting the rising tide of AI search engines and agentic tools, Microsoft AI’s Nikhil Kolar says publishers and retailers should license access to their sites and create content that speaks directly to AI crawlers.

Hollywood shifts away from Cannes; SpaceX prepares to go public; and publishers aren’t prioritizing pageviews anymore.

Snap is trying to combine multiple views of performance with its new attribution product, which unifies Snap data with data from mobile measurement partners.

Carol Reed discusses what it means to be a chief innovation officer and how to keep up with new AI developments without losing the human touch.

Podcasts are becoming broadcasts; your kid’s college scholarship might be a data mining venture; and states are getting wise to false advertising from non-profits.

This year’s TV Upfronts buzzwords are in: performance, dynamic, AI and fandom We explain why this quartet of phrases wove their way through the presentations.

Keywords, Kinda The tabs, they are a-changin’. As in, campaign analytics tabs and what they’re meant to show advertisers.  The biggest shift has been the move from “analytics” to “insights.” “Analytics” used to mean detailed, exportable data that brands could plug into their own systems. “Insights,” by contrast, are curated summaries and useful-sounding takeaways about […]

Another TV upfronts season is in the books. Please send your condolences to Senior Editor Alyssa Boyle and Associate Editor Victoria McNally as they reluctantly return to reality and their overstuffed inboxes.

TikTok announces a wide array of new tools for advertisers, and they all have one thing in common: a focus on building its ecommerce business.

The DOJ targets another Google Search ad scam; ICE relies on “advertising intelligence” and support from Palantir to ramp up deportations; and TikTok now lets you book vacations in its app.

Marketers must become memelords now; Yahoo has incurred the wrath of Apollo; and AppLovin is going hybrid.

Magnite posted strong Q1 numbers and is confident that it will prevail in its battles with both Google and The Trade Desk.

Clipping can be lucrative, but can – and should – it last?; AI Max raises the stakes for advertisers; and the ANA introduces a new fee to fund Aquila.

People Inc. previewed plans to downsize by focusing mainly on its key properties. The strategy makes sense considering its publishing portfolio has lost about two-thirds of its Google traffic.

Programmatic enemies make better friends in the AI era; social video projected to outgrow CTV this year; and apps are integrating into chatbots, but where are the users?