The traffic-referral model that drove digital advertising was laid to rest last week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, The New York Times reports. The focus shifted from how to win human attention to how to influence an AI model. “These are tectonic shifts,” said Shiv Singh, who runs the organization AI Trailblazers. “The way discoverability is changing is like an earthquake nobody expected.” 

Two senators from opposing parties are calling for a federal probe into Polymarket’s allegedly deceptive marketing practices, The Wall Street Journal reports. “The public-facing behavior alleged here does not resemble a sober financial market designed for hedging or price discovery,” wrote Senators John Curtis (R., Utah) and Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) in a letter to Michael Selig, chairman of Commodity Futures Trading Commission, adding: “We remain concerned that the Commission is neither enforcing the law appropriately, nor is equipped to serve as a federal gambling regulator.”  

The New York Times has amended the copyright lawsuit it filed in 2023 against OpenAI and Microsoft, the Times reports. The new Times filing accuses Microsoft of encouraging OpenAI to train its AI system with articles from the Times and providing services to help it achieve this. But the paper dropped a claim that OpenAI had “secondarily” infringed on its copyrights by not preventing consumers from creating copyrighted material using AI. “As we have long alleged, Microsoft actively encouraged OpenAI to steal our copyrighted works,” said Graham James, a Times spokesman, in a statement. “Beyond amending that claim and streamlining the case to its most potent …

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has accused Disney of running a “campaign of misinformation” about two investigations the FCC is conducting into it, The Guardian reports. Ads run by owner ABC drew 51,000 comments about the probe into whether "The View" violates equal-time provisions for political candidates, and 40,000 comments over the investigation into whether the FCC should renew licenses for eight local television stations owned by ABC. “I do think that Disney is running a campaign of misinformation here, I think in a lot of ways,” Carr said.  

Gross cost has long the standard financial metric for traditional media, but its past usefulness is no reason to retain it, TVNewsCheck writes. The reason is that gross cost, based on a 15% agency commission on media buys, has been supplanted by retainers, hourly fees, incentive structures and principal buying arrangements, the article continues. 

Canva has debuted Canva Grow 2.0, which allows users to create ad campaigns and publish them to TikTok, LinkedIn and Meta without leaving the Canva app, The Verge reports. The firm is also expanding further into artificial intelligence and has launched a new insights dashboard.

Amazon has launched a program called Alexa+ Agentic Ads that it says will allow customers to make purchases without leaving the ad, Ad Exchanger reports from Cannes. The ads have a visual feature that appears on Amazon Echo Show device screens. This comes as consumers have been experiencing a lack of enthusiasm over the increased ad load on Amazon devices. Amazon Echo Shows started displaying more ads in 2024. 

Podcast host Libsyn claims that a campaign for a quick-service restaurant chain boosted awareness, purchase intent and brand favorability among Gen Z consumers, Inside Radio reports. The chain was not identified, but the company says it already enjoyed broad recognition by the younger audience. The campaign featured podcast host endorsements, video integrations, social media amplification and custom brand-lift measurement, according to the report. 

,The Weather Channel remains the most trusted news source, even as overall trust in media declines, YouGov reports. The 2026 Trust in Media survey by YouGov found that Americans are 50% more likely to call The Weather Channel trustworthy than untrustworthy. PBS (+26) and The Wall Street Journal (+22) follow. The least-trusted outlets are Breitbart News (-12), One America News (-10), and Fox News (-10). The Weather Channel has been first every year since 2022. 

Elisabeth Murdoch, a member of the Murdoch media family, is one of a group of strategic investors backing Piers Morgan’s effort to turn Piers Morgan Uncensored, a YouTube talk show, into a global media network, Inc. reports. The round was led by Raine Ventures and Antenna Group, Elizabeth Murdoch’s investment is outside the structure of the Murdoch family’s media empire.