When the $3 billion gambling industry spends millions targeting the Asian community, how do you cut through with a fraction of the budget? One meal at a time.

Some jaw-dropping stats: we spend 80% of our waking hours consuming media, including 5.3 trillion-plus ads each year. That's trillion with a T.

Change is the watchword of marketing, but it is overrated, because the fundamentals of marketing are unchanging and nothing about digital or AI changes that.

The ad industry's first agentic media buy last week wasn't just between a buyer's bot and a seller's bot, but may have served ads to a user bot too. The question is, will that even be a bad thing in the future? Heck, it might even become a premium.

While it's often overshadowed by B2C, B2B is big business -- twice the size of consumer marketing. And "confident" B2B marketers are nearly four times more likely to report fully aligned relationship with sales, characterized by shared goals, joint planning, and strong trust.

"It felt like you were watching the first banner ad being served," quipped long-time digital ad native Adam Broitman, referring to AT&T's "You Will" media buy 31 years ago on HotWired.com.

The future of media and marketing research will be an increasingly synthetic one, combining AI and human experiences in ways that are better than either could be on their own.

What if I told you there was a space in culture today that grew by an average of 15% every fourth quarter since 2015? And that turmoil, instability, and uncertainty don't weigh this space down, but instead appear to accelerate it?

If agentic AI handles checkout, what happens to websites? They become the equivalent of physical storefronts: places for brand storytelling, engagement, trust-building, merchandising and inventory management.

When I received pitches - days apart - this week from two agencies claiming to be the ad industry's first end-to-end AI agency platforms, I did what I increasingly do these days: I turned to some AIs. Interestingly, they didn't exactly agree.