Three separate reports from PayPal, Deloitte and Measure Protocol show how AI has increasingly become the influencer when consumers are ready to make decisions on how much, where and when they will
spend their dollars.
When people feel genuinely recognized on the screen - and thus in the message - they have more positive thoughts about the ads viewed, according to a recent study. But there is one glaring omission.
Shelly Palmer also dives into new research suggesting half of online content already is being generated by bots, and we get his impressions on the first agentic media buy.
Incomplete data systems hinder decision-making and waste marketing resources.
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.
Jason Downie, global CRO of Making Science's RAISING division, described generative AI and agentic AI with the analogy of a baseball game. The industry isn't even in the first inning - it has not
entered the stadium yet.
More than two years after launching Madison and Wall, long-time ad industry forecaster Brian Wieser has recruited Magna's Luke Stillman to the team. Both are former Wall Street analysts.
Horizon Media just dropped new research redefining what it means to be "live" in the modern time-shiftable media universe. The agency has reorganized the meaning of "live" media experiences under a
rubric consisting of three concentric layers: real-time, social reverb and cultural afterglow.
WPP Media's updated Advertising in 2030 report highlights trends as well as the future of media, technology and commerce as viewed by industry experts. Much of it revolves around biometrics and GAI.
While Americans are increasingly pinching pennies, the silver lining is that it's driving them to ad-supported streaming services or tiers, indicating an expansion of ad inventory supply.
Advertisers concerned about using too much energy or harming the environment through searches or media buys may want to consider another way to connect with potential and existing customers.
Data, analysis, and analytics are a major part of safeguards. A research paper describes multistep reasoning and how Claude thinks before it gives a response.
DoubleVerify research shows that agencies spend 26% of their time manually optimizing client campaigns, averaging out to about 10 hours per week for every employee worldwide.
As long as consumers are willing to share personal information with AI agents, AI from companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic will plan their trip, pick out and purchase
wardrobe and automatically tell them how much it will cost to plan and complete the trip.
In a new study from Mediaocean, 72% of media and marketing execs said they believe generative AI is "the most important consumer trend," followed by streaming and social media video platforms at 51%.
Google scrapes profit from advertisers through heavy use of hidden search terms, as advertisers continue to see a decline in search query data.
The more an AI model thinks, the more carbon it emits, a research study finds, and reasoning models can produce 50 times more emissions than concise ones. Large language models use tokens - words or
parts of words - to convert them into a string of numbers processed by the LLM to come up with an answer.
Google has added general availability for 2.5 Flash and Pro and is bringing custom versions into Search. Features such as reasoning and calculating tasks and costs will be important to marketers and
developers using these platforms.
Gannett became the first publisher on Wednesday to use Taboola's DeepDive generative AI search engine, but the tool seems to be missing several important features.
Apple hosts its Worldwide Developers Conference next week. For advertisers this means gaining a better understanding of how desktop and mobile referrals are split and what this means for their
media-buying strategies. For publishers it means that while AI search referrals are growing, mobile - the dominant traffic source - remains untapped. Mobile product share belongs to Apple, but Google
dominates mobile web search.
The official start of the fall television season is still about four months away. But for insiders at media companies, agencies, and advertisers (as well as television analysts like me), the upfront
season has placed thoughts of September squarely into May and June. Of course, in today's video world, the very notion of a fall TV season is antiquated. Only the broadcast networks still adhere to
seasons that begin in September and end in April or May (and promote "fall finales" like they're special episodes). Cable series tend to premiere throughout the year, and streaming platforms debut
new shows and new seasons whenever they happen to be ready, which is not always in the same month as the previous season (and viewers often have to wait more than a year for the next installment).
OpenAI's latest ChatGPT model disobeyed human instructions to shut down during a test by researchers, and I wondered "what if" AI refused to alter ad campaigns based on data the models believed could
produce better results.
As we head into upfront season, there's a reason you're hearing the term "performance media" now more than ever. Data - and the collection of it - has never been more robust.
An analyst has made two predictions related to AI - that Google AI Mode will replace traditional search, and Apple will continue to use Google's engine as its default.
One year after Google released AI Overviews, BrightEdge published data showing total search impressions rose more than 49%, highlighting a dramatic shift in how people seek and find information.
AI, online ad serving, media buying, and search require a substantial amount of energy that companies have been trying to figure out how to support. Google's agreement with nuclear developer
Elementl Power will help to develop three project sites for advanced reactors.
Reference points line up everything. It is impossible to assess our situations in the world in the absolute. We need reference points: something against which we can compare our situations to see if
they're good or bad, worse or better, proper or improper.
Analysts have begun lowering ecommerce and paid-media industry forecasts as tariff policies persist and consumer sentiment continues to fall. U.S. ecommerce growth for 2025 is now projected at 4.5%,
down from 7.5% -- and globally, excluding China, dropping to 6.5% from 9%.
A survey by iSpot finds 16% of advertisers believe there will be declines in their budgets (1% to 49%), and 27% will see gains (1% to 49%) - while just 1% see their budgets climbing by 50% or more.
Generative AI digital customer experiences are promising, but hallucinations remain a challenge with 49% of customers in a survey experiencing AI hallucinations leading to widespread skepticism about
the tech.