Marketing

Commoditization 2.0: How Agentic AI Could Undermine The Open Web’s Best Publishers

AI agents and so-called “super signal aggregators” are being framed as the saviors of premium publishers and advertisers who prioritize high-quality media. But these technologies could perpetuate programmatic’s worst practices and push premium media brands into a Commoditization 2.0 era. Commoditization 1.0 occurred when quality media brands legitimized the programmatic open marketplace by participating in

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Platforms Dial Back The Slop; Bullying The Media

Drain the Slop Social media companies are finally trying to cut all the junk out of their diet.  Last week, Meta announced the removal of over 500,000 Facebook accounts engaged in “spammy behavior or fake engagement,” including things like long, unrelated, hashtag-filled captions on images and videos or regurgitated content from other creators. Similarly, YouTube

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The creator agency of record is now part of the core marketing stack

Sign number 108 that creators aren’t just a tactic for marketers anymore: they’re hiring agencies of record to manage them. It might not be as headline-grabbing as Unilever’s influencer pledge or Publicis buying up Captiv8, but it signals the same shift: marketers are, for the umpteenth time, done dabbling. The era of patchwork partnerships and

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Influencer marketing survival playbook: How the creator economy is shaping up in the back half of 2025

Between the TikTok ban and the tariffs eating into marketing budgets, the first half of the year was full of growing pains in the creator economy. As the second half of 2025 shifts into focus, trends in how brands spend and creators monetize are coming into full view. Amid the so-called cultural wars, marketers are

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With performance channels under scrutiny, these marketers are testing out brand-first strategies

Amid an uncertain economy, some marketers are reconsidering their former dependence on performance strategies. They’re not cutting back on digital, though. Instead, they’re running with an updated playbook layering CTV, creator marketing and audio on top of search and social. Consider the case of Opensky, a financial services brand that offers secured credit cards to

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Nestlé Waters proves with its Lion-winning ‘Sopranos’ ad that TikTok trends and AI stunts aren’t necessary to make an impact

To launch a new sparkling water in the U.S., Nestlé Waters turned to the country’s most well-known “love affair” with Italy (as the brand’s global CMO puts it): The Sopranos. The campaign — featuring Sopranos stars Michael Imperioli (Christopher) and Steve Schirripa (Bobby) — highlighted “the craft” of creating the new beverage, Sanpellegrino CIAO!, from harvested

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Media Buying Briefing: Have media agencies really spent half their upfront dollars on streaming?

They say a watched pot never boils. That isn’t stopping media agency buyers from keeping a close eye on the ad spend flowing to streamers as this year’s TV upfronts season approaches the finish line. By some counts, we’re on the cusp of streamers like Netflix and Amazon, alongside a bevy of FAST channels, nabbing

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Seedtag’s New CEO Brian Gleason Says Contextual Will Be Bigger Than Retail Media

When Brian Gleason was CRO and president of retail media at Criteo, he was all fired up about retail media. Now Gleason, who joined contextual ad platform Seedtag as CEO earlier this month, says he believes contextual ad targeting is “an even bigger opportunity.” Marketers, he said, are ready to reembrace advertising’s roots. “We’ve become

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