Marketing

Keyword Blocking Demonetized More Than Half Of Reuters’ Brand-Safe Stories

Can 2026 be the year advertisers finally let go of their keyword blocklists? News publishers sure hope so. Even brand-safety platforms want advertisers to abandon the antiquated practice of keyword blocking, which is the blunt instrument often blamed for preventing ads from appearing in the news. Arbitrarily avoiding URLs that contain words like “shoot” or

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AI Has Already Decided: First-Party Data Will Define Advertising’s Agentic Era

The industry has spent years debating third-party cookies, but AI has settled the debate. AI decision engines optimized for outcomes (sales, retention, lift) require deterministic identity, clean feedback loops and governable data lineage.  First-party data isn’t just preferred; it’s structurally necessary. And the capital is already moving: IAB’s State of Data report found that 71%

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DSP-ite The Trade Desk Backlash, Buyers Aren’t Budging; Publicis Goes Full-Court in Sports

DSPlease Brand marketers and agency buyers are skeptical of DSPs’ transparency claims. After Publicis announced last month that it’s no longer recommending The Trade Desk to its clients, other DSPs saw an opportunity to strike. Since then, other DSPs (Viant being “the most aggressive,” according to one media buyer) have been reaching out to TTD

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