Starbucks is sponsoring the second season of Amazon Prime’s reality competition “Beast Games: Strong vs. Smart” to try to reignite brand buzz.
Wall-sized TVs, smart rings, and humanoid robots make once-futuristic ideas ready for your living room.
The ad industry kept busy during the holiday season, so we rounded up the biggest stories from the last two weeks you need to know about.
CTV ad clarity gets a boost: DoubleVerify’s new tool streamlines planning and reporting to fix performance blind spots in streaming. Read online
Messasges are evolving from promo push to frictionless, full-funnel conversion tool.
New APIs let brands blend their own data with supply insights, enabling real-time, customized ad decisioning.
40% of marketers worldwide are using AI for social media management, the top reported use case, according to a September 2025 survey from MiQ and Censuswide.
2025 saw mergers, layoffs, and AI overhauls as the agency model fractured and reformed.
Agencies that don’t make AI skills a core part of employee training risk being sidelined in the age of AI.
Next year will bring shifts that redefine how networks operate, how brands show up, and how performance is measured. Here are three predictions for commerce media in 2026.
28% of retail commerce media decision-makers in North America and Europe say they review and approve creatives manually but lack automation or dynamic capabilities, according to November 2025 data from Koddi and Forrester Consulting.
Deepfake scandal clouds enterprise rollout, raising flags on brand safety and buyer trust.
Asia-Pacific ad growth will remain steady in 2026 as momentum shifts to digital, retail media, and CTV. Rising demand for premium video contrasts with uneven expansion across fast-growing and mature markets.
Our analysts (or “bakers”) will compete in a Great British Bake Off–style episode, discussing how new standards will unlock agentic ad buying and selling, and how (and why) YouTube will benefit most from the surge in video podcasts. Join Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, along with Senior Analyst Ross Benes and Principal Analyst Yory Wurmser. Listen everywhere, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
SoftBank and Alphabet acquire AI infrastructure in anticipation of a compute crunch that could limit access for businesses.
Voice assistants evolve into AI-first interfaces—blending conversation, context, and control across ecosystems.
T-Mobile’s orbit ambitions bring SMS to dead zones, expanding ad reach to highways, oceans, and rural users.
With 95% of gamers active weekly, brands that balance ad quality and compliance can gain lasting recall.
Threads and WhatsApp ads are growing as novelty draws interest, but lasting ad spend hinges on better, platform-native formats.