Adobe lifted its ad spend 30% to $1.4 billion to sell its AI story, signaling a future where marketers must sort real AI innovation from flashy features.

Amazon’s strong Q4 results were tempered by uncertainty as a $200 billion 2026 spending plan rattled investors.

It’s betting that Google’s protocols will funnel agentic payment volume to its BNPL platform.

YouTube TV's win against Disney shows marketers that platform scale now shapes where premium sports ads live.

Latin America’s video market is hitting peak penetration as streaming dominates media time. Mobile-first behaviors, platform concentration, and the popularity of short-form video are reshaping media consumption habits.

PubMatic addresses publisher concerns with AI Insights, a tool that reveals buyer, DSP, and inventory trends to clarify where demand and value move.

Short-form, shoppable, and side-by-side features aim to narrow the gap between Paramount and Netflix, but Netflix remains the safer bet for advertisers.

AI platforms’ long-held anti-advertising stance changed in January 2026. The rising cost of competing in AI has forced OpenAI and Google to launch AI ad pilots, and other platforms will likely follow suit. But advertisers may not be the winners in this gold rush.

AI is already disrupting programmatic. Generative search is reshaping web traffic, while agentic buying and curated deals redraw how ads are bought and sold. Expect more automation and more premium pipes, but tougher transparency tradeoffs.

AI was everywhere at CES 2026, from robots to toilets and toys. The race to define the next computing interface is on, agentic ad tech is emerging, and health wearables are pushing further into physiological data. Best in show: Lego’s Smart Brick.

A 4% fee puts pressure on merchants and could shift momentum to rivals like Google and Microsoft.

Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol promises a common standard for agentic commerce. But AI-driven checkout will remain small for the foreseeable future, keeping the focus on how AI influences discovery rather than where transactions are completed.

YouTube reaches more people than any other media platform in history. But saturation, slower growth, and rising competition are reshaping its future.

Supporting Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol signals a deeper bet on agentic commerce and AI-driven payments.

Trust in consumer banking varies widely in 2026. Primary banks still anchor core products. But confidence differs by generation, product, and channel, with honesty, transparency, and security shaping how consumers evaluate financial providers.

ChatGPT will begin testing ads, but while its massive userbase positions the platform to deliver ads to engaged audiences, brands must weigh the risks.

Nearly two-thirds of worldwide marketers (64%) say reduced use of traditional search engines like Google will be the top AI-driven shift impacting digital advertising over the next few years, according to a September 2025 survey from Funnel and Ravn Research.

As consumer health AI tools expand, companies must tread carefully or risk eroding consumer confidence.

New protocols aim to secure their role as default rails for bot-led shopping.