How the industry actually moves.
Case studies from engagements we ran, field notes on what moved in the market, and analysis from the desk that operates the auctions. No gated fluff, no roundups.
Germany Makes Apple Rewrite Its Tracking Prompts — the First Real Crack in ATT
On 17 August, Germany's Federal Cartel Office — the Bundeskartellamt — closed a proceeding it opened in June 2022 by declaring binding a set of commitments from Apple to change how its App…
· 5 min read Field noteMKTMarketing deskChatGPT Ads Land in 31 European Markets — Six Months In, OpenAI Goes for Scale
Starting 24 August, ads appear inside ChatGPT across 31 European markets — including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.
· 5 min readChatGPT Ads Land in 31 European Markets — Six Months In, OpenAI Goes for Scale
Starting 24 August, ads appear inside ChatGPT across 31 European markets — including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.
· 5 min read
Field note
Who Counts an Impression No Human Saw? Agent-Facing Ads Hit Their Measurement Wall
The young business of selling ads to AI agents has run into the oldest question in advertising: how do you prove it worked? Digiday's 20 August media briefing lays the problem out plainly.
· 5 min read
Field note
YouTube Redefines the View and Doubles the Monetisation Bar — Every Benchmark Built on It Just Moved
The most widely used metric in video is about to mean something different. From 24 August, YouTube counts a public view the moment playback starts, with no minimum watch time.
· 5 min readWall Street Marks Down Ad Tech — Growth or No Growth
Q2 earnings season delivered a verdict that had remarkably little to do with the quarter it was supposed to be judging. Companies that grew got punished.
· 5 min read Field noteGoogle Buyer Direct Lands in the Ad Server You Already Run
Google shipped something significant this week and barely mentioned it. Buyer Direct lets AI agents automate direct sales by reading availability, live bookings and pricing straight out of…
· 5 min read Field noteBuyer Agents Are Finally Making Publisher First-Party Data Sellable
For years the publisher first-party data story has had the same ending: a genuinely valuable asset, sitting in a DMP, waiting for a monetisation path that never quite scaled.
· 4 min readEuropean Publishers Take Four Times the AI Scraping — and Robots.txt Is Ignored
European publishers have spent a year describing the AI scraping problem anecdotally. This week, TollBit put numbers on it — and the numbers are worse than the anecdotes.
· 5 min read Field noteThe Google Replacement Is a Portfolio, Not a Product
If you were waiting for the thing that replaces Google traffic, this week's publisher earnings round-up delivered the answer: there isn't one.
· 5 min read Field notePeople Inc. Won’t Block Google — Because Its Hedge Is Working
People Inc. put numbers on the referral collapse this week that would justify panic at most publishers: Google search traffic down 40% year over year, unique visitors down 22%.
· 4 min readThe Quiet Yield Leaks in Programmatic CTV — and Why Publishers Are Leaving Money on the Table
The most expensive problems in programmatic CTV are not the dramatic ones — fraud, outages, disputed measurement.
· 5 min read Field noteSmart TV Home Screens Get Standard Specs — the Premium Slot Outside the Stream Opens Up
The most valuable screen real estate in the living room may not be inside any stream at all.
· 5 min read Field noteAgentic Buying Reaches Audio — Butler/Till and iHeartMedia Run the First Agent-to-Agent Streaming Campaign
Agentic media buying has left the display-and-CTV sandbox. Independent agency Butler/Till and iHeartMedia completed what they describe as the industry's first agentic streaming-audio…
· 6 min readGermany Makes Apple Rewrite Its Tracking Prompts — the First Real Crack in ATT
On 17 August, Germany's Federal Cartel Office — the Bundeskartellamt — closed a proceeding it opened in June 2022 by declaring binding a set of commitments from Apple to change how its App…
· 5 min read Field noteIAB Redraws the AI Disclosure Line — Label What Changes Reality, Not Every Use of AI
The IAB published Version 2 of its AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework on 18 August, seven months after the original January release — and the interval explains the update.
· 5 min read Field noteIAB Tech Lab Says the AAMP-vs-AdCP Layer Map Is Wrong — the Standards Actually Compete
The tidy story the industry has been telling itself about agentic advertising standards took a direct hit on 19 August, when Shailley Singh, COO and EVP of product at the IAB Tech Lab…
· 5 min readEverything
174 pieces174 pieces
ChatGPT Ads Land in 31 European Markets — Six Months In, OpenAI Goes for Scale
Starting 24 August, ads appear inside ChatGPT across 31 European markets — including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands.
OpenAIChatGPTAI advertisingEurope Field note REGRegulation deskGermany Makes Apple Rewrite Its Tracking Prompts — the First Real Crack in ATT
On 17 August, Germany's Federal Cartel Office — the Bundeskartellamt — closed a proceeding it opened in June 2022 by declaring binding a set of commitments from Apple to change how its App…
AppleApp Tracking TransparencyBundeskartellamtGermany Field note MKTMarketing deskWho Counts an Impression No Human Saw? Agent-Facing Ads Hit Their Measurement Wall
The young business of selling ads to AI agents has run into the oldest question in advertising: how do you prove it worked? Digiday's 20 August media briefing lays the problem out plainly.
AI agentsagent-facing adsmeasurementattribution Field note REGRegulation deskIAB Redraws the AI Disclosure Line — Label What Changes Reality, Not Every Use of AI
The IAB published Version 2 of its AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework on 18 August, seven months after the original January release — and the interval explains the update.
IABAI disclosureAI transparencysynthetic media Field note REGRegulation deskIAB Tech Lab Says the AAMP-vs-AdCP Layer Map Is Wrong — the Standards Actually Compete
The tidy story the industry has been telling itself about agentic advertising standards took a direct hit on 19 August, when Shailley Singh, COO and EVP of product at the IAB Tech Lab…
IAB Tech LabAAMPAdCPagentic advertising Field note VIDVideo deskThe Quiet Yield Leaks in Programmatic CTV — and Why Publishers Are Leaving Money on the Table
The most expensive problems in programmatic CTV are not the dramatic ones — fraud, outages, disputed measurement.
CTVprogrammaticyieldbid requests Field note VIDVideo deskSmart TV Home Screens Get Standard Specs — the Premium Slot Outside the Stream Opens Up
The most valuable screen real estate in the living room may not be inside any stream at all.
Nexxensmart TVhome screen adsCTV Field note MKTMarketing deskYouTube Redefines the View and Doubles the Monetisation Bar — Every Benchmark Built on It Just Moved
The most widely used metric in video is about to mean something different. From 24 August, YouTube counts a public view the moment playback starts, with no minimum watch time.
YouTubeview countsengaged viewsYouTube Partner Program Field note VIDVideo deskAgentic Buying Reaches Audio — Butler/Till and iHeartMedia Run the First Agent-to-Agent Streaming Campaign
Agentic media buying has left the display-and-CTV sandbox. Independent agency Butler/Till and iHeartMedia completed what they describe as the industry's first agentic streaming-audio…
agentic buyingButler/TilliHeartMediaaudio Field note MKTMarketing deskOne Currency to Score Them All: The Nielsen–DoubleVerify Deal Finds Its Meaning
Two weeks on, the industry is still arguing about what Nielsen's $2.15 billion acquisition of DoubleVerify actually is.
NielsenDoubleVerifymeasurementverification Field note VIDVideo deskYouTube Pays to Keep Its Stars Off Netflix — and Content Just Learned Its Price
For years the flow ran one way: platforms held the leverage, and content took the terms on offer. This week the direction reversed in public.
YouTubeNetflixcreatorsexclusivity Field note MKTMarketing deskOmnicom Hands the Builders of Omni to a Contractor — Read It as a Buyer-Side Signal
Omnicom has spent the year telling clients that its AI-powered Omni platform is the keystone of the merged Omnicom–IPG offering, showcasing the rebuilt system at CES in January.
OmnicomEndavaOmniagencies Field note MKTMarketing deskPerplexity Blocks Time’s Agent-Facing Ads — and Claims the Right to Set the Rules
Three weeks. That is how long Time's experiment in selling ads to AI bots ran before it met its first wall.
PerplexityTimeMobianagent-facing ads Field note MKTMarketing deskThe Referees Pick Sides: Publicis Takes LiveRamp, Nielsen Defends Buying DoubleVerify
Two of ad tech's independent layers changed hands in the same news cycle, and the industry's remaining claims to neutrality got noticeably thinner.
PublicisLiveRampNielsenDoubleVerify Field note PUBPublisher deskEuropean Publishers Take Four Times the AI Scraping — and Robots.txt Is Ignored
European publishers have spent a year describing the AI scraping problem anecdotally. This week, TollBit put numbers on it — and the numbers are worse than the anecdotes.
TollBitAI scrapingrobots.txtEuropean publishers Field note PUBPublisher deskThe Google Replacement Is a Portfolio, Not a Product
If you were waiting for the thing that replaces Google traffic, this week's publisher earnings round-up delivered the answer: there isn't one.
People IncDow JonesUSA TodayZiff Davis Field note REGRegulation deskThe Stealth Bot Prohibition Act Gets Its Cost Case
When the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act was introduced in late July — we covered it at introduction in our 26 July issue — it arrived with a mechanism but not yet a headline number.
Stealth Bot Prohibition ActPoliticobot managementrobots.txt Field note MKTMarketing deskAgentic Buying Meets Supply-Path Optimisation — Prove Your Path or Lose It
The most useful counterweight to agentic hype this week came from an agency actually doing the work.
Goodway Groupagentic buyingSPOsupply path optimization Field note MKTMarketing deskWalmart’s “Independent” Gaming Publication Cuts Its Entire Editorial Team
Restart.run launched in December 2024 under a tagline that carried its own contradiction: "independent gaming news powered by Walmart." This week, the "powered by" clause exercised its…
WalmartRestart.runMoonrockbrand-funded editorial Field note PRGProgrammatic deskWall Street Marks Down Ad Tech — Growth or No Growth
Q2 earnings season delivered a verdict that had remarkably little to do with the quarter it was supposed to be judging. Companies that grew got punished.
Wall StreetQ2 earningsAppLovinThe Trade Desk Field note REGRegulation deskIAB Tech Lab Opens GPP and Data-Deletion Overhauls for Public Comment
The IAB Tech Lab put two load-bearing pieces of privacy plumbing out for public comment this week: the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) and the Data Deletion Request Framework v2.0.
IAB Tech LabGPPGlobal Privacy PlatformMSPA Field note MKTMarketing deskOpenAI Starts Pouring a Fourth Walled Garden — the SMB Ads Unit
The most consequential ad platform news of the week was not a product launch. It was a set of job listings.
OpenAIChatGPTSMB advertisingwalled gardens Field note MKTMarketing deskCMOs Can’t Connect AI Visibility to Sales — and That Gap Is a Brief
A striking number surfaced in Digiday's marketing coverage this week: 73% of CMOs have invested in AI visibility monitoring.
AI visibilityCMOsmeasurementAI Overviews Field note MKTMarketing deskAppLovin’s 8% of Online Ad Spend Sits in a Box Buyers Can’t Inspect
Two years ago, AppLovin held roughly 1% of online ad spend. Today, per AdExchanger's reporting this week, that share is approaching 8% — one of the fastest budget migrations in recent ad…
AppLovinblack boxPerformance MaxAdvantage+ Field note MKTMarketing deskWalmart Connect Ships Negative Keywords — Seven Years After Amazon
Walmart Connect added negative keywords to sponsored products this week — the ability for an advertiser to exclude specific search terms from triggering their ads.
Walmart Connectnegative keywordsretail mediaAmazon Ads Field note PRGProgrammatic deskGoogle Buyer Direct Lands in the Ad Server You Already Run
Google shipped something significant this week and barely mentioned it. Buyer Direct lets AI agents automate direct sales by reading availability, live bookings and pricing straight out of…
GoogleBuyer DirectGoogle Ad ManagerAI agents Field note PUBPublisher deskPeople Inc. Won’t Block Google — Because Its Hedge Is Working
People Inc. put numbers on the referral collapse this week that would justify panic at most publishers: Google search traffic down 40% year over year, unique visitors down 22%.
People IncNeil VogelGoogleAI crawlers Field note PUBPublisher deskStealth Crawlers Are Routing Around Your Robots.txt
Every publisher strategy for getting paid by AI companies — blocking, pay-per-crawl, tiered licensing — rests on one assumption: that bots identify themselves.
stealth crawlersrobots.txtbot managementAI scraping Field note REGRegulation deskNew Jersey’s Data Broker Law Is Already Live — and It Covers Your First-Party Data
The most dangerous privacy laws are the ones that arrive without a countdown clock. New Jersey's data broker law was signed on 30 June 2026 and is already in force — no grace period, no…
New Jerseydata broker lawfirst-party dataprivacy Field note PRGProgrammatic deskBuyer Agents Are Finally Making Publisher First-Party Data Sellable
For years the publisher first-party data story has had the same ending: a genuinely valuable asset, sitting in a DMP, waiting for a monetisation path that never quite scaled.
PubMaticOptableagentic advertisingfirst-party data Field note MKTMarketing deskChatGPT Ads Get Real Plumbing — and Product Carousels Aimed at Q4
Two announcements in the same week, from two directions, describe one platform growing up fast.
OpenAIChatGPTadvertisingproduct carousels Field note MKTMarketing deskNielsen Takes DoubleVerify Private for $2.15 Billion — Verification Loses Its Independence
Nielsen is acquiring DoubleVerify for approximately $2.15 billion in an all-cash deal — $13.60 a share, a 30% premium — expected to close by Q1 2027.
NielsenDoubleVerifyverificationacquisition Field note PRGProgrammatic deskThe Trade Desk Grows 3% — and the Mix Is a Demand Map
The largest independent DSP just told the market what open-internet demand actually looks like right now, and the market did not like it.
The Trade DeskQ2 earningsDSPmid-market advertisers Field note PRGProgrammatic deskMagnite Doesn’t Want to Be a DSP — It Wants the Decisioning Layer
"More valuable decisions are moving toward the supply side." That single sentence is the thesis of Magnite's quarter, and it is worth more attention from publishers than the earnings…
MagniteSSPSpringServecuration Field note VIDVideo deskCTV’s Real Divide Isn’t PMP vs. Open Market — It’s Quality Control
PMPs now carry 99.2% of programmatic CTV spend. That number was supposed to be the end of the CTV quality debate: move everything into private deals, away from the open market's chaos, and…
CTVPMPdeal IDsinventory quality Field note MKTMarketing deskMarkdown for AI Bots: Cheaper to Scrape, Unproven to Cite
The AI-optimisation tactic of the moment is disarmingly simple: publish a markdown version of your site — no JavaScript, no visuals, no ad stack, just clean structured text — so that AI…
markdownAI crawlersGEOcitations Field note MKTMarketing deskThe IAB’s AI Visibility Guidance — Explicitly Not a Standard
The IAB published its first serious framework for measuring how brands and publishers show up in AI search — and spent almost as much effort explaining what the document is not.
IABAI visibilitymeasurement4Ps Field note MKTMarketing deskAppLovin Grows 50%, Falls 20% — a Lesson in How Slowly Budgets Move
AppLovin posted $1.9 billion in Q2 revenue and roughly $1.3 billion in net income, both up more than 50% year over year — and the stock still fell more than 20% after hours.
AppLovinQ2 earningsecommerce adsbudget cycles Field note PRGProgrammatic deskPubMatic Kills Its Web Wrapper — and Tells You What a Wrapper Is Worth
For years, the wrapper was the thing SSPs fought to own. It sat closest to the publisher, it saw every bid, and whoever ran it controlled the plumbing of the auction.
PubMaticOpenWrapPlaywirePrebid Field note PUBPublisher deskTime Is Now Selling Ads to AI Bots. Your Crawl Just Became Inventory.
Every publisher argument about AI crawlers to date has been framed as defence: block them, license them, sue them, or eat the loss.
TimeMobianAI agentsbot traffic Field note PUBPublisher deskLife Without Googlebot: The Modelling Has Begun in Earnest
Two weeks ago the story was publishers saying out loud that they might leave Google Search. This week the story is quieter and more serious: they have started doing the arithmetic.
GoogleGooglebotAI OverviewsReuters Field note PUBPublisher deskReddit Grew Ads 64%. The Market Docked It 13% for Its Google Habit.
If you want to know how capital markets now price a content business, this week produced the cleanest experiment you will ever get.
RedditQ2 earningsGoogleAI Overviews Field note MKTMarketing deskGoogle Blinks on PMax: Advertisers Can Finally Opt Out of Your Inventory
Since Performance Max launched in 2021, its bargain has been non-negotiable: hand Google the budget and the black box decides where it goes — Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Discover, and…
Performance MaxGoogleGDNSearch Partners Field note MKTMarketing deskPrincipal Media Is Paying the Holdcos' AI Bills — and Omnicom’s Q2 Shows the Math
Two stories landed this week that read as one. Digiday reported how agency holding companies are funding their AI investments; Omnicom's earnings showed what that funding mechanism looks…
principal mediaOmnicomholdcosAI costs Field note VIDVideo deskFreeWheel Switches On Show-Level Reporting — Seven Streamers Opt In
Streaming's transparency problem has always had a simple shape: buyers spend premium CPMs on premium video and then cannot see which shows their ads actually ran in.
FreeWheelCTVshow-level reportingtransparency Field note MKTMarketing deskAmazon Clears $19.8B in Ad Revenue — and Barely Mentions It
The most remarkable thing about Amazon's second quarter was not the number. It was how little anyone at Amazon wanted to talk about it.
AmazonearningsQ2 2026retail media Field note MKTMarketing deskMeta’s Ad Revenue Grew 27%. Its Expenses Grew 55%.
Meta's second quarter reads like two companies sharing one income statement. The first grew ad revenue 27% year over year to $59.4 billion, on total revenue of $60.4 billion, up 28% — a…
MetaearningsQ2 2026generative AI Field note VIDVideo deskXbox Tests Ad-Supported Game Streaming
New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma delivered the kind of internal assessment executives usually reserve for private memos: "our business today is not healthy." Her response, reported this week, is a…
XboxMicrosoftgame streamingad-supported Field note REGRegulation deskIAB Tech Lab Ships AAMP 2.3 — Agentic Buying Gets Its Guardrails
Agentic advertising has spent two years arriving as speculation — panels, prototypes and press releases about a future in which software buys media from software.
IAB Tech LabAAMPagentic advertisingAgentic Audiences Field note REGRegulation deskFTC, Utah and California Sue Hims & Hers Over Health Data Shared With Ad Platforms
The FTC put ad-platform data sharing back in the dock this week, and it brought company. The Commission, joined by Utah and California as plaintiffs, sued telehealth company Hims & Hers in…
FTCHims & Hershealth dataMeta Whitepaper PRGProgrammatic deskPPID on signal-poor inventory: the 15% is not 15% of your revenue
Google measured the uplift on the cookieless slice, not the whole book. Here is what the number means, and the formula for your own version of it.
PPIDIdentityCookielessGoogle Ad Manager Case study PRGProgrammatic deskMSN scaled Google demand to 80+ markets — without conflicting with direct sales.
One of the largest premium publishers in the world ran without Google demand to protect direct sales. We proposed proving the two could coexist.
Google Ad ManagerPrice floorsPPIDPremium publisher Analysis PRGProgrammatic deskThe floor you set is a bid you refuse
In a first-price auction a floor is an instruction you hand to every bid-shading algorithm buying your inventory.
Price floorsFirst-pricePrebidBid shading Field note PUBPublisher deskOnce Unimaginable: Publishers Are Preparing to Turn Google Off
For twenty years the one thing no publisher would do was leave Google Search. This week, three of the largest content businesses on the open web said out loud that they are preparing to do…
GooglesearchAI crawlersReddit Field note REGRegulation deskThe EU Fines Google €890M and Orders Structural Change to Search, Ads and Play
On July 24, 2026 the European Commission fined Google €890 million — roughly $1.01 billion — for two separate breaches of the Digital Markets Act. The number will get the headlines.
GoogleEuropean CommissionDMAself-preferencing Field note MKTMarketing deskAlphabet Posted a $119.8B Quarter — and Barely Mentioned Advertising
Alphabet reported Q2 2026 revenue of $119.8 billion, up from $96.4 billion a year earlier. YouTube advertising hit $11.1 billion, up from $9.8 billion.
GoogleAlphabetearningsGoogle Network Field note REGRegulation deskA Federal Judge Halted the $110B Paramount–Warner Bros. Deal Days Before Closing
Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery expected to close on July 22. On Monday, July 20, US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in Oakland granted a temporary restraining order…
Paramount SkydanceWarner Bros DiscoveryantitrustClayton Act Field note REGRegulation deskCongress Goes After Disguised AI Crawlers — The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act
On July 23, 2026, Representatives Laurel Lee (FL-15) and Valerie Foushee (NC-4) introduced the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, a bipartisan bill requiring AI-powered web crawlers to disclose…
AI crawlersbotsFTCNews Media Alliance Field note MKTMarketing deskThe W3C’s Attribution API Could Decide Who Owns Web Measurement — and Publishers Are in the Room
A new draft of the W3C Attribution API published in July 2026 has moved into wider industry review, and the argument that followed is not really about the specification.
W3Cattributionprivacybrowsers Field note REGRegulation desk“Not Knowing Who’s In Your Audience Isn’t Good Enough Anymore” — Children’s Privacy Comes for Everyone
The FTC's updated COPPA Rule reached its enforcement deadline on April 22, 2026. Three months in, the practical consequences are landing on publishers who never considered themselves…
COPPAFTCchildren's privacyage verification Field note MKTMarketing deskAmazon’s Million-Dollar Sellers Revolted — and Won Something
A group called Million Dollar Sellers (MDS) — merchants doing seven figures or more on Amazon — organised a boycott against the platform this month over changes that weakened their…
Amazonretail mediasellerstransparency Field note VIDVideo deskCTV’s Dead Air Gets a Standard: Pause and Menu Ads Are Becoming Programmatic Inventory
Two items landed within 48 hours of each other this week that, read together, mark a new inventory class becoming buyable at scale.
IAB Tech LabCTVpause adsVAST Field note VIDVideo deskParamount Builds a “Free Front Porch,” Disney Hints, Netflix Says No — Streaming’s Free-Tier Split
The three biggest names in streaming took visibly different positions on free, ad-supported viewing this week, and the disagreement is more instructive than any of the individual moves.
ParamountNetflixDisneyPluto TV Field note PRGProgrammatic deskBeehiiv Built Its Own SSP — Newsletters Are Getting a Programmatic Layer
Beehiiv rolled out programmatic ads for newsletters this week, extending a direct-sales ad network it launched two and a half years ago across a platform of roughly 60,000 publishers.
beehiivnewslettersSSPprogrammatic Field note PRGProgrammatic deskProgrammatic Says It Wants Transparency — Until a Watchdog Asks for a Seat
Check My Ads, the nonprofit that has spent years documenting where programmatic money actually lands, wanted to do what any researcher would: buy some ads and look at the supply chain from…
Check My AdsDSPtransparencysupply chain Field note PUBPublisher deskPublisher Ad Supply Fell Up to 40% in Q2 — AI Search Is Shrinking the Open Web’s Impression Base
The open web is producing dramatically fewer ad impressions, and the drop is not subtle. New data from Ozone — drawn from roughly 20 billion impressions across a premium publisher network…
Ozonead supplyAI searchprogrammatic Field note VIDVideo deskAn $80 Billion Video Market Where Two-Thirds of Buyers Don’t Trust the Open Exchange
Digital video spending is booming. Confidence in the inventory being bought is doing the opposite.
IABdigital videoCTVtransparency Field note VIDVideo deskNielsen ONE and VideoAmp Both Walk Away from MRC Accreditation — TV Currency Loses Its Referee
The two leading contenders to become cross-platform TV's measurement currency have both stepped out of the accreditation process at the same time.
NielsenVideoAmpMRCaccreditation Field note MKTMarketing deskIP Targeting Misses Three Times in Four, and Match Rates Have Fallen Below 10% — Identity Is Failing in Public
Two separate research releases this week put hard numbers on something buyers have suspected for a while: the identity layer underneath digital advertising is not performing anywhere near…
identityCTVattributionmatch rates Field note VIDVideo deskNetflix’s Ad Business Doubles to $3B — While It Cuts Back on Telling Anyone What Gets Watched
Netflix reported Q2 2026 revenue of $12.56 billion, up roughly 13% year over year from $11.1B — just under the ~$12.59B consensus — with net income of $3.4 billion ($0.80 per share).
NetflixCTVstreamingupfronts Field note REGRegulation deskPublishers Are Building Their Own Meter: SPUR’s Telemetry Standard and the SAIL Ledger
If you can't measure how AI systems use your content, you can't price it — and two publisher-led efforts launched this month are attacking exactly that.
SPURSAILAI licensingtelemetry Field note PUBPublisher deskAI Visibility Is Publishers' Newest Sellable Currency — And Nobody Can Measure It Yet
A new line item is appearing on publisher rate cards, and it isn't impressions. Axios, Forbes, Future, Time and The Washington Post are packaging AI-visibility metrics into products sold to…
AI visibilityGEOgenerative engine optimizationLLM discoverability Field note REGRegulation deskBook Publishers Sue Google Over Gemini Training — and an Internal Document Cites '$10Bs-$100Bs' in Exposure
The AI training-data fight has reached Google Books. Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier and novelist Scott Turow have filed a class action against Google in the U.S.
GoogleGeminicopyrightlitigation Field note REGRegulation deskThe EU Orders Google to Share Search Data and Open Android to Rival AI Assistants
Europe just extended its gatekeeper rules into the AI layer. The European Commission has issued two binding specification decisions under the Digital Markets Act, requiring Google to share…
DMAEuropean CommissionGoogleAndroid Field note PUBPublisher deskReddit Says the Quiet Part: Are Its AI Data Deals Eating Its Own Ad Business?
Every publisher weighing an AI licensing check has had this thought privately. Reddit just said it on stage.
RedditAI licensingOpenAIGoogle Field note PRGProgrammatic deskStagwell Builds Its Own AI Curation Marketplace — Agencies Are Taking the Supply Path In-House
Another intermediary layer just got insourced. Stagwell is launching Stagwell Curate, an AI-powered platform aggregating CTV, online video, display and audio inventory from publishers and…
Stagwellcurationsupply path optimizationSSP Field note MKTMarketing deskMeridian and Robyn: The Walled Gardens Are Writing the Measurement Layer
As tracking collapses, marketing mix modeling has become the fallback — and the two most widely adopted MMM tools were built by the two companies with the most to gain from what those…
MMMmarketing mix modelingMeridianRobyn Field note MKTMarketing deskPrivate Equity Comes for Criteo: A 50%+ Takeover Bid, and What a Take-Private Means for the Open Web
One of ad tech's most recognizable independents is in play. Reporting this week says Vista Equity Partners and investment firm Quinti Capital submitted a takeover offer for Criteo at a…
CriteoVista Equityprivate equityretail media Field note VIDVideo deskSky to Buy ITV’s Media Business for £1.6B — and One Owner Would Control ~70% of UK TV Ads
British TV just moved toward a single center of gravity. Sky has agreed to acquire ITV's Media & Entertainment division for £1.6 billion (about $2.14 billion), according to reporting this…
SkyITVUKCTV Field note VIDVideo deskWarner Bros. Discovery Hands Its Ad Stack to Amazon: The Hyperscaler Now Runs the Pipes
A major premium publisher just outsourced a core part of its business to a cloud giant. Warner Bros.
Warner Bros DiscoveryAWSAmazonCTV Field note VIDVideo deskParamount Rebuilds Its Ad Stack Under an Ex-Google Exec — What It Signals for CTV Supply
A top-five US media owner is retooling the engine room of its ad business. Paramount is consolidating its advertising-technology and product teams under Hugh Williams, a former Google…
ParamountCTVad techPluto TV Field note PRGProgrammatic deskPubMatic Plants Its Flag in Gaming: A Zynga Deal Extends Programmatic Into In-Game Inventory
The programmatic pipes just reached into a new room. PubMatic has partnered with Zynga to connect advertisers to roughly 200 million mobile-gaming users, in a deal reported this week.
PubMaticZyngain-game advertisingprogrammatic Field note REGRegulation deskThe IAB Is Rewriting the Video Rulebook — New Media-Type Standard and Programmatic Streaming Signals
Two standards moves this week point the same direction: the industry is trying to give video a common language and make new streaming formats buyable programmatically.
IABIAB Tech LabvideoCTV Field note PRGProgrammatic deskEurope’s Ad Market Hits €131B — and the Growth Is All Video, Programmatic and Retail Media
The numbers are in, and they tell publishers exactly where the money is moving. Per IAB Europe's AdEx Benchmark Report, covered this week, European ad spend grew 10.5% year over year to…
IAB EuropeAdExprogrammaticretail media Field note REGRegulation deskGoogle Will Now Show 'How This Ad Was Made' — AI Disclosure Becomes an Industry Norm
AI-generated advertising just got a label. Google has launched a "How this ad was made" section in My Ad Center, rolling out globally across Search, YouTube, and Discover, that lets users…
GoogleAItransparencydisclosure Field note REGRegulation deskNew Jersey Bans the Sale of Precise Location Data — Another Brick in the State Privacy Wall
The US privacy patchwork got another piece. New Jersey has enacted a law restricting the sale of precise and sensitive location data, reported this week — the latest in a widening set of…
privacyregulationlocation dataNew Jersey Field note MKTMarketing deskDentsu Wires Into Meta’s Creator Machine — and Influencer Budgets Route Further From Publishers
The agency-platform plumbing keeps getting tighter. Dentsu announced an API partnership with Meta that integrates Instagram, Threads, and Facebook Creator Marketplace and Partnership Ads…
DentsuMetainfluencercreators Field note MKTMarketing deskThe $30B 'Mediapalooza' Is Loading — Why the Great Account-Review Wave Matters to Publishers
Billions of dollars in ad budgets are about to change hands — and the terms attached to them are shifting.
media reviewagenciesbudgetsCoca-Cola Field note VIDVideo deskComcast Splits in Two: NBCUniversal and Sky Break Free — and a New Streaming Ad Giant Is Born
Comcast announced on June 29, 2026 that it will split into two independent publicly traded companies, spinning off NBCUniversal and Sky into a standalone media business separate from its…
ComcastNBCUniversalSkyPeacock Field note PUBPublisher deskGoogle’s New Deal to Publishers: Hand Over Your Archive to Train Our AI, or Lose Your Checks
According to reporting that broke around July 1–2, 2026 (originating with The Information and picked up across the trade and mainstream press), Google is moving publishers off its legacy…
GoogleAI trainingNews Showcaselicensing Field note MKTMarketing deskOpenAI Is Building an Ad Platform at Breakneck Speed — and Publishers Aren’t in the Revenue Split
In a two-part interview published by Digiday on June 30, 2026, OpenAI's global head of ads, David Dugan, laid out how fast the company is turning ChatGPT into an advertising business — and…
OpenAIChatGPTadvertisingad platform Field note PUBPublisher deskCloudflare Rewrites the AI-Crawler Bargain: From 'Pay Per Crawl' to 'Pay Per Query'
Cloudflare is moving its AI-bot compensation model from "pay per crawl" to "pay per query," it said around July 2, 2026 — a shift that tries to price AI access to publisher content by the…
CloudflareAI crawlerspay per querypublishers Field note MKTMarketing deskApple Quietly Walks Away from SKAdNetwork — and Mobile Measurement Loses Its Anchor
Apple has effectively abandoned SKAdNetwork (SKAN) — the privacy-preserving mobile-measurement framework it once told the entire app economy was "the future" — according to analysis by Eric…
AppleSKAdNetworkSKANmobile measurement Field note PRGProgrammatic deskAI Buyers Skip 86% of the Auctions — and Still Win. What Agentic Buying Is Doing to Your Yield
New June 2026 data reported by MediaPost on July 2, 2026 puts numbers on a shift publishers have felt but couldn't measure: AI-agent buyers are entering 86% fewer auctions than traditional…
programmaticagentic AImedia buyingCPM Field note PRGProgrammatic deskThe Trade Desk Pushes OpenPath into the Netherlands — and Reopens the 'How Much Reaches the Publisher?' Fight
The Trade Desk has integrated its first Dutch publisher — Amsterdam-based publishing house Massarius — into OpenPath, its direct pipe that lets the DSP buy publisher inventory without the…
The Trade DeskOpenPathMassariusprogrammatic Field note PUBPublisher deskSix UK Publishers Just Formed a United Front — Inside Atria’s Bid to Reclaim Curation from Ad Tech
Six of the UK's biggest publishers — Hearst UK, Bauer Media, Immediate, Future, HELLO! and Time Out — have banded together as Atria, a collective (built with Permutive) that jointly curates…
AtriacurationUK publishersHearst Field note REGRegulation desk'Surveillance Pricing' Laws Are Coming for the Subscription Playbook Publishers Don’t Talk About
A wave of new "surveillance pricing" laws — and a fresh class-action lawsuit — is taking direct aim at a practice most publishers use but rarely discuss: charging different subscription…
surveillance pricingsubscriptionsregulationWashington Post Field note MKTMarketing deskReddit Goes All-In on Performance: Automated Buying, Better CPAs, and a Push Down the Funnel
Reddit is accelerating its transformation from a brand-awareness platform into a performance-marketing machine.
Redditperformance marketingMax campaignsCPA Field note PUBPublisher deskThe Economist Bets on a Cheaper Audio-and-Video Tier to Win a Younger Audience
The Economist launched "Economist Play" on July 1, 2026 — a standalone audio-and-video subscription priced around $15/month, roughly $10 below its all-access tier — explicitly built to…
The EconomistEconomist Playsubscriptionsaudio Field note MKTMarketing deskiHeart Becomes Amazon’s Reseller — What the Expanded Deal Tells Publishers About Surviving the Giants
iHeartMedia just expanded its partnership with Amazon Ads, and the shape of the deal is as instructive as the deal itself.
AmazoniHeartMediaaudiopodcasts Field note PUBPublisher deskGoogle Broadens Its Publisher AI Licensing Deals — While Zero-Click Search Eats Their Traffic
Two stories landed this week that are really one story. First: Google is reportedly broadening its publisher licensing deals, including arrangements that pay for content to train and ground…
GoogleAI Overviewszero-clickAI licensing Field note MKTMarketing deskCannes 2026’s Two Hard Questions: Who Pays for the Open Web, and Is Agentic Buying Just a New Ad Tax?
Cannes Lions is usually where the ad industry congratulates itself. This year it doubled as a mid-year reckoning, and for publishers the two questions on everyone's lips cut right to the…
Cannes Lionsopen webagenticagency model Field note VIDVideo deskFox Buys Roku for $22B — and Publishers Just Watched a New TV Walled Garden Get Built
Fox Corporation is acquiring Roku for $22 billion — roughly $160 a share — in the biggest signal yet that connected TV's bid for share has entered its consolidation phase.
FoxRokuCTVconnected TV Field note MKTMarketing deskAmazon’s Alexa+ Agentic Ads Turn the Ad Into the Checkout — and That Should Worry Publishers
Amazon has launched Alexa+ Agentic Ads, a new format where a shopper can see an ad, ask Alexa questions about it, weigh options, and complete the purchase — all inside a single…
AmazonAlexaagentic adsvoice commerce Field note VIDVideo deskWalmart Buys 'the Google Ads of Streaming' — Retail Media Is Coming for CTV
Walmart has agreed to acquire Vibe.co, a self-serve connected-TV ad platform built for small and mid-sized businesses, in a deal reported at a ~$1.4 billion valuation.
WalmartVibe.coretail mediaCTV Field note REGRegulation deskIAB Tech Lab’s SupplyChain v1.1 Wants to Show You Every Hand Your Bid Request Passed Through
The IAB Tech Lab has proposed SupplyChain v1.1, calling it one of the biggest transparency upgrades to programmatic advertising in years.
IAB Tech LabSupplyChainsellers.jsontransparency Field note REGRegulation deskMeta Will Use Your Off-Platform Activity to Train Its Feeds and Ads — Again
Meta has announced it will use activity from third-party websites and apps to further personalize content and advertising across Facebook and Instagram — and, notably, to influence feed…
MetaFacebookInstagramfirst-party data Field note MKTMarketing deskTikTok Opens Its Ad Stack to Outside Tech With an MCP Server — and Stacks On New AI Formats
TikTok is pushing past AI creative tools and into AI-native ad infrastructure. The headline move: TikTok now offers a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets developers bring their…
TikTokMCPModel Context ProtocolSymphony AI Field note PRGProgrammatic deskEA Built an Ad Server Into Its Game Engine — and the Ad-Server Map Just Redrew Itself
Electronic Arts has launched EA Advertising — a proprietary ad server built directly into its game engine.
Electronic ArtsEA Advertisingin-game adsad server Field note PRGProgrammatic deskPubMatic’s Decision Fabric Moves the 'Brain' of Programmatic to the Sell Side
For fifteen years, the DSP has been the brain of programmatic — the place where targeting decisions get made before a bid is sent. PubMatic is challenging that.
PubMaticDecision FabricAgenticOSSSP Field note REGRegulation deskGoogle’s Ad-Tech Empire Reaches Its Moment of Truth — What a Divestiture Would Mean for Publishers
The slowest-moving, highest-stakes story in our industry is finally approaching its conclusion.
GoogleantitrustDOJAdX Field note VIDVideo deskDisney Pulls Its Sell-Side Under One Roof (DRAX) — CTV’s Stack Wars Are Here
The CTV ad-tech bid for share has a clear new phase: the biggest media owners are no longer just selling streaming inventory — they're building and consolidating the infrastructure that…
DisneyDisney+DRAXCTV Case study MKTMarketing desk44× ROAS on search. Then automation made it scale.
Pegasus Airlines on Microsoft Advertising — and 33× within five months of the PMAX launch.
Microsoft AdvertisingSearchPMAXTravel Field note MKTMarketing deskMeta Is About to Outearn Google in Ads — and Publishers Should Read It as a Warning
For two decades, "the digital ad market" was a polite way of saying "Google." That sentence is about to need a rewrite.
MetaGooglead revenuewalled gardens Field note VIDVideo deskNetflix Puts AI Agents to Work on Its $3 Billion Ad Business — and Rebuilds Its Stack
Netflix's advertising business is no longer the experiment it was in 2022. It's a $3 billion operation — and Netflix is now industrializing it on two fronts at once: bringing AI agents into…
NetflixCTVAI agentsad tech Field note PRGProgrammatic deskAmazon Opens Its Server to Prebid — A Quiet Move With Loud Implications for Publishers
Amazon doesn't usually do "collaborative." Its advertising machine — Amazon DSP on the buy side, the Amazon Publisher Services (APS) / Transparent Ad Marketplace stack on the sell side…
AmazonAPSPrebidheader bidding Field note MKTMarketing deskTikTok Opens Its Ads to Third-Party AI Agents — and Returns to the NewFronts a Year After the Brink
A year after a near-ban and a forced-sale saga that nearly removed it from the US market, TikTok is doing two things at once: rejoining the advertising establishment (it's back at the…
TikTokAI agentsNewFrontsprogrammatic Field note MKTMarketing deskOpenAI Starts Building the Ad — Not Just Selling It. The Creative Bottleneck Is Next
A few months into its advertising pilot, OpenAI has tipped its hand about where it's really going.
OpenAIChatGPTgenerative AIad creative Field note PRGProgrammatic deskForrester’s First SSP Ranking in a Decade Calls Google a 'Challenger' — Read That Twice
Analyst rankings rarely make headlines. This one should. Forrester released its first SSP (supply-side platform) Wave since 2014 — and ranked Google, the company that has defined and…
ForresterSSPGoogleAdX Field note REGRegulation deskThe IAB Tech Lab Is Quietly Rewriting the Rails for an Agentic, Live, AI-Saturated Web
While the headlines go to giants and lawsuits, the most consequential long-term work in ad tech is happening in a standards body.
IAB Tech LabOpenRTBagenticstandards Field note PRGProgrammatic deskPubMatic and Magnite’s Earnings Tell the Sell-Side Story: CTV Up, AI Agents In
If you want to know where the independent sell-side is heading, read the SSP earnings. The two biggest independent supply-side platforms — PubMatic and Magnite — both reported Q1 2026…
PubMaticMagniteSSPCTV Field note PUBPublisher deskGoogle Ships the Switch: AI Visibility Data and an Opt-Out Toggle Land in Search Console
Days after UK regulators ordered Google to give publishers control over AI features, Google started shipping the plumbing.
GoogleSearch ConsoleAI OverviewsAI Mode Field note VIDVideo deskThe $10.5 Billion Kickoff: What the World Cup Means for Publishers
The biggest single advertising event in years began this week. The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicked off on June 11, hosted across the US, Canada, and Mexico, and it is expected to pour an…
World CupFIFACTVstreaming Field note VIDVideo deskThe Most Valuable Screen in the Living Room Just Went Programmatic
For years, the single most-seen ad unit in connected TV — the one you can't avoid, the one that loads the instant you press the power button — has been sold the slow way: direct…
SamsungCTVprogrammaticThe Trade Desk Field note PRGProgrammatic deskAmazon Puts Attention on the Price Tag — Before the Bid
Attention measurement has spent years as a post-campaign report card — interesting, but too late to act on. This week it moved to the front of the line.
AmazonAmazon DSPAdelaideattention metrics Field note MKTMarketing deskChatGPT Ads Go Downmarket: Criteo Cuts the Minimum to $10K and Matches Every Dollar
The ad-supported AI assistant is no longer an experiment reserved for the biggest brands. This week, Criteo — OpenAI's first ad-tech partner — lowered the minimum spend for advertising in…
OpenAIChatGPTCriteoAI advertising Field note PRGProgrammatic deskDynamic Take Rates: A Market-Wide Squeeze Dressed Up as Innovation
Every few years the ad-tech middle invents a new word for the same old thing: taking more of the publisher's dollar.
take ratesSSPprogrammaticsupply path Field note PRGProgrammatic deskOwn or Rent? Why Ad Tech’s New Battleground Is the Cloud Underneath It
Ask an SSP what makes it different in 2026 and you'll increasingly hear an answer that sounds more like a data-center pitch than an ad-tech one.
cloudinfrastructureAWSGoogle Cloud Field note REGRegulation deskRead the Fine Print: Revised IAB Terms Are Quietly Shifting Risk onto Publishers
Not every consequential story arrives with a press release. This week, the practitioner community flagged a change that won't trend on LinkedIn but could cost publishers real money: revised…
IABstandard termspublishersSSP Field note VIDVideo deskDisney Folds Hulu Into Disney+ — One Ad-Supported Streaming Giant Takes Shape
The long-telegraphed merger is now in its final stretch: Hulu is being folded into Disney+, ending as a standalone U.S. app and consolidating into a single platform.
DisneyDisney+Huluad-supported streaming Field note PRGProgrammatic deskGoogle and The Trade Desk Walk Away from TAG — While Viant Wires a Direct Pipe to Publishers
Two items in the same week's news cycle, pointing in the same direction. The two biggest names in demand — Google and The Trade Desk — declined to renew their TAG accreditations, and Viant…
GoogleThe Trade DeskTAGViant Field note VIDVideo deskNetflix Wires Amazon and Yahoo Data Into Its CTV Ad Stack
Netflix is no longer trying to be a closed garden. To make its fast-growing ad tier easier to buy and target, it's plugging third-party audience data and demand from Amazon and Yahoo…
NetflixAmazonYahooCTV Field note REGRegulation deskGoogle’s Ad-Tech Remedies Near a Decision — AdX/DFP Divestiture vs. Behavioral Fixes
The most consequential antitrust case in the history of digital advertising is approaching its remedies decision, and publishers have more at stake than anyone.
GoogleantitrustDOJAdX Field note REGRegulation deskA World First: UK Regulators Just Handed Publishers an Off Switch for Google’s AI
While American publishers fight AI scraping one lawsuit at a time, a regulator on the other side of the Atlantic just did something no court has managed: it gave publishers a…
CMAGoogleAI OverviewsAI Mode Field note MKTMarketing deskAmazon’s June Power Play — Prime Day Moves Up, Dynamic TV Creative Scales, and the DSP Hits 90% Reach
Amazon is compressing its advertising flywheel into June, and the moves rhyme: take the shopping event, the TV ad product, and the demand-side platform — and fuse them tighter than any…
AmazonPrime VideoPrime DayDynamic TV Creative Field note REGRegulation deskIAB’s June Comment Calendar — Campaign Data Standards (June 14) and TCF v5.0-B (June 29)
June is a heavy month for industry standards, and publishers who skip the public-comment windows are choosing to live with rules other people write.
IABIAB Tech LabIAB EuropeCampaign Data Standards Field note PUBPublisher deskThe AI Search Reckoning — Referral Traffic Collapses, and Publishers Pivot to Paid
The numbers publishers feared are now the numbers publishers are budgeting around. This week's coverage from AdExchanger and Digiday put hard figures on the AI-search hit — and on the…
AI OverviewsGooglezero-clickreferral traffic Field note PRGProgrammatic deskThe Disintermediation Trade — Holdcos Go Agent-to-Agent, SSPs Answer With Operating Systems
There's a quiet structural war underway in programmatic, and this week it came into focus. On one side, the agency holding companies are using AI agents to buy media directly — squeezing…
OmnicomWPPPubMaticAgenticOS Field note REGRegulation deskFrom Open Internet to Open Agent — IAB Tech Lab’s AAMP, AdCP, and the Agentic-Standards Landscape
This week AdExchanger ran a piece with a thesis that should make every publisher sit up: "From Open Internet To Open Agent — The Architecture Buyers Were Promised Is Finally Here." The…
AAMPAdCPIAB Tech Labagentic advertising Case study PRGProgrammatic deskA direct-sales publisher let us challenge everything. Programmatic revenue rose 370%.
Four months, one anonymised Turkish news publisher, and a willingness to test every assumption in the stack.
ProgrammaticDirect salesTürkiyeNews Field note REGRegulation deskThe Perplexity Flashpoint — CNN Sues, and Publishers Reject the 'Trust' Pitch
The fight between publishers and AI answer engines got a new front line this week. On May 28, CNN sued Perplexity in the U.S.
PerplexityCNNAI copyrightanswer engines Field note REGRegulation deskBlock or Don’t Block? IAB Tech Lab’s New Bot-Management Guidance Meets Microsoft’s 'Leave the AI Bots Alone'
The single most operational decision a publisher faces in 2026 — let AI crawlers in, or shut them out — got both a rulebook and a counter-argument this week.
IAB Tech LabAI botscrawlersCoMP API Field note REGRegulation deskIAB Tech Lab’s OpenRTB Live-Content Signals Hit the Deadline — Public Comment Closes May 28
The clock is running on one of the more practically useful standards updates of the year. IAB Tech Lab's proposed new OpenRTB attributes for live content, plus a new substitution macro, are…
IAB Tech LabOpenRTBlive contentCTV Field note MKTMarketing deskMeta Opens Its Ad Stack to Third-Party AI Agents — ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity Can Now Drive Meta Campaigns
Meta is opening its advertising ecosystem to third-party AI agents. The company moved its Meta ads AI connectors into open beta for eligible advertisers globally, letting them run and…
Metaagentic AIMCPChatGPT Field note VIDVideo deskAfter the Upfronts: 'Agentic,' 'Outcomes,' and 'Fandom' — How Netflix, NBCU, and Fox Are Repricing Streaming Attention
With the 2026 upfronts wrapped, the dust has settled enough to see what was actually said versus what was staged.
NetflixNBCUniversalFoxCTV Field note MKTMarketing deskGoogle Marketing Live 2026 — Gemini Becomes the Operating System of Ads, Commerce, and Measurement
At Google Marketing Live on May 20, Google stopped describing Gemini as a feature and started treating it as the operating system underneath its entire advertising, commerce, and…
GoogleGoogle Marketing LiveGeminiagentic AI Field note MKTMarketing deskOmnicom and Horizon Accelerate Their LiveRamp Exits — the Publicis Deal’s First Casualties Are Identity Contracts
A week after Publicis announced its $2.2B acquisition of LiveRamp, the fallout is already concrete.
OmnicomHorizon MediaLiveRampPublicis Field note MKTMarketing deskThe Trade Desk Opens Its DSP Inside Skai and Pacvue — the Walls Between Programmatic, Search, and Retail Media Start to Fall
At AdExchanger's inaugural Programmatic AI event in Las Vegas (May 18–20), The Trade Desk made a quietly significant move: it will let mutual clients use its DSP inside Skai and Pacvue…
The Trade DeskSkaiPacvueretail media Field note MKTMarketing deskSnap Stops Grading Its Own Homework — Unified Attribution Brings Third-Party Measurement Into the Walled Garden
On May 20, Snap announced Unified Attribution, a product that aligns Snap's own measurement with data from mobile measurement partners (MMPs) so app advertisers can track and optimize…
SnapattributionmeasurementMMP Field note PUBPublisher deskAmazon Cuts Affiliate Commissions Up to 50% — and Reduces the Reporting Publishers Relied On
Amazon has quietly overhauled its Associates affiliate program, cutting commission rates by as much as 50%, removing milestone- and year-over-year bonuses, and degrading the reporting tools…
AmazonaffiliateAssociatescommerce content Field note PUBPublisher deskThe Economist Is Building a Two-Track Internet — One Web for Humans, One for AI Agents
The Economist is openly preparing for what its VP of generative AI, Josh Muncke, calls "a world with two versions of the web" — one optimized for rich human reading, and another built for…
The EconomistAI agentsanswer enginescontent strategy Field note PRGProgrammatic deskAgencies Are Moving Closer to Supply — and the Programmatic Middle Layer Is Being Rebuilt
One of the quieter but more structurally important stories of the week: Digiday reported on May 18 that agencies are moving closer to supply, reshaping the programmatic middle layer.
agenciescurationSSPprogrammatic Field note MKTMarketing deskPublicis to Acquire LiveRamp for $2.2B — Identity Becomes the Agentic-Era Battleground
On May 17, Publicis Groupe announced an all-cash acquisition of LiveRamp for $2.2 billion ($38.50/share, a 29.8% premium to LiveRamp's prior close, with a total equity value of $2.546B…
PublicisLiveRampidentitydata collaboration Field note PRGProgrammatic deskMicrosoft Shutters Xandr/Invest DSP — A Watershed Moment for the Open Programmatic Market
On May 14, Microsoft Advertising notified buyers that Microsoft Invest — the platform formerly known as Xandr, originally AppNexus — will be sunset.
MicrosoftXandrInvestDSP Field note VIDVideo deskOpenAP Launches Cross-Publisher CAPI Backed by Nine of the Largest U.S. TV Companies
On May 13, OpenAP launched a standardized cross-publisher Conversion API (CAPI) backed by nine of the largest U.S.
OpenAPCAPImeasurementconversion API Field note VIDVideo deskNetflix Upfront 2026: 250M Ad-Tier Viewers, AI Agents, and 15 New Countries
On May 13, Netflix held its 2026 Upfront at Sunset Pier 94 Studios in New York, and turned the volume up on every dimension of its ad business.
NetflixupfrontCTVprogrammatic Field note VIDVideo deskAmazon Upfront 2026: Dynamic TV Creative, the Comcast Partnership, and the Closing of the CTV-to-Cart Loop
On May 11, Amazon Ads held its 2026 Upfront at the Beacon Theatre in New York. It was the most operationally aggressive presentation of the week — Amazon is no longer pitching itself as a…
AmazonPrime VideoDynamic TV CreativeComcast Field note VIDVideo deskWBD Upfront: Biddable Now ~50% of Inventory, Shoppable Pause Ads, and a $110B Merger in the Room
On May 13, Warner Bros. Discovery held its 2026 Upfront at Madison Square Garden, presented by ad presidents Ryan Gould and Bobby Voltaggio.
Warner Bros DiscoverybiddablePMPprogrammatic Field note VIDVideo deskYouTube Brandcast 2026: Buy with Google Pay on CTV, Costco/Dollar General Data, and a Full-Funnel Replacement Pitch
On May 13, YouTube's Brandcast at Lincoln Center delivered the most explicit "we want your TV budget" pitch of the entire upfront week. The launches were strategic, not promotional.
YouTubeGoogleBrandcastCTV Field note MKTMarketing deskTikTok Launches MCP Server for AI Agents to Run Campaigns — The Walled Gardens Are Racing to Own the Agent Interface
On May 12, at TikTok World 2026, TikTok announced an Ads Model Context Protocol (MCP) server — a server that lets external AI agents plug directly into TikTok's ad platform and run…
TikTokMCPagentic AIwalled gardens Field note MKTMarketing deskOpenAI Ships Custom Audiences and Product Feeds for ChatGPT Ads — and Ad Tech Lines Up to Integrate
In a single week, OpenAI moved its ChatGPT ad business from "experimental" to "real." Three things happened:
OpenAIChatGPTadscustom audiences Field note REGRegulation deskIAB Releases Campaign Data Standards 1.0 (Project Eidos) for Public Comment Through June 14
On May 15, the IAB released Campaign Data Standards 1.0 for public comment — the first deliverable from Project Eidos.
IABIAB Tech LabProject EidosCampaign Data Standards Field note REGRegulation deskIAB Tech Lab Forms Programmatic Governance Council to Tackle a $200B Transparency Problem
On May 4, the IAB Tech Lab launched its Programmatic Governance Council, an industry-wide effort to address the structural opacity that has come to define the U.S. programmatic market.
IAB Tech Labprogrammaticgovernancetransparency Field note PRGProgrammatic deskPubMatic Q1 2026: Agentic AI Pays Off as Underlying Business Grows 13%
PubMatic reported Q1 2026 results on May 7, posting 13% year-over-year growth in its underlying business, 80%+ growth in emerging revenues, 4% adjusted EBITDA margin, and $10.7 million in…
PubMaticSSPagentic AIprogrammatic Field note PRGProgrammatic deskMagnite Q1 2026: CTV and Live Sports Power 6% Revenue Growth
Magnite reported Q1 2026 results this week with total revenue up 6% year over year to $164.4 million.
MagniteCTVlive sportsSSP Field note VIDVideo deskNetflix Hits $3B Ad Revenue Trajectory and Launches AI-Generated Pause and Midroll Ads
Netflix's 2026 upfront message is unmistakable: the ad business is no longer the side experiment, it's the growth engine.
NetflixCTVadvertisingupfronts Field note MKTMarketing deskReddit Q1 2026: Ad Revenue Up 74%, AI Tools Drive Demand and Stock Pops 12%
Reddit's Q1 print this week is the kind of number that quietly resets a category. Q1 revenue rose 69% year over year to $663 million, with advertising revenue up 74% to $625 million…
RedditadvertisingcommunityAI ads Field note VIDVideo deskTikTok Returns to NewFronts with a Streaming Ads Suite Built for Subscriber Conversion
A year after surviving a near-ban and a court-ordered ownership transition, TikTok came back to the 2026 IAB NewFronts swinging.
TikTokNewFrontsstreaming adsAI ads Field note MKTMarketing deskMeta Set to Surpass Google in Global Ad Revenue for the First Time in 2026
It is the kind of milestone that closes one era and opens another: Meta is on track to generate $243.46 billion in global ad revenue in 2026, edging past Google's $239.54 billion.
MetaGooglead revenuemarket share Field note VIDVideo deskAmazon × Samsung Bring Shoppable Interactive TV Ads to Samsung TV Plus This Summer
This week's Amazon Upfronts message was, in the words of one observer, that 2026 is the year of "outcomes" — and Amazon Ads is well-positioned to capitalize.
AmazonSamsungshoppable TVCTV Field note REGRegulation deskIAB Tech Lab Standardizes CTV Ad Portfolio Signals — Pause and Menu Ads Get a Common Language
The IAB Tech Lab on May 6 released for public comment a set of technical specifications that would standardize how CTV ad formats — including emerging ones like Pause Ads and Menu Ads — are…
IAB Tech LabCTVOpenRTBpause ads Field note REGRegulation deskGoogle Ad Tech Antitrust: A Divestiture Decision Looms in 2026
The biggest single regulatory question for the publisher ecosystem in 2026 remains unresolved: what remedies will the court impose on Google for unlawfully monopolizing the publisher ad…
GoogleantitrustDOJAdX Case study VIDVideo deskA tech magazine went digital, and video revenue rose 50% in six months.
A video player built for monetization rather than retro-fitted to it, and what that changed on CPM.
VideoCPMPlayerTürkiye Case study VIDVideo deskA content format with no ad market. Ten days later, the revenue goal beaten by 200%.
İki Dakika — a vertical mini-series with no ad market, sold out before the first episode aired.
Content licensingDirect salesVideoNothing matches that.Try a different filter, or clear the search.
One letter a week, from the desk that runs the auctions.
What actually moved in yield, CTV and curation across our publishers — written by the people who saw it, not a content team. No digests, no roundups, one email.
One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click. We never share or sell the list.