Every retail media network claims its data is different. PayPal Ads actually has a structural reason to back that up. AdExchanger Editorial Director Sarah Sluis sat down with Mark Grether, SVP and GM of PayPal Ads, to talk about what it means to sit horizontally across 25 billion transactions, 400 million accounts, and 30 million […]
Incremental growth is what every marketer says they want. Proving it is another story. At Cannes 2026, AdExchanger Editorial Director Sarah Sluis sat down with Fabrice Beer-Gabel, SVP of Strategy and Partnerships at Intent IQ, and John Koenigsberg, EVP and Head of Platforms at Horizon Media, to talk about what happens when audience amplification actually […]
A year ago, agentic advertising was mostly theoretical. AdExchanger Managing Editor Allison Schiff sat down with Vlad Stesin, CEO and Co-Founder of Optable, to talk about what’s actually changed — and which companies are doing real work rather than chasing the buzzword. Stesin breaks down why workflow automation is the unglamorous but essential starting point […]
For years, algorithmic decisioning lived on the buy side — inside DSPs that only ever saw a fraction of available inventory. Containerization changes that, moving custom AI decisioning models directly into SSP environments and reshaping the programmatic supply chain in the process. At Cannes Lions 2026, AdExchanger Editorial Director Sarah Sluis sat down with Pirouz […]
Retail media and CTV have been on a collision course for years. Walmart Connect and Magnite are making that convergence real. AdExchanger Editorial Director Sara Sluis sits down with Mike Laband, Group SVP of Revenue at Magnite, and Khurrum Malik, VP, Business and Product Marketing at Walmart Connect, to talk about what it looks like […]
The awareness-consideration-conversion funnel isn’t dead — it’s just moved faster than the org chart has. At Cannes Lions 2026, AdExchanger Editorial Director Sarah Sluis sat down with Liane Nadeau, Chief Media and Investment Officer, Digitas, to make the case that channel planning — the TV budget, the search budget, the audio budget, the programmatic line […]
The mood at Cannes 2026 is complicated — rosé in one hand, existential dread in the other. AdExchanger Editorial Director Sara Sluis sat down with Michael Lehman, President, Americas of Equativ, aboard the company’s yacht to cut through the noise. What they got was a rare thing: a genuinely optimistic take on AI’s impact on […]
As more brands, agencies, and media companies join in on the AI chorus of “better, faster, smarter,” the teams administering AI tools are singing a dissonant tune — managing a growing stack of AI-powered tools layered across planning, activation, measurement, reporting, and workflow management. It’s a familiar irony to anyone in advertising: Another innovation designed to […]
Optimization has been the golden promise of AI in advertising. From audience targeting and bid management to media buying and creative optimization, the industry’s first wave of AI investment has focused on helping campaigns perform better.
AI is rapidly moving from promise to practice in streaming TV advertising, reshaping how campaigns are planned, executed and experienced. But as adoption accelerates, there remains no clear answer to what success actually looks like across all parts of the industry.
Signal loss used to be something the industry managed around. Now, with AI in the mix, it’s becoming something you can actually monetize. AdExchanger Editorial Director Sarah Sluis sits down with Fabrice Beer-Gabel, SVP of Strategy and Partnerships at Intent IQ, to unpack how publishers and advertisers are flipping the script on identity-less environments — […]
Everyone at Cannes is talking about AI — but CivicScience CEO and founder John Dick says the industry is missing its most important stakeholder: the consumer. Drawing on survey data, Dick argues AI may be among the most unpopular technologies ever introduced to the public, with the average person “somewhere between skeptical and terrified.” While […]
Healthcare marketers have never had more data, channels or targeting capabilities at their disposal. Yet many organizations still struggle to answer a fundamental question: what actually drove performance across a campaign?
I’ve always loved sci-fi movies and the way they portray futuristic worlds shaped by advanced technological innovation. One of my favorite movies is the ’80s classic “The Terminator.” And the more I hear about “agentic AI” in ad tech, the more I think the film is a perfect analogy for what’s happening right now.
Earlier this year, I wrote in AdExchanger about the 20% to 30% of programmatic video spend that gets lost in the gap between what inventory labels promise and what the actual viewing experience delivers.
Ask yourself where conversion data goes after a campaign runs. It flows back to the advertiser, the measurement vendor and the DSP. It does not flow back to the SSP.
With an anticipated viewership of more than 1.5 billion people, the 2026 World Cup is expected to represent the most-watched live event in history. For advertisers, that creates an obvious opportunity to reach soccer fans around matches, highlights, team coverage and tournament content.
Most competitive intelligence is backward-looking. Earnings calls tell us what happened last quarter. Annual reports tell us where budgets went last year. Traditional competitive intelligence tools often focus on creative libraries, estimated spend or campaign archives.
For years, independent agencies won business by being different from holding companies: agile, responsive and flexible, with closer client relationships.
Connected TV has entered a new phase.
For years, the channel was primarily a reach vehicle, a way to follow audiences as viewing shifted from linear TV to streaming. That migration has reached critical mass. Audiences are engaged across CTV, and advertiser dollars are following. According to eMarketer, US CTV ad spending is projected to reach $53.42 billion, reflecting continued double-digit growth as streaming outpaces linear TV.
Advertising has never been richer in data. With the right tools, marketers can now track competitor spend, campaigns and performance across media and markets, often in near-real time.
Coming back from POSSIBLE last month, one thing stood out to me: Streaming TV has entered a much more operational phase. The conversation has evolved from where streaming is headed to how marketers drive better performance today. The content and conversations focused on how AI can improve campaign execution, how data can sharpen targeting and measurement and how channels work together within broader omnichannel strategies.
The mass adoption of LLMs is shifting internet search for consumers from following blue links to synthesized answers from LLMs. Zero click is here. As generative engines and personal AI agents begin searching, comparing and acting on our behalf, discovery will no longer happen on a search page. It will happen inside the answers with personalized information and preferences.
The last decade of app marketing drove massive success in downloads thanks in large part to preloads, install campaigns and carrier partnerships. But the app download is just the beginning. EMarketer warns that 90% of new users stop using an app after seven days.
As connected TV (CTV) matures, advertisers aren’t just raising expectations; they’re resetting them. And increasingly, transparency isn’t a value-add, it’s the cost of entry.
Brands have gotten adept at finding and following their audiences across the media landscape. Today, that means everywhere: linear TV, CTV, YouTube and the open web, often in the same evening.
The Measurement Gap in B2B Advertising Campaign Sophistication Is Increasing, but Performance Visibility Remains Limited B2B advertising is undergoing a major transformation. Campaigns now span multiple channels, target entire buying committees, and draw on richer audience data than ever before. Yet most marketers are still struggling to answer a fundamental question: are these investments actually […]
When it comes to identity, most marketers moved past third-party cookie concerns a long time ago. Identity today is not about a single technology or solution; it is about learning how to combine different signals in ways that allow campaigns to reach real people across channels while respecting privacy and maintaining performance.
In the rush to scale globally, US brands are often content with “accidental attention.” But attention isn’t a lottery; it’s a strategy that requires a deep familiarity with context in real time.
For years, programmatic advertising has operated on the assumption that most buyers didn’t really want to know how the system works. That’s changing. More advertisers are asking harder questions about where their media dollars actually go, and those questions are increasingly come from mid-market agencies that would historically rely on DSPs to manage the complexity of supply for them.
