AI News

AI has redefined web experiences. Agentic commerce protocols like Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) will make website visits increasingly optional. Optimizing for both humans and AI is now essential. Websites are now data sources for AI to ingest, interpret and cite. The question shifts from “Did users visit my […]

Adtech vendors were among the early adopters of machine learning, using it to help optimize campaign performance over the past decade. Social media platforms use AI to help build creative units. But there are a number of use cases for AI and agents in the advertising ecosystem, including audience research and insights, which are flying

After five years as one of marketing’s fastest-growing areas, retail media is transitioning from its early growth phase to maturity. IAB’s latest ad spend study projects the industry will grow by 12.1% in 2026. Retail companies launched dozens of media networks. Brands shifted billions of dollars into retail environments. Technology companies built systems that link

Forty-two percent of marketers say their budgets increased because of AI, and a third say it is also driving a significant rise in headcount, according to a new survey from Semrush. The study, “AI Myths Marketers Believed and What the Data Actually Shows,” found that the impact of AI is less about cutting costs and

Imagine handing a supercar to a driver with no map, no sense of direction and a GPS that only speaks in generalities. They can certainly move fast, but they’re just as likely to end up in a ditch as they are at the finish line. While much of the talk surrounding generative AI focuses on

Until recently, digital audio was treated as a nice-to-have line item, layered in after TV, social and search were funded, often left in the background. That mindset no longer reflects how people spend their time or how media platforms have evolved. According to eMarketer, nearly 240 million people in the U.S. will listen to digital

Hightouch announced today direct data onboarding integrations with The Trade Desk and Yahoo DSP.  The integrations will allow media networks to list and monetize audiences in self-service ad marketplaces without paying secondary marketplace fees. Hightouch said this will roughly halve total marketplace fees compared to traditional onboarding options. Those traditional onboarding solutions require media networks

In MarTech’s “MarTechBot explains it all” feature, we pose a marketing question to our very own MarTechBot, which is trained on the MarTech website archives and has access to the broader internet. Question: What are the specific ‘hidden costs’ of moving from a monolithic marketing cloud (like Adobe or Salesforce) to a best-of-breed composable stack,

If you Google “should agencies own ad accounts,” you’ll find plenty of advice saying agencies should never own client accounts. These arguments typically frame agencies as gatekeepers trying to lock clients in. In some cases, that may be true. But account ownership is not just about control. It is primarily a question of financial logistics,

Last year, I wrote about the gap between martech promises and results. The questions I raised about revenue attribution, process dysfunction and team readiness have gotten sharper. Because now there’s an expensive new variable: AI that promises to fix everything yet struggles to prove it fixes anything. Agentic AI is the buzzword of the moment.