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The online ad industry has been burned by Apple before, and it’s feeling the heat again.  Its latest software update cut off some of the biggest companies that track people across the web to target them with ads, stopping them from working in Safari altogether. For anyone who remembers what came before it’s a familiar feeling. Apple’s earlier crackdowns on tracking in 2017 and 2021 wiped billions off the industry, and Meta alone said the second one would cost it around $10 billion

Universities are beginning to formalize the creator economy  In the past year, Arizona State launched a BA in content creation, Stanford introduced a graduate course called Mastering the Creator Economy, and Syracuse opened he Center of Creator Economy, focused on research, policy, academics and content production.  Their approaches vary, but together they signal a shift: as the industry grows, more students are learning about it in the classroom, rather than on the fly. Continue

At least one CEO wants to talk about advertising. PepsiCo’s Ramon Laguarta used a recent appearance in front of investors to champion the company’s decision to hand its global media account to Publicis Groupe. The move came without a formal review and pulled the business away from Omnicom, which had managed it for three decades. That is a lot of money changing hands. PepsiCo spends an estimated $1.9 billion on media a year, $780 million of it in North America, according to COMvergence. The f

More media planners, creative strategists and CMOs are basing marketing decisions on insights gleaned from the behavior of synthetic consumers. The latest example comes courtesy of Goodway Group, which has struck a deal with data company Arima to incorporate insights drawn from a “synthetic population” of U.S., British and German consumers into its media planning processes, Digiday has learned. According to Paul Frampton-Calero, CEO of Goodway Group, the solution will allow Goo

Many publishers execs say — despite the hype — agentic media buying remains a test-and-learn proposition, rather than a proven source of returns. That caution was clear in Digiday’s conversations with publishers at Advertising Week New York last week, where on-stage discussions dusted across the topic. Sessions on agentic media, tools and marketing were peppered throughout the programming of the four-day event. But privately, publishers aren’t sold on its future. At least, not yet. Co

The Golden State Valkyries are the WNBA’s youngest team. Since their inception two years ago, they’ve been competing not just on the court but in the boardroom, seeking out sponsorship investments as spending in women’s sports rises. Capturing the team’s fair share of that spending will be crucial to its long-term sustainability — and the Valkyries are up against teams with years of data and precedent to back up their pitch to potential partner firms. To make up the distance, president J

Creator-led content is being pitched across the entertainment spectrum from TV to micro dramas and even theater. At Advertising Week New York, several panels explored the business stakes: are these partnerships helping creators build IP they control, or mainly giving studios, streamers and brands access to their audiences? Digiday spoke with three agency and media execs, two creators, and a creator economy lawyer about how these deals are financed and distributed, who owns the resulting IP, a

The biggest creators are cutting their brand rosters. The partners they keep are being asked for equity, product input and, in some cases, a job title.  That was my read after following Advertising Week New York from afar this week, through the panel livestreams, recordings and conversations with sources who were there.This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. Continue reading it on digiday.com and subscribe to continue reading content like this.

Patricia Clark, vp, go-to-market, Nexxen AI has become more than the topic du jour. It’s the topic of the year — and probably the decade — in and outside the world of advertising. For agencies, AI presents particularly compelling opportunities: less manual work, faster insights and a greater ability to connect planning, activation, optimization and measurement. And as agentic AI develops, a natural language request could become a coordinated, multi-step workflow spanning different data,

This story was first published by Digiday sibling Glossy As an 87-year-old brand, Revlon needed to do more than just reintroduce itself to a new generation of beauty consumers.  “We needed to reintroduce ourselves to not just a next generation of consumers, but we had to reintroduce ourselves to our existing consumers. We had been quiet,” said Dana Medema, Revlon’s president of North America, while speaking at the 2026 Advertising Week conference. Continue reading this article on

When former MullenLowe U.S. CEO Frank Cartagena set out to launch his own creative shop, OK Future, he wanted to test how much generative AI would allow his small agency of four people to punch above its weight. That answer came fast with the newly launched agency’s first bit of work for Goodwipes — ”Meet Asstra,” Goodwipes’ spoof of OpenAI’s commercial for its AI model Astra. With generative AI tools, the social media spot went from concept to execution in just four days and curbed the proje

With no shortage of news on media agencies moving forward with agentic initiatives — and Advertising Week has featured several discussions around it — it’s worth asking how they’re dealing with client concerns over the possibility of rogue activity.  Dentsu announced that its Carat media agency is partnering with NBC Universal, Freewheel and AI firm Newton to launch a planning, buying and optimization agent to use in upfront investments. Although none of the parties would name it, one lu

As social platforms absorb more and more ad spend, marketers wanting to use other channels need to know they can provide the right outcomes if they’re to devise a bulletproof media plan. Heineken has been testing a combination of brand lift and attention measurement in order to solve that problem for its Birra Moretti and Old Mout brands. The brewer is working with GumGum to track how display assets are performing in market using “Attentive Lift”, a method of overlaying brand lift study resul

What publishers once filed under someday now has a deadline, and Apple set it.  With its latest software update, the tech firm started blocking companies that track people who browse the internet to target them with ads, cutting them off inside its Safari browser without warning. So far it affects the largest players but there’s concern that it could span the gut of ad tech. Publishers are understandably worried. They rely on at least some of those companies to make their audiences valua

This week’s Media Briefing looks at why shrinking referral traffic is giving registration walls a new purpose, one that publishers are testing in different ways: turning fewer, anonymous visitors into known — and potentially more valuable — users. The registration wall revival 3 Qs with Joy Robins, The New York Times’ global chief advertising officer Apple plans to block programmatic tech companies, Google gives publishers “Preferred Sources” counts, and more. The

With fuel prices rising and consumer confidence damp, marketers might not be enthusiastic about another round of discounting this fall. Despite that, they’re cranking up media investments with Amazon as the commerce giant stages its Prime Big Deal Days this week (Oct. 6-7). Like Black Friday, and June’s Prime Day, the event has become a catalyst for ad spend on Amazon. According to five media buyers who spoke to Digiday, client spending on Amazon Ads prior to Prime Day is up 15-40%, com

Fresh off research showing that ad avoidance isn’t just limited to a set of consumers disgruntled with marketers’ messaging, especially across the TV spectrum, Omnicom Media has partnered with in-content advertising platform Rembrand to craft what it’s calling a first-to-market capability that lets brands identify, plan and activate in-content placements across first-look premium streaming inventory. Digiday has learned that the holding company’s media agency network is in negotiations

This story was first published by Digiday sibling Modern Retail. Marketing school was in session at Shoptalk Fall in Nashville, but this time, the students were the teachers. Last week, a panel of five Gen Alpha shoppers, ranging from middle schoolers to high schoolers, took the stage to talk candidly about what they want and don’t want from the brands competing for their time, dollars and clicks. The conversation touched on various topics, from the use of AI in ads (“That’s a huge turnoff

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how Hispanic audiences spend their time between traditional TV and streaming. Televisión Skydance’s leadership lineup, Google’s Hollywood charm offensive and more Televisión I’ve never been a fluent Spanish speaker (lo siento, Mom). But I did watch a fair amount of Spanish-language TV growing up. Especially “Sábado Gigante,” thanks to my maternal grandparents who would often babysit my sister and me. I didn’t really know what Don Francisco

Advertising Week New York, a four-day conference that draws nearly 20,000 of adland’s finest, is renowned for on-stage programming tinged with optimism and creator reps angling for their 15 minutes in the spotlight. However, out in the snaking lines outside the conference venue, nearby hotels and dive bars, the talk often circles back to Apple — the biggest brand/platform provider in the industry — which reopened its war with the digital ad industry just a week before. The news came too la