Digiday

Every time a transparency crisis rattles programmatic, the same reflex kicks in: rivals circle, sales decks get dusted off and emails go out, it is one of ad tech’s more reliable habits, and one of its more reliably ineffective ones. The Trade Deal’s falling out with Publicis is the latest to trigger it. Competitors have been working phones and LinkedIn ad budgets, pitching transparency and the implicit suggestion that now might be the moment to rethink the roster. Buyers, for the most part,

Agency trading desks spent a decade trying to live down what they were. Horizon Media thinks it’s finally figured out what they should become.  It’s building what it describes internally as an “orchestration and intelligence” layer that sits above ad tech rather than alongside it. The idea: plug every relevant media marketplace partner – demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, ad verification vendors, data partners, measurement providers and creative tech – into a central com

Between the Super Bowl, 2026 Winter Olympics and FIFA World Cup, there is no shortage of sports marketing opportunities this year. But global ad spend has increased, and brands like Grey Goose, John Deere and Lavazza coffee brand are investing in pre-existing, long-standing partnerships instead of chasing this year’s live sports calendar. Blame it on the price tag.  ‘Keeping the coin purse very close’ “Clients are keeping the coin purse very close because of just the na

This story was first published by Digiday sibling ModernRetail Amazon will impose a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge on merchants’ fulfillment fees beginning April 17, as rising fuel costs tied to conflict in the Middle East pressure supply chains. “Elevated costs in fulfillment and logistics have increased the cost of operating across the industry. We have absorbed these increased costs so far,” the company wrote in an announcement to sellers. “When costs remain elevated, we im

This story was first published by Digiday sibling Glossy Fenty Beauty is taking its community-first strategy into messaging. On Wednesday, the Fenty Beauty brand launched “Rose Amber,” an AI-powered beauty advisor built for WhatsApp, marking its first formal partnership with the platform in the U.S. The experience allows users to chat directly with the brand in Whatsapp to get product recommendations, tutorials and reviews in a conversational format. It is designed to feel like texting a f

As TV evolves into a more immersive storefront experience, there are new opportunities for advertisers to open up two-way interactions with consumers. To keep pace with this shift from viewership to commerce, advertisers need modern strategies to navigate the wealth of data available to refine their campaigns — from targeting and messaging to optimization and measurement. One strategy that marketers and media planners can no longer overlook is purchase-based segmentation. By using past buy

In February 2019, Griffin Johnson was a junior in college, studying nursing and working in a steel factory. Six years later, he’s co-founder of Animal Capital, a venture fund, a journey he credits almost entirely to TikTok and the connections he’s made along the way.  Johnson built a TikTok audience around “complaining about student life,” he told Digiday (at the time of writing, he has 9.5 million followers on TikTok and 3 million on Instagram). After building that following, Johnson met a g

Spotify’s ad exchange more than tripled its programmatic advertiser base in the year since its launch, according to the streamer. The media agencies using it are less effusive, Following the launch of SAX last April, the number of monthly active advertisers investing via programmatic jumped 222%, according to a Spotify spokesperson.  “We have seen basically just amazing growth in both revenue, active advertisers, consumption of our formats and performance across the board,” said

This week’s Media Briefing recaps publishing execs’ thoughts on optimizing content for AI search (or the concept of GEO) and the opportunities for revenue from AI licensing deals and marketplaces, during the Digiday Publishing Summit’s closed-door town hall sessions.  Overheard at DPS – on AI AI is finding its way into opinion and tech journalism, Versant eyes Vox Media’s podcast business, and more. Overheard at DPS – on AI To be expected, AI was a popular topic during t

Earlier this month, Meta announced its Facebook Creator Fast Track, a program aimed at attracting more creators to the platform by offering guaranteed payouts depending on their follower size on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. It’s a clear attempt to build up a robust creator space on a somewhat untapped platform, and there are some benefits for creators and brands alike. Awkwardly, just a few days after the announcement, Meta (and YouTube) were found liable in two separate court cases for har

Vlad Stesin, CEO, Optable Traditional programmatic, the process of holding a 100-millisecond auction between the buyers and sellers of digital media, is wearing thin, but the infrastructure didn’t break overnight. For years now, fragmentation, privacy shifts and signal noise have eroded the programmatic foundation and diminished confidence in how workflows perform. The question is, what is the right infrastructure for the long term? Before the term signal loss gained popularity, medi

01 Introduction Over the past year, publishers have grappled with a volatile economic climate including persistent inflation and cautious consumer spending. Many publishers have accelerated efforts to diversify their revenue streams through ads, events and bundled subscriptions and have started to shift search strategies in the face of AI-driven, zero-click search. Bearing all of this in mind, Digiday+ Research’s third annual report on publishers’ revenues examines the current and futur

That question stopped being hypothetical last week. The U.S. sent Iran a 15-point ceasefire plan; Tehran called it “maximalist and unreasonable” and denied talks were even happening. Oil climbed back above $106. The White House began quietly modelling $200. Since then, Trump has threatened to obliterate Iran’s oil facilities, Iranian forces continue to attack across the Gulf, and the stopgap measures keeping crude prices artificially contained are expected to expire later th

For all the buy-side noise, publishers say OpenPath revenue has largely held up – give or take a few sharp dips and recoveries in recent months.  Nine publishers Digiday spoke to said their OpenPath revenue and yields have been strong over the last six months, with three saying they’d seen double-digit growth in CPMs at various points over the last six months, and that that had spurred them to trial OpenAds, The Trade Desk’s digital ad auction launched last October. Several publishers

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at what publishers have to offer creators as more media outlets enlist independent video makers. The publisher-creator dynamic Netflix’s NFL slate, AI slop the show and more The publisher-creator dynamic Publishers increasingly want to work with creators. But why should creators want to work with publishers?This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. Continue reading it on digiday.com and subscribe to continue reading content like this.

It’s been more than a year since the ink dried on Walmart’s Vizio acquisition. At the IAB NewFronts last week, the retailer finally lifted the veil on what the deal means for advertisers — though marketers say its measurement and attribution capabilities remain a sticking point. Walmart and Vizio are slated to roll out a unified account login enabling customers to use their Walmart accounts to access smart TV features. Though the timeline for the rollout is unclear. For marketers, it would me

This story was originally published on sister site, Modern Retail. As every brand and retailer grapples with the implications of artificial intelligence, they’re having to ask themselves tough questions about where they will and won’t use AI, and what their guiding principles are as they experiment with seemingly endless use cases. E.l.f. Beauty’s guiding principle is simple, according to its chief digital officer, Ekta Chopra. People are its purpose and, therefore, even as it uses AI for

Criteo is widening access to its performance media stack with the full rollout fo full self-service capabilities for its GO platform as it looks to capture a broader base of small and mid-sized advertisers, bringing itself into more direct competition with Amazon and Google.  Related Insights Media Buying How Criteo is turning LLMs into its next big advertising channel Read More Announced today, the development lets advertisers

The Trade Desk is overhauling how it pays identity partners within its Identity Alliance, moving from a volume-based model to one centered on “incrementality,” according to multiple industry sources. The changes, communicated to partners in recent weeks and expected to come into force in the early part of 2026, introduce new commercial terms that alter how data providers are compensated for contributing identity signals used in cross-device targeting and measurement. Historically, Identity

Time is taking what it’s learned about where AI search engines pull information and when Time shows up in those summaries to sell a new GEO product for brands. It’s not the first to do so. Other publishers like Forbes and Future see the opportunity in converting their AI visibility insights into a product they can sell to brands — Future is already selling its AI visibility tool, called Future Optic, as part of branded content packages to clients to increase the volume of mentions and ci