Marketing tech

Marketing tech

Will Critchlow catches up with Mike King, founder and CEO at iPullRank to talk about GEO, fanout queries, agents, and what the cutting edge feels like at a top agency. Mike and Will go way back, so this episode covers a lot of ground, from SEO to Mike's view on the place of AI in the production of art. This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.

The new Amazon Ads MCP Server is built on the Model Context Protocol, an open standard enabling AI platforms to communicate with external tools. The Amazon Ads MCP Server acts as a translation layer between AI agents and the Amazon Ads API, turning natural language prompts into structured campaigns. Additionally, the Amazon Ads MCP Server includes pre-built capabilities and workflows to reduce the complexity of launching and running Amazon Ads campaigns.

While those questions matter, the secret sauce is understanding the context behind a person's interaction with your brand at a given moment. A frequent traveler might visit an airline's website one day to research a family vacation. The next time they see, they might be booking a flight for work. Their attitudinal profile hasn't changed, but what their context - and therefore what they want from you - has.

It's not exactly a secret that many advertisers are using generative AI in their marketing, from producing copy to editing images. What isn't always as obvious is exactly when those tools are being used, and when advertisers ought to make AI usage clear to their audiences. Last month, the IAB launched a new framework to standardize when AI in ads should be disclosed.

At the same time, learning technology buyers are under pressure. Budgets are scrutinized. Buying committees are larger. Risk tolerance is lower. Decisions that once involved a single L&D leader now require alignment across HR, IT, compliance, procurement, and executive leadership. In this environment, vendors are not evaluated only on functionality; they are evaluated on credibility. This is where thought leadership marketing becomes a strategic advantage rather than a branding exercise.

That Meta's move has propelled the concept of the metaverse into the public consciousness, bringing with it no shortage of brands into the space, is no bad thing. Very few of us beyond niche communities were talking about 'the metaverse' two years ago. And now we are.

We are delighted to welcome Annette Male as head of agency for Facebook in APAC. The role of agencies has never been more important as clients adapt to the changing media landscape in pursuit of growth and digital transformation. Annette's experience will be an asset as we explore new ways to invest and enable agencies of all sizes to take advantage of our platforms and tools.

They were trying to get to the bottom of how to diminish catalogue distribution without having a negative impact on store and online sales. They were also keen to define the geographic areas where digital content would work best and how to profile those areas to classify digital purchase behaviour. Together with Analytic Partners they were able to uncover opportunities to eliminate 22% of catalogues with negligible sales impact and increasing digital support in high-performing topologies, preserving€ 294 million in sales.

Following last year's trend of showcasing AI in multimillion-dollar ad spots, the 2026 Super Bowl advertisements took it a step further by leveraging AI both to create the commercials and to promote the latest AI products. Love it or hate it, the technology has become a star in its own right, alongside the latest movie trailers and snack brands.

This redesign shows your "business goals" such as ad dollar spent, product adoption goals, recommendation trackers, and your points, plus messages and more. The tabs at the top left include "my accounts," "points activity," and "FAQ." As you can see in the screenshot, the portal says: Welcome to the new Google Partners Rewards experience! We've made it simpler to understand your goals and to track all your points activity.

AI chatbots for business have shifted from simple support tools to frontline revenue engines that engage visitors the moment they land on a site. By combining natural language processing with behavioral tracking, chatbots identify intent, answer questions, and guide prospects toward buying decisions without delays. This real-time interaction turns passive traffic into active conversations, especially for e-commerce and B2B brands competing for short attention spans.

The commercial, which is the first-ever Super Bowl ad of its kind, borrows from both the incredibly popular '80s and '90s book series as well as similar trends adopted by Black Mirror's "Bandersnatch" and the "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" episode "Kimmy vs. the Reverend." Uber Eats invites customers to create their own highly personalized Super Bowl LX commercial featuring celebrities like Bradley Cooper, Amelia Dimoldenberg, Parker Posey, Matthew McConaughey, and Addison Rae.

"Our vision is to build a powerful technological and media-driven arm to break out of Overwolf Ads' closed ecosystem, expand its reach, and create unrivalled value in the gaming ad tech space," said Eyal Betzalel, COO of Overwolf Ads. "Overwolf has extraordinary assets in gaming. The opportunity now is to connect those assets to the broader programmatic ecosystem in a way that preserves quality, brand safety,

In the Super Bowl ad for Amazon's Alexa+ AI assistant, Chris Hemsworth fears that the AI is trying to kill him. Perhaps it will trigger a rogue garage door, or close the pool cover while he is out for a swim. Ultimately, of course, he learns that the AI just wants him to be happy, offering a massage to relieve his tension. As it happens, AI anxiety seems to be running high, and the Super Bowl is poised to become the center of that conversation.

Prompting Systems: Lifetime Subscription addresses this workflow bottleneck with an AI-powered prompting platform that transforms basic ideas into professionally structured prompts across all major AI platforms. Rather than learning complex prompt engineering techniques for each AI tool separately, business users gain access to a unified system that handles ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Midjourney, DALL-E, and other leading platforms. Turn any idea into expert-level AI output

Boone acknowledged improving profitability and raised his 2027 EBITDA estimate, but flagged weaker engagement, including a sequential decline in North American daily active users. Global daily active users also fell sequentially and missed estimates, which he attributed to reduced community marketing spend and regulatory-driven account removals in Australia. He said stronger AI-powered content recommendations from competitors are challenging Snap's ability to retain user attention and defend advertising share.

But IAB CEO David Cohen refutes that narrative. "There's a lot of companies that are hurting in the current environment," he said in an interview with AdExchanger after his opening speech Monday addressing attendees at the Palm Desert, California, event. "The health of the publisher community is critical to the health of our overall business." "If we don't have publishers, we don't have content," he added. "What are we optimizing What are we reading? What are we engaging with? It's a problem."

Lego is building up an in-house programmatic media buying team and hiring programmatic experts in the United States and Denmark. It's among several advertisers currently deepening in-house media benches. The brickmaker advertised for five programmatic roles during January, including positions for a global programmatic media manager, programmatic media associates and media planning associates. The hires are a sign that the company is further developing the in-house media unit it first established in 2024.

If your company wants to give up its marketing budget, lay off half of its employees and solely use AI-generated content, then Airpost is "not for you," CEO and Founder John Gargiulo said.

Tinder is turning to a new AI-powered feature, Chemistry, to help it reduce so-called "swipe fatigue," a growing problem among online dating users who are feeling burned out and are in search of better outcomes. Introduced last quarter, the Match-owned dating app said that Chemistry leverages AI to get to know users through questions and, with permission, accesses their Camera Roll on their phone to learn more about their interests and personality.

As you can see in these examples, Reddit's Reminder Ads come with a "Remind Me" CTA button, which, when tapped, will opt that user into a push notification for your launch/event/announcement on the day of the event.