Marketing tech

Marketing tech

RAAS LAB is at a really exciting inflection point. The opportunity to push the boundaries of relevance using AI, while building scalable creative systems that genuinely drive performance, is hugely compelling. I'm excited to help shape the next phase of the platform's growth.

The European Union has imposed a €120m (£105m) penalty on X, marking the first sanction under the bloc's Digital Services Act for content-moderation breaches. The Commission said that X misled users with its paid "blue tick" verification, blocked researchers from accessing platform data, and failed to set up a proper advertising repository. Despite early speculation that regulators might go after Elon Musk's broader business empire, the fine was calculated without taking into account his estimated USD$467bn (£352.7bn) fortune.

Creative automation offers a fast and efficient way for brands to scale their content production without compromising on creative quality. The technology enables the generation of thousands of campaign asset versions across formats, languages, and touchpoints in a fraction of the time of traditional methods. So, with the demand for content at an all-time high, why are many brands still reluctant to embrace this technology?

ChatGPT's 800 million weekly users are worried that OpenAI, whose mission is to create artificial intelligence that benefits all of humanity, is starting to publish ads on the platform. Screenshots of the ChatGPT interface showing what looks like a Target ad have been circulating on social media. OpenAI's head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, however, dismissed those rumors in a post on X on Saturday.

A bear leans in the window of the Jeep Grand Cherokee while a woman holding a microphone asks the bear a question. The woman's mouth does not quite sync with the words she is delivering. Then, the bear starts talking. Something is amiss. The opening scene of Jeep's artificial intelligence-generated advertisement may look real to some and uncanny to others. Regardless, it has generated millions of views on social media.

Is it too soon to start thinking about New Year's resolutions? Since taking on AdExchanger's CTV beat at the beginning of March, I've learned a lot about the industry from the perspectives of publishers, measurement companies, platforms and even a few brands. So next year, to round out my education, I'm setting a goal for myself to start talking to more media planners, agency executives and buy-side experts.

Brands lose up to 40 percent of potential conversions to digital friction, not from broken links, but from journeys that feel broken. Mobile users bail the moment things feel clunky, when a link traps them in an app browser that won't remember their login, or makes them choose a country or language from a tiny dropdown on their phone. For years, marketers have obsessed over what happens before the click: the creative, the targeting, the timing.

Agency teams are under pressure to move faster, deliver sharper work and manage a growing mix of AI-enabled tasks-all without losing strategic rigor or creative edge. As GPT models become more capable, they're shifting from simple drafting tools to support partners that can strengthen research, planning and production workflows. Yet the real advantage comes not from the technology itself, but from how well professionals guide, structure and refine its output.

"I wanted revenue predictability, and so every deal that we did this year and for next year, we did on an annualized basis, and so I pitched every advertiser that we were basically building like a kind of Formula One team," Hays told Axios' Eleanor Hawkins.

In 2021, Apple tweaked its privacy rules to make it harder for app developers to track their users across the internet. This created a massive problem for social media platforms, because without access to users' browsing data, they could no longer target them accurately for advertising purposes. Millions of people in developed markets like the U.S. use Apple's iPhone to access social media, so this was a gigantic sea change.

In a move that could clean up one of programmatic advertising's messier processes, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its proposed Deals API for public comment. The new spec introduces a standardized way for supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-side platforms (DSPs) to sync deal data-cutting down on the manual errors that often derail private marketplace (PMP) transactions. The public comment period runs through the end of January,

Marketers instinctively know that better data and higher-quality media drive better outcomes. But bad habits are sticky and they die hard, said Jamie Barnard , CEO of Compliant, a startup that tracks data quality standards across digital media. The ad industry has "a volume-based mentality," said Barnard, who knows that struggle firsthand. He spent nearly 16 years at Unilever as its general counsel focused on global marketing, media and ecommerce before leaving in 2022.

"A press release really lends itself to AI, because if you think about it, if you're talking about your company or your you're putting out expert knowledge," Jeppsen explained during a recent Tech Talk at Ragan's Future of Communications Conference. "You are the domain expert. You are factual. You've got a framework ... that resonates, and not only humans read it that way, but then AI tries to read it like a human."

AdPlayer.Pro, a global provider of digital video advertising technologies, has enriched its video ad format suite with the performance-driven Interstitial Video Ads 2.0. According to the company's announcement, the full-screen, fully closable upon viewer action, Interstitial video format can deliver maximum ad viewability for advertisers, while maintaining a non-intrusive user experience with the ad. The newly introduced Interstitial Video Ads 2.0 are also completely customisable and fully configurable on a publisher's end, in line with their specific monetisation tactics and technical setups,

"I think there are two tracks in terms of how it changes things. The first is the self-service... we will launch Commerce Go as a self-service tool by the end of Q1 next year. That means an advertiser can go online, put in their credit card information, and have campaigns up and running in 10 minutes. It is competitive with some of the self-service tools from Meta with Advantage+ or from Google with Performance Max"

MrBeast is building out a platform to match creators and marketers, the CEO of the top YouTuber's company said at The New York Times' DealBook Summit on Wednesday. Jeffrey Housenbold, CEO of Beast Industries, said the company was "building a two-sided marketplace in a global creator platform, matching creators with Fortune 1,000 marketers who want to be able to access the creator influencer economy in an efficient way to be able to build demand for their products and services."

Posh's blend of community and commerce captures the theme of this year's Under 30 Marketing & Advertising class of founders and marketing leaders turning fast-moving technologies into new engines of creativity and connection. As the boundaries between tech, entertainment and advertising blur, these innovators are building tools, platforms and campaigns that reflect how people actually engage with brands today. Some are leveraging AI to reimagine the creative process.

The vendor landscape is turning into a sea of sameness. So what's worthwhile and what's worth chucking in the bin? The best way to separate AI hype from reality is to roll up your sleeves and try out the tech for yourself, says Ikkjin Ahn, CEO and co-founder of machine learning-based ad tech startup Moloco, on this week's episode of AdExchanger Talks. It's like watching a movie, he says. How do you know if it's good before you even try it?

Media shops organized around a simple machine: More client cash flowing through their pipes means more revenue. Fees. Volume incentives. Data leverage. Margin on margin. Their economics compound. A dollar placed becomes infrastructure for the next dollar. Creative agencies built the opposite. Every idea is a bespoke project. Every campaign starts from scratch. Deliver, invoice, repeat. There's no compounding. No flywheel. Just craft sold by the hour.

Conversations Inbox - Keeps customer communication organized across email, chat, and social channels. Small business owners can now respond faster, prioritize conversations and stay on top of every customer interaction - all in one place. Marketing Calendar and Social Posts Agents - Helps small businesses plan and launch marketing campaigns and create social posts, videos, and blog content for channels like Facebook, Instagram and more, driving engagement and saving countless hours each week.

Multimodal AI represents the next frontier in AI, enabling machines to understand and evaluate multiple data types, providing greater understanding and flexibility than a single data type could ever offer. In this WTF explainer guide, Digiday and Dstillery explore what multimodal AI is, how to apply it in real-world settings, its benefits to advertisers and how it's well-positioned to solve current and future challenges.