#adtech

#adtech

Here's a story about Kuh Elsa: A butler informs his employer, the Count, that one of his cows has died. The Count owns more than 3,000 of them, so he barely reacts. Unfortunate, he says, but hardly catastrophic. Cows die. That is, after all, what cows do. Still, he asks how it happened. The roof of the barn fell on her head.

For advertisers, it's a problem because the world is going to change a lot for them. We've really fine tuned the system that you're talking about, and now we're throwing a wrench into all of that and saying actually people aren't interacting with the web in the same way they used to, which means a whole completely different type of interaction that you are all going to have to adjust to,

Shares of AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP), the volatile, mobile game-focused adtech stock, were moving lower last month as the company faced another short-seller attack, software valuations came under scrutiny due to threats from AI, and Google unleashed a new platform for AI game creation, which was seen as a threat to gaming stocks. As a result, AppLovin stock fell sharply last month, closing January down 30%, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

BRAVE, the radically human supply-side platform (SSP) built for precision, performance, and transparency, today (2nd February, 2026) announced the launch of its inaugural list: "The Class of 2026: 10 Rising Ad Tech Stars." This definitive list honours the technical architects, yield engineers, and operational leaders who are rebuilding the open web in an era of agentic AI and privacy-first identity. Selected by BRAVE team members, the Class of 2026 represents a fundamental shift in industry leadership.

Limy's tech aims to show brands how AI agents are driving sales for their businesses - and optimize AI to drive even more sales. Limy integrates directly with a brand's content delivery software to detect when AI agents visit that advertiser's site and which prompts led to a purchase. Based on these insights, brands can improve how they show up in popular large language models by allocating more ad spend to specific prompts that perform better among agents.

Meta is pressing ahead with the global monetisation of Threads, confirming plans to roll out advertising to users worldwide. The expansion will be phased over several months, starting this week, as the company seeks to balance revenue growth with user experience. Brands will be able to run image and video formats, including carousel ads and the newer 4:5 aspect ratio, and manage campaigns alongside Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp through Meta's Business Settings.

It is arguably this dynamic that has denoted 2017 in the evolution of adtech, or the 'transparency debate.' Besides the brand safety question raised to much opprobrium earlier in the year, 2017's transparency debate has largely centered on 'take rates', aka the 'adtech tax', which refers to the money charged by each player in the programmatic supply chain throughout the course of a campaign.

Finding the time to create great content for your users is an essential part of growing your publishing business,

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.

Building on the hype of his page, the creator sells a range of adland-focused merch, including sweatshirts that draw inspiration from the Pornhub and Supreme logos and a smattering of mugs and stickers. He also publishes Drip Sequence, a newsletter that curates ad industry news and insights with the same ironic, self-aware style as the meme page. It covers marketing and advertising headlines and key trends, from cookie depreciation developments to adtech earnings reports.

The rapid evolution of AI and data is nothing short of head-spinning. In the last year alone, we've seen an explosion of interest in these disciplines, with developments that have left us both exhilarated and more than a bit uncertain. Generative AI, in particular, has garnered widespread attention, raising questions about its potential impact across various industries. AI, once the stuff of science fiction, is now woven into the fabric of our daily lives. A tool that is no longer just for an engineer but for anyone who can thoughtfully ask a question.

This week's headlines paint a clear picture: AI is becoming the backbone of business strategy. In today's MadTech Daily, we discuss global ad spend set to top USD$1tn in 2026, WPP being demoted from the FTSE 100, and the EU probing Meta's AI use in WhatsApp. Eventbrite is changing hands in a deal worth USD $500m (£378.8m). The acquisition by Bending Spoons underscores the challenges facing the ticketing platform, whose growth has slowed despite strong brand recognition.

Adnami, a leading attention-first ad tech company, is expanding its European footprint with the opening of a new office in Amsterdam, following strong growth in the Dutch market and the company's continued international expansion.