The Trade Desk said fourth-quarter 2025 revenue rose 14% year over year to $847 million. Highlighting how the company's growth has been decelerating, The Trade Desk's revenue grew 25% in the first quarter of 2025, followed by 19% growth in Q2 and 18% growth in Q3.
We view media quality as an engine for growth. What we hear consistently from brands is, 'Prove to us that media quality drives higher ROI and higher efficiency.' Advertisers increasingly demand verification providers demonstrate concrete performance improvements from premium placements rather than simply protecting against brand safety risks.
Media buying refers to the process of purchasing advertising space across various platforms, including social media, search engines, and traditional media. It's about strategically placing ads where they will reach the target audience effectively.
The joint venture is now operational and in talks with major advertisers. Together, Hasbro and Animaj say their digital networks generate more than 50 billion views per year on YouTube alone. "Kids attention and curiosity continue to evolve faster than ever," said Sixte de Vauplane, co-Founder and CEO of Animaj. "With Lumee, we are building a bridge between advertisers and anew generation of digital-native kids."
YouTube continues to vacuum up digital advertising dollars, mostly at the expense of traditional TV ad budgets, notching its biggest-ever ad sales number to date for the fourth quarter of 2025. However, the video giant's ad haul came in below Wall Street forecasts. In the last three months of the year, YouTube's global ad revenue totaled $11.38 billion, a year-over-year increase of 8.7%, parent company Alphabet reported. Wall Street analysts on average forecast YouTube ad revenue coming in at $11.84 billion, per StreetAccount.
If you're trading XYZ company stock, you don't get "good" or "bad" shares, they're all the same (unless they are clearly marked as different e.g. preferred versus ordinary shares, etc). We know from the viewability discussions alone, that this is far from the case in media. There are many, many formats, every page is different, every ad unit behaves differently.
The shift reflects a playbook built around storytelling, familiarity and constant presence across the moments you already care about. Beyond speaking solely to gamblers, campaigns now speak to fans, followers and casual viewers who recognize faces, formats and references. That wider relevance has been driven by data-driven targeting, celebrity partnerships and a willingness to operate inside popular culture rather than outside it. When you trace the path from banner ads to cultural visibility, you see a deliberate strategy to become part of everyday conversation.
On today's MadTech Daily, we cover TikTok using Pixels to track performance beyond its platform, Amazon launching Prebid Adapter Beta to connect ad demand, and UK Lords backing social media ban for under-16s. OpenAI confirmed it will begin testing ads in ChatGPT, marking a significant shift in how the AI assistant is monetised. The ads will be trialled with free users in the US, appearing in clearly labelled placements above or below chatbot responses, while paid tiers remain ad-free.
The fastest ad spend recoveries were naturally attributed to the hardest-hit sectors of out-of-home (OOH) and cinema, with the former at 46.4% and the latter at 2,208.2% (cinemas shut during the pandemic, remember). TV was alone in seeing a decrease in ad revenue in the last quarter (-0.6%). It's worth noting that spending in TV is diversifying across new channels (that broadcasters often still own) such as broadcast video-on-demand (BVOD) (+9.3%).
As interest rates ease and buyer demand returns, real estate agents face a critical moment to reestablish visibility and trust before clients are ready to transact. Winning listings in a rebounding market requires agents to show up with purpose, be consistent, and be where clients are looking for information about buying. Chris Mumford, VP and CMO of Marketplaces at CoStar Group explains why modern digital marketing is centered on building long-term brand presence across the entire buyer journey.
When discussing their results, they tell us that Facebook's reporting or Google Analytics show the ad campaigns as barely breaking even. Yet they keep investing in this channel. They reason that Facebook can only see a fraction of the sales, so if Facebook is reporting a 1x return on ad spend (ROAS) then it's probably at least 2x in reality.
At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, AdExchanger and the Chief Marketer Network asked digital advertising insiders for their perspective on where the industry stands as we kick off the new year. We got their takes on trends to watch in 2026, as well as what the industry got wrong last year and how it can learn from those mistakes. We also asked them to separate the real AI use cases having an impact on the market today.
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