Excitement about AI and its enterprise possibilities aren’t translating into meaningful adoption as corporate strategies lag. More than one-third (38%) of tech leaders say their organizations are piloting agentic AI projects, but only 11% have agents in production, per Deloitte’s Tech Trends 2026 report. Foundational challenges—such as data quality and security governance—are blocking the path to clear ROI. CMOs should balance excitement about agentic AI’s potential by first applying the technology to larger pain points. Establish clear KPIs before deployment, and monitor the quality of initiatives to ensure that initial goals are met.
Amazon is in early talks to invest up to $10 billion in OpenAI, three sources told The Information. If finalized, the deal would value OpenAI at more than $500 billion and intensify Amazon’s competition with Microsoft in AI cloud services. The investment, which follows November’s $38 billion deal between the companies, would bring OpenAI deeper into Amazon’s ecosystem to use Amazon’s Trainium chips to develop future AI products. Consolidation means faster model updates, tighter cloud integrations, and more reliable access to genAI tools. Choosing the right AI tools and cloud providers now becomes a turnkey solution.
On today’s EMARKETER Miniseries—A Blueprint to Better Measurement—we explore Amazon's plans for moving out of Beta and offering Omnichannel Metrics (OCM) more widely to advertisers, the top two challenges they face heading into the new year, and what is next for Amazon Ads in 2026, as it pertains to durables. EMARKETER Principal Analyst Sky Canaves speaks with Kolby Capelouto, Head of Sales for Durables at Amazon Ads. Listen everywhere you find podcasts, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
As consumers grow more comfortable with using AI, retail industry leaders see 2026 as a pivotal year in shaping how the emerging technology disrupts the way people shop.
Later has transformed from a scheduling tool into a full-scale creator-commerce engine. One year after acquiring Mavely, the combined platform is processing more than $2.4 billion in annualized GMV and has paid out over $250 million to creators. During Black Friday–Cyber Monday alone, creators drove $50 million in sales through Later and Mavely systems. With link-in-bio tools, affiliate rails, workflow software, and AI-powered attribution stitched into one stack, Later now acts as a performance channel for brands like Southwest and Bissell. Its EdgeAI engine ties creator posts to SKU-level results, reflecting a broader shift toward creator marketing as a full-funnel, revenue-driving discipline.
WPP Media and YouTube are expanding their partnership to bring non-public YouTube video and creator data into WPP’s AI system WPP Open, per a press release. Taking advantage of WPP Media’s offering gives advertisers the ability to partner with creators on the most popular social platform in a far more measurable, practical, and effective way than before.
Marketers are entering 2026 with more money and less patience for waste. Sixty percent of US small businesses plan to raise marketing spend next year, per Clutch. Budgets are moving toward channels that produce quick returns and at lower cost as ROI expectations tighten—46% of marketers say more than half of their 2026 spend will go to digital. Marketers should treat 2026 as a year for discipline, not just expansion. Invest where attribution is strong, like paid search tied to conversion events, retail media with closed-loop sales data, and email with CRM programs.
Consumer spending held up in October, despite broader signs of growing strain on lower- and middle-income consumers. Retail sales rose 3.5% YoY, according to the US Commerce Department. Control group sales—which exclude food services, autos, building materials stores, and gas stations, and are used to calculate GDP—increased 0.8% MoM, the biggest rise in four months. However, the US economy appears increasingly fragile. While spending is growing at a healthy pace for now—largely due to higher-income households with a greater capacity to absorb higher prices and a stronger appetite for discretionary purchases—a softening labor market and tariff-driven inflation could push consumers to pull back next year.
Home Depot introduced The Home Depot Creator Portal, a centralized hub that offers resources and earning opportunities for creators developing home improvement content. The creator portal is intended to inspire creators while giving them access to advertising opportunities with Home Depot and its extensive supplier network. More retailers are setting up their own creator platforms as they look to tap into influencer marketing and ensure relevance as more product discovery shifts to social media. Establishing a creator platform allows retailers to bring greater standardization and quality control to their influencer partnerships, while still taking advantage of all the opportunities that influencer marketing can offer.
Reuters reporting suggests Meta has been unable to contain large-scale fraud in its China ad ecosystem. Despite launching a dedicated crackdown in early 2024 that cut violating ads from 19% to 9% of China revenue, enforcement was later relaxed, allowing misconduct to climb back to 16% by mid-2025. A multilayer reseller network, weak overseas deterrence in China, and partner whitelisting made violations difficult to trace. China advertisers still generated more than $18 billion for Meta in 2024, creating tension between revenue goals and quality controls. The case raises sharp questions about platform accountability and advertiser risk.
Klarna launched the Agentic Product Protocol, an open standard that makes products on the internet discoverable and understandable by AI agents, per a press release. All payment providers need to meet consumer demand for AI-powered commerce that allows them to save time and money on shopping. However, to speed up adoption of agent-driven checkout, platforms need to ensure safety and privacy with AI agent transactions: 65.5% of US consumers still have misgivings about agent-led payments, per Omnisend.
PayPal filed to form PayPal Bank with the FDIC and Utah Department of Financial Institutions. Banks and credit unions should anticipate expanded interest-bearing offerings from PayPal Pay Later if its license is approved. And PayPal has a built-in advantage because its buy button and credit underwriting can all happen during the checkout process—whereas banks and credit unions have to rely on consumers applying for a loan well before they intend to complete a transaction. Credit unions should emphasize their competitive interest rates to consumers choosing between their loan products or a PayPal loan.
Visa will offer stablecoin settlement in Circle’s USDC for its US network, per a press release. Visa and Mastercard are investing in crypto to preserve their dominance in the US payment ecosystem. Crypto-based payments have been slow to catch on in the US—we forecast just 1.8% of US adults will transact with crypto this year. It’s unclear which components of crypto will enter the mainstream, so a strategy like Visa’s, where it invests in everything from stablecoin-issuing sandboxes and crypto settlement to cards that transact over traditional rails but pay out rewards in crypto, could position it to maintain its edge wherever crypto catches on.
The global transition to electric vehicles is losing momentum as both policymakers and automakers scale back ambitions. The EU is retreating from its 2035 combustion-engine phaseout, while Ford is pausing F-150 Lightning production and redirecting resources toward hybrids after steep EV losses. Demand has softened as incentives expire in the US and Europe and regulatory pressure eases under the Trump administration. With affordability and range anxiety still major consumer hurdles, EV share is projected to slip to 6% next year, signaling a far slower transition than industry leaders once expected.
Looma raised $10 million in Series B funding and a $3 million credit facility to expand its network of 7,000 in-store screens, which now reaches 27 million shoppers monthly across major grocers such as Kroger and H-E-B. Its recent rollout to 600 Kroger wine and spirits departments followed a multiyear test that boosted category sales and delivered strong returns for featured brands. Although in-store retail media is scaling more slowly than expected, grocery remains a key proving ground, with most retailers planning activations. Success will hinge on solutions that pair broad reach with measurable sales lift—an area where Looma’s early results stand out.
The FDA sent warning letters to four major retailers that continued to sell baby formula linked to a botulism outbreak after the products were recalled in early November. As retailers move deeper into health and wellness, their daily operations need to support the image they’re trying to build.
Prominent clinicians and healthcare experts report a growing trend of bad actors using AI to impersonate them online and push unsafe products or unreliable medical information, according to a recent New York Times article. AI deepfakes may further discourage doctors from having their images and voices online. Social platforms must reassure healthcare creators about how they detect AI-driven scammers, enforce impersonation policies, and respond swiftly to deepfake reports.
Digital health company Noom is rolling out a new program that will combine microdoses of GLP-1 medications with at-home testing. With brand-name GLP-1 prices dropping, telehealth players in the weight loss drug space need a new strategy to attract and retain members. The GLP-1 microdosing wave gives them that opportunity, opening access to far more patients beyond those who are overweight and obese. With similar capabilities now offered by D2C healthcare companies like Hims, Noom, Ro, and WeightWatchers, differentiation will hinge on cost and accessible coaching/support—especially guidance through untested areas like microdosing weight loss drugs.
The average cost of ad-free streaming has risen from $9 to $16 per month since 2020, a 78% increase in five years, according to an October analysis from The Verge.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed lawsuits this week against Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL, stating that they secretly record users’ viewing activity through automated content recognition (ACR) software embedded in their connected TVs (CTVs), per Newsweek. If Texas wins, TV makers could face stricter limits on ACR data collection, forcing them to pause or redesign how they track viewing behavior across apps. The cases could establish new disclosure and consent standards for smart devices. For advertisers, it could upend existing data pipelines that rely on opaque tracking and may face state-level scrutiny.