Amazon keeps widening its lead: Delivery speed, AI tools, and advertising are driving growth while reinforcing customer loyalty.
Doctronic's Summer Health deal extends AI care to families seeking urgent virtual care, but clear guardrails on when clinician escalation is required will matter as much as convenience.
AI slop fools ad metrics by scoring as premium: Viewability and invalid traffic rates may no longer be trusted quality signals for programmatic buying.
Omnicom reports strong Q2 from integrated media: Agencies now need bundled, AI-ready services to win larger client accounts.
AI quality shapes brand perception: Consumers like AI experiences that work, but weak creative and poor content placement can quickly damage brand trust.
Classrooms turn into AI pipelines: Free teacher and student access aims to lock in future generations of paid users.
US credibility in AI slips: Pew finds most adults see China ahead in development; brands can react by proving value of models beyond origins.
Microsoft reports strong Q4 FY2026 results: AI expansion points to more AI-driven search, cloud, and ad inventory.
Meta misses on EPS and cash flow: Marketers should expect more AI ad tools as the company tries to justify heavier spending.
Today, Marketbridge and Meltwater announced a partnership to sell B2B go-to-market strategies and intelligence for generative engine optimization (GEO). Some 32% of B2B buyers worldwide use generative AI chatbots to discover new vendors, nearly matching web search and peer recommendations at 33% each, according to a July 2025 Responsive survey reported in EMARKETER. Among US B2B buyers who use AI, 35% use it for discovery, 43% for consideration, and 31% for purchase decisions, per Google and National Research Group’s June-July 2025 survey.
AI ads ignite spending: Chatbot and AI search formats drive $32 billion in spend as discovery moves beyond blue links.
Audio and video podcasts complement each other: Combining both formats can build brand trust first and drive measurable consumer actions later.
Meta vows to fight misleading AI content: An EU pact will force advertisers to clearly label AI content even as usage climbs.
The great agency DIY shift: Media buyers are shrinking vendor rosters as AI coding tools make proprietary builds cheaper—but scale remains a risk.
As access replaces purchases, brands must earn loyalty with flexibility, transparency, and lasting value.
Acquiring the AI startup would allow Stripe to expand its footprint in agentic and AI commerce.
82% of weekly AI users use Google Search every day, compared with 71% of all internet users, according to a May 2026 survey from EMARKETER.
SpaceX's record-shattering public debut has become the first major test of whether investors will continue funding AI companies that burn billions while chasing distant profitability. The rocket company's $75 billion raise, larger than all US IPOs combined over the past two years, signals both the enormous capital requirements of AI development and growing uncertainty about returns. "The move itself is a kind of a double-edged sword for xAI," said our analyst Jacob Bourne on a recent episode of "Behind the Numbers," referring to Elon Musk's AI startup that SpaceX acquired earlier this year. "On the one hand, it now has access to SpaceX's resources and clout. The downside is that xAI now is part of SpaceX's lack of profitability story."
As AI becomes more embedded in everyday life, a growing number of brands, including Polaroid, are marketing the opposite. At the center of Polaroid's recent "The best of summer is analog" campaign is a billboard overlooking Coney Island Beach that reads, "Go jump in some water before the data centers drink it all up." While the campaign references AI, its target is consumers' increasingly always-on relationship with technology. "It's not a campaign against AI or against data centers," said Patricia Varella, Polaroid's creative director. "Data centers were the perfect metaphor that talks about the scale of this overuse of digital in our lives."