McDonald’s has pulled an AI-generated Christmas ad after a wave of online backlash. Upon removal, McDonald’s said to BBC News that the ad was “an important learning” for the company’s understanding of “the effective use of AI.” McDonald’s teaches a valuable lesson: Consumers aren’t yet ready for ad creative that is built entirely on AI. But advertisers still face a landscape where not using AI is a detriment to staying ahead. Balance is now a competitive differentiator.
Substack is testing its first structured sponsorship program, allowing selected writers to insert paid brand placements directly into newsletters—an opt-in beta that keeps creators in full control and avoids programmatic ads. The move follows significant audience growth, with US uniques doubling in a year, but minimal marketer adoption: only 5% of brand marketers use Substack today. Sponsorships offer a way to monetize large free audiences while preserving the platform’s editorial identity. For advertisers, the beta introduces a premium, high-intent environment suited to thought leadership and niche expertise—an early indication that creator newsletters may become more formal components of influencer and upper-funnel strategy.
Figma’s latest AI-powered object removal and image expansion tools could be an ideal counterpart to AI image generators like Google’s Nano Banana, OpenAI’s DALL-E, and Midjourney. By automating time-consuming edits, these tools will help smaller agencies and in-house brand teams compete with big-budget creative studios. Figma’s AI upgrade marks a tipping point where creative workflow automation at scale is no longer prohibitive. As repetitive tasks get offloaded to smarter tools, brands and marketers can focus on vision, differentiation, and improved campaign strategy.
Adobe and OpenAI have partnered to enable editing tools like Photoshop within ChatGPT, where users can fine-tune images, alter backgrounds, and apply effects using prompts for free, with no paid ChatGPT or Adobe subscriptions required. The creative stack is shifting from specialty software to conversational tools that sit closer to the brief. Brands that embrace this new workflow should use ChatGPT as a creative front end by building prompt libraries and standardizing asset templates. These integrations can help brands test more, waste less, and push fresh creative into the market faster than rivals.
By the end of 2026, generative AI could rival paid ads as a source of website traffic. SensorTower predicts that more than half of top websites will get more traffic from genAI than from paid sources by the end of next year. As AI assistants increasingly answer queries with sourced links, marketers need to optimize for AI-driven discovery, not just search algorithms and paid media. Add FAQs, clean metadata on products, and concise explanations on sites that models can easily read and cite, and frequently update content to maximize the likelihood of surfacing in genAI results.
Use cases for Perplexity’s Comet AI browser and assistant mark how agentic AI’s influence is happening upstream, within cognitive tasks and away from the point of purchase. Personal use makes up about 55% of total agentic queries within Comet, followed by professional (30%) and educational (16%), per a deep dive on the browser from Harvard Research and Perplexity. The biggest entry for brands isn’t only being shoppable inside AI systems, but becoming embedded in users’ daily workflows. Brands that surface in productivity-driven queries could shape preferences and promote awareness before consumers enter a shopping mindset.
77% of worldwide consumers are comfortable with AI resolving a question or issue, according to an August survey from CSG.
PepsiCo has reached an agreement with activist investor Elliott Investment Management to cut its US SKU count by 20%, streamline its workforce, and reinvest savings into lowering prices on core brands—moves that largely reinforce strategies already underway. The company expects these price reductions to lift volumes while continuing to expand its growing lineup of “better for you” products, including reformulated snacks, sugar-free beverages, and prebiotic offerings. PepsiCo projects 2% to 4% organic revenue growth next year, but regaining momentum will take time as price-sensitive shoppers increasingly turn to lower-cost private-label alternatives.
Sell-side platform PubMatic and connected TV (CTV) ad company BrightLine announced a partnership that will bring addressable and interactive CTV ad formats to PubMatic’s programmatic platform. As interactivity becomes a critical differentiator in a crowded CTV ad landscape, marketers can use PubMatic and BrightLine’s partnership to more easily deploy interactive CTV ad formats across major publishers.
Meta is restructuring its European ad system under pressure from the Digital Markets Act (DMA), setting up one of the most consequential shifts to its ad targeting model in a decade, per The Economic Times. Users can opt to allow full data sharing for personalized ads or limit data sharing and receive a lighter, less-tailored ad experience. Brands reliant on Meta or those that have deep EU campaigns should diversify targeting inputs, invest in creative that performs without deep personalization, and build measurement strategies resilient to thinner data signals.
Yelp’s newest Most Loved Brands list identifies which national chains consumers returned to most in a year defined by cautious, value-sensitive spending. Unlike perception-based rankings, Yelp’s loyalty score draws from behavioral signals—repeat visits to brand pages, review volume, sentiment, and photo activity—revealing what people actually do, not just what they say. Dave’s Hot Chicken leads the list on the strength of customizable experiences and overwhelmingly positive ratings, while legacy chains, nostalgia-driven brands, and Zillennial favorites succeed for distinct reasons. For marketers, the findings echo broader path-to-purchase trends: consumers increasingly depend on reviews, consistency, and social proof to validate where they spend.
Uber is offering customer data to marketers to enhance ad targeting and placement capabilities. The data is available through Uber Intelligence, its new insights platform powered by LiveRamp. Advertisers can get information on how people “move, dine, travel, and order” to build a better understanding of customers’ behavior patterns, the company said in a blog post. Marketers should experiment with Uber Intelligence’s insights to create bespoke ad strategies that segment audiences, identify relevant customers, and personalize targeting.
Mobile advertising remains concentrated around a few dominant platforms, but challengers are gaining ground, per AppsFlyer’s Performance Index. Worldwide, Google Ads and Apple Ads remain No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, but AppLovin, Mintegral, Meta Ads, and TikTok for Business are climbing the rankings. As industries push further into mobile ads, competition is intensifying around creative efficiency, privacy-safe measurement, and cross-platform diversification. Marketers should prioritize mobile-first creative, test emerging networks early, and diversify across iOS and Android to hedge volatility.
On today’s podcast episode, we discuss how LGBTQ+ streaming platform Revry has been able to gain traction in a crowded, highly competitive streaming TV universe; what advertisers misunderstand about marketing to the queer community; and some examples of when queer representation in media hit the nail on the head—and when it missed the mark. Join Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, along with analysts Paola Flores-Marquez and Emmy Liederman, and Revry CEO and Co-Founder Damian Pelliccione. Listen everywhere, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
The US accounts for just 10% of TikTok users but generates 41% of the platform's ad revenue worldwide, according to a July forecast from EMARKETER.
While commerce media networks expand, retailers can take advantage of the efficiencies and measurement capabilities that they can provide.Retail media networks alone are expected to claim one-fifth of US digital ad spending by 2029, according to EMARKETER’s September forecast.
The commerce media landscape is bracing for a defining year. Pressure is building across retailers and platforms to rethink how shoppers discover, evaluate, and buy products.
e news: Multicultural consumers—a segment whose buying power has grown 345% over the last 20 years—now expect brands to prioritize representation in ads, per a Snapchat study. Brands must tailor ad strategies to appeal to multicultural consumers, but should understand that simple, one-off campaign inclusion won’t be enough to drive action.
The rise of AI browsers like OpenAI’s Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet is setting up a possible bifurcation of the web. These agent-driven browsers navigate pages, click through tasks, and fetch information on a user’s behalf while traditional browsers anchor the search-centric behaviors most people rely on. The divergence could result in further fragmentation where there are two versions of websites. Brands that structure their content for both—with product metadata, clear semantic HTML, and agent-ready pages focused on specs, summaries, and FAQs—will have a higher chance of visibility across browsers.
US ad spend growth will grow a total of 11% in 2025, excluding political spending, per an updated Madison & Wall forecast cited by Mediapost. The figure is well above Madison & Wall’s previous estimate of 3.6% growth and follows 13% YoY growth in Q3. Even as total media ad spending continues to grow, growth doesn’t entirely negate the overall climate of uncertainty that will undoubtedly affect the ad industry in the year ahead. Slowing growth expected from Madison & Wall in 2026 and ongoing economic headwinds indicate that advertisers are still operating in an era of caution.