Over half (52%) of senior data and technology executives worldwide use generative AI to boost internal productivity, according to a June survey from MIT Technology Review Insights.
Retail media’s early free-for-all is giving way to a more deliberate approach. At last week’s EMARKETER Summit, leaders from Kellanova and Every Man Jack described how marketers are sharpening their focus, rethinking measurement, and preparing for an AI-driven discovery landscape.
BNY will integrate Google Gemini Enterprise into Eliza, its in-house AI platform. Gemini will give Eliza deep research tools and let BNY’s employees build AI agents that draw from and act on the bank’s vast libraries of financial data. The haves and have nots of banking’s AI era are coming into relief. The top strata are institutions that have invested heavily in data infrastructure that supports AI’s needs. The next strata are developing dedicated AI strategy but aren’t building as much in-house. Banks in the final strata haven’t found ways to use AI at scale but need to now.
On today's podcast episode, we discuss the Thanksgiving shopping season—what surprised us most, what it revealed about the fragility of the US consumer, and how much AI moved the needle for shoppers, and retailers. Listen to the discussion with Vice President of Content and host Suzy Davidkhanian, Senior Analyst Zak Stambor, and Analyst Rachel Wolff.
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.
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.
Instacart’s AI pricing tools may be causing some consumers to pay higher grocery prices, according to a report by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative. The report found that consumers were routinely charged different prices for the same products, with differences as high as 23%. Instacart defended its pricing policy by emphasizing its efforts to improve affordability, and insisting that its experiments “are not dynamic pricing” because prices don’t change in real time according to supply and demand. For shoppers, whether Instacart’s tactics meet the technical definition of dynamic pricing is beside the point. Consumers overwhelmingly prefer brands with consistent pricing and respond negatively toward those that use surge pricing and hidden fees. The lack of transparency around algorithmic pricing is likely to be particularly distressing at a time when rising food prices and other stressors are pressuring household budgets.
More than half (53%) of US physicians plan to significantly increase AI use over the next year, per a DHC Group and Sermo study in November. As physicians increasingly rely on AI for support, the information they encounter will be shaped by the quality of the science-based content that AI systems will surface.
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.
OpenAI, now 10 years old, is expected to accrue about $143 billion in negative cumulative free cash flow between 2024 and 2029 before it starts turning a profit, per Deutsche Bank. “No startup in history has operated with losses on anything approaching this scale. We are firmly in uncharted territory,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote. This could foreshadow a correction in the AI sector if revenues keep lagging behind escalating spending. The next few years may reward those who find sustainable monetization models, not necessarily those who build the most powerful tools.
77% of worldwide consumers are comfortable with AI resolving a question or issue, according to an August survey from CSG.
Google is quietly exploring how Gemini could support advertising in 2026, per Adweek, even as the company publicly denies any such plans. Agencies say Google has framed potential Gemini ads as high-intent, conversational opportunities for ecommerce brands—signals emerging alongside rapid user growth. Gemini’s global MAUs have climbed roughly 30% since August, and its US footprint is projected to reach 85.7 million users by 2029. If prompt-level signals become targetable, conversational AI could function as a new, more precise form of intent advertising.
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.
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.
Retailers experimenting with agentic AI are doing so with commercial urgency, not curiosity. In an EMARKETER interview, Criteo’s Michael Greene said retailers now see onsite AI as “mission critical” for owning the shopping journey—especially as consumers increasingly use chat-based tools for early discovery. Generic LLMs lack real retail signals like inventory, regional availability, and nuanced category expertise, making proprietary data the retailer’s strongest edge. With Gen Z already leaning heavily on AI for purchase research, retailers must build systems that deliver more relevant, trustworthy guidance than general chat interfaces. The mandate is clear: build AI that improves baskets, conversion, and shopper retention.
Instacart has become the first grocery partner to launch a dedicated app within ChatGPT, enabling users to shop by prompting the assistant and then building a cart powered by Instacart’s catalog and OpenAI models. After signing in, customers can review selections and pay securely via Instant Checkout, with orders fulfilled through Instacart’s network. The move reinforces Instacart’s leadership in US grocery delivery and gives it an early chance to shape AI-enabled shopping behavior. If consumers embrace the feature, its ability to learn preferences and streamline reorders could meaningfully reduce friction and nudge more shoppers toward online grocery buying.
Personalized AI is no longer a nice-to-have feature—it’s a driver of adoption that inspires trust in the efficacy of AI solutions. Nine in 10 Gen Z and millennial leaders would be more inclined to use AI at work if responses were personalized, per a survey from The Harris Poll commissioned by Google Workspace. CMOs should ensure AI tools on deck can learn style and brand voice and deliver outputs that are aligned with employees’ goals and tasks. Encourage employees to experiment with custom GPTs and Google Gems to develop role-specific tools that can follow workflows across the organization.