As AI moves into decision-making support, the next challenge is helping patients trust how it fits into their care.
On today’s podcast episode, we discuss our “very specific but highly unlikely” predictions for 2026: what Amazon will do with the price of Prime; between OpenAI and Apple, who’s most likely to buy whom; and why a potential WBD acquisition by Netflix might not go through in 2026—if at all. Join Senior Director of Podcasts and host Marcus Johnson, Principal Analyst Nate Elliott, and Vice Presidents of Content Suzy Davidkhanian and Paul Verna. Listen everywhere, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
Amazon is recalibrating its relationship with the agencies and adtech firms that helped build its retail-media dominance. While Amazon insists agencies remain central, many intermediaries say rising data costs and tool duplication echo earlier platform playbooks from Google and Meta—centralize strengths, limit external dependencies, and scale in-house automation. The result is a more controlled, AI-driven ecosystem that may reduce tooling diversity while boosting Amazon’s own ad stack. For marketers, the challenge will be balancing Amazon’s convenience and scale with the flexibility, transparency, and customization offered by independent partners.
On today’s EMARKETER Miniseries—AI-Driven Media Management—we explore how to break down the media manager role into workflows that can be automated or augmented by agentic AI, what agencies misunderstand about AI, and which agency tasks are ripest to hand off to AI right now. EMARKETER Senior Director of Content Jeremy Goldman speaks with Adam Epstein, co-founder and CEO of Gigi. Listen everywhere you find podcasts, and watch on YouTube and Spotify.
As retailers prepare for next year, they acknowledge that convenience has evolved from a value proposition to a structural shift in how all of retail operates. We asked leaders across retail media, digital identity, payments, mobility, and connected commerce, and they agreed that convenience will continue to change throughout the next year as expectations shift and AI eliminates friction.
Agencies are increasingly acting as commerce media guides, helping brands move past outdated structures, sort through measurement standards, and bring AI into their planning. While commerce media networks (CMNs) have expanded to capture more than just retail media dollars, the silos between brand, retail, and sales teams make integration a challenge.
"The retail media landscape is only becoming more crowded, but Target's guest insights are often cited as a key differentiator," said our analyst Sarah Marzano during EMARKETER's recent Commerce Media Summit.
2025 challenged many of retail’s long-held assumptions. What looked like familiar patterns often turned out to be something different entirely, and in the process, a few key trends were either missed or misread by brands trying to make sense of shifting shopper behavior. Here are three trends from 2025 that were either overlooked or misunderstood, and why they will matter in the year ahead.
NBCUniversal (NBCU) debuted AI-powered ad features ahead of the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in 2026, giving advertisers the opportunity to leverage AI for better results in live TV and video-on-demand properties. Campaigns running on NBCU properties now gain access to the massive benefits of utilizing AI for TV, CTV, and VOD advertising.
OpenAI opened up its app store in ChatGPT to all developers, inviting them to create apps that operate directly inside ChatGPT’s user interface, per Engadget. Rather than downloading separate programs from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, users can run mini apps directly inside the chat window. ChatGPT is growing as a content marketplace and shopping platform, offering a fresh surface for brand engagement. Start testing interactive brand utilities, see where conversational AI fits into user acquisition strategies, and identify branded content or tools that could eventually be packaged as digital goods.
Google is testing a new AI agent, CC, to change how the workday begins. Instead of another app or dashboard, CC delivers a daily email briefing that summarizes information pulled from Gmail, Calendar, and Drive. As AI agents begin ranking and summarizing messages, the inbox shrinks and attention gets scarcer. Marketers who rely on email will need to understand tools like CC and optimize for agents—not inboxes—as AI assistants decide what’s worth surfacing. Catchy subject lines will no longer be enough to earn attention.
Integral Ad Science is expanding far beyond verification with IAS Agent, a DSP-embedded AI assistant that analyzes live campaign data and autonomously optimizes safety, suitability, and contextual settings. Built on IAS’s multimodal dataset, the tool evaluates trillions of signals across text, video, audio, and imagery to refine targeting decisions faster than human workflows—early testers reported efficiency gains and reduced waste. IAS frames the product as a step toward agentic advertising, enabling real-time optimization, natural-language insights, and interoperability with other AI systems. The launch comes as private equity bets heavily on independent measurement players amid rising demand for precision and transparency.
Over one-third of Gen Z (39%) and millennials (34%) who have used genAI tools to check symptoms report that they would put off seeing a doctor if the AI told them their issue was low-risk, according to an October 2025 poll from The Mesothelioma Center at Asbestos.com conducted by SurveyMonkey. Overrelying on AI for medical guidance carries real risk, especially as models are still maturing and sometimes produce faulty information. AI companies should add explicit in-chat disclaimers against being used as a replacement for medical care and strengthen guardrails to block unvetted or potentially harmful health advice.
DoorDash is testing an AI-powered app that helps consumers find new restaurants to explore, expanding its business model beyond food delivery. Zesty pulls in signals from across the web and provides citations like Yelp reviews, Google Maps ratings, and mentions on Reddit threads, per Bloomberg. Brands should focus on both generative engine optimization and earned, shared, and owned (ESO) media placements to maximize the chances of showing up in AI responses. Monitor brand mentions and reviews on ESO channels to address any negative responses from customers and ensure accuracy of business details.
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.
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.