Uber partnered with ad measurement firms Kantar and Adelaide to launch a custom attention metric for in-ride ads and Uber Eats checkout screens, the companies announced Tuesday. The partnership is Adelaide’s first custom, platform-specific attention metric partnership. As the ad industry inches toward universal standards, Uber’s launch shows the challenges in creating a one-size-fits-all approach. Even post-standardization, advertisers will have to navigate an ecosystem with multiple platform-specific offerings.
Google added integrations to Gemini that pull information and insights from Gmail, Google Chat conversations, and Google Drive files. It can also connect with PDFs, Docs, Slides, and Sheets. For enterprise users, this means faster and more context-rich insights—especially for tasks like internal research, competitive benchmarking, or campaign planning, where information is often scattered across different tools and channels. Marketers should begin with targeted use cases like analyzing brand sentiment from team discussions or summarizing performance reports.
Nintendo reported blockbuster financial performance for its most recent quarterly earnings, with revenues surging over 90% YoY and profits rising more than 270%, per CNBC. This growth is largely driven by the successful launch of its Switch 2 flagship console, which debuted in June. As gaming consumption shifts to handheld and hybrid devices, brands should explore partnerships and placements that align with Nintendo’s highly curated experiences rather than disrupt it. Because Switch 2 and its games are ad-free, brands can engage players through co-branded campaigns, limited-edition content, and cross-platform tie-ins on Twitch, Discord, YouTube, and social media.
At the Marketecture conference, MiQ’s global VP of strategy and partnerships, Moe Chughtai, said advertisers are finally connecting platforms like Meta, YouTube, and TV through clean room technologies that enable unified measurement. Traditional marketing mix models are being replaced by one- to three-month measurement cycles that allow for real-time optimization and smarter KPI alignment. The result: advertisers can move beyond isolated reporting and toward integrated, cross-platform performance strategies that strengthen confidence in ROI.
A global Azure and 365 outage hours before earnings revealed the fragility of Microsoft's dominance, briefly disrupting apps and websites worldwide. But its latest earnings demonstrated its unmatched lead in enterprise AI. Azure and other cloud services jumped 40%, powering Microsoft Cloud’s 26% revenue surge to $49.1 billion. Despite the hiccup, Microsoft’s results confirmed AI’s full integration into its business model, with Copilot and Azure fueling recurring cloud consumption—and turning productivity into predictable, high-margin growth.
Grocery shopping is more digital than ever, but the physical store remains the cornerstone of the experience, amplified by digital tools and touchpoints. Shoppers blend in-store visits with online discovery, opening new opportunities for brands and retailers to connect with them at every stage. Here’s what marketers need to know about today’s grocery shoppers and what it means for retail media strategies.
Spectrum Reach and Waymark are scaling their AI-powered creative partnership, which has already supported over 15,000 ad campaigns for small and midsize businesses. The collaboration blends Spectrum Reach’s data-driven media targeting with Waymark’s AI video creation tools, enabling broadcast-quality commercials in minutes. The expansion comes as 55% of US small businesses now use AI, up from 39% last year. Together, Spectrum Reach and Waymark are redefining local advertising, proving AI can make creative faster, smarter, and fairer.
TikTok is undergoing a sweeping reorganization that consolidates control under ByteDance’s Beijing-based leadership. The company’s global content and distribution teams now report directly to Douyin architect Fiona Zhi, who is closely tied to ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming. The change strengthens central oversight just as the US and China approach a potential TikTok ownership deal—but it also raises questions about governance, transparency, and stability. Advertisers are pausing or shifting spend amid uncertainty over who will run TikTok’s US operations and how its algorithm and data policies will evolve. ByteDance’s move reasserts control—but risks reigniting trust concerns in its largest market.
Walmart has expanded its Scintilla Digital Landscapes platform with new capabilities that give suppliers a clearer, data-rich view of how customers move from discovery to purchase.
AdsGency, which bills itself as the first agentic operating system for advertisers, is working to unify the entire advertising process in a single ecosystem. Its large language models (LLMs) target the ideal audience, create the ads, and automate the ad-buying process. AdsGency is breaking down siloes and democratizing advertising for smaller teams that don’t have the talent budget of larger companies. But at the same time, it’s taking over for humans and can easily miss the nuance that people can provide. Brands could adopt systems like AdsGency for targeting, placements, and analytics but leave the content to human creatives.
Marketing measurement is entering a new phase of speed and precision. InMarket’s Michael Della Penna told EMARKETER that marketers are moving beyond static reports toward real-time insights—fusing marketing mix modeling (MMM) and multi-touch attribution (MTA) to understand what drives incremental sales as campaigns run. AI-powered models now forecast lift, optimize spend, and connect awareness to conversion through unified platforms. With 56% of marketers prioritizing sales lift and nearly half investing in MMM, the focus is clear: decision speed over dashboards. InMarket’s end-to-end system exemplifies this shift, reframing measurement as a continuous feedback loop rather than a quarterly report.
Google has officially eliminated its Privacy Sandbox and removed the remaining 10 Sandbox technologies that were still available, marking an end to its yearslong plan to pivot away from third-party cookies on Chrome. Even as giants like Google step away from first-party initiatives, advertisers should prepare for continued change as many are pushing forward with post-cookie ambitions. Cookies may linger for some time to come, but that doesn’t negate broader consumer sentiments that favor data transparency.
This sponsored article by TransUnion® will explore why marketers’ trust in measurement is plateauing.
Twilio’s new tools solve a major marketing bottleneck: unreliable customer data signals. Its update turns Twilio Segment into a real-time control tower by giving marketers and engineers a shared view of what’s working and what’s broken across the customer journey, per MarTech. Marketers don’t need more data—they need usable data. Twilio’s tools clean the pipes and light up dashboards, turning signal chaos into signal clarity while giving brands the confidence and autonomy to act without second-guessing. Brands that delay addressing unreliable signals risk falling behind as data blind spots widen and personalization breaks down.
DirecTV and Glance will bring AI-powered ads to idle TV screens in 2026, per Digital Trends. Instead of a screensaver, DirecTV’s streaming devices will display personalized AI content, opening doors for shoppable ads, travel ideas, news, and more. Personalization is key for those spots to succeed. Advertisers should focus on demographics and viewing context for placements. If the ads don’t feel relevant or include images that delve into uncanny valley, consumers could turn off the TV and leave the brand altogether.
47% of US banking decision-makers say their institutions have already rolled out generative AI, up from 10% in 2023, said data from EY-Parthenon.
Once seen as a revenue channel, commerce media is fast becoming the connective tissue between brands, retailers, and consumers. The industry’s focus is expanding from monetization to meaning, a theme that resonated throughout Advertising Week New York.
At Tech Futures 2025 in New York last week, IBM general manager of corporate strategy Roger Premo and VP of AI and automation Nick Fuller outlined how enterprises and brands can scale AI responsibly—and profitably. Acting as “client zero,” IBM has improved its run rate by $3.5 billion—about 8% of its revenues—through internal AI adoption. Brands that treat AI as a business transformation, not a tech trial, will move faster from proof of concept to profit. Align leadership vision with a disciplined data strategy, invest in unified platforms, and embed governance from the start.
At Philadelphia’s 1682 conference, Coca-Cola’s Benny Lee and Hershey’s Andy Hunt shared how two of the world’s oldest CPG brands are transforming retail through creativity, data, and AI. Coca-Cola is evolving from selling beverages to designing experiences—using AI to power global design systems and create immersive in-store storytelling through products like Y3000. Hershey’s is closing the gap between physical and digital by embedding data into every stage of retail, from aisle feedback to retail media KPIs. Both executives envision the store of the future as dynamic, data-driven, and human-led—where AI supports storytelling, not automation.
OpenAI announced a blockbuster deal to design its own AI chips in collaboration with Broadcom, continuing a trend of AI companies seeking partnerships and investments to own both ends of the AI stack, per The New York Times. OpenAI’s Broadcom deal is a turning point in AI strategy—from chasing smarter models to securing the power that fuels them. For enterprises, this is the moment to pick sides. The competitive advantage in the next decade belongs to those who align with partners that control their infrastructure, not just their algorithms.