Luma AI has secured a $900 million funding round led by Humain, pushing its valuation above $4 billion and marking one of the largest investments to date in AI-generated video. As agencies, studios, and brands increasingly adopt AI for editing, narration, testing, and full video generation, Luma’s raise signals a shift: AI video is becoming the creative backbone for modern advertising, powering faster iteration, scalable personalization, and multi-format production across every screen.
Adobe is acquiring software platform Semrush for $1.9 billion. The deal, which is expected to close in the first half of next year, will help Adobe expand beyond creative tools into a full-service marketing and analytics suite that can compete with Google and Meta. Whether or not marketers use Adobe today, the deal presents an opportunity to check tech stacks and evaluate search, design, and analytics tools. The acquisition could also help marketers trim martech spending by streamlining the tools they need to create content and stay on top of brand visibility and performance.
Google offered remedies to settle an antitrust case in the European Union following a nearly €3 billion ($3.5 billion) fine arguing that Google abuses its dominance in digital advertising. The EU’s tough stance signals that the global regulatory environment is intensifying.
Google is expanding its use of agentic AI across its advertising suite, announcing that Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor—two new, Gemini-powered assistants—will roll out to all English-language Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts in early December. Per Google, the tools aim to make campaign management and data interpretation faster, simpler, and more conversational. AI copilots are becoming table stakes. With Google and Amazon both embedding agentic AI into their ecosystems, conversational interfaces will soon be the default way advertisers plan and manage campaigns.
AI is reshaping the ad agency landscape and eliminating the need for entry-level hires, according to a Sunup report that found that 91% of US senior agency leaders expect AI to reduce headcounts and 57% have slowed or paused entry-level hiring.
A year after enterprise software firms began rolling out AI agents, most tools now look and act alike—creating confusion for companies trying to choose the right solution. And because many rely on the same OpenAI or Anthropic models, their offerings are almost indistinguishable, per The Information. Brands should prioritize AI agents that connect across ecosystems, protect data, and scale smarter instead of locking into one vendor’s walled garden. Doing so builds resilience, flexibility, and trust in an increasingly crowded AI market.
35% of US employees who use unapproved AI tools at work have shared employee data, the most commonly shared category of potentially sensitive information, according to an August survey from Cint and Cybernews.
Last week, Tesla and Rivian approved two of the most aggressive CEO compensation plans in history—Elon Musk’s potential $1 trillion payout and RJ Scaringe’s $4.6 billion plan. Both hinge on hitting decade-long performance and valuation targets tied to EV production, AI innovation, and market capitalization growth. Why it matters for brands and marketers: This compensation era spotlights the rise of the personality-driven company. Musk and Scaringe are seen not just as CEOs, but as brand assets whose visibility and vision influence valuation. For advertisers, the message is that leadership narratives can serve as marketing multipliers that help drive brand identity and, for better or worse, brand reputation.
Spending on martech tools will continue to grow over the next five years, but data silos, inefficient ROI measurement and training gaps could hold back the tools’ potential. 78% of B2C organizations increased their martech budgets over the last five years, and that pace isn’t slowing: 79% plan to raise them again by 2029, per McKinsey’s Rewiring Martech report, and 34% will boost it by at least 11%. Despite these aggressive investments, only 35% of organizations say their martech operations have reached a “transformational” level of maturity. CMOs should ensure teams are supplied with the technical skills to aid martech’s advancement and treat the tools as a part of operations across the board—not just an IT task. They should also connect martech success metrics directly to clear outcomes—like customer retention—to prove its value across the organization.
The Trade Desk posted another strong quarter, with revenue up 18% to $739 million and EBITDA margins above 40%, but CEO Jeff Green’s focus remains philosophical. On the Q3 call, Green said the company’s “AI-first” Kokai platform and new tools—Open Ads, Deal Desk, Audience Unlimited, and Trading Modes—position TTD as the infrastructure layer of an open, transparent internet. CTV now accounts for half of total revenue, with Disney and Hearst partnerships lifting publisher yields by 23%. Yet Green acknowledged the open web’s challenges, calling the vision “more aspirational than factual” as walled gardens tighten control.
LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe says marketers are now fighting a “war for signals”—a race to collect, clean, and connect data fast enough to prove every dollar’s impact. Speaking alongside Q2 earnings of $200 million (up 8%), Howe described marketing’s new reality as “precision and proof.” LiveRamp’s clean room tech now lets brands merge data across partners like Netflix, Uber, and PayPal to tie spend directly to transactions. With AI acceleration and data collaboration redefining performance, Howe says growth depends less on scale and more on signal speed: “Access to better data gets the flywheel going—and determines who wins.”
AppLovin beat expectations again, delivering a blowout quarter that affirmed its place among the most profitable players in adtech. Even as the company faces ongoing scrutiny over data practices and an SEC probe, its financial momentum appears unaffected. AppLovin is proving that controversy doesn’t always kill momentum. Its ability to execute quarter after quarter suggests marketers may be more pragmatic than moralistic, following results over rhetoric.
Mid-market marketers (companies with 10 to 499 employees) have high expectations for artificial intelligence and see AI as a productivity lever for lean teams, according to new data from WARC and MailChimp—but adoption lags behind enthusiasm. AI is still in its early days, leaving a wide gap between the largest companies with capital to invest in proprietary resources and smaller teams with more limited resources.
Sony AI released the Fair Human-Centric Image Benchmark (FHIBE), a freely available image data set to test AI fairness using images from 2,000 volunteers across 80 countries—all consent-based and removable on request, per Engadget. Independent data sets like FHIBE give marketers, platforms, and regulators a common reference point for evaluating AI performance. That helps brands prove compliance, reduce reputational risk, and speed up adoption of trustworthy automation. Tools like FHIBE could excise bias and rebuild trust in how AI sees—and represents—people in marketing and advertising processes.
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.