At Advertising Week New York, creators are no longer side players—they’re center stage. Global president Ruth Mortimer told EMARKETER that influencers now operate as media channels in their own right, shaping programming with four dedicated tracks, a creator lounge, and even an Adobe-backed live pitch where creators can secure $25,000 contracts on stage. As creators revive entertainment formats and build their own businesses, brands should view them as long-term partners driving cultural relevance—not just campaign amplifiers.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved a consent order to finalize Omnicom’s multibillion-dollar acquisition of Interpublic Group (IPG) on Friday. New conditions state that Omnicom cannot deny ad dollars to publishers for ideological or political beliefs, unless a client specifically instructs otherwise. The FTC being able to put such explicit conditions on two of the largest advertising agencies globally underscores a new era of aggressive conditions in mergers, setting precedent for how regulators can shape corporate conduct beyond traditional remedies.

Amazon Ads has unveiled an agentic AI tool inside Creative Studio, designed to serve as a real-time creative partner for advertisers. Through a conversational interface, brands can brainstorm, storyboard, and generate professional-quality video and display ads in hours instead of weeks—at no extra cost. Powered by AWS models like Amazon Nova and Anthropic Claude, the system combines retail insights with automation to democratize high-quality ad creation once limited to big-budget brands. Early testers, including Nestlé Health Science, praised its ability to surface new insights and scale campaigns, underscoring how platforms like Amazon, Meta, and Google are redefining advertising.

What CMOs say they expect to gain from AI: Efficiency and cost savings top the list of perks the industry hopes to gain from the disruptive tech.

The summer boom for marketing interns was more of a thud: A report found that the number of ad industry internships has sharply declined since 2022.

GenAI is changing pharma marketing from content creation to pharmacovigilance. Brand marketers and agencies are moving from experimentation to broad adoption of AI assistance and more efficient, effective, and relevant consumer communications.

What Omnicom-IPG’s tepid revenue outlook means: The two ad giants could upend agency dynamics, but tech firms are the industry’s real power brokers.

Horizon Media is hunting for acquisitions: The US agency is targeting companies in the influencer marketing and retail media sectors.

Will December’s strong ad spend hold into 2025? Economic uncertainties could cause a cooldown, but regulatory shifts offer some relief.

WPP’s RTO mandate could spill over to other agencies: Its four-day requirement is upsetting employees hired during an era of remote work.

Ad buyers will see a year of agency changes, privacy problems, AI innovations, and media network competition in 2025. Here are five charts to help media planners prepare for the year ahead.

What Omnicom and Interpublic’s merger means for the industry: The Big Four will become the Big Three in a move that shifts industry power dynamics.

Edelman wants to rely less on top-funnel brands: Layoffs show the company attempting to diversify revenues and meet demand for marketing services.

Sustained ad industry job losses don't signal a crisis: Sector employment is still about 100,000 jobs stronger than in April 2020.

Toys R Us offers a high-profile use case of AI video: The toy brand made an ad with OpenAI’s Sora tool, riling creatives.

Brands expect agencies to understand AI while providing unique value. That means agencies need to walk the line between highlighting their AI innovations and emphasizing their human creative work. Since different agencies provide different value, some, like VML, are showing up to pitch meetings armed with an AI toolbox. Others, like Mischief USA, are letting AI fade into the background as they show off unique outputs.

The “Mad Men” approach of finding the perfect slogan and polished copy isn’t gospel. For some, we’re now in the era of unpolished content, disruptive formatting, and what TotalRetail is calling “weirdvertising.” These ads take the basic idea of memeification found on social media and extend it to other forms of display advertising, including out-of-home (OOH) and print.

Even as suspicions surrounding ChatGPT and generative AI swirl, marketers know the new tech will turn search—and its ad dollars—on its head. As search shifts toward chatbots, the way brands advertise with Google and Microsoft will change completely, creating problems for publishers and agencies.

Because data clean room technology is so new, it involves a lot of trial and error for marketers to get their strategy right. However, there are ways that brands can set themselves up for success, including creating a strategy that can be used across multiple clean rooms, having an identity solution in place, and working toward a holistic customer view.

Agencies and consultancies offer customer experience leaders with limited resources a way to deliver an excellent customer experience. Here are some guidelines on how they can maximize results.