Uncertainty looms over ad industry, producing a loss of 2,100 jobs in March: As AI advances and regulations toughen, agencies are caught in a difficult position.

Over the past month, we’ve seen ad updates from all the major players, from Meta’s generative AI ads to Google’s attempts to decrease clutter. Here’s what they mean for advertisers.

The influencer landscape is more crowded than ever, even as creator funding dries up. Leveraging smaller influencers will help your brand focus a limited budget toward a targeted audience. “We’ve had sleeper hits [with] micro-influencers,” said Fernish CMO Evelyn Krasnow, speaking at eTail West 2023 in March. Finding the right influencers is “going to be trial and error,” said Krasnow. Here are tips for finding smaller influencers who can reach niche, targeted audiences.

Gen Zs are more likely to start their shopping journey on TikTok than Google: They’re also less likely to cut back on discretionary spending, despite inflation.

Marketers shouldn’t be waiting for Google to make a move on third-party cookie deprecation or for more privacy laws to come down the pipeline; they need to start exploring the complex landscape of identity solutions now, combining deterministic and probabilistic approaches to achieve maximum effectiveness.

A chatbot-induced suicide could get regulators' attention: AI’s Eliza effect is triggering mental health issues. Companies will struggle to balance entertainment value with safety amid the AI arms race.

Search advertising industry could be monetizing AI chats too soon: Much rides on Bing Chat ads—and how it impacts user experience.

Ad-supported video gains viewership, time spent on digital video surpasses TV, and streaming services pivot from audience growth to profitability.

As Bing makes inroads into Google’s lead, it experiments with AI ads: Disney and Roku layoffs and pivots by Twitter and ByteDance dominated headlines this past week.

OpenAI, Microsoft might ignore industry calls to halt AI advancement: As OpenAI continues to aim for a human-level AI with Microsoft’s blessing, industry players are calling foul. Regulation is necessary.

With some legacy identifiers already in the history books and the rest on the chopping block, the digital ad industry is finally getting serious about adopting targeting and measurement practices that don’t rely on cookies and mobile IDs.

Bing's ChatGPT integration is boosting its usage, challenging Google in the AI-driven search market: Microsoft shares are up, and the incumbent’s ad revenues could be impacted.

US ad spend dropped 8.0% YoY in February, according to a MediaPost analysis of Standard Media Index’s US Ad Market Tracker. That marks eight months of consecutive YoY decline as part of a trend that began in July 2022.

Social platforms are gaining in search: More US consumers are researching products on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, which could bode ill for Amazon and Google.

What is truly promising with generative AI, and when should content marketers stay human? Here’s how content marketers might use ChatGPT and other AI tools and where they should invest time and resources.

This year, the payments industry will face its first major test following pandemic-driven digitization as economic uncertainty pressures customer habits. This is the data you need to understand the major changes facing the payments ecosystem in 2023—and how to navigate them.