Affiliate marketing publishers benefited from jittery consumers buying to get ahead of tariff-induced price increases. But consumers’ increasing reliance on genAI for shopping help has alarmed affiliate publishers and advertisers.

AI is rewriting the rules of digital media, advertising, and commerce at breakneck speed. Here’s what players in the digital realm can do to stay relevant.

Ad tech company PubMatic filed a lawsuit Monday against Google for alleged anticompetitive and monopolistic actions in the digital advertising ecosystem. The lawsuit claimed Google took illegal actions that impacted PubMatic and harmed its ability to grow revenues. PubMatic’s lawsuit underscores that structural shifts in ad tech could eventually reshape how advertisers access and value Google’s search inventory and digital ad offerings.

The news: PayPal and Venmo users can receive early access to Perplexity’s new browser, Comet, with a free 12-month trial of Perplexity Pro. Our take: Big Tech is betting that agentic commerce is the future of shopping, but consumers aren’t on board yet: Nearly 70% of US adults are not interested in AI-powered shopping assistants, per a September 2024 EMARKETER and CivicScience survey. While jostling for future positioning in the market, PayPal, Venmo, and Perplexity need to convince consumers that agentic commerce is a desirable payment option, lest they repeat a metaverse investment flop.

A federal court stopped short of ordering Google to divest Chrome, instead requiring it to end exclusive search contracts and share some index data with competitors. Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling allows Google to keep paying Apple for default placement but bans exclusivity that kept rivals sidelined. Alphabet shares rose 8% after hours, while Apple gained 4%. Google faces six years of oversight but avoids a structural breakup sought by the DOJ. The bigger challenge looms outside the courtroom: AI tools, Reddit, and TikTok are increasingly siphoning queries, while Google’s top-result clickthrough rates continue to slide.

AI search engine Perplexity is facing potential ad business struggles with the departure of its head of advertising Taz Patel. The departure comes as Perplexity eyes new avenues for growth and is faced with legal pressures, per Adweek. Patel’s departure signals a deeper issue with AI search ad monetization, reflecting advertiser hesitation to spend without proven formats, measurement, and ROI, even as AI adoption grows.

The news: Perplexity added a standalone subscription tier for its Comet agentic AI browser that will fund a $42.5 million publisher revenue-sharing program. Comet Plus costs $5 per month and gives users access to “premium content from a group of trusted publishers and journalists.” The browser is included in Perplexity Pro and Max subscriptions. Our take: Brands should actively monitor how their content is used across AI platforms and consider usage-based deals for fair compensation, especially if content is regularly surfaced by AI tools. They should also examine the real revenue potential of partnerships like Comet Plus and scrutinize audience size, payout structures, and long-term sustainability before committing.

Retailers have built lucrative revenue streams from retail media networks (RMNs), leveraging on-site ad inventory and first-party transaction data. As the potential grows for consumers to shop through AI agents instead of retailer sites or apps, those data streams and ad surfaces are at risk.

AI shopping assistants are reshaping product discovery and threatening retail media’s search-driven model. RMNs and advertisers need to adjust strategies to protect their market position and seize the opportunity to turn disruption into growth.

The news: Despite consumers’ rising use of AI agents for search, shopping, and discovery, brands are falling behind on generative engine optimization (GEO) strategies. 47% of brands have no deliberate GEO strategy or have no idea if they appear at all in AI agent responses, per a new report from Cordial. Another 47% have only just begun optimizing content for AI discovery. Our take: To boost visibility, brands should optimize for conversational context and create structured, machine-readable content that AI can index, like clear website FAQs, TL;DR summaries, and detailed product specs. Expanding presence across social platforms that feed AI training models, such as Reddit, Quora, and YouTube, can also improve chances of surfacing in AI-generated responses.

AI search startup Perplexity shocked the industry with an unsolicited $34.5 billion all-cash bid for Google’s Chrome browser—despite Chrome not being for sale. The offer comes as a US court weighs whether Google must divest Chrome after an antitrust ruling, and positions Perplexity as a ready operator if a spin-off is ordered. Even if the deal never closes, the move amplifies Perplexity’s profile, pressures Google, and underscores the growing importance of distribution channels alongside model quality in AI competition.

The news: Meta’s strategy of hiring its competitors’ top AI engineers reflects the industry’s urgency to ramp up capabilities and get to artificial general intelligence (AGI) first—CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that was the company’s objective in “delivering personal superintelligence for everyone,” per ZDNET. Our take: Meta is betting big—on people, not just products. This strategy offers speed, proprietary insight, and technical capacity. But it also raises scrutiny from investors and customers expecting it to pay off. Marketers should track Meta’s progress and watch how it integrates newly acquired AI knowledge. If successful, this shift could reinvent ad targeting, creative automation, and user modeling at scale.

The news: Amazon plans to put ads in its AI-powered Alexa+ voice assistant to boost product discovery and profits. Our take: If Amazon rolls out sponsored answers to Alexa+ user queries or in-conversation ads, the voice assistant’s vast trove of personal user data will help marketers target consumers on a micro level. However, if hallucinations arise and lead to irrelevant or inaccurate product recommendations, Amazon risks eroding both user trust and brand confidence.

The news: Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed plans to “significantly” increase AI investments, including acquisitions. The iPhone-maker acquired seven firms this year, some focused on AI, and remains open to deals of any size to boost capabilities, per Business Insider. Our take: Apple’s focus on efficiency and partnerships suggests incremental but impactful AI-driven tools will emerge, especially around privacy-first and device-dependent personalization. Prepare for evolving Apple AI features that emphasize user privacy. Balance campaigns between Apple’s controlled environment and more open, AI-reliant ecosystems like Google’s and Meta’s to optimize reach and precision.

The situation: Amazon and Google, once bound by a symbiotic relationship in which Amazon funneled ad dollars into Google Search and Google indexed Amazon’s pages, are now veering toward open conflict as generative AI (genAI) blurs the lines between ecommerce, advertising, and search. Both companies are determined to own the entire journey from discovery to checkout, and that ambition is unraveling what remains of their former détente. Our take: Amazon and Google are racing to define where and how consumers discover and buy products in the genAI era. If Amazon succeeds in walling off its marketplace data and steering shoppers to its own AI interfaces, the retail landscape could splinter into walled gardens where tech giants cooperate far less. That winner‑takes‑all dynamic might suit the victors, but it risks degrading the overall consumer experience with fewer choices and less transparent pricing. At the same time, it could lead brands and retailers into a margin‑sapping race to the bottom inside whichever closed ecosystem proves most dominant.

Alphabet posted strong Q2 results, with Search ad revenue up 12% YoY and YouTube ad revenue climbing 13%. But analysts and advertisers are asking tougher questions as the company shifts toward AI-led formats like AI Overviews and Gemini. Google declined to provide clear data on ROI, clickthroughs, or user engagement, fueling concerns about monetization in a no-click world. Licensing costs for LLM training, brand safety, and competition from ChatGPT and Perplexity are all in focus. While YouTube continues to lead in streaming ad growth, the future of Google’s ad engine may hinge on transparency, AI accountability, and performance parity.

Our midyear report revisits the top trends we named in early 2025 to see what’s shaping the market, evolving fast, or fading in the rearview mirror.

Walmart is going all in on AI as it prepares for a future in which more people rely on the technology to work and shop. The company is making strategic AI hires while streamlining its agents to make them easier for shoppers, employees, and partners to use. Agentic tools are both a threat and an opportunity for retailers. Companies need to prepare for a future where tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity make purchases on behalf of shoppers—which will require them either to make their websites more accessible to these assistants, or to build their own AI agents to make those transactions seamless. AI agents are also a useful investment in the current era of uncertainty, given their ability to unlock cost savings at a time when every dollar counts.

The news: Google is looking to sign licensing deals with more publishers, per Bloomberg, to improve its products and address the threat of dwindling AI training resources. It’s launching a pilot project to partner with about 20 national news outlets, which could help ease tensions between Big Tech players and the publishers that are demanding compensation for their content. Our take: Google’s increased effort to license more media content shows its gearing up for a future in which AI-generated summaries dominate search. As this shift occurs, brands will need to focus on generative engine optimization (GEO) to get their content into AI summaries, such as by including concise takeaways that LLMs can surface. Preparing for a world where more premium content is behind paywalls could also include deeper publisher partnerships.

The news: Perplexity is in talks with smartphone manufacturers to make its new Comet browser a default app on smartphones to drive adoption and user engagement, per Reuters. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said it aims to reach “tens to hundreds of millions” of users in 2026 after a desktop rollout to a “few hundred thousand” testers, a plan that could be aided by expanding Comet access on phones. Our take: While Comet itself is a browser, its integrations with Perplexity’s AI could streamline access to mobile AI search tools, changing mobile search behavior and forcing marketers to rethink traditional search marketing practices. Getting Comet onto phones could also supercharge Perplexity’s data on user behavior and boost its ability to improve its AI search tools.