Programmatic ad buying is undergoing a sea change: Microsoft’s DSP closure signals a smaller role for Big Tech in managing third-party ad inventory—so who will take its place?

The news: Pinterest will host high-performing influencer content posted on affiliate shopping platform LTK, automatically bringing popular images from the platform to Pinterest, according to The Verge. Pinterest also hired Chip Jessopp, former Amazon director of global accounts and ad tech sales, as head of programmatic, per Digiday. Jessopp will help Pinterest create new demand channels while scaling its programmatic abilities. Our take: Pinterest’s moves could better position it as a legitimate competitor in digital advertising and a promising growth area for influencers and marketers—giving the platform more legs against social commerce giants like Meta and TikTok.

The news: Cannes Lions 2025 is highlighting how retail media is moving beyond performance marketing into broader applications across brand storytelling, in-store influence, and customer experience. Executives like Victoria Usher and Jim Kane are calling attention to how brands now activate retail data for segmentation, planning, and innovation across media touchpoints including CTV and search. Our take: This shift reflects growing demand for privacy-safe, first-party data solutions amid signal loss and rising complexity. Cannes will underscore retail media’s potential to support creativity and full-funnel integration. The future isn’t just attribution—it’s about making retail platforms vital to brand equity and long-term engagement.

The news: Amazon’s Private Auction is quietly reshaping the CTV landscape by introducing more flexible buying on Prime Video. The format allows smaller advertisers and performance marketers to compete for inventory through open bidding, bypassing the need for costly guaranteed placements. As CPMs decline and the demand for agility rises, this move gives brands better control over pricing and access. Our take: While big brands may still favor premium guarantees, Amazon’s shift reflects broader momentum toward programmatic efficiency. By inviting direct-response buyers into the Prime Video ecosystem, Amazon is not just monetizing scale—it’s redefining what CTV access looks like in 2025.

The news: The Trade Desk unveiled Deal Desk, a new tool to fix the inefficiencies in private marketplace buying, where up to 90% of structured deal IDs fail to scale. By automating deal creation via API and surfacing metadata like fit and availability, Deal Desk aims to save time and unlock premium inventory. Our take: As PMP spending overtakes open exchange buys, The Trade Desk is shoring up the backend infrastructure that supports this shift. Deal Desk positions the company to capture more high-value spend and offers a cleaner path to scale in a fragmented programmatic landscape.

Following Google’s second antitrust loss in under a year, Google is at a crossroads. The recent ruling that Google maintains an illegal monopoly on ad tech, combined with last year’s ruling of antitrust practices in online search, could reshape digital advertising.

Tariff escalation heightens recession fears: EMARKETER's forecasting team analyzes the economic disruption from Trump’s new trade policies.

Spotify boosts global ad tools: New programmatic, targeting, and AI creative features position Spotify as a full-funnel solution for global marketers.

Worldwide programmatic display ad spending will grow 14.6% in 2025. This report explains our programmatic forecasts for six countries to map global spending trends.

Programmatic plays a small but growing role in digital audio services ad spending. Major digital audio platforms are leaning in.

Disruption is imminent for programmatic. The market teeters on the brink of several seismic shifts around identity and audience data. And a landmark antitrust ruling could energize an already hot ad tech consolidation streak.

MFA sites still plague open web exchanges: AI allows bad actors to rapidly produce fraudulent websites and use bots to drum up fake pageviews, muddying the ad ecosystem.

The programmatic strategy known as curation is gaining traction in the ad tech space. Curation is a message from supply-side platforms (SSPs) to demand-side platforms (DSPs) that they’re ignoring valuable inventory. SSPs are increasingly using elevated data to make curated inventory more accessible, and in turn heighten advertiser value, before DSPs have the opportunity to commoditize ad buys.

Customer data collection, the dawn of retail media, and AI-assisted shopping has upended a retail industry already in the midst of a big-box transformation at the tail end of the 20th century. And then there is one of the biggest elephants in the room: Amazon. Here are some of the most impactful changes that marketing leaders have seen over the last 25 years.

Programmatic ad sales on properties owned by digital publishers will reach $22.69 billion by 2027, adding $3.7 billion to where it was in 2022, according to Advertiser Perceptions' "Q4 2024: The State of the Ad Industry" survey.

Though programmatic nonvideo digital display ad spend will continue to grow through 2026 when it will hit $70.99 billion, its share of total programmatic digital display ad spend is declining, according to our forecast.

As the relationship between data and AI deepens, both push- and pull-based marketing strategies will benefit.

Companies large and small will net hundreds of billions in US incremental ecommerce and digital ad dollars in the next two years. Who will be the big winners?

Roblox soars in Q3 despite critical reports: The company saw significant user and revenue growth and restated its commitment to child safety.