Ad Tech
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AI
This Ad Tech Company Wants To Ensure Brands Don’t Go Viral For The Wrong Reasons
Digital Culture Group aims to stop ineffective or offensive ads before they ever go live by preemptively determining what will resonate with – or push away – an audience.
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Data-Driven Thinking
AI Labels Don’t Tell Consumers Whether An Ad’s Claims Are Real
Disclosure: Sourin Chakrabarti works on AI labeling for advertising at Meta. The views expressed are his own and do not represent Meta. In October 2025, three clips appearing to show police detaining and pepper-spraying protesters racked up millions of views across X, Instagram and TikTok. Created with OpenAI’s Sora, the videos carried visible watermarks, yet […]
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The Big Story
Smart Acquisition Or Frankenstack? Stagwell-Freestar And DoorDash-Instacart
It’s fall, M&A is in the air. Two acquisitions happened this week: Stagwell bought Freestar and DoorDash bought Instacart.
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Marketers
DoorDash Acquires Instacart As Consolidation Comes For Mobility Media
DoorDash on Thursday confirmed the rumors and announced its intention to acquire Instacart at a $17 billion valuation. The deal is a logical one for a variety of reasons. The two fit into the same category of mobile app-based, last-mile-fulfillment specialists that have shoehorned their way into the brick-and-mortar shopping habits. These companies fall into […]
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Data-Driven Thinking
Can We Really Blame Apple For Blocking ID Tech?
Earlier this month, ad tech received its latest warning about the cybersecurity vulnerabilities baked into programmatic advertising. That context is largely missing from discussions about Apple’s plan to disable the third-party ID infrastructure that powers digital advertising on iOS and Mac devices. But ad tech’s wider issues paint Apple’s actions in a different light. On […]
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AI
Meta Has A New Ad Ranking System Built On LLMs, Plus Upgrades To Andromeda And GEM
Meta now scores every eligible ad for every impression at more than a billion ads per second, one of three ad ranking upgrades Meta announced on Wednesday. The others are an update to GEM, the ads recommendation model it introduced last year, and a new generative recommendations model (GenRecs) built on LLMs that can predict […]
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Marketers
Marketbridge Acquires The B2B Advertising And Analytics Startup Channel99
Who doesn’t know that doleful tune, “The agencies they are a-changin’.” That’s not exactly how Bob Dylan sang it in the original, but it’s not wrong. One such agency is Marketbridge, a 35-year-old B2B marketing firm that’s been a recent acquirer of agency and consultancy services businesses. Marketbridge added to its portfolio on Tuesday by […]
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CTV Roundup
Programmatic, FAST And Queerness – The Trifecta Of Revry’s Future
The law-professional-to-queer-media-founder pipeline is not a particularly common one. But it’s exactly how Alia J. Daniels came to co-found Revry, a free streaming platform centering LGBTQ+ storylines. Revry is home to PrismRiot, a programmatic ad exchange that also connects advertisers to other multicultural and diverse-owned publishers.
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AI
This Startup Makes Sure That AI Tools Aren’t Out Of Reach For SMBs
Pie, an AI-powered growth platform for SMBs, aims to give smaller businesses affordable access to AI tools that often cater to larger businesses with bigger budgets.
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AdExchanger Talks
From Puppies To Programmatic To AI Agents
Nobody gets into media buying for the joy of reconciling reports or QA-ing a campaign. But trusting AI to do those things takes more than a promise to save time, says Kovva COO and Co-Founder Tanja Mimica.
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