Marketing tech

Marketing tech

Storytelling has always been at the core of brand marketing. Now, with AI becoming more deeply embedded in creative workflows, marketers are finding new ways to scale emotional, multimodal narratives that connect with audiences across channels. According to a recent study conducted by DMEXCO and Kantar, emotional advertising increases brand demand by more than 60%. In a dynamic and crowded landscape, emotional narratives - especially those that can be personalized, scaled and optimized in real-time - can drive greater impact.

Magnite bought ai to make CTV advertising more accessible to small businesses and smaller budgets. DeepIntent received $637 million from a private equity acquirer that believes healthcare advertising - even as it faces governmental pressure - is ripe for growth. AI-powered virtual product placement startups Rembrand, which was founded by ad tech OG Omar Tawakol, is merging with another startup, Spaceback, which uses AI to convert social media content and videos into CTV ad creative.

Google Search Console reporting seems off since last week. Plus, third party Google tracking tools reporting is mostly broken since the Google 100 search results parameter going away. Google did not add AI Overview tracking in Search Console, that was fake news. Structured data does not help with AI visibility, not yet at least. FTC is investigating Google over ad pricing and terms.

"pretty much doing the same thing," he said, "we're just approaching it from different angles." "People love content, and they hate disruptions, so they'll literally pay money not to see ads," Tawakol said. "In that kind of a world, you either need to embed a brand into content - which is what we do - or make great ads content, which is what Spaceback does."

When we analyzed event performance from the previous two years in preparation for 2025, Dmexco didn't make the cut,

The booking system you choose shapes how smoothly your salon operates, how satisfied your clients are, and how much your business can grow without adding extra stress to your day. In 2025, the best hair salon booking software does far more than simply organize appointments. It helps you prevent no-shows, manage payments efficiently, run marketing campaigns, and keep your team coordinated, all from a single, easy-to-use platform.

This week, I covered the ongoing Google August 2025 spam update and how it heated up this week. Google got into hot water over saying the web is rapidly declining. Google AI Mode also said AI Mode would be the default, and then backtracked on that statement as well. Google AI Mode expanded beyond the English language. Google is showing AI Mode in the search suggestions autocomplete.

"This brand has never had top-of-funnel paid media launched at scale," Lynch said on the company's most recent earnings call. "It's hard to believe, but all the marketing has always been word of mouth, earned media and bottom-funnel ... promo activations, and so we leaned in on making some of these investments and so we're ecstatic with the results."

The Verge reports that the streamer envisions a near future where your TV is flooded with AI-generated advertisements. No longer is it going to be about the top 200 advertisers, Roku CFO and COO Dan Jedda told investors during a recent investor conference hosted by Citi. It's going to be about 100,000 advertisers. Oh, dear God, please no. He apparently went on: You can use gen AI to [make] a very well-produced commercial, noting that you can be up and running within minutes.

I don't think that anyone saw this coming three years ago. On Sept. 5, S&P Global announced that advertising-technology company AppLovin would be added to the S&P 500 index later this month -- a milestone in AppLovin's publicly traded journey that was unimaginable just three years ago. AppLovin makes money by helping to get its customers' apps -- usually mobile video games -- discovered and monetized.

Microsoft Advertising is testing using three dots, instead of the arrow down, for the sponsored ads URL in the Bing search results. We've seen Bing test three dots before but they were horizontal, the new test are vertical three dots. I cannot replicate this but Sachin Patel spotted it and posted a screenshot on X - here is his screenshot:

Since the early days of Google search, brands have invested heavily in either organic SEO or paid advertising. For years, debates raged about which approach delivers more value - long-term organic growth or immediate paid reach. But in 2025, the conversation has shifted. The rise of AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude means the future of brand visibility is not about choosing between SEO and paid media, but about integrating them strategically.

Across the UK, marketers are facing a measurement gap with major business consequences. It's estimated that one in five conversions are not being recorded because of browser restrictions, like the blocking of third-party tags. That means as much as 20% of campaign performance is invisible, which makes ROI appear weaker than it is, reduces the effectiveness of AI bidding, and erodes trust in marketing data at the leadership table.

The LTK brand platform provides businesses with tools they can use to discover content creators, gift them products, manage and scale campaigns, and analyze their performance. In the past, LTK offered these features only to high-paying enterprise brand clients. While there will be plenty of paid premium features, according to Kristi O'Brien, the company's chief revenue officer, brands will soon be able to use the basic version at no cost.

Azerion, the leading European digital advertising company, is proud to announce a comprehensive rebranding, unveiling a fresh visual identity, a newly designed website, and a revitalised presence across social platforms, highlighted by the brand's dynamic new tagline 'Everyone. Everywhere'. This rebranding marks a significant milestone in Azerion's journey, reflecting its evolution into a more accessible, globally connected platform. Azerion connects audiences to advertisers using proprietary technology, local expertise, and premium inventory to drive measurable omnichannel outcomes in the places that matter to clients. This refined brand promise is core to Azerion's new identity: combining human connection with digital innovation to help clients succeed across channels, formats, and geographies.

First off, on Reels promotions. Meta's expanding Reels trending ads to more advertisers, which enables marketers to place their ads alongside popular Reels content. As explained by Meta: Reels trending ads use AI to curate the most trending and culturally relevant Reels inventory, delivering advertisers access to highly engaging, brand-safe video content that puts their brand where culture happens. Available lineups include all overall trending content or specific categories like animals & pets, beauty & fashion, cars, sports, with more to come next year.

Over the past year, it's become difficult to open Instagram or TikTok without scrolling by a virtual influencer. These are different from the faceless creators who use generative AI tools to mass-produce content; instead, they are fully AI-generated avatars whose appearance, voice and actions are fine-tuned by an individual or team of individuals behind the scenes. Virtual creators have been around for years, but have received a new wave of attention this year as generative AI and avatar technology entered the mainstream.

Publicis's Niel Bornman said advertising rivals were between five and 10 years behind in their adoption of data and AI The world's largest advertising agency is hiring more graduate roles than ever in the face of artificial intelligence's rise, gearing junior training to be more focused on client management, its UK media boss has said, bucking a global slowdown in junior white-collar employment.

Transaction IDs (TIDs) have been the topic du jour on LinkedIn and Twitter - and for good reason. These OpenRTB identifiers let buyers deduplicate the cluttered bidstream. The entire TID debate has a clear subtitle: "Duplication is waste." However, legitimate auction duplication provides benefits for publishers. And the use of TIDs drives publishers' fears around data leakage and buy-side power aggregation.

Microsoft is testing putting link icons in the sitelinks carousel buttons within the Bing search ads from Microsoft Advertising. Normally, you'd just see the carousel of sitelinks below the search snippet but here Microsoft is testing adding a link icon to them. This test was spotted by Sachin Patel who posted a couple of examples on X - here is one of those examples: Here are more:

Since the arrival of the internet and online marketing, measuring and analyzing certain metrics has been essential for those wanting to attract audiences and sell online. Figures like click-through rates, page impressions, and conversions have traditionally provided marketers with the insight needed to make decisions about how, when, and where to present their products and services to us. Those days, however, could be coming to an end.

On Wednesday, Cognitiv released the latest version of ContextGPT, which allows brands to provide more detailed and specific targeting parameters in order to optimize ad performance, Aaron Andalman, co-founder and chief science officer of Cognitiv, told AdExchanger. Brand suitability used to rely solely on keywords, said Andalman, but Cognitiv's technology understands content situationally based on how words are being used.

'Retail media' is yesterday's label, while 'commerce media' is bigger, broader and fast becoming the operating system for how brands plan, buy and measure across the entire media ecosystem.