386 signals

Ad-tech

Desk brief

State of Play

Revised Nov 1, 2026

The moment. Search is paying for the AI that is replacing it. Adweek’s Kendra Barnett reports Alphabet’s Q3 search revenue growth slowed to 12% from 17% the quarter before, with executives citing AI Mode’s lower ad monetization, and TechCrunch has Google taking AI Mode ads international anyway. Google is also moving to personalize those ads with signals from Gmail and Photos. Meta rebuilt the engine underneath its feed: AdExchanger’s Allison Schiff reports an LLM-based ranking model and a retrieval overhaul letting Andromeda score more than a billion ads per second. OpenAI kept building its ad business in public, taking ChatGPT ads to 26 more countries for 89 in all, adding an automatic bid strategy, and applying creative enhancements to existing ads from October 30 unless an advertiser opts out. The FTC cleared Publicis’s LiveRamp acquisition under a consent order with a five-year data firewall.

The tension. The platforms are editing the work and moving the liability to the buyer. Adweek has Meta’s AI reworking creative without being asked, and Meta’s new terms make advertisers solely responsible for whatever it generates, a change Meta pushed from October 30 to November 20 after publisher trade bodies objected. Identity is closing in one browser and opening in another inbox: Apple confirmed it has broken identity resolution vendors’ tracking on Safari, while Google’s policy now lets Gmail, Drive and Photos data feed ads once a user connects them. CTV’s plumbing is still the weak joint: The Measure’s Jon Lafayette reports Wurl finding 89% of CTV ad requests lack a usable program name, and executives from Magnite to The Trade Desk name frequency waste as the problem nobody has fixed. Indie agencies now ask aloud whether they need a DSP at all.

Who’s moving. Google, with search growth at 12% and AI Mode ads going global. Google again, on Gmail and Photos signals in AI Mode ads. Meta, scoring every impression with an LLM. Meta again, delaying its terms to November 20. OpenAI, at 89 countries. The FTC and Publicis, on a five-year firewall around LiveRamp. Apple, closing the Safari workarounds. Wurl, on CTV requests with no program name. Skydance, weighing Google over FreeWheel. FreeWheel, following NBCU in the Comcast split. Madhive, adding AdImpact spend data across 210 markets. Pinterest, launching Programmatic Deals with Magnite.

What the desk is watching. Whether Meta’s November 20 date holds, and whether AI Mode’s ad load closes the gap in Google’s search growth or widens it.

Microsoft rolls out agentic commerce playbook and AI Max search expansion

MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan reports that Microsoft Advertising released an “Agentic Playbook” for brands to prep product feeds and checkout for AI agents, plus a 90-day rollout plan. It also began rolling out AI Max, expanding search-term matching across Copilot Search and Bing.

TechCrunch finds easy jailbreak for explicit content in older Claude models

TechCrunch got Claude Opus 4.6 to produce explicit sexual content in 10 of 10 tests, via a multiturn jailbreak. Anthropic still offers Opus 4.6, Opus 3 and Haiku 4.5 via API and partners like Azure and Bedrock.

Butler/Till, iHeartMedia pilot direct agent-to-agent buying for audio

Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that Now I’ve heard everything. Butler/Till and iHeartMedia ran a four-week agentic buying pilot on streaming audio and podcasts, using matched AI agents to execute a direct agency-publisher buy with no SSP middleman involved.

OpenAI’s business CMO pitches ChatGPT as a marketing department in a box

Ad Age reports that OpenAI’s CMO for business products argues ChatGPT can let any employee perform marketing tasks like campaign analysis without dedicated marketing staff or tools.

OpenAI expands ChatGPT ads to 31 European markets as revenue climbs 25%

eMarketer reports that OpenAI is bringing its ads pilot to 31 European markets, including Germany, France and Spain, while ad revenue has grown over 25% since early August. The company’s ad business is nearing a $1 billion run rate.

Lineup adds ad-creation tools to its publisher order-management system

Lineup integrated alfamedia’s alfa Stylo ad editor into its Adpoint and Ad2order products, letting publishers create and book ads in one system. The AI-powered tool offers templates, image generation and text suggestions for building digital and print creative.

Samsung Ads case study: CTV matches social/search on gaming ROAS

Advanced Television reports that Samsung Ads and Playtika ran a three-month performance campaign for Bingo Blitz, citing nearly 4x higher ROAS and 60% lower cost per install. Samsung frames CTV as a lower-funnel channel that meets the same bar as social and search.

WunderKIND’s high-impact ad formats join Amazon Publisher Services

The Measure’s Jon Lafayette reports that WunderKIND is integrating its overlay, masthead and endcap ad formats into Amazon Publisher Services, making its 300+ publisher network available to Amazon DSP and APS bidders. The formats trigger on behavioral signals like exit intent and CTV pauses.

Covatic lets publishers re-target live ad campaigns mid-flight

Covatic’s Smart Campaigns uses AI to compare exposed and unexposed audiences during a live campaign, then lets publishers’ own ops teams add or drop segments to chase advertiser outcomes like sales and sign-ups, not just reach.

CTV bid request inefficiencies are quietly costing publishers 20-40% in revenue

VideoWeek’s Tim Cross-Kovoor reports that Shinka CEO Kieran Greene says CTV publishers lose significant revenue not from data withholding but from poorly formatted bid requests and missing signals that never reach buyers, since ad servers prioritize their own demand paths over third parties.

Madhive exec: local ad AI still at ‘day one’ despite scale claims

TVREV’s Madhive’s Chief Innovation Officer reports that Madhive CIO Aaron Brown says local advertising’s fragmented, non-digital signals remain an unsolved problem, even as Maverick sifts the full bid stream to find nuanced local targeting at scale.

Apple in talks to pay publishers nine figures for Siri content

TheWrap’s A.J. Katz reports that Apple is negotiating multiyear, pay-per-use deals worth nine figures to feed publisher content into a revamped Siri. It’s another AI licensing revenue stream for news outlets as referral traffic keeps shrinking.

AppLovin pushes beyond gaming to court ecommerce advertisers

AdExchanger’s Sarah Sluis reports that AppLovin is expanding its performance-ad machine beyond game installs to court ecommerce and non-gaming marketers.

Nano Interactive debuts AI tool to unify fragmented CTV data

ExchangeWire reports that Nano Interactive launched Screen Graph, an AI layer that cross-matches publisher data to fix CTV’s identity and metadata gaps. It targets ad repetition and weak targeting caused by fragmented content IDs, pricing, and measurement standards across the channel.

Comcast’s Rooke: TV wins back share by being as easy to buy as social

Comcast Advertising’s James Rooke says premium video can beat platforms only by fixing buying friction and proving outcomes via incrementality. He also touts Universal Ads’ UK launch with ITV, Sky and Channel 4 as proof the pipes now work.

Pinterest taps Zillow data to target home shoppers via Media Network Connect

Pinterest and Zillow struck a deal letting Zillow Elevate advertisers target Pinners using 34 Zillow consumer segments, from fixer-upper shoppers to renters. It’s another sign Pinterest is leaning on third-party data partnerships to sharpen ad targeting and grow revenue.

Ad tech’s public-market exodus: four delistings in a year

Digiday’s Seb Joseph and Krystal Scanlon report that Nielsen-DoubleVerify, IAS-Novacap, LiveRamp-Publicis and now Criteo-Vista mark four take-privates in a year, while public survivors like Trade Desk get punished despite growth.

AI reshapes search and shopping funnels, but ad dollars haven’t followed

eMarketer reports that Google, Amazon, Booking, and Reddit all show AI touching discovery and purchase now, but monetization badly lags adoption. Referral traffic is shifting to chatbots faster than advertisers can buy against it.

AppLovin bets on ecommerce ads to prove it’s more than a gaming platform

AdExchanger’s James Hercher reports that AppLovin is pushing its algorithmic ad platform beyond mobile gaming into ecommerce, even as its stock has fallen from $720 to $340. Skeptical brands are running holdout tests, and results are convincing them despite limited targeting transparency.

DOOH vendors chase the women’s sports boom

The Big Story reports that digital out-of-home operators are angling to cash in as advertisers pour into women’s sports amid its viewership surge. It’s another sign DOOH is positioning itself as a flexible add-on for advertisers chasing hot, fast-growing audiences.

AI reshapes ad infrastructure but earnings show little revenue lift yet

Ad Age’s Q2 earnings roundup finds AI embedded in buying, ranking, and creative across tech, CPG, travel, and ad tech firms. Yet execs admit the revenue flowing through these new systems remains small so far.

Cineverse turns podcast ads into CTV spots with VAUDIO

Advanced Television reports that Cineverse’s new VAUDIO tool adds visuals to existing audio ads for CTV, skipping video shoots. It projects up to $12M in annual revenue at 15-20% margin, built cheaply atop IndiCue’s ad infrastructure.

Week in Charts: Trade Desk stock hits 52-week low as Green admits growth miss

VideoWeek’s Dan Meier reports that Trade Desk shares fell to a 52-week low after Jeff Green conceded growth is below expectations, while S4 Capital and WPP posted gains on turnaround progress. The split shows ad-tech pressure mounting even as agency recoveries take hold.

TBPN teases OpenAI’s first hardware device

TBPN’s roundup flags a coming OpenAI-branded device alongside AI-designed virus research and real estate chatter. Thin on detail here, but any move by OpenAI into hardware matters for who controls the next ad and content interface.

Retail media and CTV underpin Europe’s digital ad growth

EMARKETER’s 2026 forecast covers digital ad spending across 31 European countries, with Western Europe still leading regional growth. Retail media and CTV are the named drivers, signaling where budgets are shifting as linear and search-only strategies lose share.

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