Covers agencies and ad-tech. Bylines at digiday.com. Desk record: 19 signals cited since August 2026, 16 published, first to report 1. Updated November 3, 2026.
Indexed from published reporting. Not a medianexis staff byline. Any journalist can ask to be removed.
Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that advertisers are funneling Q4 media dollars into social, video and retail media, lifting year-on-year spend, even as Omnicom, Havas and Publicis post positive Q3 growth while WPP and Dentsu results remain pending.
MediaPost’s Joe Mandese reports that political advertising forecasters now project the 2025-26 midterm cycle will total $12 billion, with linear local broadcast TV still accounting for 50% of the $11.038 billion spent cycle-to-date versus CTV’s 21% share.
Oct 27Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that media buyers describe NBA linear and streaming inventory as all but sold out across Peacock, Amazon and Disney for the 2026-27 season, even as streaming ad spend hit $874 million last year.
Oct 27Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that Amazon is using Thursday Night Football to pull in both non-endemic brands like American Express and endemic retail advertisers like Colgate, which hasn’t run a Super Bowl ad in seven years but is now “all in” on Amazon football.
Oct 19Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that Goodway Group struck a deal with Arima to use a “synthetic population” of U.S., British and German consumers for incrementality testing, joining WPP, Dentsu and Vurvey Labs clients like Kenvue in adopting AI-generated audience data.
Oct 12Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that client spending on Amazon Ads ahead of October’s Prime Big Deal Days is up 15-40% year over year, per five media buyers, with growth expected to reach a third by year end.
Oct 10Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that consumer healthcare firms like Opella are shifting budgets toward retail media, creator marketing, paid social and search, pulling spend from traditional pharma TV, as OTC sales hit $58.2 billion in 2025.
Oct 6Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that mid-sized advertisers like Wyndham Hotels, Opella and BetMGM are now building in-house teams to mass-produce AI creative, a practice once limited to giants like Unilever and L’Oréal.
Oct 5Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that State Farm, Mercedes and Hoka marketers say AI search behavior is a factor in budget debates, arguing brand spend protects consideration as tools like ChatGPT and AI Overviews reshape research.
Sep 15Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that the IAB now projects 12.3% U.S. ad spend growth this year, up from 9.5%. Madison & Wall estimates AI-directed spend will hit 12% of U.S. ad dollars, up from 2% in 2023, reaching 27% by 2030.
Sep 10Automated agents and bots now account for more than half of all web requests, per Cloudflare. Agencies say inflated impressions and conversions are poisoning retargeting data, pushing some clients to shift budget into social and retail media instead.
Sep 9Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that a year into Cindy Rose’s tenure, WPP Media’s retention rate has climbed to 43% from 16%, with $3 billion in new accounts won versus $2.81 billion lost. Operating margin still sits at 4.1%, far below Publicis’s 17.4%.
Sep 1Fox’s World Cup coverage drew 128 million viewers and lifted its ad revenue 28% to $4.2 billion, but buyers say that hasn’t translated into a rush for Premier League inventory.
Aug 28Digiday’s Sam Bradley reports that Brainlabs analyzed Google Analytics across 54 clients and found organic sessions fell 10.5% since AI Overviews hit scale, while AI-platform referral traffic rose 163% and converted 1.5x better than organic search.
Aug 25Digiday’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.
Aug 22Poppi and McDonald’s are building social strategies around superfans rather than mass audiences, using comments and viral moments to drive product launches. Marketers like McDonald’s Guillaume Huin now use personal accounts, not brand handles, to leak news directly to fans.
Aug 19