Ted Flanagan, Habu Chief Customer Officer, LiveRamp

As the commerce category evolves and expands to more verticals and use cases, the industry is seeing a proliferation of media networks. Thanks to retailers, there’s a blueprint for how data captured from the core business can power a new high-growth, high-margin revenue stream. Now, across many verticals — like travel and hospitality, rideshare, entertainment, financial services and more — data-rich enterprises searching for growth want to get in the game. 

Launching and scaling a media network is a robust undertaking. These platforms leverage data in fundamentally different ways than the core business, requiring new strategic partnerships and integrations with media buying and selling technologies. Moreover, no CEO will pursue a new business line if it’s perceived to add risk to the enterprise, necessitating clear answers to questions about privacy, security and data governance. 

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T-Mobile has held talks to purchase Vistar Media, as the U.S.’s third-largest telco seeks to strengthen its non-traditional revenue streams by further expanding its footprint in the advertising sector, sources told Digiday.

Such discussions are understood to have taken place amid what would appear to be an ongoing sales process from Vistar Media, which is said to have fielded several inbound inquiries since late 2024, and come as parties in the space anticipate a flurry of mergers and acquisitions. 

T-Mobile and Vistar Media declined to respond to Digiday’s requests for comment, but later confirmed the deal.

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In the age of social media-driven, viral trends, brands often look to platforms like TikTok to strike gold with the algorithm and reach a massive audience. As social media fragmentation continues and the TikTok ban looms even nearer, the concept of virality may soon shift, making it an even less realistic goal than before. 

Take Bogg Bag, the brightly colored, Croc-inspired tote bag that became one of the many “TikTok Made Me Buy It” products backed by influencers and content creators, setting it on the path to achieve $100 million in revenue last year, according to Bogg Bag founder and CEO Kim Vaccarella.

Last year, the bags were everywhere on social media. One video was posted back in May where a mom packing a Bogg Bag with daily essentials got 1.7 million likes. The post was in partnership with Bloom Nutrition, health supplement company, but mentioned Bogg in the caption. Another post featuring a healthcare worker sporting a Bogg Bag racked up more than 378,000 likes in January. In June, another nurse who accessorized the bag in an unsponsored post got nearly 98,000 likes.

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Throughout 2024, several major brands announced they were creating their own brand studios that would soon roll out television shows and films. Marketers, it seems, have become more interested in creating entertainment rather than just advertising around it.

In February, luxury behemoth LVMH announced the creation of 22 Montaigne Entertainment in partnership with Superconnector Studios. In June, Starbucks touted its own burgeoning studio, Starbucks Studios, with the help of Sugar23. And in August, Chick-Fil-A revealed its plan for its own original programming focusing on reality TV. That’s just to name a few of the major brands that have been dipping more than a toe into entertainment to create their own studios.

Studios aren’t the only way brands are getting more involved in entertainment production either. In December, Sugar23 and production and distribution company Fifth Season kicked-off a three year venture to work with advertisers to co-finance $100 million of productions. That’s another one of the ways entertainment production companies are working with marketers. It all lays the groundwork for marketers to move beyond mostly creating advertising that interrupts programming people want to watch to (potentially) create that very entertainment.

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This edition of Digiday’s daily CES Briefing looks at the need for brands to adopt SEO strategies for dealing with AI agents, an interview with Mastercard’s Raja Rajamannar about agency compensation models in the AI era and how Dotdash Meredith has used OpenAI to boost its contextual ad product D/Cipher.

SEO for the agentic AI era

Expect to hear a lot about search engine optimization in 2025. Except it won’t be called that.

“It’s no longer about search engine optimization. It’s about answer engines,” said Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi.

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Advertisers may still be standing by TikTok for now, but its execs are eyeing the door as the app’s U.S. future grows increasingly precarious. 

Since the start of the year, two senior leaders from its ad team have already made their exit. Sameer Singh, general manager for global business solutions in North America, is reportedly leaving the platform, after three-and-a-half years of service. It’s understood he is available to support the transition for his team until the end of February. Days later, it was reported that Jack Bamberger, general manager of agency business for the region, had already left on Jan. 3, having only worked at TikTok since March 2024. 

While they have not said publicly why they departed, the timing is hard to ignore — coming just days before the Supreme Court weighed in on a pivotal case that could determine the platform’s fate in the U.S. last week (Jan. 10). Neither Singh nor Bamberger responded to Digiday’s request for comment.

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Shoppable TV ads powered by AI-powered visual search aren’t yet a household habit. However, one startup’s new partnerships with two major TV manufacturers are just one of the many ways AI was showcased in Las Vegas last week during CES 2025.

‘Searchable TV’?

At CES 2025 last week, a startup called TheTake announced new deals with LG and Samsung, bringing its total footprint to more than 30 million devices. Founded a decade ago, TheTake uses visual AI to let users click on items within a show to see what it is, where to buy them, and view similar items. The on-screen display also shows both organic recommendations and ads from brands and retailers.

The goal is to take a “pull more than push” approach to product discovery and the ads around them, said TheTake founder and CEO Tyler Cooper. With LG, the expanded partnership includes a new “click to search” feature to identify the products, places, and people on-screen. With Samsung, the startup debuted a new way to browse and shop for products within content, along with updates for advertisers to reach high-intent audiences.

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Once the U.S. presidential election was decided on Nov. 5, 2024, with former president Donald Trump defeating vice president Kamala Harris — an election that was certified only a week ago without attempts to overthrow the government, thankfully — there was little doubt the country’s mindset would shift somewhat rightward. 

That shift took a decisive and intentional lurch rightward last week with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announcing he was dismantling the company’s fact-checking apparatus in favor of X’s approach to content moderation — community notes. The move, because it aligns with X owner Elon Musk, was largely interpreted as a means of currying favor with the incoming administration — which, it’s fair to say, Musk helped usher into power more than any single person or entity in the last year. Whether that’s true or not remains in the eye of the beholder.

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After another year of rapid AI development and experimentation, tech and marketing experts think 2025 could help move adoption beyond the testing phase.

The factors in play come from multiple fronts. Tech companies are expanding access to AI content creation, agencies are working on ways to improve workflows for various tools, and enterprise-focused companies are looking for more ways to drive better performance with specific applications. Meanwhile, tech companies are rushing to deploy new ways for companies and consumers to use AI agents.

While there are plenty of topics to follow in the coming year, here are five things industry experts think will happen with AI in 2025 — not to mention all the news from Las Vegas this week during CES. (Read more in our 2024 AI news timeline and how platforms are evolving with AI content and ads.)

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No one doubts that 2025 is going to be a fasten-your-seatbelt kind of year.

A new (but also not-so-new) president known to shake up norms, an expected deregulatory environment, but one that generally discourages pro-social initiatives and generative AI adapting and getting more powerful with each new iteration — the latest buzzword being “agentic” AI. 

So what’s in store for the media agency world? A lot, it would seem. For one, the mid-December news that Omnicom moved to acquire Interpublic Group has observers and analysts thinking it’s bound to set off a wave of acquisition and consolidation among the other agency holding companies — at least most of them. Scenarios usually involve WPP, which has been the largest global holdco, or Havas, which has just spun out from parent Vivendi, making it a much easier acquisition target now. 

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Ads that target AI agents rather than humans might sound like something ripped from the pages of sci-fi, but it’s a concept that’s gaining traction among marketers thanks to recent musings by Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. On the “Marketing Against The Grain” podcast, he painted a picture of a future where  “user never sees an ad. Unlike Google, the different merchants are not competing for users’ attention. They’re competing for the AI agents’ attention”.

Naturally, Srinivas’ comments have unleashed a torrent of hot takes. Somewhere in the swirl of opinions, a few recurring arguments emerge — both for and against this seemingly far-fetched, yet not entirely implausible, vision.

Cases for ads served to AI agents

It provides a cleaner user experience
People are over the endless deluge of ads — especially the ones that miss the mark entirety. But if AI agents became the new target for advertisers, the constant stream of ads could disappear from view altogether. The result? A cleaner, ad-free user experience, letting consumers enjoy the web and their platforms without the usual interruptions.

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This edition of Digiday’s daily CES Briefing examines how brands and agencies are seeing a need to change payment structures to account for AI tools handling some agency work, what marketing and media execs may have missed on the CES show floor and how Disney’s tech showcase reflects real-time bidding finally being fast enough for live sports.

Agency compensation models in the AI era

A change to how clients pay agencies seems inevitable in the AI era. How the agency compensation model should change, though, is anyone’s guess. But it has very much been a topic of discussion during CES this week.

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TikTok’s ultimatum — shutdown in the U.S. or get a lifeline from the Supreme Court — is the latest plot twist in a whirlwind month that’s left markets in a tailspin. With the app’s future hanging by a thread, marketers are navigating murky waters, scrambling to make sense of what it all means for their plans.

Late last month, Chris (not his real name) fired off an email to his TikTok rep. As the go-to guy for managing client ad spend at his agency, he needed clarity ahead of a critical moment for the app, the looming federal deadline that could force ByteDance to sell TikTok — or face a U.S. ban. The response he got wasn’t just telling, it was practically a confession. TikTok reps were offering make-goods to advertisers locking in ad inventory through the end of the second quarter.

For the first time since whispers of a ban began six years ago, TikTok seemed to be bracing for the possibility that its American swan song might not be far off.

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Over the past two weeks, a growing cohort of digital creators has spoken out against the Honey browser extension for swapping creators’ affiliate marketing links with its own. Beyond their stolen affiliate revenue, however, creators are criticizing — and suing — Honey because they believe it has hurt their ability to sign future brand partnerships.

The controversy kicked off on Dec. 21, 2024, when the YouTuber MegaLag released a video essay claiming how Honey, a PayPal-owned browser extension, makes money by replacing creators’ affiliate marketing links with its own, thus gleaning a share of affiliate revenue that would otherwise go to the creators themselves. A Honey representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Since December, the Honey scandal has become something of a cause célèbre within the YouTube community, in part due to the fact that prominent creators such as James “MrBeast” Donaldson and Marques “MKBHD” Brownlee had previously promoted the service in sponsored videos. On Jan. 2, legal YouTubers such as Devin “LegalEagle” Stone initiated a class-action lawsuit against the company.

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After spending much of 2024 recovering from a down period, esports industry executives are stepping on the gas in anticipation of a growth year in 2025.

In 2023, advertisers and investors alike jumped ship from competitive gaming, leading to the so-called esports winter, a period in which esports organizations consolidated or pivoted to new business models in order to stay afloat. Over the past 12 months, however, the industry has recovered, in part thanks to brands coming back into the space, as well as the updated revenue share programs created by the publishers of popular esports games.

Emboldened by the success of new major esports events such as the Esports World Cup — and by an influx of investment by the Saudi Arabian government — esports industry leaders are projecting confidence going into 2025. Here’s a look into the best-case scenario for competitive gaming in the new year.

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The creator economy is gearing up for significant change over the next year — from the rise of AI and creator-founded businesses to the growth of long-term brand partnerships and embrace of long-form content.

As a whole, the creator economy continues to significantly transform, moving beyond simple influencer marketing to a more complex and integrated ecosystem. All signs point to the maturation of influencer marketing, as brands and creators move toward long-term brand ambassador programs replacing one-off influencer collaborations.

As more business opportunities emerge for creators, the industry is also seeing an increase in entrepreneurial opportunities for them — whether it’s starting their own brands and storefronts to hiring talent agents as they scale. By the start of the year, there may be a potential shakeup in the social media landscape as TikTok nears its ban-or-sale deadline.

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This edition of the daily CES Briefing features an interview with Stagwell’s Mark Penn about the landscape for agencies and a recap of a session from OpenAP’s Audience Summit on the disconnect with streaming ad data.

10 Questions with Stagwell’s Mark Penn

AI is one backdrop for this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. But the Omnicom-Interpublic Group merger is another, particularly for the advertisers and agencies in attendance, such as Stagwell, which has been billing itself as a challenger to the incumbent agency holding companies. 

On Tuesday, Digiday sat down with Stagwell CEO and chairman Mark Penn to hear how the Omnicom-IPG merger is coloring his company’s conversations with clients, what Stagwell is up to with its own recent M&A activity and what the potential TikTok ban and agentic AI era mean for advertisers.

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For most advertisers, programmatic advertising is a one-stop shop: log into a demand-side platform (DSP), place your bids and call it a day. 

Mars Petcare, however, is doing things differently.

When it comes to CTV, it’s using a supply-side platform — the tool publishers normally use to manage ad sales — to buy ads directly, skipping the usual DSP route altogether. 

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Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL coverage was a hit among viewers and advertisers. Its two holiday games each drew an average of 26.5 million U.S. viewers, according to the Nielsen Big Data + Panel, while ad inventory sold out weeks in advance.

In the short term, that performance will defuse industry concerns over the service’s ability to host major sporting moments, following its glitchy telecast of the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight in November.

“They proved that they can handle the NFL,” said Adam Schwartz, svp, director of video investment, sports at media agency Horizon Media.

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