Reggie Riley, head of U.S. ad business, SmartNews

Amid overwhelming amounts of content, advertisers face the challenge of capturing audiences’ attention effectively in the era of information overload. While many brands aim to reach a broad audience, targeting consumers deeply engaged with news offers distinct advantages. These individuals are informed, attentive and more likely to respond to relevant messaging — making them an especially valuable audience for advertisers.

News consumers’ active nature makes them valuable to advertisers

News consumers are not passive; they actively seek out information and often spend significant time engaging with trusted sources. This active engagement makes them a prime target for advertisers. 

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Neej Gore, Chief Data Officer, Zeta Global

AI is driving a fundamental shift in marketing. While it’s been many years since new technology has drastically changed how businesses operate, AI is here to stay, and the early adopters will be the ones that win the day.

AI agents provide marketers with a new opportunity to reduce the distance between data and action. These agents are specialized assistants programmed to perform essential tasks in automation, optimization, personalization and more — offering a new method for analyzing data and taking action. In modern marketing, action without intelligence is risky, and intelligence without action is wasted, making a successful action–intelligence partnership highly valuable.

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Damian Garbaccio, Chief Business and Marketing Officer, Affinity Solutions

CTV and retail media are some of the fastest-growing advertising channels and the spend is only going to increase. CTV ad spend is forecast to reach $33.35 billion next year, accounting for 7.8% of all spend while retail media networks will reach a stunning $62.35 billion, accounting for 14.7% of spend. 

CTV accelerated this year due to brands embracing shoppable ad formats, evidenced by Warner Bros. Discovery recently introducing “Shop with Max” as a new ad tech offering and NBCUniversal and Walmart bringing shoppable ad experiences to live sports ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

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Lance Brothers, Chief Revenue Officer, Adstra

In an increasingly fragmented ecosystem, brands face challenges navigating signal loss, privacy regulations and complex customer journeys with traditional identity solutions.

As digital transformation continues to reshape all business aspects, brands demand robust and adaptable data solutions — including an identity solution that is as flexible as it is comprehensive. Composability is emerging as the key to unlocking the next generation of data management.

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This WTF guide, sponsored by Criteo, defines commerce audiences, explains how they are created and describes how advertisers use them to target shoppers at key moments

Connecting with online shoppers is a game of hide-and-seek for marketers. The buying stages — discovery, consideration, decision and purchase — remain intact, but rarely linear. Consumers will move backward and forward along purchase paths littered with abandoned shopping carts and product reviews. A shopper can pass through all the buying stages in seconds with a shoppable ad on social media or take a much slower journey on the open web across multiple locations and devices. 

Even though e-commerce is a fast-moving business with fleeting marketing opportunities, advertisers typically employ traditional demographics and other static characteristics to target consumers. These don’t reveal what a shopper is doing or where they are on the purchase path. They also cause missed opportunities and wasted impressions when ads get served long after purchase. 

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Jessica Dudley, vp analytics and operations, Liftoff and Jason Hicks, gm of measurement solutions, Kochava

Streaming apps are rapidly becoming a staple for households worldwide, with the U.S. market leading the way. According to a Forbes report, Americans spend an average of $46 on streaming services monthly. An incredible 99% of U.S. households subscribe to at least one or more streaming services, with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ topping the list. 

Business leaders understand the importance of leveraging data to gain a competitive edge. However, streaming data’s sheer volume and velocity presents unique challenges and opportunities. By understanding best practices, streaming app publishers can harness the power of streaming data analytics to make data-driven decisions that propel them ahead of the competition in a rapidly evolving market. 

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Luiz Felipe Barros, global CMO, Channel Factory

There is no shortage of speculation about the future of long-established media channels like TV. At any given moment, it’s fairly easy to find someone publicly touting TV advertising as stronger than ever while another industry observer is declaring that the channel is on its deathbed. 

In this debate, as in many others in the advertising industry, the truth typically lies somewhere in between. However, even more nuanced discussions of TV advertising’s relevance often put forth flawed arguments because of a common problem: industry watchers conflating the concepts of effectiveness and efficiency. 

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This Tactics + Insights guide, sponsored by Amazon Ads, explores how brands leverage generative AI to unlock more efficient ad creation, drive creative transformation and optimize ad creatives.

Successful ad creative differentiates products and empowers advertisers to stand out in the competitive marketplace; however, brands face two prevalent challenges when devising, designing and deploying ad creative that can achieve these two goals.

First, smaller organizations often need more access to creative teams and technology. Second, even though larger organizations typically have greater access to these resources, they need help producing creatives quickly in response to market conditions. 

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Gavin Dunaway, marketing director, The Media Trust

To become a successful malware spreader, the barrier to entry is unbelievably low.
These threat actors buy and sell exploit kits and malicious software on the dark web, and AI is key in building out new attacks. AI is also useful in creating bogus creatives and landing pages, ensnaring consumers into dangerous schemes and fooling ad platform security audits.

Digital threats are more prevalent than ever across the connected landscape. Organized crime is heavily involved, and rogue states appear to be using malvertising (malicious advertising) to attack critical infrastructure. For example, Ukraine was barraged with phishing redirects and backdoors delivered by advertising before Russia’s invasion in 2022.

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Abby Roulston, vp of marketing, Blis

As the end of the year approaches, businesses are taking stock of what works and what doesn’t to make room for transformative opportunities. For the advertising industry, that means acknowledging the advertising approaches and methodologies holding it back, such as dependency on third-party cookies and IDs, reliance on proxy metrics that overlook business impact, siloed media buying strategies and outdated measurement practices. 

Fortunately, the new year promises to usher in innovative approaches to omnichannel advertising and measurement grounded in business outcomes, geo-based strategies and a commitment to accuracy and rigor.

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This WTF guide, sponsored by Blis, explores how geo-based omnichannel measurement works, what it looks like and its benefits to advertisers.

Marketers need a long-term solution for cross-screen measurement that delivers the results advertisers are accustomed to without getting lost in siloed inefficiencies or proxy metrics. As new programmatic channels emerge and the availability of cookies and personal identifiers decline, the industry faces an urgent challenge: developing an omnichannel measurement framework that addresses these shifts.  

Moving away from the dependence on cookies or IDs and letting go of the traditional one-to-one attribution mindset requires connecting all campaign touchpoints, whether an ad is seen on TV at home, on a mobile phone or an out-of-home screen. This new approach must address current limitations while aligning with new consumer behaviors and media consumption habits. Most importantly, it must focus on metrics that truly matter to marketers and their business outcomes.

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This State of the Industry report, produced in partnership with Perion, explores how brands and agencies leverage video advertising across channels and formats to engage relevant audiences.

The video advertising landscape is rapidly evolving, driven by changing consumer behaviors and new technology. It’s also becoming increasingly diverse and dynamic, offering agencies and brands numerous platforms and channels to reach their target audiences. 

In this new State of the Industry report, Digiday and Perion polled 128 brand and agency respondents to learn more about how they’re leveraging video advertising and optimizing their campaign performance. Marketers are leaning on video advertising to increase brand awareness and favorability, using it as a conduit to achieve ad relevance and audience targeting.

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Bob Regular, CEO, Infolinks

Scale is not a one-size-fits-all concept. 

Marketers and publishers historically have their own goals associated with scale. When it comes to content, the KPIs vary according to the media (i.e. podcast, video, etc.) and subject matter. 

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