AdTechGod at Advertising Week, HoldCos' Dated Models, and Retail Media Problems

Retail media is on track to hit $203 billion this year, and apparently every company with an app, screen, store, or customer login now wants a piece of it. McDonald’s and Citi are among the latest entrants, joining more than 200 retail and commerce media networks worldwide.

The problem is that advertisers are being asked to navigate different platforms, metrics, and definitions across every network. One recent study found five different definitions of an “attributed sale.” That’s not exactly helping the measurement conversation.

Retail media absolutely has value. First-party data, proximity to purchase, and closed-loop measurement are powerful. But if every company launches its own network with its own measurement methodology, we’re creating more complexity for advertisers at the exact moment the industry keeps saying it wants less.

Read Business Insider

Apple’s iOS 27 update is blocking The Trade Desk from bidding on Safari, and right now, nobody seems to know exactly why.

Technical issue? ATT? Privacy compliance? Nobody really knows.

What we do know is that being blocked from Safari is costly. TTD is working with Apple to resolve it, and hopefully it happens quickly. This isn’t good for The Trade Desk, Apple, or most importantly, the advertisers relying on TTD to reach Safari users.

For now, we wait.

Read AdExchanger

Meta and OpenAI are both making a big push into AI agents.

Meta’s Muse connects to tools like Shopify, QuickBooks, Stripe, Slack, and Meta Ads to help businesses manage everything from finances to marketing. OpenAI’s Dots goes even further, giving each agent its own computer and browser, access to thousands of apps, and the ability to keep working when you’re not around.

We spent years talking about AI helping us do our jobs. Now we’re quickly moving toward AI actually doing parts of the job.

For advertising, that could be a pretty significant shift. Eventually, the question may not be which platform a marketer chooses to spend with. It may be which platform their AI agent chooses, and in many cases, that agent may be making the decision on its own.

Read Meta and Read ADWEEK for both articles.

AppLovin is suing Unity, claiming its Ad Quality SDK collected data from AppLovin ads and then used some of that data to improve models competing in mobile ad auctions. Unity says that’s not what’s happening and AppLovin is simply trying to slow down a competitor.

AdTech companies see a lot of data. But if you’re using data from a competitor’s ads and auctions to make your own models better, where exactly is the line?

I have a feeling we’re going to be asking that question a lot more as AI gets built into everything.

Read Digiday

Apparently, 58% of ad executives think agentic buying will reach operational scale within a year. I am very much in the other 42%.

We are still an industry where campaign setup, measurement, identity, supply paths, and basic interoperability can be painfully fragmented. Now we are supposed to believe autonomous agents will suddenly move meaningful budgets across that infrastructure at scale within 12 months?

Agents will absolutely become part of media buying. They already are. But there is a huge difference between using AI to automate pieces of the workflow and handing meaningful decision-making and execution over to agents.

The technology is moving fast, but advertising plumbing is not.

I think agentic buying gets there eventually. I just think a lot of people are confusing a very good demo with an operating model, and we need to stop sipping the Kool-Aid and talk about actual feasible timelines for this.

Read ExchangeWire

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