Welcome to The Refresh, your weekly download of what actually matters in advertising. Brought to you by Marketecture Media and written by AdTechGod.
Every Thursday, we bring you the latest news, commentary, and memes that speak the truth about this industry. If it's happening in AdTech, media, or marketing and it’s interesting, it’ll be here.
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Roku Becomes First Major Streamer To Use iSpot’s Outcomes-Based Metric In Bid To Improve Ad Targeting (Deadline)
TBPN, Tech’s Hottest Show, Adds New Sponsors in Shopify, Plaid, AppLovin (ADWEEK)
LiveRamp Expands Its Marketplace to Data, Models, and Agents for AI Use Cases (LiveRamp)
Index Exchange Launches Gracenote-Powered Show-Level Reporting with Spectrum Reach (Index Exchange)
PHȲND and Magnite open smart TV gaming to programmatic advertisers (Broadband TV News)
DoubleVerify Partners with IMDb, Providing Advertisers with Media Quality Data (ADWEEK)
Roblox Expands Advertising Platform as Essential Channel for the Next Generations (Roblox)
Yahoo DSP Advances Its Buying Platform With New Agentic AI Capabilities (Yahoo)
PMG Acquires Influencer Agency Digital Voices (MediaPost)
Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, on Agentic AI Hype, Privacy, and the Future of Ad Tech
Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, shares insights on the hype and reality of agentic AI in advertising, its impact on media buying and selling, and what it means for privacy, measurement, ad ops, and AI-powered browsers.
Domenic Venuto on Trust as the New Media Currency in an AI-Driven Advertising World
Horizon Media Chief Product and Data Officer Domenic Venuto explains why trust is now foundational to modern advertising, how Horizon’s AI-native Blu platform uses transparent, first-party data workflows to accelerate insights, and why ethical, privacy-first AI is critical to protecting brands and improving outcomes.
Agentic Takes the Stage at CES 2026
You and I both know the “C” in CES now stands for Agentic. And while I could spend the next several paragraphs summarizing the flood of agentic-themed press releases that landed in my inbox over the past two days, I’ll spare us both and simply point you to the News You Need to Know section at the top of this newsletter.
There was one press release that genuinely stood out to me: the IAB Tech Lab press release that dropped yesterday. I’ve summarized it below because this feels like a meaningful initiative and one worth paying attention to.
IAB Tech Lab Lays Out Industry Path to Scaled Agentic Advertising
IAB Tech Lab has released its Agentic Roadmap, detailing how the digital advertising industry can scale agentic buying and selling by extending existing open standards rather than introducing new, fragmented ones. The roadmap focuses on building agentic execution on top of widely adopted frameworks such as OpenRTB, VAST, Open Measurement, GPP, and TCF, while integrating modern protocols like Model Context Protocol, Agent2Agent, and gRPC. This approach is designed to enable secure, interoperable, and high-performance agentic systems without disrupting current market foundations.
Roku's 2026 Predictions Land Well with AdTechGod
I rarely agree with industry predictions. Most are either too safe or too far ahead of reality. This one feels good to me. Roku’s 2026 outlook is grounded in actual platform behavior, advertiser movement, and viewer economics, which makes the conclusions hard to ignore. Stripped down to the essentials, here’s what Roku believes will define the year ahead.
The main predictions for 2026
TV becomes deeply personalized: AI-driven discovery moves from a feature to a baseline expectation, reducing search time, increasing engagement, and improving retention across platforms and apps.
The ad-free viewer effectively disappears: Ad-supported viewing reaches full market penetration as FAST, ad tiers, and platforms like YouTube and Prime Video dominate total TV time.
CTV becomes a brand-safe refuge: As generative AI disrupts search and social, advertisers shift budget into CTV for attention, quality content, and more reliable measurement.
Creators fully enter the TV ecosystem: Creator-led content expands beyond YouTube into major streaming platforms, blending traditional TV programming with creator-driven formats.
Hyperlocal advertisers scale on CTV: Political campaigns prove the model, and local businesses follow, using ZIP-level targeting and AI-generated creative to drive measurable results at scale.
Marketecture Media Raises Million-Dollar Seed Round from Top Ad Industry Execs
What started as a scrappy podcast, an anonymous social media account, and recorded conversations with industry friends has grown into something much bigger: a place for real storytelling, connection, and perspective in advertising.
“In an environment flooded with opinions, the role of content is to create clarity. Our focus is helping the industry understand what actually matters right now by elevating voices that are shaping the future,” said Sam Khoury, Marketecture’s CSO.
We’re proud to kick off 2026 by sharing that Marketecture Media has raised a $1M seed round from some of the most respected leaders in our industry. This next chapter lets us go deeper on what matters most: content, community, and events that bring the industry together.
I couldn’t be prouder of how we’re transforming the way we communicate and collaborate – as a team, a community, and as an industry.
Jeremy Bloom, CEO
As the largest platform with online and in-store transaction data, you can confidently tailor ads to fit your target customer. Let's look amazing. Let’s spark sales.
Marketecture Live III
Marketecture Live is designed for the doers building what comes next and the thinkers shaping how it all works. We’ve announced our first slate of featured speakers, with more to be announced in the coming weeks.
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