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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What Regulators Talk About When They Talk About Ad Tech (AdExchanger)
Aldi hires Instacart to power its U.S. website instead of developing it in-house (Digiday)
The Trade Desk is changing how advertisers buy — and what they can see (Digiday)
Amazon Accused Of Scraping Videos To Train AI (MediaPost)
TCL’s Internet Services Arm Partners With AdTech Agency Affinity for Smart-TV Advertising (Media Play News)
Three Top Executives Including Ian Colley Are Leaving The Trade Desk (ADWEEK)
The Long Game: Amanda DeVito of Butler/Till on Growth, Grit, and Modern Agency Survival
Amanda DeVito, Chief Marketing Officer at Butler/Till, shares her journey from strategy leader to executive and what it really takes to grow within a single company over 15 years. She breaks down the power of culture, access over “empowerment,” and why modern agencies must embrace collaboration, AI, and adaptability to stay relevant.
From Screen to Store: How CTV is Driving Real Outcomes with Leif Welch of JamLoop
Leif Welch, Founder and CEO of JamLoop, breaks down how connected TV is evolving from a brand awareness channel into a full-funnel performance driver. He shares how mid-market brands are leading this shift, why outcomes now matter more than impressions, and how advertisers can connect CTV to real business results both online and offline.
Disney and Mediaocean Turn Direct Buys Into a One-Click Flow
Mediaocean and Disney are teaming up to roll out Prisma Direct in Q3 2026, introducing a unified workflow built to automate direct ad transactions across Disney’s streaming, video, and CTV ecosystem. As the first media partner in the initiative, Disney will leverage API integrations to simplify ordering, trafficking, and billing, creating a more efficient experience for advertisers.
At the core of the partnership, Disney’s inventory will connect directly into Mediaocean’s Prisma platform, which serves as a central system of record for media management, with support from Disney Campaign Manager technology. The broader aim is to replace manual steps in the buying process with automation, particularly for premium video and streaming inventory.
The expected result is a more seamless path for advertisers to access high-impact sponsorships and CTV placements across Disney’s portfolio.
Mondelez Rebuilds Digital Strategy
Mondelez is reworking its $3.5 billion digital commerce strategy as AI-driven search and agentic commerce start to reshape how people discover and buy products. The shift came after the company noticed its brands weren’t showing up as often in AI-generated recommendations, partly because bot crawlers had been blocked. Since then, Mondelez has started optimizing its digital ecosystem for AI systems by improving site infrastructure, allowing better crawlability, and creating content that machines can easily interpret.
The company is focusing on three areas:
Standardizing product data across channels
Scaling AI-native content to show up more often in prompts
Building new measurement frameworks based on visibility, citation, and sentiment
Mondelez says early signs are encouraging, with brands like Oreo appearing more frequently in AI-driven results, and the company expects that 20-30% of purchases could soon be influenced or completed by AI agents.
Regulators Tighten Pressure on Ad Tech Over Privacy, Opt-Outs, and Data Practices
Privacy regulators across the U.S. are taking a closer look at ad tech, and their expectations are becoming more consistent. There’s a clear push toward stronger protections for children, real enforcement of opt-out signals like the Global Privacy Control, and making sure privacy policies reflect what companies are actually doing with data.
In California, enforcement is starting to zero in on companies that fail to honor opt-out requests, which signals a higher level of scrutiny overall. Regulators are also questioning the idea that companies can claim they don’t know when users are underage while still offering highly specific audience segments.
Kargo Launches Project KERA to Automate End-to-End Media Buying and Creative Execution
Kargo has introduced Project KERA in closed beta, an agentic platform designed to streamline the full campaign lifecycle from planning through optimization. It takes a campaign brief and turns it into a ready-to-execute plan by bringing together creative, audience targeting, premium inventory, and measurement in one system. Built on Kargo’s Creative Science, the platform uses predictive scoring and real-time signals to guide decisions and improve performance along the way.
KERA supports both fully automated workflows and human input where needed, giving teams flexibility in how they use it. Early partners like Hershey’s are already testing the platform. The broader goal is to reduce fragmentation in media buying while increasing speed, creative effectiveness, and measurable results.
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