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Latest news on media and advertising, covering ad spend, digital marketing, AI, programmatic, retail media, streaming, and brand strategy.
The global advertising industry is undergoing rapid transformation, with total ad spend projected to surpass $1.1 trillion as AI, retail media networks, and streaming reshape where brands invest. Digital channels continue to dominate, while traditional media like print faces structural decline. Major holding companies, including the newly merged Omnicom-IPG entity — now the world's largest advertising group — are repositioning around AI-driven capabilities.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping every layer of the industry, from automated creative generation to programmatic ad buying and audience targeting. Platforms such as Meta, Google, and TikTok are rolling out AI-powered campaign tools that optimise in real time, raising both performance expectations and concerns around transparency and data privacy. Regulators in the EU and elsewhere are scrutinising AI-driven advertising practices, while a US federal court has found Google held an illegal monopoly in key ad tech markets — with potential forced divestitures still being determined.
The decline of third-party cookies has accelerated a pivot to first-party data strategies and contextual advertising, fundamentally altering how brands track and reach consumers. Retail media networks — advertising ecosystems built around retailer data — are among the fastest-growing segments, with commerce advertising expected to surpass total TV ad revenue. Meanwhile, short-form video on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts has become the dominant creative format, demanding that brands communicate value in under three seconds.
Advertising has always reflected culture, and today's media landscape mirrors deep tensions around identity, privacy, and trust. Campaigns increasingly engage with social values, while audiences — particularly Gen Z — reward authenticity and punish perceived cynicism. The Super Bowl remains a barometer of brand ambition, attracting global attention to its ads as cultural events in their own right. Streaming platforms, once ad-free, are embracing advertising tiers, fundamentally changing viewers' relationship with commercial media.
The media and advertising industry has roots in the early print era, evolving through broadcast radio and television before the internet upended its economics entirely. The digital revolution transferred power from broadcasters to platforms, enabling hyper-targeting but also enabling misinformation and brand safety crises. Today's challenges around ad fraud, attention measurement, and algorithmic accountability are direct consequences of that shift — and the industry is still working through them.
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