蘑菇AV

AI agents are revolutionizing marketing with autonomous capabilities that go far beyond traditional automation. Organizations are implementing AI agents to boost workflow efficiency and prepare for a consumer marketplace increasingly mediated by AI.

OpenAI introduced product recommendations into ChatGPT on Monday, creating a potential opportunity for advertising鈥攁nd a threat to affiliate marketing sites.

The agency and marketing world is undergoing a strategic shift, with M&A activity surging in AI, experiential, and sports sectors. AI is no longer optional鈥攆irms like R/GA, Real Chemistry, and The Shipyard are acquiring to integrate automation, content generation, and efficiency into operations. Experiential marketing is also bouncing back, with global spending surpassing $128 billion and deals like BeCore and JetFuel reflecting renewed momentum. Meanwhile, sports marketing is booming, with Publicis and M&C Saatchi expanding to capture rising media rights value and digital viewership. Across sectors, the common thread is impact: marketers want scalable, measurable solutions that deliver real results.

AI-fueled gains kept Google, Meta, and Amazon atop Q2鈥檚 ad market, but slowing engagement, murky ROI, and macro risks leave the triopoly鈥檚 future growth story more complex than the headlines suggest.

ChatGPT saw 52.2 million US unique visitors in June, up 180.6% from last July, per Comscore.

The news: Microsoft Advertising now enforces policy compliance at the asset level鈥攁d headlines, descriptions, and images will be reviewed individually. If one element violates policy, the rest of the ad can stay live, as long as the minimum required approved assets remain, per MarTech. Key takeaway: Marketers should embrace modular creative strategies, ensuring each individual asset is in compliance. Build campaigns with redundancy in approved elements to maintain uptime, and monitor flagged assets to quickly respond and ensure ad integrity.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淐anada Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.鈥�

This is the first installment of our 鈥淐anada Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淐anada Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淐anada Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

The news: Google Ads is ending manual language targeting, taking over a significant element of campaign management. In lieu of manual targeting, Google鈥檚 AI will detect user language automatically using signals such as language settings and historic search activity. Our take: Brands should consider auditing current campaigns to identify where automated language detection might create gaps and establish safeguards, such as breaking out campaigns by region or market and including clear, native-language text in headlines and descriptions to signal intended language to both users and Google鈥檚 systems.

This is the first installment of our annual 鈥淢exico Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淢exico Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淢exico Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淢exico Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

This is the first installment of our annual 鈥淏razil Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淏razil Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淏razil Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

This is the first installment of our 鈥淏razil Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

A new four-day format for Amazon鈥檚 tentpole event will shake up the playing field.

The situation: Amazon and Google, once bound by a symbiotic relationship in which Amazon funneled ad dollars into Google Search and Google indexed Amazon鈥檚 pages, are now veering toward open conflict as generative AI (genAI) blurs the lines between ecommerce, advertising, and search. Both companies are determined to own the entire journey from discovery to checkout, and that ambition is unraveling what remains of their former d茅tente. Our take: Amazon and Google are racing to define where and how consumers discover and buy products in the genAI era. If Amazon succeeds in walling off its marketplace data and steering shoppers to its own AI interfaces, the retail landscape could splinter into walled gardens where tech giants cooperate far less. That winner鈥憈akes鈥慳ll dynamic might suit the victors, but it risks degrading the overall consumer experience with fewer choices and less transparent pricing. At the same time, it could lead brands and retailers into a margin鈥憇apping race to the bottom inside whichever closed ecosystem proves most dominant.

The Q2 performances of Amazon, Walmart, and Target illustrate the retailers鈥� diverging fortunes as shoppers reassess their spending priorities. While uncertainty is funneling more dollars toward Amazon and Walmart, customers are steering clear of Target鈥攄ue both to a lackluster assortment and frustration over its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) flip-flopping. Walmart and Amazon are pulling ahead as their relentless focus on value鈥攊n the form of speed, selection, and convenience鈥攎ake them the first stop for shoppers buying everything from essentials like groceries to discretionary items like beauty and apparel. That leaves Target鈥檚 new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, with the unenviable task of having to turn the retailer around just as tariffs threaten its bottom line and undermine its core discretionary business.

The news: Despite consumers鈥� rising use of AI agents for search, shopping, and discovery, brands are falling behind on generative engine optimization (GEO) strategies. 47% of brands have no deliberate GEO strategy or have no idea if they appear at all in AI agent responses, per a new report from Cordial. Another 47% have only just begun optimizing content for AI discovery. Our take: To boost visibility, brands should optimize for conversational context and create structured, machine-readable content that AI can index, like clear website FAQs, TL;DR summaries, and detailed product specs. Expanding presence across social platforms that feed AI training models, such as Reddit, Quora, and YouTube, can also improve chances of surfacing in AI-generated responses.

Amazon shrugged off tariff concerns in its Q2 earnings report, after reporting growth ahead of expectations. But the retailer鈥檚 Q3 forecast was murky, suggesting that while consumer demand remains resilient, uncertainty from tariffs and trade policy鈥攁long with extensive investments in AI鈥攃ould weigh heavily on its bottom line. Amazon鈥檚 strong quarter and Q3 sales guidance help dispel some fears about the health of the consumer. But its decision to once again offer an unusually broad profit range for the next quarter shows considerable uncertainty about the impact the Trump administration鈥檚 trade policies will have on retailers鈥� costs.

Organizations will prioritize governance in 2025 as they ramp up genAI investments in pursuit of business transformation.