Edition #518
Welcome 2026, CES and Nike’s new mind lab.
Welcome to 2026. I kicked off the year with a couple of days in Vegas (just the right amount of time) for CES.
We forget it is first and foremost a consume electronics show. TechCrunch had a summary of the gadgets launched this week, including some of the bizarre. My fav being the smart Lego brick. Looking forward to playing with those.
Robotics is a big trend this year, so when we talk about adjusting advertising for machines, it literally might be an at home robot parsing your website at some point. To relay info to a human. Funny thought huh.
At Canne last year I felt there was too much lip service to AI. Many adtech companies had embraced ML years ago so felt like they did ‘AI’. In turn, the implication was they weren’t being so opened minded about the new opportunities from generative AI. From CES though that’s starting to change. The magic of a new year, new goals and horizons huh.
And that reflected wider conversations that had a sense of optimism about AI for the year ahead. With a better sense of understanding of the strengths and opportunities it can provide. Here’s to a great 2026.
I do have a bunch of notes from the break on the year ahead, which I’ll share in the coming weeks.
Notable stories this week
- Why Content Marketing Must Say Less — and Mean More.
- AI is accelerating content creation, but also flattening it.
- Avocados from Mexico debuts the Prediction Pit.
- Amazon Tries to Move Beyond AI Basics.
- What ads in LLMs could look like by 2027.
- Adtech’s year of reinvention: These are the storylines that will shape the industry in 2026.
- Roblox expands their advertising platform.
- Major publishers back Trade Desk’s OpenAds auction platform.
- How Basis and Mediaocean’s new deal could reshape advertising workflow.
- Google Ads quietly buys ads on X.
- The Trade Desk’s Jeff Green Says 2026 Will Be ‘The Best Year Yet’ for the Open Internet.
- Teads adds a new CMO.
- Havas Partners with Akkio to Expand and Democratize AI‑driven Capabilities. And unveils their LLM Portal AVA.
- The AI hype cycle is rewriting ad tech’s M&A math.
- Food52 just declared bankruptcy, here’s what happens next.
- Agentic AI dominated CES—but competing standards could fracture ad tech.
- PubMatic Launches AgenticOS, the Operating System for Agent-to-Agent Advertising.
- Beehiiv Doubles Ad Sales Team, Scaling Newsletter Ads Business.
- How Google got its groove back and edged ahead of OpenAI.
Deals/M&A
- Semafor raises $30M at a $330M valuation.
- PMG acquires Digital Voices to scale influencer marketing intelligence.
Campaign of the week
- Behind the scenes, Nike Mind Technology. Branded content done well, give those that want to dive deeper what they want.
Smartest commentary
- “Taken together, the discussion offered an early picture of what ads in LLMs might look like: paid placements embedded directly within AI-generated answers; commerce links surfaced alongside recommendations; and prompts designed to guide next steps rather than send users elsewhere. In that world, advertising becomes less about banners or blue links, and more about influence inside the answer itself.” –Audrey Kemp, Adweek.
Datapoints of note
- Top Marketers Are 4X More Likely to Consolidate Tech and Use AI to Drive Growth.
- Roblox homepage is the starting point for over 151 million daily active users.
Events
- Next breakfast is coming up, let me know if you’d like to join.
That’s it for this week.
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