Navigating Ad Tech Disruptions: Why Brands Must Diversify Amid Industry Trials
Navigating Ad Tech Disruptions: Why Brands Must Diversify Amid Industry Trials
From Basement Beginnings to AIâEra Leadership: The Ad Man 2.0 Reframes Marketing for What Comes Next
In 1981, Jim Mudd Sr. started what would become one of automotive marketingâs most recognizable agencies in a basement. More than four decades later, that origin story is being revisitedânot as nostalgia, but as a blueprint for navigating an industry now shaped by AI, automation, and relentless digital change.
PubMatic Launches AI Insights to Give Publishers Real-Time Clarity on Demandâand Revenue
Thatâs the problem PubMatic (NASDAQ: PUBM) is targeting with the launch of AI Insights, a new set of AIâpowered capabilities designed to help publishers understand shifting demand dynamics and act on them before revenue opportunities disappear.
Delivered through the PubMatic Assistant, which is embedded directly into the companyâs platform, AI Insights gives publishers realâtime visibility into how their inventory, pricing, and demand compare with a relevant peer groupâwithout exposing proprietary data. The goal: replace backwardâlooking analysis with live intelligence that explains not just what changed, but why it changed.
LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe Earns IAB Lifetime Award for Shaping the Future of Ad Tech
LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe has spent much of his career arguing that advertising works better when the industry works together. This week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) made that case official. At the 2026 IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, Howe was presented with the IAB Service of Excellence â Lifetime Commitment Award, one of the organizationâs…
Flowco to Buy Valiant in $200M Deal, Deepening Its Grip on Artificial Lift
Flowco Holdings Inc. (NYSE: FLOC) is making a decisive move to broaden its role in oilfield production technology. The company announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the parent company of Valiant Artificial Lift Solutions LLC, one of the largest private, pureâplay providers of electric submersible pump (ESP) systems in the U.S., in a transaction valued at approximately $200 million.
AdClarity Adds AI to Decode Competitor Ad Objectives
Competitive ad intelligence has never been short on data. Marketers can already see where competitors advertise, how much they spend, and which creatives they run. Whatâs been missing is contextâthe intent behind those campaigns. BIScience, the company behind the ad intelligence platform AdClarity, thinks it has the answer.
Northslope Raises $22M Series A to Build MissionâSpecific AI on Palantirâs Operating System
Enterprise AI is moving out of the lab and into productionâand Northslope wants to be the company that proves it can work where the stakes are highest. The Palantirânative AI company has raised $22 million in Series A funding to scale its forwardâdeployed engineering model and expand its AI application platform built specifically for the Palantir operating system.
Blockboard Unveils BlockVantage to Make AIâDriven Media Buying Accountable by Default
AI has transformed how digital media is planned, bought, and optimizedâespecially in Connected TV. Campaigns now spin up in minutes, optimize in real time, and scale globally with minimal human input. But for all that speed, one thing has lagged behind: accountability. Blockboard is betting that gap is no longer tolerable.
Datalinx AI Raises $4.2M Seed Round to Fix the Dirty Data Problem Holding Back Enterprise AI
Enterprise AI has a dirty secret: most organizations are trying to build intelligent systems on top of broken, inconsistent data. Datalinx AI wants to clean that upâat scale. The company, which positions itself as an âAI data refineryâ, has raised $4.2 million in Seed funding to help marketing and data teams turn complex commercial data into AI- and application-ready assets, without armies of consultants or brittle pipelines.
BIGO Ads Expands Pixalate Partnership to Crack Down on Mobile Ad Fraud as IAA Risks Escalate
As mobile advertising budgets keep climbing, so does a less welcome metric: fraud. BIGO Ads, the AIâpowered programmatic advertising platform under JOYY Inc. (NASDAQ: JOYY), is responding by expanding its partnership with Pixalate, a global leader in ad fraud detection and traffic quality measurement. The goal is straightforward but increasingly difficultâto restore trust and transparency in the InâApp Advertising (IAA) ecosystem, where invalid traffic is getting smarter, stealthier, and more expensive.
IAB Taps NBCUniversalâs Alison Levin as 2026 Board Chair as AI Reshapes Digital Advertising
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is placing a familiar industry heavyweight at the helm just as digital advertising faces its next structural reset. The trade body has named Alison Levin, President of Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal, as Chair of its 2026 Board of Directors, with Alan Moss, VP of Global Advertising Sales at Amazon Ads, stepping in as Vice Chair.