Every industry has a word it reaches for when it does not know what else to say. In boardrooms today, that word is transformation. It gets invoked at strategy off-sites, written into annual reports, and handed to consultants as a mandate — often before anyone has agreed on what exactly needs to change, or why.

The results are predictable. Brands that once stood for something begin to feel like everything. Customer experiences that were once a competitive advantage become inconsistent and interchangeable. Revenue targets get hit in the short term. Brand equity quietly erodes over the long term.

The problem, more often than not, is not a lack of ambition. It is a lack of an anchor. Transformation without a clear sense of what must be preserved is not strategy — it is change for its own sake.

Giovanna B. Questioni has spent her career in that gap. A transformation expert with experience across luxury fashion, food, furniture, and the digital industries, she has led mergers and acquisitions, crisis interventions, and large-scale omnichannel overhauls across global markets. Her argument is not against change. It is for coherence.

The brands that survive disruption, Questioni argues, are the ones that understand the difference between what is negotiable and what is not. Design, quality, emotional resonance — these are not variables to be optimized in a transformation roadmap. They are the reason the brand exists. Everything else is in service of them.

That distinction shapes how she thinks about omnichannel strategy — an area where many brands have spent heavily and delivered inconsistently. The instinct is to treat every new channel as an opportunity. The discipline is to treat every channel as a responsibility to serve customers without breaking what they already trust.

“Every touchpoint — whether in retail, franchising, wholesale, e-commerce, or social commerce — must deliver a distinct yet cohesive experience. Physical stores thrive on human connection and sensory engagement, while digital platforms excel through simplicity, speed, and personalization.” 

A customer who buys online and returns in-store should not feel the friction of two separate systems. The seams should never show. And the sales assistant at that moment is not a workaround — they are an opportunity for the kind of personalization no digital platform has yet replicated.

What Questioni warns against is the version of transformation that becomes its own end. “Disruption is powerful, but it must always align with customer expectations and ROI,” she says. “Without this balance, transformation risks becoming an academic exercise — one that could dilute the brand’s reputation and desirability.” Bold innovation is not the enemy of brand integrity. Undisciplined innovation is.

The second argument she makes — and the one that challenges the most deeply held assumptions in corporate strategy — is about resilience. The dominant understanding is reactive: how fast can an organization absorb a shock and return to normal?

That framing, Questioni argues, is entirely the wrong one. By the time a company is managing recovery, it has already lost the most valuable thing: time. The organizations that emerge from disruption stronger are not the ones that responded fastest. They are the ones that had already built for it.

“Resilience isn’t just about bouncing back — it’s about building the future before it arrives. It’s the difference between surviving the unexpected and shaping it into opportunity.” 

A future-ready organization, in her view, has designed agility into its operating model before crisis arrives — and has given its teams the tools, authority, and mindset to move without waiting for direction from above. The question she puts to every leadership team is not how they responded last time. It is what they have already built for next time.

Which brings the conversation to the question that defeats most large-scale transformations before they ever reach the customer: execution. The strategy is rarely the problem. The problem is that a vision designed at the top must be delivered by teams moving at different speeds, across different functions and geographies.

Most organizations respond with governance frameworks. Questioni’s response cuts closer to what the problem actually is.

“Large-scale transformation operates like a symphony — an intricate performance where each element must harmonize under the guidance of a skilled conductor.” 

The conductor she has in mind is not ceremonial. It is a deeply operational C-level leader who holds the granular and the panoramic simultaneously — who understands how individual performance feeds collective outcomes, and who can align diverse functions without erasing what makes each of them effective.

The failure mode she sees most often is not a shortage of talent or resources. It is teams executing brilliantly within their own lanes while the overall composition falls apart. “True transformation isn’t about managing chaos,” she says. “It’s about precision, collaboration, and leadership that turns vision into reality.”

The conductor is not optional. Neither is the score. And the brands that understand the difference between noise and music — between change and transformation — are the ones that will still mean something when the disruption settles.

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The slow death of the cookie has been anticipated for years. The operational reality of advertising without it has arrived faster than most campaigns were built to handle.

MINT Square, the programmatic advertising specialist, is announcing a strategic partnership with Digiseg, a provider of ID-independent audience targeting, designed to give advertisers a scalable alternative to identifier-dependent targeting — one that works even in browsers and environments where traditional signals are unavailable or restricted.

The partnership takes effect in early 2026 and will be available to MINT Square clients across all markets.

The Problem It’s Solving

Addressability across the open web has become increasingly inconsistent. Cookies are blocked or deprecated across major browsers. Personal identifiers are increasingly restricted in regulatory environments. For advertisers trying to plan and execute campaigns with any reliability, the result is a patchwork of signal availability that traditional targeting infrastructure was not designed to navigate.

The MINT Square and Digiseg partnership sidesteps that problem by anchoring audience targeting in household-level characteristics rather than individual identifiers. Segments are built from real-world attributes — income bands, homeownership status, life stage — derived from household data rather than cookies, device IDs, or any form of personal tracking.

Those segments are accessible through Adform and The Trade Desk, integrating directly into existing advertiser workflows without requiring new infrastructure.

Also Read: AI Isn’t Killing PR. Bad Measurement Is.

Privacy-Safe by Architecture, Not by Workaround

The distinction Digiseg draws is architectural. Its audience segments are not constructed by anonymizing personal data after the fact — they are built from the ground up without personal identifiers. Digiseg’s Insights Platform extends this further, offering campaign performance analysis and audience understanding without touching personal data at any stage.

For advertisers operating under tightening privacy regulations across multiple jurisdictions, that is a meaningful difference. Compliance is not a retroactive adjustment; it is the baseline condition of how the targeting works.

“ID-independent targeting is now a commercial necessity,” said Christoph Berg, CEO of MINT Square. “This collaboration allows our clients to plan and activate with confidence across all major browsers, while benefiting from lower costs and a simplified route to market.”

Part of a Broader Ecosystem Play

Digiseg joins MINT Square’s newly launched membership-based offering, a tiered access model designed to lower the barriers to entry for advertisers and agencies navigating the programmatic landscape. The structure introduces three membership tiers, each providing access to a suite of targeting, contextual, and data capabilities — with Digiseg’s audiences now included as a core component.

For MINT Square, the partnership is one piece of a larger push to build a comprehensive ecosystem of premium publishers and targeting partners. Additional collaborations are expected to be announced throughout the year.

“MINT Square’s deep knowledge of the programmatic ecosystem and strong activation capabilities across markets make it a natural partner,” said Ulrik Krag Morell, CEO of Digiseg. “Together, we can make it easier for advertisers to adopt ID-independent targeting at scale, without compromising on reach or effectiveness.”

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Aerie, the clothing brand owned by American Eagle Outfitters, has enlisted Pamela Anderson as the face of the next chapter of its “100% Aerie Real” campaign — a direct challenge to an industry that is moving rapidly toward artificial intelligence-generated imagery at the precise moment Aerie is moving just as deliberately in the opposite direction.

The partnership builds on a commitment the brand made in October 2025 to never use AI to create images of people or bodies in its campaigns. That pledge itself extended a promise Aerie first made in 2014 to stop retouching people and bodies in its advertising entirely. The new campaign, created by Shadow Creative Marketing and Communications and directed by Gemma Warren, is designed to take that message beyond Aerie’s existing audience and pressure the broader industry to reckon with what AI-generated imagery is doing to consumer trust.

The Ad Makes the Argument Visually

The campaign’s creative execution is deliberately pointed. The new spot contrasts a cold, AI-generated environment with the warmth of a real photo shoot. Anderson’s voice is heard in the background, prompting an AI system — asking it, with increasing futility, to bring authenticity and feeling to what it is producing. When it cannot, the artificial scene dissolves. The models come alive in a real, energetic environment.

The message is not subtle, and it is not meant to be.

“We’re getting the word across that you can’t prompt realness,” said Stacey McCormick, Aerie’s chief marketing officer.

Anderson, who rose to cultural prominence through the 1990s television series Baywatch and has since become known for embracing a stripped-back, unmediated public image, was a deliberate choice. She is, McCormick said, “a cultural force who has spent decades reclaiming and showing up as her authentic self. She stands for everything we stand for and stand up to.”

Also Read: Your Rebrand Is Failing. Have You Tried Listening?

It Is Already Working

The October pledge was not only a values statement — it was a commercial decision that has since paid off. Aerie, which McCormick acknowledged “was not top of mind for a lot of consumers” before the campaign, saw a double-digit increase in brand awareness from October through the end of 2025, with momentum continuing into the new year.

“We look at a moment like this to increase the visibility of our brand,” McCormick said. “We have great momentum behind us.”

The campaign will run across paid, owned, and earned social channels, with placements on YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, HBO, NBCU, Roku, and Samsung.

Where Aerie Draws the Line

Aerie is not positioning itself as opposed to artificial intelligence categorically. McCormick was precise about the distinction: the brand has no objection to using AI tools for logistics, planning, and content scaling. The line is drawn at using AI for bodies, faces, or any representation of lived human experience. “That will be made by real people,” she said.

Since October, the company has also committed to using real creators behind the scenes of its campaigns — a change that required, in McCormick’s words, significant internal work to establish new operating standards.

In its retail operations, Aerie is pursuing the same philosophy through different means. The brand opens 40 to 50 new stores per year, treating them as community and event spaces rather than purely transactional environments. It’s Aerie Real Foundation extends the campaign’s values into a longer-term commitment to building confidence in women and girls.

Also Read: Marketing That Predicts, Not Reacts

A Growing Industry Movement

Aerie is not alone. Equinox and Almond Breeze have both mounted campaigns this year that explicitly call out AI-generated content and position authenticity as a competitive differentiator. The anxiety driving these moves is real and measurable — consumers are increasingly attuned to the difference between genuine and generated, and a growing number of brands are concluding that the cost of AI-generated imagery is not just ethical but commercial.

McCormick said she hopes the movement grows.

“We’re not resisting AI in the world, but we are redefining value in an AI world,” she said. “In this industry where everything can be generated, real becomes rare and unique — and that becomes powerful and different.”

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OpenAI has hired David Dugan, a longtime advertising executive at Meta, as vice president and head of global advertising solutions — a move that marks the company’s most concrete signal yet that it intends to build a substantial ads business around ChatGPT as it looks to scale revenue beyond subscriptions.

Dugan spent more than a decade at Meta, most recently as vice president of its global clients and agencies division. He will report to Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s chief operating officer, according to The Wall Street Journal. He announced the appointment himself on LinkedIn, describing it as “a brand new model that’s going to reshape the industry” and saying the ads experience would be “governed by clear principles” and designed to be additive rather than disruptive to users. Early efforts will focus on advertising solutions within ChatGPT’s consumer product, which is currently in alpha testing.

Also Read: When a Logo Changes Everything — and Nothing

The hire lands as OpenAI has been quietly assembling the infrastructure for an ads operation. The company has been building an ads manager platform, and holding companies including Omnicom, WPP and Dentsu are already in conversations to test inventory on ChatGPT, which the company says now reaches more than 900 million weekly active users. Early brand partners, including AppLovin, WIRED and Best Buy, have begun running ads through pilot programs.

The placements are not inexpensive. OpenAI has asked for a minimum commitment of $200,000 from brands looking to run advertisements inside ChatGPT, according to previous reporting by Adweek. The company has also said that ads will not influence the chatbot’s responses and that user conversations will not be sold to advertisers — assurances that will be central to the trust argument Dugan will need to make to a skeptical advertising industry.

Dugan’s remit is likely to extend well beyond product development. His decade of relationships across the advertising industry — with agencies, holding companies and major brand clients — could prove as valuable as any technical infrastructure OpenAI builds, as the company attempts to convert early industry curiosity into sustained media commitments.

Also Read: Super Bowl 2026: When the Commercials Became Bigger Than the Game

The appointment follows that of Fidji Simo, the former Facebook executive who now leads OpenAI’s product and business teams as chief executive of applications — another indication that the company is deliberately recruiting seasoned commercial operators from established technology platforms to shape its revenue strategy.

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Less than a third of American consumers plan to watch the 2026 FIFA World Cup, according to new survey data from advertising technology company LoopMe — but among those who do, engagement with advertising around the tournament is unusually high, suggesting that the event’s value to marketers may lie in audience quality rather than scale.

The survey of 4,413 United States consumers, conducted in November 2025, found that just 30% plan to watch World Cup content this year. Yet nearly three-quarters of all respondents said they expect to notice World Cup advertisements regardless of whether they plan to watch — a disconnect that points to the tournament’s broader cultural footprint beyond its direct viewership.

Among the 32% of respondents who said they are more excited about this year’s tournament than the previous one held in Qatar in 2022, the likelihood of noticing sponsor advertising rises to 60%, compared with 52% across all respondents. Those planning to watch via mobile apps reported the highest level of excitement of any viewing group, with 36% saying they are more engaged this year than last.

Intent to watch peaks among the 35-to-44 age group, at 37%. Live television remains the most popular channel for watching matches, cited by 35% of likely viewers, but viewing is spread across platforms: streaming services account for 18%, social media for 12% and mobile apps for 11%.

Also Read: AI Isn’t Killing PR. Bad Measurement Is.

“The data highlights a small but dedicated pool of American viewers, emphasizing the value of highly tailored and timely campaigns,” said Dan Sicular, senior manager of insight and analytics at LoopMe. “As consumers increasingly gravitate toward the communities and interests most aligned with them, truly understanding the most engaged audiences — and responding to their needs — grows in importance, even for huge international events like this.”

For advertisers, the findings suggest that reaching World Cup viewers will require a cross-platform strategy rather than a live television buy alone, and that campaign creative aligned specifically with the tournament is likely to perform better among the high-intent, high-excitement segment than broadly targeted messaging.

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Publicis Groupe announced Monday the acquisition of AdgeAI, an artificial intelligence platform that measures and predicts the performance of creative content — a move the French advertising giant says will allow it to tell clients not just how their campaigns performed, but why, and what to do about it before the next one runs.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

AdgeAI’s platform analyzes engagement and conversion data to identify which creative elements are driving results, delivering what the company describes as granular, real-time insights that can be acted upon immediately rather than surfaced in a retrospective report. The acquisition brings that capability inside Publicis Production, the groupe’s end-to-end content and AI production operation.

The deal addresses a problem that has grown alongside the ease of producing content. As AI tools have made it faster and cheaper than ever to generate creative assets, many brands now find themselves overwhelmed — producing more content without a reliable way to know what is working, what is not, and whether any of it is contributing to sales.

“In the AI era, brands don’t simply need more content,” said Arthur Sadoun, chairman and chief executive of Publicis Groupe. “They need to know what works, and crucially, why, in order to immediately scale their creative messaging across audiences, markets and platforms. With the acquisition of AdgeAI, we are bridging the gap between instinct and proven performance — transforming creative measurement from a retrospective report into a forward-looking capability that anticipates and delivers real business outcomes.”

Also Read: Your Rebrand Is Failing. Have You Tried Listening?

Deepti Velury, chief executive of Publicis Production, framed the integration in operational terms. “By embedding predictive intelligence directly and in real time, we are empowering brands to make only what works — and to make that work a lot harder,” she said. “AdgeAI delivers deep analysis with a level of granularity, efficiency and speed that identifies patterns correlating directly with performance outcomes — capabilities that are typically siloed, manual or unavailable in current market tools.”

Eyal Ben Shalom, co-founder and chief executive of AdgeAI, said the acquisition represented a broader shift in how the industry approaches creative judgment. “By bringing our technology into Publicis’ existing engine, we are giving brands something they have never had before — the ability to move at the speed of the algorithm without losing the spark of great creative.”

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Benjamin Moore launched its “See The Love” advertising platform in March 2020, just as people were about to spend a great deal of time staring at the paint on their walls. Five years later, the Berkshire Hathaway paint brand and its agency of record, Fig, have produced what may be the platform’s most personal installment yet.

The new campaign, titled “Timeless,” follows two siblings — a girl and her younger brother — from childhood through young adulthood, set against the painted walls of the home they grow up in. It is shot on 35mm film in an old-school aspect ratio by director Matthew Dillon Cohen, a deliberate aesthetic choice that mirrors the campaign’s central argument: that quality, in paint as in memory, endures.

The campaign runs across broadcast and online video, with national out-of-home, radio, print, social and display support across the United States, Canada and international markets.

Also Read: AI Isn’t Killing PR. Bad Measurement Is.

Selling Longevity in a Category That Usually Doesn’t

The conceptual starting point for “Timeless” was longevity — a quality consumers prize in paint but that paint companies rarely make the centerpiece of their advertising. That idea led the Benjamin Moore and Fig teams toward the passage of time, then toward family, then toward the specific dynamic between siblings.

“The platform has worked. We see it through the metrics we look at. We’re definitely vested in leaning into the emotion,” said Harriette Martins-Szilvasi, senior vice president of marketing at Benjamin Moore, who called this year’s iteration her favorite. “It has all of the components of quality that are indicative of our brand.”

The minute-long anthem spot opens with a contractor painting a bedroom mint green before shifting to a girl in a crown posing with her pregnant mother. In montage, the siblings grow up — ballet birthday parties, childhood games of hide-and-seek, the door slammed in a little brother’s face — until the girl, now a young woman, packs up her room and leaves for college. The tagline reads: “Surround your life in our life’s work.”

Fifteen- and 30-second cutdowns tell the story in compressed form. Out-of-home ads carry the same theme through paired images showing the passage of time.

“We cast the oldest girl in the spot first, and then worked backwards to fill in the cast,” said Mark Figliulo, founder and creative chairman at Fig. “Everybody in the process brought their past to this story. There’s a little bit of all of us in this woman.”

Also Read: Super Bowl 2026: When the Commercials Became Bigger Than the Game

Contractors, Designers and Homeowners — All in the Same Room

Selling the longevity of paint may seem counterintuitive for a company that wants to sell more of it. But Benjamin Moore’s audience extends well beyond homeowners who repaint every several years. The brand’s consumer base includes contractors, residential painters, architects and designers — groups with different relationships to the product and different reasons to trust a brand that has stayed consistent for five years.

“I talk to contractors every day, and they really appreciate the ‘See The Love’ work, because they see themselves in it,” Martins-Szilvasi said. “For designers, seeing this as a brand with longevity speaks to what they can offer their clients. For consumers, making that human connection predisposes them to us.”

Figliulo, whose agency has worked with Benjamin Moore since 2018, said the emotional and product arguments were always the same thing.

“This paint lasts a long time because of the quality, but it’s also the emotional thing,” he said. “We didn’t have to burden you with the rational bit. It was baked into the idea. We can tell the story — not just the product story — because it’s the same thing.”

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Ford Motor Company is returning to Formula 1 this weekend after more than two decades, partnering with Oracle Red Bull Racing as the automaker expands its global “Ready Set Ford” marketing campaign.

Rather than relying solely on traditional commercials, Ford plans to use Apple TV’s sequential advertising technology to turn race broadcast ad breaks into a short-form narrative series. The campaign will connect the engineering behind Formula 1 race cars with the technology used in Ford vehicles sold to consumers.

“We’re using Formula 1 on Apple TV to show how research and development in the most demanding racing environments translates to the vehicles people drive every day,” said Michael Cope, senior director of Ford consumer marketing, during a press briefing about the campaign.

According to Ford, the initiative is designed to highlight links between the company’s motorsports engineering and models such as the F-150 Raptor, Bronco Raptor and a forthcoming electric truck.

Also Read: AI Isn’t Killing PR. Bad Measurement Is.

Racing Technology Meets Consumer Marketing

The campaign operates under the platform “Every Ground Is Our Proving Ground.” Its centerpiece is a 30-second advertisement that blends slow-motion and real-time footage to draw parallels between extreme racing conditions and the performance of Ford’s consumer vehicles.

Additional creative assets include:

• A 30-second spot highlighting Ford’s history in off-road racing
• A 15-second ad explaining the engineering of Formula 1 components
• A 15-second ad connecting that technology to the F-150 Raptor

Ford executives say the approach reflects a broader shift in advertising strategy.

“Standard commercials aren’t cutting it,” Cope said. “We want to use this broadcast environment to tell a deeper technology story and demonstrate how that innovation translates to production vehicles.”

Formula 1’s Growing Marketing Appeal

Ford’s return to the Formula 1 grid comes amid a surge of commercial interest in the sport. Global brands including PepsiCo, Heineken, Lenovo and Celsius have increased their presence as viewership has grown in key markets.

As part of its partnership with Oracle Red Bull Racing, Ford will also serve as the title sponsor for practice sessions and qualifying races throughout the season.

Running ads on Apple TV — the exclusive Formula 1 broadcast partner in the United States — allows Ford to deploy targeted messaging aimed at different audiences, from dedicated F1 fans to consumers actively considering a vehicle purchase.

Sequential ad placements will allow the company to tell a layered story during race broadcasts.

“The first 30-second piece can introduce the idea,” Cope said. “Then the next ad can go deeper into the engineering required to compete at the highest level.”

Also Read: Part 3: Authority, Not Attention, Wins in 2026

A Broader Global Campaign

Ford introduced the “Ready Set Ford” platform in September 2025, marking the company’s first unified global marketing campaign in more than 15 years. The initiative followed the U.S.-focused “Built Ford Proud” tagline launched in 2018.

The Formula 1 effort is intended to reinforce the campaign’s focus on three core audiences: builders, adventurers and thrill-seekers.

“The premise is that true capability is proven in extreme environments,” Cope said. “That idea connects directly to the vehicles we build.”

Beyond Apple TV, the Formula 1 campaign will run across multiple channels, including social media, digital advertising, out-of-home placements, connected TV and traditional television.

Ford executives describe the strategy as a full-funnel marketing approach designed to deliver consistent messaging across more than a dozen media channels.

“It’s a flywheel,” Cope said. “Each channel communicates the same message — just in slightly different ways.”

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Advertising agencies are racing to prepare for an artificial intelligence–driven future, restructuring operations, acquiring technology firms and launching proprietary AI platforms in hopes of reigniting growth.

But some analysts warn those bets may not age well.

Research firm Gartner predicts that half of the proprietary AI platforms built by agencies will either be retired or become obsolete by 2029, as open-source technologies developed by major cloud providers gain dominance.

Those providers — often referred to as hyperscalers — include companies such as Google and Amazon, whose AI systems can support enterprise-wide operations far beyond marketing. Open-source platforms are expected to power more than 75% of enterprise AI deployments by 2028, according to Gartner, largely because they offer greater customization and lower costs than proprietary systems.

For agencies that are investing heavily in their own AI ecosystems, that shift could present a structural challenge.

“I don’t hear agencies talking about these platforms — whether it’s WPP Open, Omni or others — as enterprise-wide AI systems,” said Jay Wilson, vice president and analyst at Gartner for Marketers. “That’s the big disconnect or risk. Agencies are still thinking about AI primarily at the marketing or advertising level, perhaps extending into customer experience.”

Who Controls Enterprise AI?

Another factor complicating the agencies’ strategy: who ultimately decides which AI tools companies adopt.

Marketing leaders have been among the earliest adopters of AI, particularly for tasks such as content creation and campaign optimization. But when it comes to enterprise-wide technology decisions, responsibility often lies elsewhere.

According to Wilson, chief information officers and technology leaders — not chief marketing officers — are increasingly shaping enterprise AI strategy.

“At the enterprise level, the CIO will likely own that AI roadmap,” Wilson said. “A CMO who is working closely with an agency platform may find themselves removed from that broader decision-making process.”

That dynamic could limit the influence of agency-built AI tools if companies choose to standardize on systems developed by cloud providers or internal technology teams.

The Value Agencies Still Offer

Despite those risks, agencies continue to play an important role as brands navigate the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence.

Wilson said agencies can offer value through training, speed of implementation and perspective drawn from working with multiple clients across industries and markets.

“What an agency provides that technology alone cannot replicate is an outside-in perspective on a client’s business,” he said.

Still, Gartner advises marketing leaders to approach agency AI offerings cautiously. Because agency relationships often change, relying heavily on a proprietary platform tied to a specific partner could create operational challenges later.

Switching between agency-developed AI tools could also prove costly or complex.

The firm recommends that companies avoid long-term commitments tied to agency AI systems and instead start with proof-of-concept projects and contractual flexibility that allows agreements to be terminated without penalties.

A Sector Under Pressure

The debate over AI strategy comes at a difficult moment for the agency industry.

Large holding companies have spent heavily on AI development while also navigating layoffs, restructuring and the elimination of legacy agency brands.

As AI technology becomes increasingly accessible — and in many cases open source — agencies face a new challenge: how to differentiate themselves in a market where many of the underlying tools are widely available.

For Wilson, the answer may lie in capabilities that have historically defined the agency business.

“The core value of agencies still comes back to creativity, innovation and customer insight,” he said. “AI provides the science, but agencies can still add the art on top of it.”

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Vudoo, a commerce media technology company, has announced a partnership with PubMatic to expand the reach of shoppable advertising across premium programmatic inventory.

The collaboration integrates Vudoo’s commerce media technology with PubMatic’s global supply-side platform, enabling advertisers and publishers to activate interactive ad experiences within verified programmatic environments.

The partnership reflects a broader shift in digital advertising as content, commerce and media converge. For marketers, the goal is increasingly to connect consumer engagement directly with transactions.

Simplifying Commerce Activation

Through the integration, brands and agencies can access commerce-enabled advertising through a single deal ID, allowing shoppable ad formats to be activated within existing programmatic buying workflows.

The approach is designed to make commerce-driven campaigns easier to deploy while improving measurement and scalability across digital channels.

Advertisers will be able to run interactive ads across display, video and connected television inventory on PubMatic’s platform, allowing consumers to browse and purchase products directly within an advertisement without navigating to a retailer’s website.

The integration also enables brands and publishers to track commerce signals such as product views, add-to-cart actions and purchases, providing clearer visibility into campaign performance.

Also Read: AI Isn’t Killing PR. Bad Measurement Is.

Connecting Media Engagement to Sales

The partnership expands Vudoo’s effort to scale its commerce media technology across the broader advertising ecosystem, as shopping increasingly occurs within media environments rather than traditional retail sites.

By embedding purchasing capabilities directly into advertising placements, the companies say brands can link inspiration and discovery with immediate transactions while maintaining privacy standards and transparency across the open web.

“Commerce media continues to gain momentum as marketers demand measurable performance from every impression,” said Peter Barry, vice president of commerce and audience solutions for APAC at PubMatic.

Barry said the integration allows agencies and brands to activate instant-cart experiences within ads without disrupting existing workflows or requiring new creative builds, while also enabling publishers to demonstrate the commercial value of their audiences.

Nick Morgan, founder and chief executive of Vudoo, said the collaboration represents a significant step toward expanding commerce-enabled media across the open internet.

“It’s an important milestone as we continue making commerce media accessible across the open internet,” Morgan said. “Our vision is to turn every impression into an opportunity for engagement, discovery and conversion.”

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