TriCoast Media, the content-first adtech company that grew out of global film and television distributor TriCoast Entertainment, has announced an expansion of its unified supply-side and demand-side platform, scaling both its sales team and content library to meet growing demand.

The company’s model is built around a content flywheel. Drawing on a library of more than 5,000 film and television titles, TriCoast Media offers publishers more favorable revenue shares in exchange for preferred access to backfill inventory — a structure it says preserves publisher economics while allowing the company to build direct partnerships with more than 250 connected TV publishers and 3,000-plus channels, including VIZIO, Samsung, Paramount, Xumo, Tubi and Plex.

For advertisers, the company claims the model delivers CPMs 30% to 50% lower than traditional buying approaches by reducing the number of intermediary hops between buyers and inventory. The platform integrates first-party, third-party and contextual data, with campaign verification supported by HUMAN and Mediaocean.

Also Read: Push Notifications Are Broken. Here Is What Comes After Them

“Right now, everyone is talking about the convergence of buy and sell sides, but we’ve been built that way from the start,” said Nick Risher, chief executive of TriCoast Media. “Because we began as content owners filling our own inventory, we developed a fully integrated SSP and DSP that optimizes the supply path, resulting in fewer hops, better economics, and stronger outcomes.”

The expansion positions TriCoast Media at an unusual intersection for the adtech industry — operating simultaneously as a studio, distributor and technology platform — a combination the company says gives it structural advantages that purpose-built adtech players cannot replicate.

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Rakuten International and impact.com have announced a strategic alliance designed to consolidate the affiliate and performance marketing ecosystem, combining their respective technology platforms, managed services and consumer data into a single integrated offering.

The partnership brings together three distinct assets: Rakuten Advertising’s global partner relationships, managed services and performance intelligence; Rakuten Rewards’ cash-back shopping platform and direct consumer signals; and impact.com’s technology infrastructure for contracting, tracking and payments across commerce partnerships.

For advertisers, the alliance is designed to deliver expanded platform capabilities alongside Rakuten Rewards’ first-party consumer data — giving brands a clearer picture of incrementality, attribution and return on investment. Publishers and creators will gain access to a unified platform and a broader portfolio of advertisers, offers and monetization models across affiliate, creator and commerce channels.

“As a global network, publisher, and strategic operator for more than two decades, Rakuten has developed an unparalleled perspective on what drives performance,” said Amit Patel, chief executive of Rakuten International. “This alliance brings together infrastructure, service excellence, global reach, and consumer intelligence to offer a fundamentally stronger approach to performance marketing. By pairing with impact.com’s industry-leading platform, advertisers will have access to a unified technology and services solution that combines performance intelligence, managed execution, and consumer insight to deliver programmatic, data-driven programs with smarter insights, stronger execution, and measurable results at global scale.”

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“Partnership marketing has become one of the most important growth channels for modern businesses, but the systems supporting it have remained fragmented,” said David Yovanno, chief executive of impact.com. “Bringing our platform, Rakuten Advertising’s global scale, and Rakuten Rewards’ consumer platform into a unified value proposition will make it easier for advertisers to achieve their goals with better economics, greater transparency, and measurable outcomes. This is a significant step toward a more scalable and powerful alternative to traditional performance marketing channels.”

The companies said they plan to share additional product and capability details in the coming months.

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AdRoll and PubMatic have announced a partnership that uses the Model Context Protocol to connect their demand-side and supply-side platforms in a single diagnostic workflow. This lets AI agents find and fix campaign delivery issues in both systems in real time.

With this integration, AdRoll’s agents can directly check PubMatic’s deal diagnostics. They can quickly find the root causes of delivery problems, such as pacing limits, creative issues, or publisher-side factors, and suggest solutions without manual checks across different platforms. The companies say this can reduce issue resolution from days to just minutes.

“Advertising doesn’t operate in silos, and the systems behind it can’t either,” said Vibhor Kapoor, chief executive of AdRoll. “Our strategy is to build a more connected and flexible ecosystem where AI can work across platforms, with the ability to incorporate new data sources and technologies as they emerge.”

The integration builds on AdRoll’s investment in MCP as an open standard for connecting AI systems to marketing workflows and validates PubMatic’s first agent-to-agent MCP specification, published in September 2025. The companies say the approach demonstrates that independent platforms can interoperate without tightly coupled integrations — a flexibility they argue is essential as deal-based buying strategies grow more complex.

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“One of the biggest challenges in traditional programmatic workflows is a lack of visibility into how demand-side decisions impact campaign delivery,” said Alex Shephard, VP of advertiser solutions at PubMatic. “This collaboration shows that intelligence across the supply chain drives better outcomes, giving marketers and partners a clearer view into what’s happening and why.”

The partnership reflects a broader industry push toward interoperable, agent-driven systems. As open standards like MCP gain wider adoption, the companies argue that direct agent-level collaboration between DSPs and SSPs will become operationally standard rather than experimental.

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Social media advertising crossed a symbolic threshold in 2025, overtaking search to claim the largest share of the digital advertising market, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau’s annual assessment of the industry. The shift reflects a sustained reallocation of marketing budgets that has been building for several years and is now reshaping the competitive order among the platforms that have long defined the sector.

Social media ad spending rose 32.6% year over year to $117.7 billion in 2025, giving the channel a 40% share of the total digital market — the first time it has held the top position. Search, which built Google into the dominant force in digital advertising, generated $114.2 billion, but its growth rate declined by nearly 5 percentage points in 2024 as AI-powered tools alter how users find information and how that activity can be monetized.

The downstream consequences for Google are significant. Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, is projected to surpass Google in both US and global advertising revenue for the first time in 2026, according to a recent eMarketer forecast — a milestone that would have seemed unlikely as recently as three years ago.

The IAB’s report also marks a formal reclassification of creator content. What was once treated as an experimental add-on to campaign budgets is now described by the trade group as a “core media channel.” Creator economy spending reached $37 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach $44 billion in 2026, driven by a shift from one-off brand partnerships toward always-on strategies that combine micro-influencers, affiliate programs, and performance-focused creators.

“Brands are embedding creators into the foundations of their media strategies, operational workflows and even product development,” the IAB said in the report.

Part of what is driving creator value beyond raw follower counts is commerce. More creators are linking brand awareness activity directly to transactions, capitalizing on the growth of commerce media, which rose 18% last year to $63.4 billion — though its rate of growth also slowed by five percentage points from 2024. The human quality of creator content is also becoming a competitive advantage as algorithmic feeds fill with low-quality AI-generated material, a phenomenon the industry has dubbed “slop.”

AI is creating other complications. The IAB estimates that more than 50% of global web traffic now originates from automated bots — a figure the trade group cited in calling for stronger industry measurement and interoperability standards. The bureau’s recently launched Project Eidos initiative is its formal response to that challenge.

Elsewhere in the report, video advertising — spanning connected TV, social video and online video — grew 25.4% to $78 billion in 2025, accelerating from the prior year. Video game and esports advertising rose 22%, driven by more sophisticated in-game ad formats, stronger demand and improved measurement.

Despite the shifting dynamics, the overall structure of digital advertising is consolidating rather than fragmenting. After brands diversified some spending toward mid-sized platforms in 2024, the pendulum has swung back. The top ten global media platforms increased their collective share of digital ad revenue by 3.4 percentage points in 2025, capturing 84.1% of the total market, leaving less room for smaller players than at any point in recent years.

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TripleLift, the programmatic advertising platform, has launched TL Spark, an intelligence layer designed to unify the core variables of advertising performance — supply, creative, audiences, measurement and optimization — into a single coordinated environment.

The launch comes as AI-driven ad spending accelerates. Advisory firm Madison and Wall projects AI-based ad spending will reach $57 billion in 2026, while IAB data shows two-thirds of ad buyers are already prioritizing agentic capabilities for both buying and execution. TripleLift argues that most solutions entering the market still optimize individual workflows in isolation, failing to learn across the full transaction.

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TL Spark attempts to solve that by connecting five capabilities: omnichannel deal curation across TripleLift’s network of more than 5,000 publishers; transformation of brand assets into high-impact creatives across display, retail media and connected TV; unified audience targeting using publisher first-party data, contextual signals and third-party sources; integrated attention, brand lift and outcome measurement with real-time optimization; and campaign performance analysis designed to drive both in-flight adjustments and longer-term strategy.

By coordinating these elements rather than treating them as separate functions, the platform is designed to learn from the interactions between creative, inventory, audiences and measurement — feeding those insights back into planning and optimization over time.

“Advertisers are being told that agents will solve everything, but most solutions still optimize workflows in isolation,” said Dave Helmreich, CEO of TripleLift. “With TL Spark, we’re introducing an intelligence layer that understands and orchestrates the full transaction — from supply discovery and creative selection to audience and measurement — so each campaign gets smarter over time.”

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Airey Baringer, VP of product management at TripleLift, said the platform was designed to augment human planners and traders today while laying the groundwork for more autonomous orchestration as agentic systems mature. “TL Spark combines creative, data, and quality supply into one intelligent layer so advertisers can make better decisions and optimize all aspects of their deals in unison,” he said.

TripleLift says TL Spark is designed to serve as a continuously evolving intelligence layer across the full advertising transaction — not a standalone AI feature bolted onto an existing product.

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While devices are ever-present, most users do not welcome intrusive messages at inconvenient times. In the Shopping category on iOS, the average push notification opt-in rate is just 33.2%, so two-thirds of users opt out. As a result, most intended recipients never receive these messages.

Interruption-based messaging has declined in the U.S. Although smartphones remain largely unchanged, user attention has shifted. Mobile users increasingly dislike frequent interruptions, and the volume of push notifications has become a significant annoyance. For example, receiving notifications during an important conversation can be disruptive.

Attention Has Quietly Moved Elsewhere

Users remain engaged, but their attention has shifted. According to the Pew Research Center’s Mobile Fact Sheet, approximately 91% of U.S. adults own a smartphone. The user base is stable, but people are increasingly resistant to interruptions that disrupt their focus.

Audiences now use mobile devices with clear intent, such as when they actively open an app. Push notifications fall outside this context, as they attempt to regain attention users have already shifted elsewhere. As attention becomes more session-driven, the gap between message delivery and user readiness widens.

This rejection is often passive. Messages may be absorbed, ignored, or filtered out, reducing the effectiveness of interruption-based communication.

The Moment Push Notifications Lost Their Edge

Push notifications were designed to capture attention through urgent alerts such as buzzes, banners, or badges. Initially, this approach was effective, with notifications treated like incoming calls. However, as users have become more familiar with smartphones and exposed to frequent advertising, the impact of these messages has diminished.

Now, users rapidly filter through numerous notifications, often without reading them. Messages that follow familiar promotional patterns are quickly dismissed before they are even processed.

A key issue is the language in push notifications, which often relies on exaggeration and urgency rather than relevance. Over 70% of brand messages use hype-driven language that audiences increasingly ignore. As this tone becomes predictable, notifications lose their impact and relevance.

Retail’s Shift to Behavioral Triggers

Retail brands continue to prioritize mobile engagement, but they are adopting new methods that align with changing user behavior.

Starbucks relaunched its rewards program to include personalized offers and challenges based on purchase frequency and past activity, keeping customers engaged through its app.

Albert Heijn, a Dutch supermarket chain, has also achieved measurable results by shifting to personalized in-app engagement. After implementing behavior-driven messaging, the company reported a 16% conversion rate within its loyalty program, demonstrating the impact of timely and relevant communication.

Inside Behavioral Trigger Systems

Modern systems send messages based on user behavior, such as repeated product browsing, cart abandonment, or incomplete actions. Timing is critical; messages sent during active sessions receive more attention than those delivered hours later. These systems prioritize real-time interaction over traditional broadcasting.

Why a Behavioral Notification Model Works

The move to behavioral triggers aligns with how people use mobile devices. Interruptions cause friction by forcing context-switching, while in-session messaging feels like a natural extension of the user’s current activity.

Raj De Datta, co-founder and CEO of Bloomreach, said, “Agency remains with the consumer when technology is designed to respond to their intent, stay transparent in its decisioning, and keep humans in control of outcomes. When it drifts from that, it stops being helpful and starts becoming opaque.”

In-session messaging is central to modern user experience. Approximately 69% of people value micro interactions that guide them through a website or app. A seamless user journey drives engagement and loyalty.

What Changed in the Results

As retail apps move away from broadcast push, organizations are shifting focus from traditional metrics like delivery volume and open rates to in-session metrics such as engagement and conversion throughout the user journey.

The same shift is happening in engagement systems. Brian Wisniach, content brand manager at OneSignal, points out, “Notifications are expected to be less about summoning users back into an app and more about solving something instantly on the surface. A food delivery update, a fraud alert, a sports score — all now deliver standalone value without demanding another tap.”

In engagement strategies, appearance and timing of messages are now more important than quantity.

What This Signals About Mobile Engagement

Push notifications remain relevant, but their role is evolving. Interruption is less effective than before. Better results occur when users are already engaged with the software. Retail’s adoption of behavioral triggers reflects a broader trend toward sending fewer, more timely messages based on user signals.

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Southwest Airlines, facing an increasingly competitive landscape for traveler loyalty, has overhauled its top marketing and digital ranks. The carrier announced Tuesday the appointment of Sabrina Callahan as its first-ever Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, alongside Nandika Suri, who joins as Vice President of Rapid Rewards.

The move marks a strategic shift for the Dallas-based airline, which carried more than 134 million passengers in 2025. By creating a unified digital and marketing role, Southwest aims to bridge the gap between its “Heart” branding and the technical realities of its booking and travel apps.

“This is an exciting time in Southwest’s history,” said Tony Roach, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer and Brand Officer. “Sabrina’s creative leadership will shape how our brand continues to engage with Customers in a genuine Southwest way.”

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Unifying the Digital Funnel

Callahan, a veteran of Hilton, Walmart, and AT&T, takes on a mandate to modernize the airline’s omnichannel experience. Her role is specifically designed to eliminate friction in the customer journey—ensuring that the experience of booking a flight is as seamless as the “legendary hospitality” passengers expect on board.

Industry analysts view the creation of this role as an admission that digital reliability is now as critical to the airline’s success as its low-cost seat inventory. As Southwest expands into new markets, Callahan will oversee the modernization of the brand’s digital platforms to support long-term growth.

Double Down on Loyalty

While Callahan focuses on the platform, Suri will focus on the people. Formerly an executive at United Airlines and Choice Hotels, Suri has been tasked with evolving Rapid Rewards, Southwest’s signature loyalty program.

Her appointment comes as airlines across the industry look to their co-branded credit card portfolios and loyalty memberships to drive high-margin revenue. Suri is expected to introduce new earning and redemption options designed to keep the airline’s “most loyal” travelers from straying to legacy competitors.

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Maintaining the Maverick Status

The executive shuffle comes at a pivotal moment for the airline. Founded in 1971 to “democratize the sky,” Southwest now operates at 121 airports across 12 countries. While it remains the leading carrier for nonstop domestic travel in the U.S., the appointments suggest a recognition that “friendly and low-cost” must now be paired with “high-tech and high-value” to maintain its market share.

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The traditional model of corporate IT outsourcing—long defined by a patchwork of hardware vendors, help desks, and fragmented service contracts—is the target of a new strategic alliance between the technology giant Lenovo and the digital services firm Konecta.

Announced on Tuesday, the partnership aims to consolidate the entire employee technology ecosystem into a single, AI-orchestrated platform. The two companies are positioning the move as a direct challenge to legacy IT service models, which they argue have failed to keep pace with the seamless experiences consumers expect in their private lives.

“Enterprises have historically relied on fragmented supplier ecosystems,” said Julien Vidal, Konecta Group Chief Growth Officer. “We are laying the groundwork for a new Digital Workplace paradigm—one that is more agile, more user-centric, and more attuned to the expectations of a digital-native workforce.”

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Closing the “Experience Gap”

The alliance is built on the premise that while companies have spent a decade perfecting the digital experience for their customers, their own employees remain trapped in reactive, “ticket-based” IT environments.

The joint offering combines Lenovo’s AI-enabled hardware and infrastructure with Konecta’s expertise in customer experience (CX). The result is an internal support system where employees use AI-powered self-service and omnichannel chat that mirrors a premium retail experience. The goal is to move from “fixing machines” to “managing experiences.”

A Global Beta Test

The partnership is already being tested at scale. Konecta is currently deploying Lenovo’s services across its own global footprint, affecting more than 100,000 employees across four continents.

This internal transformation serves as a blueprint for a joint commercial roadmap. By moving to a “labor-lite” operating model—where AI handles routine troubleshooting and infrastructure management—the companies claim they can significantly reduce the overhead costs associated with traditional IT support.

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

Shifting the Outsourcing Market

The collaboration also deepens the operational ties between the two firms. Konecta recently launched e-commerce and business process operations for Lenovo in Egypt, signaling that the relationship has moved far beyond a simple buyer-seller arrangement.

“At the core of these initiatives is the need to unleash productivity,” said Rakshit Ghura, Global Head of Digital Workplace Solutions at Lenovo. “We are bringing together AI-powered infrastructure and expertise to help organizations deliver outcome-driven employee experiences.”

As large organizations look to modernize their operations in 2026, the Lenovo-Konecta alliance offers a “one-stop-shop” alternative to the multilayered outsourcing contracts that have dominated the sector for thirty years.

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WunderKind Ads and Attain have announced a strategic partnership aimed at closing the gap between digital advertising and real-world sales outcomes, giving brands access to live, permissioned consumer purchase data to inform targeting, optimization, and measurement.

The integration connects Attain’s Commerce Audiences — built from transaction data collected directly from more than 13 million consumers — with WunderKind Ads’ ad inventory. The result, the companies say, is a system that allows advertisers to move beyond demographic targeting and build audience segments based on actual purchase behavior, including signals such as shifts in spending patterns or emerging life-stage changes.

Campaigns can be segmented using criteria including purchase propensity, recency, frequency, and customer lifetime value, with data that is continuously refreshed. Advertisers also gain the ability to adjust campaigns mid-flight based on real-time purchase signals, rather than waiting until a campaign concludes to assess performance.

The companies say a major national retailer tested the joint solution during an annual sale, integrating Attain’s transaction data with WunderKind Ads’ inventory to measure the direct sales impact of media exposure in near real time. The campaign generated more than $3.1 million in attributable sales, with a return on ad spend exceeding $105 — a 63% increase against the retailer’s existing ROAS benchmark.

“This is what the next generation of retail media looks like: verified purchase data informing every ad decision, refreshed in real time,” said Adam Gendelman, VP and Head of Sales, Supply and Operations at WunderKind Ads.

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On the measurement side, the partnership offers verified sales lift reporting, covering attribution metrics such as ROAS and sales-driven, net new buyer lift, and incrementality — giving advertisers a fuller picture of how media spend translates to revenue.

“This partnership is about accountability,” said Brian Mandelbaum, CEO of Attain. “Together with WunderKind Ads, we’re helping brands activate premium audiences and clearly measure incremental sales impact.”

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Meta is on track to surpass Google in global digital advertising revenue by the end of 2026, according to a new forecast by eMarketer — a milestone that would mark the first time Google has been displaced from the top spot in over a decade.

eMarketer projects Meta will generate $243.46 billion in worldwide ad revenue in 2026, edging past Google’s $239.54 billion. As recently as 2025, Google led comfortably with $214.06 billion against Meta’s $196.17 billion.

Meta’s share of global digital ad spending is forecast to reach 26.8% in 2026, just ahead of Google’s 26.4% — a share that has been declining steadily since 2021. The gap reflects a significant difference in growth trajectories: Meta’s global ad revenue growth is expected to accelerate from 22.1% in 2025 to 24.1% in 2026, while Google’s is forecast to hold at 11.9%.

“In surpassing Google, Meta has essentially had many of its core strategies validated,” said Max Willens, Principal Analyst at eMarketer. “Meta has long understood that scale, network effects, and habits are more important than anything else in digital media.”

The growth is broad-based rather than driven by a single product. Zach Goldner, Senior Forecasting Analyst at eMarketer, said Meta is unlocking value across its entire ecosystem simultaneously. Tools such as Advantage+ and AI-generated ad creatives are improving performance across Facebook and Instagram, while Reels has contributed to a meaningful increase in advertiser spending.

That momentum is reshaping how advertisers think about Meta’s platforms. “For the vast majority of advertisers, the question is not whether they should spend money on Meta’s apps — the question is how much they should spend,” Willens said.

Google, meanwhile, may face structural constraints on ad growth. Willens noted that the breadth of Google’s business — which spans ad-free subscription services such as YouTube Premium alongside its core advertising operation — could limit how quickly it can accelerate revenue.

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

The eMarketer forecast does not account for potential disruption from recent court rulings involving Meta and Google. Goldner said those cases will take years to fully play out, and that advertisers tend to prioritize performance over legal risk when allocating budgets.

Amazon remains the third-largest digital advertising company and is growing fast. The company is projected to rise from $68.64 billion in ad revenue in 2025 to $82.07 billion in 2026 and $97.07 billion in 2027, capturing a 9.0% share of global digital ad spending next year. Together, Meta, Google, and Amazon are expected to account for 62.3% of the global digital ad market in 2026.

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