August 25, 2026

John Nardone, CEO of JWX and credited with placing the first paid internet ad in 1994, wrote in a blog post that the drop in search traffic to publisher sites is permanent. He called it a structural shift and wrote, "That traffic is not coming back," pointing to Google's shrinking role as the central router of the open web. Publishers now need to convert content across many surfaces, each with its own format and posting cadence, to reach audiences. JWX, formed through the March 2025 merger of JW Player and Connatix, announced its "JWX Content Hub" on Monday. The platform uses AI to turn a single video library into assets for many channels: horizontal video becomes vertical, long clips become short social cuts, articles become video, and content gets translated and dubbed automatically. The hub then scores and distributes each asset to the right channel at the optimal time.

Sixty-one percent of marketers plan to increase creator content spending in 2026, according to Kantar. The research firm found that platform engagement data matched real brand-building potential in just one of every three pieces of creator content it examined. Nicole Jones, EVP, head of media and growth, NA at Kantar, and Gazmend Alushi, president of measurement and analytics at Whalar, discussed the gap in an Adweek webinar on creator measurement. Their session outlined a framework for evaluating creator partnerships before spend commits, along with methods for matching strategy to campaign goals such as awareness or conversion. The two speakers argued that engagement metrics alone mislead buyers who treat creator content as a media investment. Brands that scale creator budgets without matching measurement rigor risk paying for reach that never builds the brand equity they're targeting.

Decathlon Switzerland attributed 30,000 purchases to a two-month connected TV campaign with Teads run in spring 2026. The CTV Traffic solution used an instream format aimed at households with outdoor interests, then linked exposure to website visits over a 30-day attribution window. The campaign produced an 11 percent visit rate, seven times the global benchmark. Cost per visit came in 40 percent below the DACH benchmark, and the bounce rate was 59 percent lower than benchmark, with visitors spending about three minutes on site on average. Quentin Perceval, Digital Media Planner at Decathlon Switzerland, said the collaboration showed that TV advertising drives website visits with a high intent to purchase. The results give Swiss advertisers concrete performance data for a channel long associated with brand building.

Broadcast airings for movie advertisements fell to 93.6K between May 1 and August 12, 2026, down from 192K over the same window last year, a decline of more than 50 per cent, according to AdImpact. CTV impressions rose to 17.7 billion, up from 15.2 billion in summer 2025, an increase of roughly 16 per cent. The Odyssey led the shift, generating more than 1.8 million CTV impressions before its release and another 741 million afterward, the highest total of any movie released this summer and 15 per cent of all movie CTV ad impressions in the period. On broadcast, The Odyssey logged 9.4K airings before release and 2.3K after. AdImpact's analysis also covered Minions, Moana and Toy Story.

Alex Yip, Director of Product Strategy at AppsFlyer, argues in a VideoWeek analysis that CTV consolidation resolves into a fight over four capabilities: the screen, the pipes, the checkout and measurement. Walmart combined a TV operating system and home-screen inventory from its Vizio purchase with self-serve buying from Vibe.co, adding those to the checkout data it already holds through Walmart Connect. Fox's pursuit of Roku, Mediaocean's purchase of Innovid and Pinterest's purchase of tvScientific follow the same pattern of folding separate capabilities into one platform. CTV ad spend is set to grow 14 percent year-on-year, and Yip says the experimentation phase for the channel has ended. Measurement deals, including DoubleVerify's acquisition of Rockerbox and iSpot's acquisition of 605, build scale within the measurement layer itself and stay independent of any single screen, pipe or checkout owner.

NIQ's new report, The Commerce Revolution: Where East Meets West, puts US retail media spend at more than 22% of total media budgets, according to Skai x Stratably data cited in the study. Brands currently split that budget across six retail platforms on average, a figure NIQ expects to reach eight by the end of 2026. Measurement remains fragmented by campaign and retailer: 77% of organizations surveyed by Skai x Stratably report they are seeking better measurement solutions, and 68% say they are actively pursuing efficiencies. The report also highlights Asia Pacific as the global e-commerce leader, generating almost 55% of worldwide revenue in 2025, where 58% of consumers have adopted quick commerce and 59% use social commerce. NIQ argues these Eastern consumer habits and Western retail media infrastructure are converging into one AI-driven commerce system over the next five years.

X has launched an Ads Model Context Protocol server, giving advertisers a way to build and manage X campaigns through third-party AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT. The server connects any LLM agent, including custom builds on the MCP SDKs, to 23 X Ads tools covering campaign data, analytics and ongoing ad management. Advertisers can issue prompts such as "launch a campaign for the fall drop, $15k over two weeks, US only, goal is to drive sales" and have the AI turn that into a live campaign. X joins Meta, Pinterest, TikTok and Snapchat, all of which built their own MCP integrations over the past year. The launch follows X's addition of text overlays for short-form video last week and fits owner Elon Musk's plan to turn X into an "everything app" with video-first ad incentives.

Digiday, Glossy and Modern Retail will convene the second edition of AI Marketing Strategies on Sept. 24 in New York City, gathering brand leaders, agency executives and technology providers to discuss AI adoption in marketing. Speakers include representatives from Samsung, Bayer and David's Bridal, who will present case studies spanning product discovery, personalization, targeting and creative generation. The event follows a February gathering where marketer approaches to AI were still early stage; organizers say brands have since moved from experimentation to execution. Sessions will cover creative production, media buying and targeting, analytics and measurement, plus an interactive town hall for peer discussion. Digiday editor-in-chief Jim Cooper said brand marketers "no longer really have a choice" on AI adoption because their customers already use it. Attendees include brand marketing leaders, agency executives navigating AI at scale and technology providers evaluating how their tools fit current market needs.

Zenith India CEO Jai Lala told Storyboard18 that CTV spend has become mainstream, with brands now debating what share of the budget, 5%, 10% or 20%, to put into the format. Zenith pitched one integrated team spanning awareness, consideration and commerce to win L'Oréal's media mandate, replacing the separate specialists the brand used before. Lala named Nespresso and Centrum as brands leaning on CTV to reach cord-cutters, metros and high-purchase audiences that are hard to find elsewhere. He said Publicis has built a proprietary tool that inputs reach curves across YouTube, Meta, TV and OTT so clients can see whether campaigns are reaching the same people repeatedly or finding incremental audiences. Zenith separately runs a proprietary attribution tool, reviewed monthly with client and media data, to measure how much of a brand's business output media is driving. "Zenith stands for ROI," Lala said.

Getblogger and hotel booking service Otello ran a joint campaign from March 1 to March 31, 2026, using webmasters to grow new users, bookings and average check for the CPA channel. Getblogger selected one key partner from the gift-panel segment, where users see partner offers on the order confirmation page or inside the emailed receipt, depending on the platform. Otello's offer gave new users a 20% discount on their first booking, promoted through an individual UTM link and promo code. The campaign prioritized webmaster audiences in Moscow and the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar and Yekaterinburg, and the teams tested creatives, calls to action and messaging angles. The mechanic centered on the first-booking discount performed best, and loyalty-program, email and push placements from the webmaster expanded contact volume and supported conversion to bookings.