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For publishers, disintermediation isn’t a one-off — it’s a pattern.
Now, publishers are watching agentic AI browsers closely because they’re a new kind of middleman: instead of sending readers to sites, they can read, summarize and act on information inside the browser itself. And that could further cut publishers out of both clicks and the audience relationship, just as AI search is already...
AI-powered search rewrote the rules of SEO this year with diminishing click-through rates and referral traffic upending decades of SEO strategies. In kind, publishers shifted from optimizing headlines and keywords to brand visibility and attribution tracking to appear in AI search results.
The shifts are still underway as publishers head into 2026: KPIs are changing, more AI search data is...
Even in the era of the 20-person Microsoft Teams meeting, some advertising execs rack up the air miles.
Andrea Timmerman, global chief client officer at media agency Assembly, heads out from her Minneapolis, Minn. base to the agency’s offices and those of its clients in Singapore, Dubai, London and New York between two and four times a month.
“I’m a strong believer of [being] in person and...
2025 — what a ride in media.
Even for battle-worn publishers already so well accustomed to rewriting their playbooks to adapt to whatever hot plate has been flung at them (the print-to-digital crash, endless Google algorithm swings, Facebook’s pivot away from news, the cookie collapse, to name a few), 2025 was pretty rough.
The stomach-dropping moments are easy to pinpoint: copyright hell...
Generative AI tools crept closer to the uncanny valley this year as tools like OpenAI’s Sora or Google’s Nano Banana, have flooded the market. Marketers have higher expectations than ever for AI to streamline marketing processes and save dollars. The novelty of generative AI has worn off and marketers want controllable, consistent tools that can be easily integrated into the creative ecosystem...
This story was originally published on sister site, Modern Retail.
2025 was another challenging year for the retail industry, as tariffs added another crushing blow to an industry that had already been dealing with sky-high inflation and waning VC dollars in recent years.
The numbers lay bare how challenging it was for the retail industry: As of October, job cuts across U.S. firms hit a 22-...
This was the year AI went from being a future concern for publishers to being part of their daily reality. In 2025, generative AI was weaved into traffic analyses, licensing negotiations and product development.
Clicks from search waned. AI answers increasingly replaced blue links that drive people to publishers’ sites. Some companies struck AI content licensing deals, while others blocked AI...
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It’s been another year of ups and downs in the marketing and media businesses — and Digiday+ Research tracked them throughout the year, surveying publisher, agency, brand and retailer professionals at regular intervals throughout 2025.This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday....
This story originally published on sister site, Glossy.
When Pandora rolled out its first AI-powered service agent earlier this year, the goal wasn’t to showcase cutting-edge technology. It was to survive the peak holiday shopping season without sacrificing the customer experience or margins.
The agent, dubbed Clara, launched as a chatbot on the brand’s website in mid-February and now...
As programmatic means of investing in channels spreads further across the media landscape, there remain a few gaps where it’s neither efficient nor even doable. One of those less developed areas is product placement and sponsorship opportunities, which are either unwieldy or downright un-buyable.
But Omar Tawakol, CEO of Rembrand, has his eye on a bigger prize — trying to improve advertising...