August 21, 2026

Nine of every ten televisions Russians bought in the first half of 2025 shipped with Smart TV built in, per retailer M.Video-Eldorado, and advertisers are following viewers onto the connected screen. Premion reports that 70% of advertisers plan to raise CTV spending in 2026, by an average of 17%. The Russian CTV ad market is estimated at 40-50 billion rubles for 2026. The share of companies buying CTV ads rose from 7% to 25% during 2025. Automakers, e-commerce companies and mass-category brands are moving fastest. CTV today is bought mainly alongside classic TV campaigns, and the format is now positioned to take the lead role in that pairing as free ad-supported streaming grows.

Google is adding multi-campaign budget and ROI target testing to AI Max, its AI-powered tool for setting up search campaigns, with the feature rolling out in September. The update lets advertisers run a single A/B test across multiple Search campaigns to compare how different budgets affect return on investment. Google also added experiment capabilities for accounts that rely on brand or location controls, so those settings can stay in place during testing. Brandon Ervin, Google's director of product management for Search Ads, said the update builds on the one-click experiments AI Max introduced last September. Google posted a demo showing the new setup take ten clicks to configure an A/B test based on a brand's parameters and its targets. AI Max, a search-only platform separate from the cross-channel Performance Max, becomes the default way to set up search campaigns starting next month.

Akshay Mathur, founder and CEO of Unpromptd, projects that AI will meaningfully influence 70-80% of digital media spend among large Indian advertisers by FY27. Rajiv Dingra, founder and CEO of ReBid, puts the figure at 65-75%. Today only 10-15% of a large advertiser's digital budget goes directly to AI tools and platforms, according to Dingra, but 40-50% of digital ad spend is already targeted, bid, personalised or optimised using AI, up from 20-30% some 12-18 months ago. India's digital ad market grew 26% in 2025 to ₹94,700 crore and now accounts for 63% of the country's ad revenue, according to FICCI-EY data cited by Mathur. Dingra estimates that 25-35% of current AI investment is genuinely incremental spend; the remaining 65-75% comes from budgets redirected out of manual campaign operations, agency execution fees, conventional production and standalone martech tools.

iHeartMedia has split its audio measurement guidance into two tracks, one for local advertisers and one for national brands. Local campaigns are matched to near-term outcome metrics: web lift, call lift, place visitation lift, and online leads or conversion lift, aimed at showing whether a campaign brought customers through the door. National campaigns get a fuller set of tools, including brand lift studies for awareness, consideration and purchase intent, sales lift studies for buyer penetration and ROAS, and incremental reach validation to show how radio adds audience beyond television and digital investments. iHeartMedia notes that many advanced measurement solutions require minimum impression levels or reach thresholds that national advertisers meet naturally, while local campaigns often struggle to reach them. The company also points to first-party audience data as a growing input for attribution across both groups.

Truthset will match its Data Rated Audiences against the FreeWheel Identity Network, attaching an accuracy grade to demographic segments before they target Comcast's premium video inventory. The integration, announced August 26, 2026, scores records on a scale running from AAA down to B and applies that grade during identity resolution, when records turn into households and devices. Activation starts inside FreeWheel Buyer Cloud and Curation Hub. FreeWheel DSP is not included at launch. FreeWheel is the fourth platform Truthset has connected in 2026, following The Trade Desk, Magnite and Yahoo DSP. The release names no match rate, no pricing and no date for broader rollout across FreeWheel's audience marketplace, and does not say whether buyers can filter or exclude segments by grade tier.

WARC Media forecasts global retail media ad spend will reach $200.4 billion in 2026, according to its Future of Commerce Media 2026 report cited by Manifest. The market is projected to grow to $223.4 billion in 2027, taking retail media to 15.2% of total ad spend. Growth outside Amazon is slowing to 9.8% in 2027, the lowest rate WARC has recorded. An Ipsos study conducted with Amazon and Walmart found message recall on retail platforms ran 47% below recall for digital ads outside retail environments. WARC points to heavy ad density as a factor: retailers including Amazon, Walmart, Macy's and The Home Depot show an average of more than 20 ads per page. Alex Brownsell, head of content at WARC Media, said retail media "converts existing demand effectively." The channel shows weaker results for long-term brand building, he added, leaving retailers to balance revenue growth against the risk of overloading shoppers with ads.

A New York University study found that telling consumers an ad was made with generative AI lowered its click-through rate by 31.5%, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The IAB cited that finding this week in the second version of its AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework, which sets thresholds for when advertisers should label AI-generated content. IAB Vice President-AI Caroline Giegerich said trust between a brand and its customers depends on honesty about AI use. Sonata Insights, the research firm founded by Debra Aho Williamson, supplied data showing consumer reactions to AI in ads differ by context. More than half of consumers said brands should disclose fully AI-generated ads, and 73% of Gen Z and Millennial respondents said clear disclosure would raise or leave unchanged their likelihood of buying a product. The framework applies alongside, and below, government regulation.

YouTube is preparing to exclude creators from advertising campaigns and revenue-sharing deals if they also publish videos on Netflix, which is signing deals with dozens of YouTube stars, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. Netflix's more than 325 million subscribers give creators access to a new audience, and the streamer is paying creators such as Alan Chikin Chow and Nick DiGiovanni to post the same videos on both platforms. YouTube is countering with offers of millions of dollars to channels that post exclusively on its platform for a set period, sometimes paid as a share of revenue from major advertising campaigns. Creators who keep cross-posting to Netflix become less likely to land in YouTube marketing campaigns and lose eligibility for revenue shares tied to some large ad deals. YouTube also warns that cross-posting cuts view counts on its own platform.

LG Electronics expects its US CTV advertising sales to exceed $717 million this year, and LG Ad Solutions posted roughly 50% year-over-year growth in the first half, according to Chosun. Alphonso, the ad-tech company that runs LG Ad Solutions, projects the full-year total near $850 million, delivered through the webOS home screen. Samsung Electronics reports over 100 million monthly active users on Samsung TV Plus, its free ad-supported service, with total viewing time up 25% last year. In March, Samsung and Amazon launched a feature letting viewers add advertised products to an Amazon cart directly from the TV. eMarketer forecasts the US CTV ad market growing from about $38 billion this year to $46.9 billion by 2028, overtaking traditional TV advertising. Samsung has also placed ads on some Family Hub refrigerator screens in the US, a move that drew consumer pushback.