August 23, 2026

Joe Lige's Los Angeles startup Culture Hive Media Group has assembled an advisory board of veterans from Google, AT&T Advertising, WPP Media, PubMatic, Xandr, LiveRamp, OpenX, Oracle and CBS to back its 'Cultural Relevance Score' (CRS), an AI-powered metric that scores how closely creative and media placements align with the cultural values, identities and communities of a target audience. The tool builds 'culturally grounded audience personas' from shared values, symbols, habits and identities, then scores publisher inventory, including websites, creative, ads, media plans, bundle IDs and magazine articles, against those personas. CRS integrates into ad platforms, SSPs and DSPs to curate inventory for connected TV apps, display and social media. A 2024 U.S. Census Bureau and Claritas report found the multicultural population topped 150 million, more than 42% of the U.S. total as of early 2025. The system currently produces recommendations. Lige said some partnerships are already moving toward generating those changes automatically.

Chalice AI and OpenX ran a programmatic containerization pilot for Hyundai that lowered the cost per high-value action by 20% and cut CPMs by 67% compared with the next-best approach. The campaign used OpenXBuild, an SSP container product OpenX launched this year, to move AI-driven bidding decisions into the supply layer through OpenX's Real Time Bidstream API. Canvas Worldwide supported the campaign, helping bring AI-driven decisioning into the supply path. Chalice AI CEO Adam Heimlich said advertisers are increasingly bypassing traditional ad-buying platforms to work directly with AI tools. "It's really a movement to adopt this type of technology," he said. Chalice AI, whose technology also serves Bayer and Zillow, spent five years building the system. The pilot follows an IAB Tech Lab project announced in early June to standardize container technology for Open RTB specs.

Маркетплейс «Финуслуги», запущенный Московской биржей, выпустил за полгода две рекламные кампании, созданные с помощью генеративного ИИ. Традиционный продакшн сопоставимого масштаба занял бы от двух до четырех месяцев и стоил около 30 млн рублей. Каждая ИИ-кампания заняла около двух недель: неделю на поиск идеи и неделю на производство, а бюджет составил сотни тысяч рублей. Технологию применяли для сбора трендов, поиска визуальных решений, тестирования гипотез и адаптации материалов под форматы. Первую кампанию, построенную вокруг идеи «деньги работают, пока вы отдыхаете», проверили через «Яндекс Взгляд»: ролик набрал максимальный сводный балл среди пяти протестированных видео и обошел рыночные бенчмарки по категориям «Видеоряд», «Герои» и «Полезность информации». Директор по маркетингу Финуслуг Юлия Майорова заявила, что идею теперь можно собрать, показать аудитории и проверить гипотезу за несколько дней.

Paul Ballew, the NFL's senior vice president of data and analytics, told reporters on a Thursday call that the league still has questions about Nielsen's fall 2025 currency upgrades ahead of the 2026-27 season, which opens Sept. 9 on NBC. The upgrades change how Nielsen measures co-viewing, connected-TV deliveries and Spanish-language audiences. Ballew said the NFL lacks enough impact data to fully assess how the changes will show up in this season's ratings. A Nielsen pilot in February found that enhanced co-viewing data lifted measured consumption of major sporting events, including Super Bowl LX, by 4.2%. Ballew called that a positive but said the connected-TV changes look like a negative for sports. Performance guarantees for much of the inventory sold in this year's $33.8 billion sports upfront were modeled under the new system, and early spring pricing data show fall football rates up around 2% year over year.

Access to chat-bot creation in Russia's MAX messenger is currently limited to legal entities, individual entrepreneurs and self-employed people registered in the country, a new guide from the LiveDune team explains. Individuals and foreign companies cannot yet create bots on the platform. To unlock the feature, a company registers on the "MAX for partners" platform and verifies its organization, a step only the company head or someone with first-signature rights can complete. Self-employed users verify through a Gosuslugi account only, while organizations and entrepreneurs can also verify via bank services such as Alfa-ID or T-Business ID. Once verified, MAX's visual builder handles greetings, menus and FAQs without code, and an API connects more complex scenarios to CRM systems. LiveDune also flags eight recurring mistakes businesses make with these bots, including scripts nobody updates and no route to a human agent.

Bango, a UK-based content and advertising-technology platform, surveyed 2,500 US adults in May 2026 and found live sports is driving major shifts in streaming behavior. Forty-three percent of respondents said they would switch their mobile, broadband or TV provider for a better sports streaming bundle, and 45% would choose a provider with a strong sports bundle over a lower price. Another 42% said they would pay their current provider more for specific sports. Viewing habits are changing alongside subscriptions: 51% of consumers aged 25-54 now watch more highlights of live games, and 58% of 18-24 year olds use a second screen during a livestream. Discovery is a persistent obstacle, with 46% of all respondents unable to find a specific live sports program and missing the game as a result. The NFL drove the most new subscriptions, cited by 38% of consumers, ahead of the NBA at 27%, Major League Baseball at 19% and college football at 17%.

Retail media spend on Perion Network's Perion One platform rose 60% year-over-year in the second quarter, alongside a 56% increase in connected TV spend and 45% growth in digital out-of-home. Adoption of Outmax, the platform's AI-driven optimization engine, grew more than 130% in the same period, while overall Perion One spending increased 15%. Outmax evaluates campaign performance across channels, creative assets and key performance indicators, then recommends budget reallocation or creative changes. Perion also launched Ask Perion, a client interface for submitting campaigns and reviewing results, and plans to integrate Outmax with ChatGPT and Google Shopping. Digital out-of-home remains Perion's largest channel, with in-store technology at retailers including Best Buy Canada connecting to more than 1.6 million screens in over 40 countries. New agency agreements signed after extensive testing are expected to contribute significantly by late in the third quarter.

Walmart's global advertising revenue rose 38% year over year in its fiscal second quarter, outpacing 23% growth in global ecommerce sales, according to Adweek's coverage of the earnings call. Total revenue reached $187.9 billion, up 5.9%, and adjusted earnings per share hit $0.81 against a Wall Street estimate of $0.74. Walmart raised its full-year adjusted EPS guidance to $2.80-$2.87 from $2.75-$2.85. Walmart Connect grew 43% in the U.S. excluding Vizio. CFO John David Rainey said advertising growth needs to keep outpacing ecommerce for incremental margins to climb. Walmart closed its $1.4 billion acquisition of self-serve CTV platform Vibe.co this month, building on its 2024 Vizio deal. The company's AI shopping agent, Sparky, now carries ads, and Walmart said Sparky shoppers spend 40% more per order, with usage up 70% year over year.

StackAdapt has published The AI Delegation Gap, a global report drawn from a survey of 500 marketing and advertising professionals across EMEA, North America and APAC, plus insights from 187 StackAdapt customers. The report finds a gap between AI adoption and AI trust among advertisers. Most EMEA respondents act on AI platform recommendations often or almost always. Fewer than a quarter say they are very confident evaluating whether AI is making the right campaign decisions, and only half are comfortable using Autonomous AI. StackAdapt CMO Ryan Nelsen said, "AI adoption is no longer the question. Trust is." Marketers use AI regularly and report performance gains from it. Their willingness to hand AI greater decision-making authority still lags their willingness to use it day to day. StackAdapt says closing the gap requires governance, confidence and operating models that let humans and AI make decisions together.

Nielsen's Gauge report puts YouTube's share of US TV viewing time at a record 13.8%, compared with 8% for Netflix. Dan Rayburn, who has tracked the streaming industry for 30 years and advises companies including Disney on live-streaming events such as the Super Bowl, argues the comparison hides more than it reveals. 'The vast majority of videos I watch on YouTube are two to three minutes long. Half of them have no ads,' he says. Netflix told investors that some viewing hours matter more to its business than others: live programming is expected to make up slightly more than 5% of this year's content spending while generating about 1% of viewing hours, yet it has produced six of Netflix's ten biggest new-member signup days over the past five years. YouTube, meanwhile, has held NFL Sunday Ticket since 2023 and now reports its highest paid subscriber total since the package launched.