Given the holiday week, we have a shorter newsletter this week. Happy New Year!

Digiday's guide to what's in and out for publishers in 2026

Publishers are abandoning the legacy blue link economy in favor of AI royalties and creator networks as they pivot monetization strategies to survive a zero-click future.

A Rundown Of (Pretty Much) Every Ad Tech Deal Of 2025

After a sluggish 2023, the ad tech M&A market showed renewed momentum in 2025 with strategic buyers like T-Mobile and The Trade Desk dominating dealmaking, while private equity firms took major players like Integral Ad Science private, and Netflix made waves with an $83 billion bid for Warner Bros.

OpenAI's ChatGPT ads will allegedly prioritize sponsored content in answers

OpenAI is exploring ads that would weave sponsored content directly into ChatGPT's responses and display promotions in sidebars, a move that could reshape digital advertising by leveraging the chatbot's deep user data to influence purchasing decisions more effectively than traditional search ads.

The anatomy of an agency chief client officer

Advertising holding companies from WPP to Omnicom are elevating chief client officers to the C-suite as agencies bet that dedicated relationship executives can transform project work into long-term retainers amid growing account complexity and AI-driven commoditization.

No playbook, just pressure: Publishers eye the rise of agentic browsers

Publishers are bracing for another wave of traffic disruption as AI-powered browsers from OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google threaten to cut them out of the user journey by summarizing content within the browser itself rather than sending readers to their sites.

Purina drives nearly 30,000 store visits with the help of advanced data solutions in Switzerland

Purina used The Trade Desk's geo-data marketplace and identity matching tools to drive more than 29,000 pet store visits in Switzerland while boosting brand consideration by up to 44 points and achieving a cost per store visit of 1.58 Swiss francs. The pet food brand built a seed audience from its own retail data of existing purchasers, then expanded it to target pet owners who frequent stores in German and French-speaking regions while using predictive clearing to optimize bidding on premium inventory.

Editor Note: This is a The Trade Desk case study. Take the results with a grain of salt, but it is a good use of the TTD platform by the Purina team.

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