Advertising
Digital has upended traditional advertising. What’s shaking out after the digital shakeup? Read our insights to find out.
Insights
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AI Search Is Growing Faster Than Its Business Model
Big Tech earnings this week put a spotlight on the monetization dilemma at the heart of AI-integrated search. The growth of Google’s AI Mode is proving to be a double-edged sword: Investments in conversational search are fueling Google’s fastest year-over-year search query growth in five years, but the company’s advertising revenue growth slowed to 12%, […]
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Data Wins The Media Agency Cola Wars
WPP and Omnicom’s recent success with the Coca-Cola Company’s global and North American media assignments can be summed up in one word: data. In fact, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s recent media agency reviews reveal how two competing data strategies are reshaping the global media agency market.* The Intelligence Engine Strategy Intelligence engines create value by improving […]
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Predictions 2027: Marketing Agencies Divide Between Orchestration And Execution
AI won’t kill marketing agencies, but it will reshape what makes them valuable. In 2027, agencies will increasingly split between intelligence-powered transformation partners and specialist executors as brands insource more content production and demand greater AI expertise.
Blog
Everything Is A Marketing Operating System
Why Does Everyone Want To Be An Operating System? The appeal of the operating system concept is straightforward. It meets marketers’ need for technology and service ecosystems that can manage and coordinate workflows across people, processes, tools, and AI agents, rather than simply execute isolated tasks. It also gives providers facing the SaaS-pocalypse a stronger […]
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The More Advertising Automates, The More Creative Matters
Automation is eating advertisers’ workflows. Media buying — once dependent on traders’ skills of budget allocation and bid management — has become the push of a button, where self-attributing platforms auto-optimize for advertisers’ desired outcomes. And customer understanding is increasingly cultivated by walled gardens like Amazon, Google, and Meta, which turn media planning into conversations […]
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Predictions 2027: Big Media Growth Engines Hit The Limit And Pivot
A decade of media growth is giving way to a period of reinvention. Forrester’s 2027 predictions reveal how leading media and technology firms will adapt as subscriptions slow, search evolves, and AI transforms consumer discovery and advertising.
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Europe Builds The Blueprint For Social Platform Accountability
Europe is moving platform accountability upstream, placing new scrutiny on the algorithms and design choices that shape social media experiences. For marketers, the bigger story isn't regulation itself — it's what growing consumer distrust means for the future of audience insights and targeting.
Blog
The Cost Of AI Productivity Is Less Creativity
AI is now standard across marketing agencies — but its impact remains constrained. Forrester’s “The State Of AI Inside US Marketing Agencies, 2026” finds that CMOs must shift their AI ambitions toward creativity, differentiation, and growth to unlock real value.
Blog
Google Dethrones OpenAI As Agencies’ Preferred AI Partner
New Forrester and 4As research shows that agencies are prioritizing ecosystems that connect data, creative, media, and commerce at scale, with Google emerging as the leading partner. As marketing moves from isolated tools to integrated operating systems, the ability to orchestrate end-to-end workflows is becoming the new competitive edge.
Blog
Google Goes All-In: An AI-Operated System, Not AI-Assisted Products
Will Consumers And Marketers Follow? Three years ago, Google was on the defensive. ChatGPT reset expectations for search experiences and Microsoft gained early momentum with its investments in OpenAI. Today, the answer engine race continues, but Google is back in pole position. Even with new market diversification thanks to OpenAI and Anthropic, Google remains the […]
Blog
Ad Creative Is A Technology Problem And Opportunity
The market for creative advertising technologies should have boomed by now. Despite waves of innovation, it has struggled to translate technological promise into business outcomes. Its potential remains highly significant but constrained by cultural disconnects between creative and media subject matter experts (SMEs) and intransigent bottlenecks in creative and media processes. The market appeared poised […]
Blog
From Walled Gardens To Working Media: The Rise Of Commerce Media
In less than a decade, retail media evolved from a monetization tactic piloted by margin-seeking mass retailers into one of advertising’s fastest-growing channels. By nearly every surface-level metric, retail media works. Marketers shifted billions of co-op funds into it, lured by the promise of closed-loop measurement and higher return on relationships with merchants. But beneath […]
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Publicis Acquires LiveRamp To Advance New Agentic AI Push
Publicis Groupe has agreed to acquire data collaboration and identity resolution firm LiveRamp for $2.55 billion in a move aimed to expand the agency holding company’s artificial intelligence offering. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2026, following the customary regulatory and shareholder approvals. Publicis will operate LiveRamp as an independent company […]
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GenAI Is Rebuilding Search, And Google is Still Winning (Q1 2026 Search Revenue Up 19% YoY)
Every tech cycle needs a good funeral: a villain to bury and a hero to crown. In genAI’s version of the story, kill advertising (again) and Google (search) is dead. The plot is tidy: GenAI replaces searching, ads become obsolete, and the web finally escapes the “attention tax.” It’s a satisfying story. Clean. Moral. Wrong. […]
Blog
What The History Of Ad Agencies Tells Us About CMO Power: Order-Takers To Strategic Partners — And Back Again
A Love Story Older Than Television The tension between CMOs and advertising agencies didn’t start with AI, procurement, or any media disruption. And history makes one thing clear: Agencies only gain power when CMOs don’t — or can’t — fully exercise theirs. It’s embedded in the very origin of the advertising agency itself. To understand […]
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Bye Bye Birdie: The Rise And Fall Of Allbirds
Powered by purpose and buoyed by splashy marketing, it seemed destined for greatness. But economics and profitability always have the final word.
Blog
Omnichannel Ad Platforms: The Future Beyond DSPs
The market for omnichannel demand-side platforms (DSPs) has reached its limit. Pioneers like The Trade Desk and its erstwhile rivals — including the likes of MediaMath, Rocket Fuel, TubeMogul, Turn, and Xandr — grew by accelerating cross-channel media planning, buying, and optimization. Now, DSPs’ core capabilities are very mature and highly automatable. Vendors focused primarily […]
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CMOs’ “AI Creative Leap”: From Making Ads To Designing Meaning
As AI absorbs execution at scale, creativity returns to its highest value. The brands that win will automate production while doubling down on insight, narrative, and the judgment that protects meaning.
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Marketing Chaos Is Our Calling: Why CMOs, Agencies, And Martech Have Forrester On Their Side
Forrester uniquely covers the entire marketing ecosystem and its underlying business. 2026 heralds a monumental shift in marketing and advertising, surpassing the decades-long “digital” transformation. AI will upend commercial models, reshape brand expectations from partners, and demand new measures of efficient growth. CMOs face the herculean task of rewiring the marketing function. Martech leaders must […]
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It’s “Grow-Time” For Omnicom Group And Its Customers
Omnicom enters its first earnings cycle after the IPG acquisition with scale, momentum, and unresolved operational challenges. CMOs should ignore Wall Street’s fixation on quarterly performance and instead evaluate how Omnicom plans to convert its expanded capabilities into customer growth. Despite its new size, the company still faces the same structural barriers constraining the broader […]
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