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IAB’s Zoe Soon: Media Agencies Increasingly Consider Creator Economy ‘A Must Buy’

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Perhaps it’s because the creator economy is so unlike traditional forms of media that it’s still not quite seen as “essential” by advertisers as much as consumers do. But that appears to be changing, as brands shift from tacking creators onto campaigns to building storytelling with influencers at the center. “About 50% of U.S. buyers now consider it a must buy for social,” Zoe Soon, vp, experience at IAB, told Beet.TV at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting. “Whereas creators were sort of being tacked on at the [...]

Posted on 03/01/2026 at3:01

IAB ALM 2026

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Trustworthy Data Beats Shiny AI at CES 2026: Horizon Media’s Dominic Venuto

LAS VEGAS — At CES 2026, Domenic Venuto, chief product and data officer at Horizon Media, delivered a reality check to anyone dazzled by flashing AI demos: “The data capabilities that matter most are the ones that you trust.” Venuto has been busy rolling out Horizon’s Blue AI native platform, which takes client data, enriches it with Horizon’s own assets and [...]

AI Is Everywhere, but Human Marketers Still Get the Credit: Horizon’s Jeremy Flynn

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. – The modern CMO is no longer satisfied with charts about impressions and reach, according to Jeremy Flynn, head of product at Horizon Media. He said the job now extends well beyond buying ads and into proving that marketing actually grows the business. “The demand from the CMO is changing beyond just marketing,” Flynn said in this interview [...]

Walmart Connect’s Khurrum Malik: CTV Plus Linear TV Delivers 55% Reach Increase

LAS VEGAS — Walmart Connect’s evolution from retail media network to comprehensive digital platform enables storytelling from “couch to cart to sales,” with research showing CTV advertising combined with linear TV delivers 55% reach increases. “About a year ago, we launched Vizio, and we now have the ability to tell a story from a brand solution perspective on TV,” Khurrum Malik, [...]

Beyond the Niche: Unity Exec Urges Marketers to Rethink Gaming

Marketers have poured billions into streaming and social, yet gaming, a medium commanding comparable scale and engagement, remains oddly underfunded. The disconnect, according to one industry veteran, lies in outdated perceptions rather than genuine limitations. "We've created a medium and an opportunity that continues to expand in terms of the number of monthly active users, continues to grow in the amount [...]

IRIS.TV’s Field Garthwaite: Contextual Targeting Enables Privacy-First CTV Performance

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CALIF. — Connected TV is emerging as a performance channel, thanks to new ways of marshalling data that allow advertisers to zero in on consumers who are open to a brand’s offer. The only challenge, it seems, is convincing advertisers of the possibility after years of such promises by CTV platforms. “Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of [...]

AI’s 97% Problem: Chatbots Barely are Making a Dent in Search, Analyst Finds

Search may be stubborn. Despite the breathless hype surrounding “zero-click” AI search, the predicted exodus of consumers from traditional search bars to chatbots has yet to materialize. New data suggests that standalone AI tools still command a negligible fraction of the time users spend hunting for information online. "AI is revolutionizing search, but maybe not in the way that a lot of [...]

Canvas Worldwide’s Paul Woolmington: AI Without Human Judgment Creates ‘Race to the Bottom’

LAS VEGAS — Artificial intelligence provides speed and efficiency but lacks taste and aesthetic judgment, making human oversight essential to prevent automation that eliminates human input entirely. “What we’re missing is this notion of taste and judgment,” Paul Woolmington, CEO of Canvas Worldwide, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES. “Taste is very aesthetic and I think it’s going to be [...]

For Retail Media in Gaming, It’s a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure,’ Says KINESSO’s Owen

The advertising world is obsessed with capturing fleeting consumer attention across a multitude of distraction-laden screens. But one environment, more than most, boasts undivided focus. Unlike passive television viewing or social media scrolling, which are often accompanied by a second screen, gaming demands a player’s full concentration. This is the opportunity for retail media, a market which Forrester projects will grow to [...]

Standards Meet Scale in Retail Media to Deliver for Brands: DG Media’s Austin Leonard

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. – Retail media standards are no longer a side conversation for the most patient people in the room. They are front and center, especially as more brand dollars flow into the channel. Speaking at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, Austin Leonard, vice president and general manager of the DG Media Network at Dollar General, said the pressure from [...]

Audio Gets Programmatic: Lisa Coffey of IHeartMedia Says ‘Guaranteed Human’ Wins Trust

LAS VEGAS – If you have ever wished broadcast radio could behave a little more like digital, Lisa Coffey says the wish is being granted, with a beta label and a confident smile. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES, the chief business officer of IHeartMedia said the long running mission is finally turning into shipping product. “The project of making [...]

Retail Media’s Easy Money Is Gone – Now Comes the Hard Part

For years, retail media networks enjoyed a relatively effortless revenue boom, riding the e-commerce wave and leaning on supplier budgets that seemed inexhaustible. That era, according to one close industry observer, is over - and what comes next will separate the serious media businesses from the rest. The sector is hardly collapsing. Global retail media spending is projected to climb from [...]

Dentsu’s Will Swayne: Advertising Enters Its Third Phase, ‘The Algorithmic Era’

LAS VEGAS — Media planning for 2026 must acknowledge advertising’s evolution from broadcast-focused 30-second spots and “eyeballs” by instead relying on precision targeting to meet the demands of the “agentic and algorithmic era.” “We’re in a new era of advertising — the third era,” Will Swayne, global practice president for Media and Integrated Solutions at dentsu, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan [...]

IAB’s Caroline Giegerich: Over-Labeling AI Use Could Create Consumer ‘Fatigue’

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Excessive artificial intelligence disclosure labeling could be too much of a well-intentioned thing. Aside from stoking consumer burnout on one hand, the impact could potentially harm advertisers by highlighting AI usage that splits audience perceptions between creativity and inauthenticity. “The risk of transparency is if you over label everything, consumers will just tune out and have a [...]

AI will Make Agencies Feel Human Again: Carat’s Carrie Drinkwater

LAS VEGAS – If technology used to be about pipes, dashboards and apologies for latency, Carrie Drinkwater wants it to be about culture. Speaking with David Kaplan at CES 2026, the chief investment officer of Dentsu-owned Carat, said the agency’s biggest technology investment isn’t another black box, but a clearer read on cultural momentum. “The biggest technology investment that we’re focusing on [...]

Omnicom’s Duncan Painter: Five Years of Consumer Purchase History Provides ‘Granularity’ Beyond Transactions

LAS VEGAS — In order for a retail media network advertiser to accurately find consumers at the right moment, sometimes you have to travel back in time. About five years in the past, to be exact. “We can look back at the consumer level for five years of their engagement and purchase with that product or brand,” Duncan Painter, CEO of [...]

Industry Backs the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico in PSA Campaign

TelevisaUnivision, LG Ads and Roku are among the companies supporting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico by providing inventory to run 30-second spots on their Spanish digital platforms. It's part of an effort to raise awareness and funds for a group that plays an essential role in the live of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans. The campaign is designed [...]

Lenovo’s Rick Corteville: B2B Marketers Must Focus on ‘Quality Places’ for CTV

Connected TV isn’t often considered a primary channel by B2B marketers to target their desired audiences. But Lenovo is not only making the case for CTV as a valuable venue for B2B, it’s also touting the channel’s use for eliminating ad waste. Specifically, the electronics company boasts achieving over 90% reach against specific enterprise audiences using first-party data matched to [...]

Data and Context Drive Performance in Connected TV: OMD’s Tej Desai

As brands try to make sense of a fragmented media ecosystem, performance measurement remains one of the biggest obstacles. For Tej Desai, executive vice president of client leadership at OMD USA, connected TV has emerged as a way forward, particularly as marketers look beyond narrow platform metrics and toward more holistic outcomes. Social remains powerful but siloed Desai said marketers are increasingly [...]

Fragmentation Meets Focus Even as News Expands: CNN’s Guy Griggs

LAS VEGAS – If the news landscape feels like an all-you-can eat buffet with cable podcasts, newsletters, influencers and social feeds stacked high, this is not your imagination. Guy Griggs, senior vice president of ad sales and client partnerships at CNN, says the industry has splintered in spectacular fashion and he has the receipts from living through it twice. “This is [...]

TransUnion’s Julie Clark: AI Moves From Technology Talk To ‘Outcomes Era’

Artificial intelligence discussions are shifting from theoretical to practical deliverables as the industry recognizes strong data foundations prove critical for realizing AI’s full potential. “We’ve all been talking a ton about AI, but it’s not just the technology, it’s about what we’re actually delivering now. It’s moving into an outcomes era,” Julie Clark, SVP, Diversified Markets, Media & Entertainment at TransUnion, [...]