Snapchat launched an integration with e-commerce solution WooCommerce aimed at making it easier for small and medium-sized e-commerce businesses to connect with Snapchat users. WooCommerce merchants can expect:
· Seamless ad creation: Once WooCommerce and Snapchat accounts are connected, merchants can quickly build shoppable ads inside Snapchat Ads Manager.
· Auto catalog syncing to ensure ads are up to date.
· With a one-click deployment, merchants can set up Snap Pixel and the Conversions API (CAPI), which provide more accurate data for smarter ad targeting and optimization.

“We’re inviting our merchants to make their stores visible and relevant to this vibrant community, tapping into an audience that’s often difficult to reach through traditional channels,” said Aleksandra Hardt, General Manager of Strategic Partnerships at Automattic and Woo.

YouTube is cited 200x more than any other video platform by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI products, according to data from BrightEdge. Queries most likely to trigger YouTube citations were tutorials (finance, software, medical “how-to” content) and pricing, deal hunting, product demos, and reviews. Less likely were queries about career advice, strategy, abstract concepts, or pure informational queries.

Scammers are spending heavily on Facebook ads that use deepfake videos of political figures to hawk fake government benefits, reports Tech Transparency Project. An investigation by the nonprofit found:
· 63 scam advertisers who have collectively run more than 150,00 political ads on Meta platforms, to the tune of $4 million.
· The scammers were often among the top political ad spenders on Facebook and Instagram across a range of time periods in 2025.
· The ads often targeted seniors, giving the impression they were offering official Medicare and Social Security benefits.

Meta disabled some of the accounts but not until they had spent substantial sums on advertising. While Meta prohibits scams, TTP found that Meta approved such advertisers, and let them run scams for days or weeks without taking action.

Spectrum announced a successful joint demonstration of next-generation WiFi technology with Broadcom, achieving peak throughput of nearly 10 Gbps to a single WiFi device by combining the full 6 GHz band with 125 MHz of spectrum in the 7.125–7.25 GHz band. The demonstration took place at SCTE TechExpo25 in Washington, DC.

Viant is using recently acquired tech from IRIS.TV to enable Tubi’s library of 300,000 movies and TV episodes with IRIS_ID. The move gives advertisers precise video-level contextual and emotional targeting capabilities. “Advertisers expect transparency along with improved performance as they continue to accelerate their CTV investments,” said Tom Wolfe, SVP of Business Development at Viant. “By combining Tubi’s extensive AVOD reach with Viant’s leadership in CTV, identity and measurement, advertisers achieve greater transparency and performance, at scale.”

Neuro-contextual advertising company Seedtag unveiled AURA by Liz, a suite of premium creative capabilities. Leveraging neuroscience principles, the pre-campaign solution offers creative intelligence and optimization designed to improve ad performance through in-depth creative analysis and actionable insights. “Having launched our initial generative AI offering in 2023, we’ve observed a clear industry demand for deeper creative intelligence,” said Fernando Pascual, SVP of Design at Seedtag. “AURA by Liz ensures that campaign creatives are built for success from the very beginning, leveraging the power of neuro-contextual AI to maximize engagement and performance while driving measurable impact.”

GWI announced its first Spark API partnership, teaming up with performance intelligence company Waldo. The collaboration makes Waldo the first SaaS platform to introduce GWI’s Spark API and embeds a Spark API-powered GWI insights widget directly into Waldo’s platform. Waldo users who already see curated, audience-level insights, will now have another unique and proprietary data source to access. “This partnership with Waldo is a natural evolution for GWI and the first example of our Spark API being embedded into an AI-powered SaaS platform,” said Misha Williams, Chief Operating Officer at GWI. “It shows how real-time audience insights can enhance the tools businesses already rely on. With Waldo, we’re setting the stage for collaborations that bring human truth to AI.”

Video production company Lemonlight has launched Generative AI Commercials, a new video product that delivers finished, commercial-quality video, scripted, produced, and delivered, powered by generative AI. Enterprise brands can now access video in days instead of weeks, at up to 60% lower cost. “We’ve produced over 35,000 videos for global brands, and now we’re applying that expertise to AI-powered production,” said Hope Horner, co-founder and CEO of Lemonlight. “Our clients get the speed and cost benefits of AI with the quality assurance and brand safety they expect from professional video production.”

CreativeX announced support for Amazon DSP Streaming TV (STV) Ads. With the new integration, brands can:
· Leverage CreativeX’s creative scoring to inform and optimize ads running via Amazon DSP STV for more impactful and measurable results
· Ensure creative consistency and access performance insights across Amazon’s CTV inventory, including Prime Video, Fire TV, and more
· Reduce friction between creative strategy and media execution, enabling faster, smarter deployment of high-performing assets at scale

“For years, TV creative was a black box.” said Anastasia Leng, Founder and CEO, CreativeX. “Moving TV to digital gave us media measurability, but not whether the ads themselves were built to land. With this integration, we’re finally bringing always-on creative measurement into streaming and connecting it back to the full campaign. It’s another piece of the puzzle that gives brands a more complete picture of their overall creative strategy and its impact.”

Nexxen announced the general availability of its Curated Marketplace solution. Launched in 2024, Curated Marketplace provides data owners, publishers, curators and agencies with the ability to monetize data assets over Nexxen’s premium supply. “By combining proprietary data with premium supply – and equipping partners with the tools they need to control, optimize and measure – we’re helping them drive meaningful value at scale,” said Tom Friedmann, VP/GM, Curated Marketplace, Nexxen.

LiveRamp has introduced new AI capabilities to its platform, including new agentic AI solutions. LiveRamp can now connect the trillions of signals from its network to enhance AI with better data. “AI agents are only as smart as the data they can access,” said Matt Karasick, Head of Product at LiveRamp. “Our interoperability and enterprise-grade governance allow marketers to leverage any agent, anywhere, with the complete context and trusted data necessary to operate at the speed of AI.”

Horizon Media Holdings and Havas have teamed for a joint venture that unites Horizon Global’s Horizon’s Blu platform and Havas’ Converger.AI platform to form a seamless, AI-native experience, BluConverged. “With an open ecosystem approach, Horizon Global fosters cooperation, prioritizes transparency and places power back in the client’s hands,” said Bill Koenigsberg, CEO and founder of Horizon Media Holdings. “As the first agency network built in the AI era, we’re leading with future-forward ways of working, collaborating and delivering outcomes for clients – and we’re doing it responsibly at global scale.” Horizon Global will focus on US-centric global client opportunities; outside of those opportunities, Horizon Media and Havas Media Network will continue to operate independently.

Seventy-two percent of media leaders reported their organizations continue to see compounding returns from their generative AI initiatives, with tangible improvements in key areas like productivity, marketing, customer experience, business growth, and security. That’s according to Google’s annual ROI of AI in media and entertainment survey, which also found:
· Momentum is now driven by intelligent systems, with 54% of M&E executives actively using AI agents in production.
· AI agent usage in M&E will continue to be a priority, with significant adoption for content and asset management (29%), content and asset creation (28%) and monetization (23%).

“As 2025 unfolds, it’s clear that AI has arrived in the media and entertainment industry, presenting significant opportunities for those ready to embrace it,” said Albert Lai, Global Director, Media & Entertainment, Global Cloud, in a blog post. “Creating a culture where AI can be responsibly used to generate both innovation and business results is paramount, transforming both goat paths and golden paths, and effectively your business, to meet today’s challenges.”

Interactive ads deliver a 36% lift in unaided brand recall compared to standard video ads, found a report from Brightline, The Engagement Effect: How Interactivity Predicts CTV Success. And remote-controlled interactive ads with high engagement rates score higher in brand recall and purchase intent. Some specifics:
· Ads with the highest engagement rates averaged about 33% higher recall than those with the lowest scores (64% vs. 48%).
· At the household level, ads in the high (55%) or medium (53%) household engagement groups are more likely to purchase goods or services from the brand they observed. Interactive ads delivered a 8% lift in purchase intent when engaged with.
· Regardless of the engagement rate, interactive ads lead to measurable brand outcomes when they are engaged with, including +12% Ad Likeability; +8% Brand Interest; and +4% Brand Favorability

“At a time when advertisers are demanding accountability from their media investments, this research confirms what we’ve long believed – interactivity drives stronger recall, deeper affinity, and higher purchase intent,” said Jacqueline Corbelli, Co-Founder and CEO of BrightLine. “As viewers increasingly expect TV to be more than a passive experience, brands have a rare opportunity to turn curiosity into connection through interactivity.”

Not only do Americans value access to local news, whether on traditional television or digital platforms, but it strongly influences how they research products, make buying decisions, and choose service providers. So says the 2025 Local Broadcast Study, from the Television Bureau of Advertising, which found:
· 95% of respondents think it is important to be able to receive local news information on their local TV station.
· The majority of respondents watch linear local TV news on a television (78%) or mobile device (60%) daily or a few times a wee
· 72% of respondents that have cable, satellite, or a streaming provider would likely seek out another provider if their current one stopped carrying their local TV news stations.
· Local broadcast news is important for providing information during severe weather and emergencies (95% for local broadcast news station and 94% for local broadcast station websites/apps) and during political elections (93% for local broadcast news station).
· Local broadcast TV news assets influence consumers to both consider (58%) and actually purchase a product (53%).
· TV viewers find local news the least objectionable program type as it relates to purchasing a product (11% versus 27% for soap operas and 22% for reality programs).

CTV publisher TAIV is now IRIS-enabled, so advertisers can align campaigns with moments that matter – touchdowns, power plays, walk-offs, and more – in real time, across 10,000+ TAIV screens in 1,200+ bars and restaurants. Contextual and scene-level live sports targeting in CTV OOH is now available through Viant’s DSP in partnership with Place Exchange.

Locality has launched its Advanced Audience Engine, an AI-powered identity and activation solution that unifies advertiser, third-party, and proprietary Locality viewership data into one workflow. “Locality’s Audience Engine isn’t a product, it’s a strategic shift in our business, and in the broader advertising industry,” said Keith Kazerman, President of Streaming at Locality. “We have reengineered the foundation of local advertising to deliver performance, precision, and transparency, at scale, for advertisers.”

KERV.ai launched its Contextual Marketplace Contextual Marketplace, offering pixel-edge, object-level contextual targeting across premium video OLV and CTV inventory. Using AI, the platform analyzes video frames to identify specific objects and scenes. Building on recent innovations with Warner Brothers Discovery and Wayfair, KERV.ai detects items such as clothing and furniture to give advertisers detailed insights into video content.

CreativeX announced support for Amazon DSP Streaming TV Ads, integrating its creative quality and effectiveness insights into Amazon’s Connected TV platforms. This enables brands to optimize and scale high-performing ads across Amazon’s CTV inventory, including Prime Video and Fire TV. US CTV ad spend is projected to reach $33.48 billion in 2025, with viewership up 46% in Q2 2025.