Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) has announced innovations aimed at empowering CPG retail teams, marketers and agencies to act with greater speed, precision and clarity. Highlights include:
· Agent Monday (live now for qualifying 84.51° Stratum users): A weekly AI-powered summary of brand performance.
· Consolidated Dashboards (Coming Early 2026 to 84.51° Stratum): A reimagined reporting experience that simplifies how brands answer key performance and customer questions.
· Self-Service Data Orders (Coming Early 2026 in Data Direct): A new self-service capability that enables brands to extract retail data tailored to their precise business needs.

“Consumer trends change faster than ever and brands need solutions like this to stay nimble,” said Christine Foster, SVP of Kroger Precision Marketing. “By applying more automation and AI, we’re making it fast and easy for brands to identify growth opportunities from first-party retail data.”

ChatGPT users can now adjust specific characteristics like warmth, enthusiasm, and emoji use in their “Personalization” settings, said an OpenAI post. Changing the base style and tone doesn’t impact ChatGPT’s capabilities,” according to the post.

Luma AI introduced Ray3 Modify, a workflow that allows real-life actor performances to be enhanced with AI. With Ray3 Modify, the human performer, camera operator, or physical input becomes the source of direction for AI. This enables AI to follow real-world motion, timing, framing, and emotional delivery. “Generative video models are incredibly expressive but also hard to control…. [Ray3 Modify] blends the real-world with the expressivity of AI while giving full control to creatives,” said Amit Jain, CEO and co-founder of Luma AI. “This means creative teams can capture performances with a camera and then immediately modify it to be in any location imaginable, change costumes, or even go back and reshoot the scene with AI, without recreating the physical shoot.”

“Holding companies are focused on building self-service platforms and automations to benefit their own operational efficiency – which drives agency profits,” said Bob Lord, President of Horizon Media Holdings. “They’re building closed systems of machines talking to themselves, eventually delivering the most reductive solutions. We’re taking the opposite approach: HorizonOS is designed to bring human expertise and the latest technology to the forefront, creating conditions for co-creation and client growth.”

Horizon also announced HorizonOS Labs, an innovation accelerator that tests, validates, and scales new capabilities. For clients, Labs aims to offer early access to proven innovations with less risk, and a co-creation model where specific business challenges shape what gets built. (For more on HorizonOS, go to Cynsiders.)

Agentic AI platform Clinch announced the launch of a new predictive creative scoring suite within its Flight Control platform. Predict IQ Scores™ aim to enable advertisers to understand how effective their creative assets are likely to be in capturing audience attention and sales lift before campaigns go live. Clinch says its Predict IQ Attention Score™ for Advertisers:
· Predicts how well creative assets will capture audience attention.
· Evaluates creative assets against campaign context.
· Improves creative performance with targeted guidance, with access to diagnostics with prioritized suggestions aligning with unique campaign.
· Automatically re-scores assets any time creative elements or audience inputs are updated, as concepts evolve.

“Advertisers today need insight around what will actually capture attention, long before a campaign goes live,” said Oz Etzioni, CEO of Clinch. “By assessing your Predict IQ Score™ in Flight Control, teams can get an immediate read on how their assets are likely to perform, along with guidance on how to improve them.”

According to a survey of more than 50 brands by Tatari, “dual channel” planning has returned for TV advertisers, with half of respondents claiming they intend to invest in both linear and streaming. The study also found that 92% of respondents say incremental reach plus measurable performance will drive the most value; 77% expect their TV budgets to rise; and holiday programming, news, and live sports ranked as the top breakthrough environments. In addition, only 2% plan to use AI to create full TV ads, with most wanting to use the technology for workflow acceleration, not creative replacement.

According to a report by LG Ad Solutions, Home Screen promos spur the vast majority of viewers to rent or purchase new movies at home. In its “Silver Screen & Home Screen: How Movies are Watched in 2025” report, LG found that 86% of viewers said a Home Screen promotion reminded them that a new movie is available to rent or purchase at home, and 67% followed through by renting or buying the movie.

Samsung Ads has launched an integration with Amazon Publisher Cloud, enabling advertisers buying Samsung inventory through the Amazon DSP to combine Samsung’s scaled device-level audience data with Amazon’s shopping, browsing and insight signals. “Combining viewing behavior with shopping intent creates meaningful opportunities for advertisers to connect with audiences through connected TV,” said Eldad Persky, Senior Vice President, Global Product, Engineering and Business Development, Samsung Electronics. “By securely joining Samsung’s deep understanding of what people watch with Amazon’s signals, we’re enabling advertisers to reach the right audiences at scale more effectively across Samsung’s connected TV platform.”

Samsung Ads also announced the programmatic expansion of its interactive ad format Samsung GameBreaks. Advertisers can now activate GameBreaks programmatically, giving buyers access to fully customizable, co-branded interactive games within CTV inventory exclusively on Samsung TV Plus. “Through this expansion, we are continuing to deliver first-class ad experiences at scale,” said Justin Evans, Head of Innovation and Insights at Samsung Ads. “Our formats offer the flexibility our partners demand with a seamless and fast execution, pushing brands into user-forward ad experiences that consumers love and engage with.”

Havas has acquired DIGIZIK, an agency specializing in entertainment, music, and culture. DIGIZIK joins Havas Media Network’s experiential marketing arm, Havas Play, and will operate as DIGIZIK by Havas Play, marking the launch of Havas Play in Belgium.

Integral Ad Science launched IAS Agent, an AI-powered assistant that helps customers activate marketing campaigns, extract insights from campaign data and optimize performance at scale efficiently. Benefits of the product include an extensive data set; “explainable AI” that offers transparency into each recommendation; and ease of use, allowing customers to hover over suggestions and access clear, easy-to-understand rationale explaining exactly what’s proposed and why.

FreeWheel has been named the exclusive ad-serving partner across Lionsgate’s portfolio of FAST channels in the US, making inventory available to buyers through the FreeWheel SSP either directly or programmatically via 1:1 or curated packages. Under the partnership, FreeWheel will facilitate unified decision making on advertising across Lionsgate branded U.S. FAST channels. “It was an easy decision to choose FreeWheel, a leader in the space, as our exclusive technology partner across our ad-supported FAST business,” said Chase Brisbin, EVP of International SVOD Sales & Head of Global Channels at Lionsgate. “We believe in the power of a targeted premium offering and this deeper integration makes our channels even more accessible to advertisers seeking high-quality, culturally relevant content to pair with their brands.”