- ADOTAT Newsletter - Adtech, Marketing and Media
- Posts
- AdLand’s Apocalypse Bingo: AI Agents, Blockchain Bros, and a CMO with Receipt
AdLand’s Apocalypse Bingo: AI Agents, Blockchain Bros, and a CMO with Receipt
AMC sells your eyeballs twice, Fox hires a hitter, and the UAE builds ad tech that actually works.


TikTok wants to be your creative director, while Meta just wants plausible deniability.
AdLand’s Apocalypse Bingo: AI Agents, Blockchain Bros, and a CMO with Receipt
TikTok just made your strategy deck obsolete. The platform rolled out a shiny suite of AI tools that not only tells you what your audience wants, but also how to sell it to them — keyword by keyword, frame by frame. Insight Spotlight is basically a psychographic stalker dressed as a media planner. Want to sell hormonal supplements to English-speaking Gen Z women? TikTok’s already drafted the script and suggested a hashtag. Creative autonomy is dead. Long live algorithmic advertising theater.
Meanwhile, over at Meta — surprise! — Instagram’s AI ad engine was busy monetizing synthetic nudity. Turns out, if you give an algorithm a budget and zero supervision, it’ll run hundreds of “nudify” deepfake porn ads before someone at CBS embarrasses you. Scarlett Johansson and Anne Hathaway became unwilling mascots for a new wave of digital exploitation, proving once again that Meta can’t moderate content, but sure knows how to scale it. Silicon Valley: where your next viral dance and your next lawsuit can run on the same ad exchange.
🚨 TikTok Just Automated Your Media Strategy — And Probably Your Job
🎯 Cold Open
TikTok didn’t just drop new tools — they handed brands a personalized marketing oracle. AI prompts, audience psychographics, and data-driven creative briefs? Welcome to the ad apocalypse, where your strategy deck is now auto-generated by a teenager’s For You page.
📦 What’s in the Box
The new Insight Spotlight tells you what your target demo is watching, saying, and feeling — and then suggests content to match. Think “make videos about hormonal health for English-speaking women” with keyword optimization baked in.
🧠 Big Picture Vibes
This isn’t assistance — it’s a takeover. TikTok wants to be your creative director, media planner, and trend whisperer. All you have to do is obey the algorithm.
🔥 The Bottom Line
TikTok just turned performance marketing into a Mad Libs session powered by machine learning.
🚨 Meta Sold Deepfake Porn by Accident. Again.
🫣 Crisis Response Theater
Meta yanked hundreds of “nudify” AI ads — only after CBS News did what their moderation team apparently wouldn’t. Instagram’s ad rails became a carousel of synthetic sleaze.
📜 The Receipts
From Scarlett Johansson to your cousin’s prom pic, no image was safe from being turned into a not-so-safe-for-work hallucination. Bonus points to the ad that asked, “How is this allowed?”
🧠 The Real Problem
This wasn’t an oversight — it was baked into the scale. Meta’s ad platform optimizes for engagement, not ethics, and the pervs are getting pretty good at performance marketing.
🔥 Final Thought
Meta’s algorithms don’t judge — they just distribute.
🚨 AMC’s Pre-Pre-Show Is the Newest Real Estate in Adland
🍿 Cold Popcorn
AMC will now sell “Platinum Spot” ads before the trailers. So yes, your movie night now comes with a bonus round of Hyundai commercials.
📦 The Breakdown
These premium ad slots hit just before the previews, meaning advertisers now get to hijack the audience before the fake butter kicks in.
🧠 Why It Matters
AMC figured out that attention is gold — especially the undistracted kind that still thinks it’s getting to the good part.
🔥 The Final Frame
The trailers aren’t the appetizer anymore — they’re the dessert. The real main course is a two-minute ad for State Farm.
🚨 Coign Built an Entire TV Ad With AI and Zero Irony
🧠 AI-Generated Patriotism
The conservative credit card brand launched a national TV spot made entirely by AI — less ad shoot, more Midjourney hallucination.
💸 The Stats
Half a day of production. Under 1% of the usual cost. Rolled out across Fox News, Truth Social, and anywhere else the words “spend right” don’t raise eyebrows.
🤖 Hot Take
It looks like a local bank commercial from 2007 if ChatGPT directed it. But hey — it’s budget-conscious, on-brand, and algorithm-approved.
🔥 Parting Shot
Coign’s campaign is like the AI version of dad jokes: confident, cleanly edited, and just a little off.
🚨 AI Agents Are Now the Newsroom’s Best Ad Sales Reps
🧪 Welcome to the Filter Bubble 2.0
PMG used Mobian’s agentic AI to intentionally advertise on Fox News — and it worked. The bots decided controversy converts. Shocking, right?
📊 Data Drop
Only 18% of budget hit Fox, but it drove 34% of conversions at half the cost. Human planners, please take a seat.
🧠 Why It’s Spicy
The old model said “avoid the news, it’s risky.” The new model says “risk it — the algorithm’s got your back.”
🔥 Mic Drop
Even Hannity can sell soap if the AI thinks you’re worth the click.
🚨 Puja Vohra Joins Fox With a Playbook and a Blowtorch
📈 Corporate Flex Alert
Fox tapped Vohra — the marketing mind behind Top Chef, Yellowjackets, Dexter, and half of Paramount’s portfolio — to unify its media empire.
🧠 Why It Matters
She’s got experience across prestige drama, NFL primetime, and Bravo chaos. Now she’s supposed to bring coherence to FOX’s wildly divided brand buffet.
🧳 Career Cheat Sheet
NBCU. Showtime. Paramount+. truTV. Every job tougher than the last. And now? She gets Tubi.
🔥 Takeaway
If anyone can sell Tucker Carlson and The Masked Singer under one roof, it’s Puja Vohra.
🚨 UAE Launches Ad Exchange That Actually Blocks Fraud
🧱 Sand, Oil, and Smart Contracts
VeraViews unveiled the first blockchain-powered SSP in the Emirates. Government-backed. AML-compliant. Buzzword-rich.
💰 Big Picture
Built under the NextGenFDI initiative, this platform doesn’t just promise fraud prevention — it bakes it into every transaction.
🧠 Why It Stands Out
While U.S. adtech companies play Mad Libs with “AI-powered transparency,” the UAE is building a real infrastructure with steel, code, and law.
🔥 Worth Remembering
When the rest of the world’s fixing fraud with filters, the UAE brought a sledgehammer.
🚨 The Trade Desk Says the Quiet Part Loud About Deal IDs
🧃 Juice Check
TTD admitted what everyone already knew: private marketplace deal IDs mostly don’t work. So they launched Deal Desk to duct-tape the system back together.
📉 Technical Pain
Low win rates. Bad metadata. Human troubleshooting via Slack. It's 2025 and we’re still using email to fix CPMs.
🧠 The Bigger Signal
Deal IDs were meant to be streamlined. They turned into Frankenstein’s monster. Deal Desk might be the CPR — but the body’s still twitching.
🔥 Your Takeaway
Deal Desk is TTD’s white flag — and a quiet confession that programmatic curation is a UX nightmare in disguise.
🚨 IAB’s Trusted Server Wants to Kill Client-Side Code (Someday)
🔐 Server-Side Soapbox
IAB Tech Lab’s Trusted Server could — theoretically — put publishers back in control by moving ad ops off the browser.
🧠 Privacy Pitch
No more vendor code hoovering up data in the shadows. No more Chrome chokeholds. Just clean pipes and standardized accountability. Maybe.
⚖️ The Catch
It’s still a proof of concept. Google hasn’t signed on. And most of adtech’s favorite tools rely on client-side voodoo.
🔥 Sign-Off
Trusted Server could be revolutionary — once it’s real, adopted, and not just a fancy slide deck.
🚨 Classify Declares War on Keywords With AI Context Magic
🔍 Context, but With Brains
Classify wants to kill the IAB taxonomy and replace it with AI-powered, nuance-rich, context-sensitive targeting.
🧠 Origin Story
Built by ex-Facebook and Unity folks tired of selling ads on irrelevant inventory, Classify goes beyond keywords to read the room — literally.
💥 Where It’s Going
Already plugged into Scope3’s sustainability marketplace, the company is betting on semantic smarts as the next competitive edge in media buying.
🔥 Closing Words
If you’re still buying against “news > politics > opinion,” Classify thinks you’re doing it wrong.

Let’s call it what it is: the Coign ad is what happens when AI swipes your uncle’s Facebook feed, digests a Ronald Reagan speech, and throws it all into a Midjourney blender
🧠 PATRIOTISM.EXE: When AI Writes the Ad, and the Agenda
Let’s call it what it is: the Coign ad is what happens when AI swipes your uncle’s Facebook feed, digests a Ronald Reagan speech, and throws it all into a Midjourney blender. The result? A bald eagle, some golden-hour wheat fields, and a family so wholesome they look like they were AI-generated to pitch heartburn medication during a NASCAR rerun.
But this isn’t about bad taste. It’s about a tectonic shift in how ideology is manufactured—and monetized.
🦅 The Algorithm Wears Red, White, and Blue
This ad wasn’t created. It was conjured. By a machine.
Generative AI has become the new intern from hell: it never sleeps, costs next to nothing, and always delivers a version of “America” pulled straight from a 1987 Pizza Hut commercial. The goal isn’t persuasion—it’s confirmation. Coign’s ad doesn’t make an argument; it wraps a credit card in the warm blanket of algorithmic nostalgia. Think Rockwell with fewer brushstrokes and more data scraping.
This is the Uncanny Valley of Ideology: flags, rockets, square jaws—but none of it quite human.
💰 Disruption by Default: $5K for a Culture War
Traditional ad spots cost six figures. This? A fraction. No director, no crew, no time. Just prompts, pixels, and a message: “Buy this card, prove you’re a Real American™.”
That’s not just innovation. That’s market collapse for Madison Avenue.
AI doesn’t just lower the bar; it builds a trampoline under it and launches every grifter, PAC, and politician with Wi-Fi into your feed. Speed-to-ideology is now measured in hours, not weeks. Your opposition says something dumb in a debate? AI spits out a counter-ad before they’ve finished their closing statement.
📡 The New Right-Wing Ad Stack: Fox ➡️ X ➡️ Truth
This isn’t a commercial—it’s an ecosystem test. Coign isn’t selling plastic; it’s selling identity.
Patriotic fluff for Fox. Edgy memes for Truth Social. AI-generated cringe for X. All versioned, targeted, and memified faster than you can say “deepfake.” The vertical integration is chef’s kiss—like Sinclair Broadcast Group had a baby with Adobe Firefly.
The ad itself is basically dog whistle as a service.
🪞 AI Can’t Feel, But It Can Mimic the Hell Out of It
Here’s the real kicker: no one made this ad.
No gaffer setting up lights. No cinematographer adjusting focus. No voice actor hitting the perfect note of gravitas.
Just ones and zeroes cosplaying emotion. It’s a creative graveyard in patriotic wrapping paper. The humans are gone, and with them, any soul.
But hey, it’s efficient, right?
⚠️ This Isn’t Just a Conservative Toy—It’s a Warning Shot
Progressives, libertarians, anarchists, flat-earthers—AI doesn’t care. It will push anything with equal fervor and zero context. Give it a budget and a target list, and it will produce 1,000 flavors of propaganda faster than the FEC can hold a press conference.
Get ready for:
🤖 Synthetic Spokespeople saying what you want to hear, forever.
🎯 Micro-Attack Ads tuned to your browser history and home address.
🔁 Infinite Content Loops where “authenticity” is just another setting in the UI.
🗳 The Big Question: Can Democracy Outrun the Prompt?
Coign’s ad is a punchline today. But the next one won’t be funny. Or fake-looking. Or even obviously political.
AI doesn’t care what side you’re on. It just wants input.
So here’s the real takeaway: the future of media isn’t human versus machine. It’s meaning versus mimicry. And the algorithm doesn’t blink.
Now ask yourself—who’s writing your message?
💸 Why You Need ADOTAT+ (Before the Industry Gaslights You Into Ignorance)
Let’s be real: the trades are busy spoon-feeding you reheated PR statements and ad-tech puffery while billion-dollar decisions are made behind closed doors. Want to know what Trusted Server really means?
Or why “AI-powered contextual targeting” might be code for “we just renamed a regex engine”? That’s where ADOTAT+ comes in. We’re not here to parrot press releases — we decode them, dissect them, and tell you who’s getting paid (and who’s getting played). You don’t just get access to scoops — you get context, motives, and the ugly economics no one wants to admit. Independent journalism isn’t just a buzzword — it’s the last functioning sensor in an industry allergic to transparency. And here’s the kicker:
I just heard a PR company is launching their own podcast. What? Is that insane? Yes — and a massive conflict of interest. But it shows how scared they are of what we’re doing. The entire industry reads ADOTAT now — and they’re sweating.
🧠 What You’re Missing Without ADOTAT+
While you’re stuck reading 500-word summaries on LinkedIn, ADOTAT+ subscribers are already five moves ahead. They’re learning how “privacy-first” specs like Trusted Server may quietly shift power to cloud giants, why DSPs are slow-walking support (hint: margins), and which contextual “AI” players are quietly eating Google’s lunch. You’re missing the backchannel whisper networks, the unquoted truths, and the tech that sounds shiny but could blow up your budget.
Supporting independent journalism means funding the work that dares to call BS — and gives you the map before the rest of the crowd realizes they’re lost. We don’t just follow the money. We show you who’s hiding it.