CES used to be where brands flexed with foldable phones and voice-activated vibrators. Now it’s where the ad industry turns into a corporate fever dream, trying to out-weird each other with agentic AI, identity platforms, and robotic media planners. Omnicom swallowed IPG and regurgitated a new version of Omni loaded with Real ID surveillance juice. NBCU introduced AI agents that can buy Super Bowl ads in real-time without breaking a sweat. Meanwhile, WPP’s bleeding clients, Havas is tracking employees like a startup cult, and Pinterest is the new QVC — apparently.

Let’s be real: this isn’t “transformation.” It’s a full-blown existential panic wrapped in AI glitter. The old playbooks are burning. The new ones are being written by machines. Every holding company wants to become a tech platform, every planner is now a “strategic technologist”, and every exec is praying their shiny new AI stack makes clients forget they lost Coca-Cola. And if all else fails? Just slap a “shoppable” button on it and call it commerce.

Omnicom dragged its freshly conquered IPG corpse onto the CES stage and showed off a new Omni platform that’s basically Skynet for marketers. Now stuffed with Acxiom’s Real ID — that’s 2.6 billion “verified identities” for the privacy-conscious — and a slathering of generative and agentic AI, it’s being sold as the “connection of every element of marketing and sales.” Translation: total data fusion, zero chill, and a very sexy PowerPoint for procurement.

CEO John Wren says this is about “measurable growth.” Of course he does. What it really is: a holding company flex, using a $13.5 billion megamerger to slap together more platforms, more clouds, more AI layers, and hope it somehow translates into actual results. Spoiler: it usually doesn’t. But it sure sounds good on stage.

NBCU’s new agentic AI system makes old-school programmatic look like a fax machine. With help from RPA and Newton Research, they’ve built AI agents that can negotiate, plan, and execute cross-platform buys — including live sports — without a human sweating through a media plan. The agents talk to each other inside FreeWheel’s ad server, exchanging RFPs, creative specs, and proposals like it’s Wall Street for ad slots.

The pitch? No more DSPs, SSPs, or endless back-and-forth emails. Just bots doing deals in real time. And sure, they swear this won’t lead to job cuts. But if your job involves Excel, you might want to start polishing that résumé. Because these agents aren’t just automating grunt work — they’re inching closer to full-stack campaign execution, complete with creative approvals, audience discovery, and inventory negotiation. Welcome to the machine.

Paramount thought it could woo Warner Bros. Discovery with a $30-a-share offer backed by Daddy Ellison’s billions. WBD took one look and said, “nah.” Why? Because Netflix’s $27.75 offer — while technically smaller — comes with less debt, fewer headaches, and no 18-month regulatory nightmare. Also: Netflix doesn’t want the cable networks. Paramount does. Huge mistake.

The subtext here? WBD wants to break itself up, not get strapped to another sinking ship. The board is ready to spin off Discovery Global, and nothing about Paramount’s deal — not even the $40B personal guarantee from Larry — changes that math. The only thing this move guarantees? More chaos for Paramount, and more popcorn for the rest of us.

Once the darling of aspirational DIY cooking, Food52 just filed for bankruptcy with more IOUs than recipes. In 2021, they were worth $300 million. Now? They're getting picked over for scraps by America’s Test Kitchen in a $6.5 million fire sale. That’s what happens when your “content-to-commerce” strategy runs out of both content and commerce.

This isn’t just a media fail — it’s a cautionary tale. Food52 bet big on influencer-fueled retail, Instagram aesthetics, and the idea that millennials would drop $85 on a brass pepper mill forever. Turns out, even the most curated lifestyle brand can’t outcook macroeconomic reality and mediocre P&Ls.

Havas CEO Yannick Bolloré took the CES stage to unveil AVA, a platform so central to the agency’s future it might as well come with a HAL 9000 voice pack. AVA promises to give every employee access to data, tasks, campaign results, and everything else, all in one place. It also promises to track work in a way that could completely reshape billing models and productivity metrics.

What they’re not saying out loud? This is a surveillance tool wrapped in empowerment branding. Sure, it helps build AI tools. But it also monitors your “value,” your “impact,” and probably your bathroom breaks. Welcome to the future of agency life — where the AI knows what you’re doing, even when you don’t.

Angela Steele just left Publicis to become WPP Media’s U.S. chief client officer — a newly invented title that basically screams, “Help, we’re losing accounts!” WPP lost Coke, Mars, and Paramount last year, and they’re still CEO-less in North America. Steele’s mission? Stop the bleeding, win back trust, and maybe stop clients from running straight into the arms of… Publicis, again.

Steele’s got the résumé — Carat, Dentsu, IPG, and now WPP. It’s a career path paved with turnarounds, reorganizations, and holding company musical chairs. Will it be enough? Not if WPP keeps playing defense. The ad wars of 2026 require more than leadership changes — they need product chops, tech fluency, and a reason for clients to not ghost you on Slack.

Omnicom Media is partnering with Pinterest to jam its influencer agency Creo into the platform’s creator ecosystem. The pitch: Pinterest users have purchase intent, unlike TikTok zombies. And with Pinterest’s Creator Directory, API access, and shoppable board integrations, Omnicom wants to turn inspiration into attribution gold.

The test campaigns crushed expectations, apparently. Pinterest gave Omnicom the data, and Omni slurped it up like a digital smoothie. This is less about creators and more about signal harvesting — turning platform behavior into predictive commerce actions inside Omni. Pinterest just became a plug-in to the media matrix, and it’s somehow working.

The Video Advertising Bureau is urging networks and brands to ditch demo guarantees like 18–49 and move to broader metrics like households and persons 2+. Why? Because linear TV ratings are cratering, and age/sex buckets are now as useful as fax machines in a TikTok war room.

The spin: this makes room for advanced targeting and cross-platform parity. The truth: linear’s losing so much audience that selling on demos is financial suicide. When your inventory is bleeding, you bundle whatever’s left and call it premium.

The industry trade group wants you to guarantee against "households" now. Translation: The demos you actually want don't watch TV anymore.

Look, I get it. Nobody wants to admit their business model is dying. But the Video Advertising Bureau's latest push to move guarantees from Adults 18-49 to "Households" or "Persons 2+" isn't modernization—it's mathematical camouflage for a collapsing medium.

The official story sounds reasonable enough: Broader audience bases are "more stable and comparable" across platforms. Age and sex demos are "outmoded and artificial" compared to identity-based targeting. We need standards that work for both linear and streaming.

Here's what they're not saying: When you guarantee against households instead of 18-49, suddenly every viewer counts—your grandmother watching Matlock reruns, your kid streaming Bluey, everyone. Audiences that used to be worthless spillover now fulfill your contractual promise. Convenient!

This isn't about cross-platform truth. It's about re-denominating a shrinking currency so you can keep selling "mass reach" without admitting the mass you're selling is increasingly geriatric.

Nielsen data shows weekly 18-49 TV audiences are down roughly a quarter in five years. Time spent is down more than half. That demo—the one advertisers actually wanted—simply doesn't watch linear TV anymore. When a minority slice of total viewing is your entire selling proposition, the math gets volatile fast.

So VAB wants to widen the net. Guarantee against everyone, target the demo you want later through "advanced" audience overlays. Except those overlays still rely on panel-based guesswork dressed up as precision. It's GRPs with better marketing.

VAB isn't outdated because it's abandoning 18-49. It's outdated because it's trying to preserve the entire legacy TV trading structure—upfronts, guarantees, impression tonnage—precisely when buyers are questioning whether any demo-based guarantee maps to actual business results.

The rhetoric is all data-driven precision and identity and outcomes. The reality is impression accounting on a wider denominator. That's not modernization. That's inflation.

Digital buyers already see VAB as a TV-first lobbying shop being dragged into streaming, not a neutral standards body. Its membership and leadership are dominated by legacy TV and MVPD owners. Its white papers exist to prove TV still matters. Helpful as selling collateral, sure. Independent methodology guidance? Not so much.

When you can't deliver the audience advertisers want, you change what you're measuring. It's the same playbook dying media always uses—redefine success until the numbers look better.

Linear TV had a good run. But pretending households are the new currency when the actual humans brands want to reach have moved on? That's not evolution. It's denial with a PowerPoint deck.

The future of video advertising is addressable, accountable, and impression-level. It's not "trust us, someone in that household probably saw your ad." VAB can rebrand the tonnage all it wants. The buyers paying attention know the difference.

Time to grow up.

Behind the paywall is the part everyone actually cares about: the receipts, the whispered-over-latte power plays, the charts that make CMOs sweat, and the stuff PR teams wish you’d stop noticing. If the free feed is the trailer, ADOTAT+ is the director’s cut where the knives come out and the plot twists finally make sense.

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