If you’ve been paying attention to advertising lately—and God help you if you have—you’ll notice a theme. Whether it’s AI chatbots grooming teenagers for screen addiction, Wall Street turning programmatic into a casino, or Nike selling “transformation” while their revenue trips on its shoelaces, the ad industry is running the same playbook: sell disruption, ignore consequences, then ask advertisers to foot the bill.

The headlines all blur together: NBC resurrects a sports channel it buried four years ago, OpenAI starts hawking checkout buttons in your chatbot, Meta wants AI to spend your budget for you, and Spotify decides it’s actually a DSP. Meanwhile, Amazon shrugs at ads calling tank tops “wife beaters,” because apparently corporate decency is still in beta.

What ties it all together? Advertisers are STILL the accelerant. They pour the gas, chase the shiny object, and pretend outrage only when regulators or consumers light the match. This isn’t innovation; it’s monetized negligence dressed up in pitch decks. And everyone’s pretending the future is programmable, when in reality it’s just an old business model in a new hoodie.

Former FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya basically told Programmatic IO to keep their grubby budgets off teen eyeballs—especially inside “parasocial” chatbots that pose as therapists with zero credentials. He’s not wrong. If your KPI is “time spent,” minors are chum in the water. Bare minimum fixes like persistent suicide-prevention banners and “this is not a human” disclaimers shouldn’t be controversial—unless your business model is.

The bigger takeaway: consent theater is over. Location data brokering, “agree to everything” dark patterns, and kid-targeting roulette are regulatory catnip—state AGs are itching to feast even if Washington naps. If you’re buying teen attention inside chatbots right now, you’re volunteering to be Exhibit A.

Investors are still swooning over Google, Meta, Reddit, and AppLovin, while the rest of ad tech gets ghosted harder than a Tinder date who showed up with a pitch deck. Truist’s Youssef Squali listed off the tombstones—Rocket Fuel, YuMe, Rubicon Project—as cautionary tales of programmatic promise turned penny stock tragedy.

Even The Trade Desk, the golden child, has been kicked around by Wall Street, down 60% this year despite being up 17x since its IPO. But don’t cue the funeral dirge just yet: Olympics, elections, and a potential LiveRamp deal could turn the narrative. Still, “buying the dip” in programmatic isn’t for the faint of heart—it’s more like base jumping with a blindfold.

NBCU is rebooting a dedicated sports channel this fall, four years after killing NBCSN. Why? Because it just bagged a shiny new NBA deal and can pad the schedule with Big Ten football and NWSL soccer. YouTube TV will carry it, because where else are cord-cutters supposed to watch the Pistons lose?

It’s the same old play: live sports = ad dollars. The real twist is that Comcast is once again playing both distributor and programmer. If you’re an advertiser, congratulations: you get to pay Comcast at least twice.

Nike bragged about a 1% revenue bump to $11.7 billion, but that’s on a currency-adjusted decline. Meanwhile, net income fell 31%. But hey, wholesale’s up 7%, so let’s pop the champagne?

CEO Elliott Hill is still selling his “Win Now” transformation plan, but the reality is: China’s a mess, sportswear is slumping, and Nike Direct is limping. Investors wanted dominance; instead, they got incremental growth dressed up in a swoosh.

NFL viewing is up 11% this season, averaging 20.8 million viewers per game. NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” alone has already banked $244 million in ad revenue. Even Amazon is flexing, pulling a younger audience with “Thursday Night Football.”

Advertisers can gripe about cord-cutting all day, but when it comes to mass reach, nothing touches the NFL. It’s the Super Bowl every week, and brands are paying like it.

The indie agency just hired Amy Ferguson as its first chief creative officer, fresh off stints at TBWA and The Special Group, where she churned out award-winning work for Hilton, Adidas, and Bumble.

Her mandate? Grow the office, grow the clients, and grow the ambition. With clients like Princess Cruises and Revlon, the shop clearly wants to swing harder in culture-first creative. Translation: expect TikToks, stunts, and maybe some shoes with Billie Jean King’s face on them.

OpenAI launched Instant Checkout, letting you shop directly inside ChatGPT. Translation: the chatbot that hallucinates facts now wants to sell you kitchen blenders.

Marketers aren’t sold. The user experience is clunky, merchant list is tiny, and no one knows how products will get ranked. But the writing’s on the wall: AI commerce is the new SEO. If brands aren’t jockeying for placement now, they risk getting buried when the hype turns real. Until then, this feels more like a kiosk at the mall than a real storefront.

Meta rolled out new AI agents for advertisers, promising to handle everything from budget allocation to product discovery. In other words: “Don’t worry about strategy, just give Zuck your wallet.”

It’s the logical extension of Meta’s automation obsession. If it works, CMOs get “easy mode” campaigns. If it doesn’t, you just funded a Black Mirror episode where an AI decides your deodorant belongs in cat meme videos.

Spotify cut deals with Amazon DSP, Yahoo DSP, you name it making it easier for advertisers to target its 696 million monthly users with audio and video ads. Add in Smartly integration, split testing tools, and programmatic pipes everywhere, and Spotify basically turned itself into a mini trade desk with playlists.

The pitch: Spotify is where people spend two hours a day, and 65% say it feels “more positive” than social media. Translation: advertise here and your brand won’t look like Twitter sludge. The reality: Amazon now knows what you’re humming in the shower.

Despite Canada’s ad watchdog ruling the phrase “wife beater” offensive, third-party sellers are still running tank-top ads with the term on Amazon.ca. Ad Standards called it a violation of Canada’s ad code; Amazon shrugged and said it’s “commonly understood.”

This is more than a bad look—it’s normalizing domestic violence as a marketing descriptor. Amazon loves to say it wants “a welcoming store,” but apparently that welcome mat still comes with a fist.

UK-based Jolt launched Spark Intelligence, promising impression-based targeting and near-real-time optimization for roadside OOH. Think of it as Google Ads, but for the highway.

It’s the latest attempt to drag billboards into the digital accountability era. The sell to advertisers: scale, but now with proof. The question is whether anyone really needs a split test on a bus shelter ad for energy drinks.

Analysts say WPP is 20% undervalued, with a “fair price” around £4.54. The stock’s hovering closer to £3.60. The bull case: AI investments like WPP Open could juice margins and efficiency. The bear case: meh revenue trends that already look baked into the market.

So is this a value play or a value trap? Investors are betting on AI as salvation. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that holding companies love promising transformation while still charging you hourly for interns.

Spotify has officially gone from “the app you use to drown out your own thoughts” to “a programmatic ad exchange with playlists.” This week, the company announced integrations with Amazon DSP, Yahoo DSP, Smartly.io, ID5, and basically anyone else with a log-in and a targeting graph. Add in split testing, automated workflow tools, and enough buzzwords to make a CMO salivate, and what you’ve really got is The Trade Desk, but with more Drake.

And don’t get it twisted—this isn’t some altruistic play to improve advertising. This is Spotify admitting that, after years of chasing profitability and flirting with podcasts as its salvation, the real money was hiding in the same old place: selling your data and your attention to the highest bidder.

Spotify’s big sell to advertisers is “We’re not Twitter (sorry, X).” They boast that 65% of users say the platform feels “more positive” than social media and that the average listener spends two hours a day with Spotify. On paper, it’s a marketer’s wet dream: a massive, loyal audience hanging out in a safe, ad-friendly environment, with none of the Nazi memes or Elon meltdowns that scare brands off of X.

But let’s be real: positivity is not a moat, it’s a vibe. And vibes don’t stop data leaks. Every ad partner Spotify just signed up—from Amazon to Yahoo—now gets a peek into your listening habits. Sure, you won’t see hate speech next to your ad for sneakers, but somewhere in Seattle, Amazon Ads is cross-referencing your Lizzo playlist with your Whole Foods order history.

The weirdest twist here? Amazon Music is a direct Spotify competitor. Yet now, via Amazon DSP, Amazon Ads gets to directly monetize Spotify’s listeners. That’s like Pepsi managing Coca-Cola’s distribution because “scale and efficiency.” Only in ad tech do your rivals become your business partners—and then sell you out on margin.

Amazon doesn’t care if you stream on Spotify, Amazon Music, or a toaster. What it wants is the data exhaust: when you listen, where you listen, and what that says about your shopping intent. Spotify just turned its two-hour-a-day engagement stat into a giant feeder system for Amazon’s commerce graph. Advertisers cheer, but users just became collateral input.

Spotify is also hyping its shiny integration with ID5, the cookie-replacement solution that was supposed to fix cross-device targeting in Europe. In reality, it’s a hot mess. Advertisers are already reporting low match rates, data loss, and unreliable cross-device targeting. Translation: the tech isn’t ready, but the press release was.

This is the ad industry’s oldest trick: slap “identity solution” on a broken product and watch the VC checks clear. Spotify bolting ID5 onto its programmatic pipes is like duct-taping a Roomba to a Tesla and calling it “mobility innovation.” Note: It doesn’t work, says anyone who is willing to speak up.

To be fair, Spotify’s moves are a big deal for advertisers. Programmatic audio has always been clunky, trapped in the walled gardens of SiriusXM, Google, or Pandora. With direct DSP integrations, dynamic creative optimization, and real split testing, Spotify is finally letting brands run audio the way they run display and video.

That’s huge—because it means audio ad buying can now be measurable, testable, and scalable at a global level. But let’s not forget what “measurable” actually means here: your listening history is now an ad signal. That breakup playlist? Monetized. That kids’ music station you put on repeat for your toddler? Monetized. That late-night true crime binge? Definitely monetized. Spotify didn’t just make audio programmatic—they made it creepy.

Strip away the PR gloss, and the strategy is clear: Spotify doesn’t want to be a music company. Music is expensive—labels eat margins, artists complain (rightfully), and exclusives are fleeting. But ad tech? That’s infinite scalability, baby. Slap some APIs on your audience and suddenly you’re not competing with Apple Music—you’re competing with The Trade Desk.

The irony is delicious: after years of railing against walled gardens, Spotify is building one. Except instead of walls, it’s just a series of pipes hooked up to every other walled garden. They don’t own the castle, but they’re renting out the plumbing.

Spotify’s programmatic pivot is being sold as innovation, but it’s really just old-school surveillance capitalism with a better soundtrack. The company wants advertisers to think of it as a safe haven from social sludge, but the cost of that safety is letting Amazon, Yahoo, and whoever else mine your daily soundtracks for insights into your mood, your habits, and your wallet.

So yes, Spotify might feel “more positive” than doomscrolling on X. But remember this: positivity doesn’t stop exploitation. It just makes it sound like a playlist.

Because honesty — I do some serious deep dives with some of the toughest, baddest folks in the industry every single week. You think you know what’s going on? You don’t know what’s behind Door #2 until we kick it open.

If you’ve read how Publicis ate the whole restaurant or how Netflix turned nostalgia into an adtech money printer, you know the drill: no fluff, no PR spin, just the stuff the trades are too scared (or too cozy) to print.

Next up: WPP: The Giant That Keeps Tripping Over Its Own Feet. Yeah… you’ll want to see this one.

Stay bold. Stay curious. Know more than you did yesterday.