CES 2026

LAS VEGAS – VideoElephant positions itself as a connective layer across the video ecosystem, linking media owners, publishers and advertisers through a vast content library and distribution network. Brian Cullinane, chief commercial officer of VideoElephant, said the company manages roughly 5 million short-form video assets, adding thousands more each day, alongside hundreds of thousands of […]

LAS VEGAS — The race to monetize shopper data has turned retail media into the advertising industry’s fastest-growing sector, projected to surpass combined spending on connected TV and traditional television by 2027. But perhaps it is also exacerbating a tangled web of walled gardens, leaving buyers navigating a landscape defined as much by its complexity […]

LAS VEGAS — Buyers can now verify connected TV purchases at the show level, seeing specific line items, CPMs, impressions, and total media spend rather than trusting that budgets allocated toward major television events actually reached intended inventory. “Before a couple of days ago, it was impossible for a buyer to know exactly what they […]

LAS VEGAS — Amazon’s nearly total reach — 90% of U.S. customers across authenticated devices — means that advertisers can tell personalized stories that follow consumers throughout their day, from users’ Fire TV’s in their living room to bedtime Alexa smart speaker podcasts. “If you think about it as an advertiser, [there are] so many […]

LAS VEGAS – Adam Singolda sees consumer behavior shifting faster than most media companies expected. Large language models such as ChatGPT are becoming a daily interface for information, he said, but the experience remains uneven across platforms. Some LLMs are ad free, others are ad-supported, while the open web sits largely outside those walled gardens. […]

LAS VEGAS — Pharmaceutical advertising has been the backbone of TV ad strategies since the inception of the medium. But maintaining that central role requires embracing new delivery platforms including YouTube and connected TV as consumer viewing behavior shifts. “It’s about staying the backbone [of TV],” Kurt Robinson, evp, business development at Swoop, told Beet.TV […]

LAS VEGAS — Consumers increasingly feel brands don’t care about them as companies reduce brand investment under pressure to prove immediate value, creating disconnection that surfaces in research showing most people believe advertisers pursue transactions rather than relationships. “Something like 71% of consumers have said, ‘I think they’re only after me for my dollars.’ Meanwhile, […]

LAS VEGAS — Principal-based media buying can best be seen as a not just an update of traditional “media barter” arrangements, but as a way to solve the problems associated with that old form of agency/publisher deals. As Incon International’s Reid Steinberg notes, principal-based buys can help advertisers unlock additional budgetary spending. On top of […]

LAS VEGAS — Artificial intelligence models trained on low-quality data risk generating meaningless insights that then degrade further as models train on their own flawed outputs, creating a destructive cycle that obscures actual campaign performance. “One thing that I fear, especially with all the excitement around AI, is that the quality of the training data […]

LAS VEGAS — The traditional marketing planning cycle is dead. That’s the stark message for advertisers trying to succeed on discovery-driven platforms. For brands accustomed to lengthy campaign development timelines, the platforms where consumers now spend their time operate on an entirely different clock. “The speed at which you have to drive innovation and decision […]

LAS VEGAS –Sir Martin Sorrell, executive chairman of S4 Capital, has a blunt assessment of advertising’s future. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Sorrell said agentic AI “fundamentally challenges the model.” Strategic and creative under attack Sorrell argued that agentic systems threaten the traditional agency stack. “Strategic and creative is under attack,” […]

LAS VEGAS – At CES 2026, Comcast’s NBCUniversal rolled out an idea that sounds futuristic but solves an old headache: buying live sports ads without losing your sanity. Ryan McConville, chief product officer and EVP of ad products at NBCUniversal, said the company is testing agentic AI to automate live sports buying across streaming and […]

LAS VEGAS – At CES 2026, Albertsons Media Collective outlined how it is tightening measurement, expanding in-store media and using AI to link advertising more directly to sales outcomes. Senior Vice President Brian Monahan said the network is focused on shared growth across brands, merchants and shoppers. “We seek to live up to our name […]

LAS VEGAS — The gaming industry has long been the epitome of fragmentation – mobile gamers on tiny screens, console enthusiasts locked into expensive hardware, and PC players tethered to their desks. Now a new platform aims to unite them all on the largest screen in the house. PHYND is betting that the smart TV […]

LAS VEGAS – Agentic commerce is expanding how consumers shop rather than replacing existing channels, says Michael Komasinski, chief executive of adtech firm Criteo. Speaking with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES 2026, Komasinski said AI-powered assistants should be viewed as an incremental layer that complements search, social and retail media, not a substitute for […]

LAS VEGAS – Advertisers sounded a familiar concern at CES 2026: They still struggle to measure television and video spending across platforms in one unified view. That challenge has persisted for years, Julie Van Ullen, president, CRO of iSpot, said in this interview with Lisa Granatstein, editorial director of Beet.TV. The biggest gap has been […]

LAS VEGAS – Agentic AI and self-serve tools took center stage at CES in Las Vegas last week, marking a significant shift from assisting advertisers to actually executing media campaigns. Joining me in the bustling Beet.TV studio at the Vdara Hotel, I caught up with Reddit’s Stephen Riad, who was just promoted to EVP of […]

LAS VEGAS – Amazon Ads and Publicis Media unveiled new research on interactive video advertising at CES 2026. The joint thought leadership study focuses on interactive formats in streaming TV. “Yes, we’re really excited to announce and release the Joint Thought Leadership Study with Publicis Media today at CES,” Maggie Zhang, head of global video […]

LAS VEGAS – At CES 2026, Megan Pagliuca, Chief Product Officer at Omnicom Media Group, outlined how the agency is responding to fundamental shifts in how consumers discover information, shop and engage with media. Tightly linking live content, AI-powered search signals, influencer marketing and retail media into a single, measurable system is essential. Speaking with […]