Digiday

Deep learning has become a transformative technology, enabling advertisers to navigate complexity by analyzing large datasets and uncovering intricate patterns. Marketers can now leverage deep learning models to verify users and assess their value in every impression auction. Sponsored by MediaGo.

Starting a family is one of the most exciting moments in life. But for so many people, the reality comes with unexpected hurdles — whether it’s struggling with fertility, figuring out what benefits your job actually offers, or realizing, too late, that your employer doesn’t provide much support at all. Fertility issues are more common than ever, and the cost of treatments like IVF is sky-high. That means fertility benefits, paternity leave, parental support, and family-friendly policies are becoming make-or-break factors for many job seekers. But the rising costs of fertility are squeezing both employees and employers. Maven Clinic, a virtual clinic for women’s and family health, published a report in February 2025 which revealed that 69% of employees either have taken, considered taking or might take a new job at an employer that offered better reproductive and family benefits. The report also showed that more than half of employees lack clarity on costs before starting treatments, 46% received a surprise healthcare bill or paid more than expected, and 28% went into debt to cover related healthcare costs. In this episode of our limited-series podcast WorkLife Presents: Mom’s at Work, we speak with Jenna Glover, chief clinical officer at Headspace, who shares some of the challenges she and her wife had on their own fertility journey, and in navigating company benefits, and what a bad maternity policy looks like. We also speak to Cisco’s chief people officer Kelly Jones on why offering employers tens of thousands of dollars in fertility support is an ROI no-brainer when it comes to talent retention, and Sean Puddle, managing director of North America at talent search firm Robert Walters, on the real financial costs businesses face when they have to replace talent, after mothers exit the workforce. Listen to the full episode here (or wherever you get your podcasts): https://lnkd.in/dzGxgGgx

Agency holding companies are gradually remolding themselves. No longer constellations of disparate talent, some of them now behave as “operating companies”. That’s partially a branding trick, but behind the marquee, units like WPP’s Choreograph, or Omnicom’s Omni provide real connective tissue. And in the pitch room, they’re becoming ever more important. Take Havas, for example. Its Converged “operating system” (or “data spine”, depending on your taste for corporate metaphors) was launched last February as a cookieless media planning and activation solution. A year and change later, it’s become the glue that connects its creative, media and digital domains. Converged is credited in its recent earnings report for bringing in accounts with Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, FedEx and the European Commission. In this piece by Sam Bradley, we speak to Laura Kell, Stephanie Nattu of Creativebrief, Ryan Kangisser of MediaSense, and Lucinda Peniston-Baines of The Observatory International.

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said in an earnings call last week that the company was investing $10 million of resources into BF Island, a social platform BuzzFeed is building that will focus on user-generated content supported by AI technology. The project will begin private beta testing in Q2, and details remain slim. But Peretti said the goal is to convert 5% of BuzzFeed’s audience of 34 million monthly users to join BF Island. If the company achieves this, Peretti thinks the initiative will make money. In this piece by Sara Guaglione, we speak to Sam Thompson of Progress Partners, and Jeff Jarvis.

Last week, Scope3 made a series of product announcements, touching on two of the hot-button issues in ad tech right now: brand safety and ad curation. This is a further sign that competition in ad tech is heating up. First of all, it’s worth recapping the particulars of the launch — Digiday earlier perused the details in an interview with Scope3 CEO Brian O'Kelley — which included an “agentic advertising platform” among a raft of tie-ups. Among the high-profile names involved are Amazon, Google, Meta and The Trade Desk. At the core of all the announcements was “AI-driven media optimization,” including a hub for agentic media products, a curation offering whereby users can use a centralized application to set controls across supply-side platforms, and a Brand Standards tool. In this piece by Ronan Shields, we speak to Ben Hovaness of OMD, and Ciarán O'Kane of FirstPartyCapital.

By the looks of Target’s latest earnings call, its ad business continues to be a bright spot for the retailer. Last year, Target’s ad business raked in $649 million in revenue, up 25% from the $522 million it pulled in the year prior. But for all its growth, Target is the David to the Goliaths of Walmart and Amazon, whose ad businesses brought in $4.4 billion and $50 billion in 2024, respectively. But even if Target is a long shot from hitting the bullseye to become a retail media power player, buyers see potential thanks to the retailer’s new self-service and second-price auction ad offerings. For the first few months of 2025, Target has been caught in a media frenzy due to its moves involving diversity, equity and inclusion policies and subsequent boycotting, on top of missing its revenue expectations last November. Media buyers and commerce executives say they don’t expect to put a dent in the retailer’s audience data, making it unlikely to impact its ad business — at least for now. 📰 Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/eut7JgFr In this piece by Kimeko McCoy, we speak to Hillary Kupferberg of Exverus Media, Ross Walker of Acadia, Amy Vollet of Flywheel, Elizabeth Marsten of Tinuiti, David Song.

Curation has its fair share of skeptics but Index Exchange CEO Andrew Casale isn’t one of them. He sees it as the biggest shake-up in programmatic advertising since header bidding — maybe even bigger. In his view, curation’s impact could rival that of open RTB, not just header bidding. His reasoning: while header bidding was a technical shift, curation is fundamentally about economics.

The pendulum is starting to swing back to brand and a rethink of the traditional CMO-based marketing model. Marketing organizations within major brands are recognizing the damage they can do to their brands if they focus too much on performance marketing and too little on brand marketing. Marketers, agency execs and consultants said there’s a noticeable shift when talking to brand marketers — not only CMOs but those with the various titles that have started to replace the CMO title — where it’s clear that care for brand as well as performance is more apparent.

Chatter about AI agents is suddenly everywhere — from Silicon Valley to the ski slopes of Davos – but just how will they impact Madison Avenue? In January, OpenAI previewed its new “Operator” AI agent tool to help users with web-based tasks like booking travel, making restaurant reservations and buying groceries. Early brand partners across e-commerce and travel include eBay, Etsy, Uber, Instacart, Reuters, The Associated Press, Priceline, Target and StubHub. Despite so much use of the A-word, it’s still early for AI agent adoption, meaning marketers should ask what agents are for, how they’re made, what they do, what they might do — and what they can’t do — including potential reputational risks. As tech titans build autonomous bots to tackle the mundane, marketing teams must weigh up how to integrate agents into their existing processes in order to better convert ‘prospects’ to paying customers.