Month: February 2025

This is a story about how generative AI helped a media agency CEO do the job of several people over the course of a few days.

It’s the experience that Dave Gaines, the CEO of Media By Mother, had when he was asked to deliver an RFI, which led to an RFP, for a global multinational client — just as the December holiday break was starting. Gaines declined to name the client, but it was a sizable pitch that would ordinarily take a team of people at least a few days if not weeks to assemble.

“AI in particular is forcing some changes that are necessary for all of us,” Gaines told Digiday. “AI is going to fundamentally reshape what it costs us to ask a question. Because sometimes, a client asks a question and it triggers six or seven people having to sit down and work out what the answer is. And that’s not necessary.”

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It looks like Snapchat’s hard efforts to win over small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are finally starting to pay off.

The platform has been really focused on improving its direct response business, which includes expanding data partnerships, more ad products, simpler buying and automation tools, such as its recently announced AI-powered Smart budget optimization feature — effectively making Snap’s ad platform more accessible to the SMB category of advertisers.

“You can see Snap is [now] applying the playbook that has worked so well for the bigger ad platforms [Meta and Google],” said Jamie MacEwan, senior analyst at Enders Analysis. “It is still far behind [the bigger platforms] on revenues and [average revenue per user], so there is room for decent growth in SMB advertiser numbers and revenues if it gets the execution right.”

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This week’s Future of TV Briefing features an interview with Tubi CMO Nicole Parlapiano about the Fox-owned free, ad-supported streamer’s Super Bowl broadcast.

• Tubi’s big game
• YouTube’s TV inflection point, Netflix’s video podcast plans and more

Tubi’s big game

My sister hadn’t heard of Tubi before Sunday. But if it weren’t for the Fox-owned free, ad-supported streaming service, neither she nor I would have been able to tune into this year’s Super Bowl. And we weren’t the only ones to stream Sunday’s big game.

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Uncertainty over the evolution of the ad tech sector has defined its public conversations in the 2020s, but amid talk of strategic pivots some of the sector’s leading names are turning to startups.

Sources tell Digiday that ad tech verification company DoubleVerify has invested $1 million in the Europe-based venture capital firm FirstParty Capital, which specializes in early-stage ad tech.

FirstParty Capital bills itself as an aid to the development of companies that want to build infrastructure, and further introduce automation to the ad tech and mar-tech sectors, as well as capitalize on the opportunities posed by emerging channels, such as CTV.

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Doritos revived its “Crash the Super Bowl” contest to mark its 25th year advertising during the Big Game. The move wasn’t intended to simply put together a user-generated Super Bowl spot, as it has been in years past. Instead, Doritos is looking to further its connection to the creator economy.

This year, about 2,200 spots were submitted, giving Doritos the opportunity to foster connections with new creators who entered the contest. The PepsiCo-owned brand, which originally ran the contest from 2006 to 2016, will potentially roll out some of the work from the creators who weren’t featured during the Super Bowl at other points during the year.

It’s part of Doritos’ larger plan to increase its investments in creators, with James Wade, the brand’s senior director of marketing, characterizing the move as a “pretty dramatic jump this year.”

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Fay Fredricks has been named co-anchor of the 5, 6 and 10 p.m. news at KNXV in Phoenix, Arizona. “I first moved to Arizona after college and have called this amazing place home for most of my adult life,” Fredricks said in a statement. “It’s the place where my husband and I chose to raise…

With a total viewership number of 127.7 million in the United States alone, it is easy to see where all the cable viewers went on Super Bowl Sunday. Viewership plummeted while the Big Game unfolded in New Orleans, but the status quo remained the same. Fox News once again had the most total viewers of…

The onset of the Super Bowl weekend brought a decreased interest in news as all attention turned to the Big Game in New Orleans. Fox News led the way as per normal, while CNN won its battle with MSNBC for second place in the Adults 25-54 demo. As a bonus, it also finished in the…

The cease-work order at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau won’t just affect lawsuits and enforcement actions. It will stall regulation that could govern tech companies like Apple and Google.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed the complaint on behalf of US federal workers, arguing that DOGE’s data access is illegal and should be cut off.