Welcome to Week In Review
From new tools transforming creative work, to campaigns reshaped by automation, we track the biggest shifts at the intersection of AI, media, and marketing. This week, agency proprietary platforms will become redundant by 2029 according to Gartner, a House of Lords committee urges the government to protect creatives from AI, and News Corp strikes a lucrative licensing deal with Meta.
Top Stories of the Week
Agency Platforms Will Become Obsolete by 2029, Gartner Finds
Half of agency AI platforms will be obsolete by 2029, according to new research from Gartner, Marketing Dive reported. The study finds that the rise of open source AI tools from major tech companies like Google and Amazon means proprietary tools built inside marketing agencies won’t be able to compete.
Why it matters: If this report’s findings are true, then agencies will be pressured to shift away from building their own internal AI tools and prioritising third-party platforms. Gartner advises a “composable” strategy for marketers where they own their data, models and governance instead of it sitting in an agency’s proprietary black box.
UK House of Lords: Creative Industries Must be Protected Against AI
This week, the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee published a report on the impact of AI on the nation’s creative industries. The committee warned that GenAI poses a “clear and present danger” to the UK’s creative sector, which is worth £124 billion, and urged the government to do more in protecting the industry, particularly from the unlicensed training of AI models.
Why it matters: The report, titled ‘AI, Copyright and the Creative Industries’ called for a licensing framework and more transparency around when the work of creative’s is being used by AI models. Creatives – musicians, photographers, and filmmakers – have been greatly impacted by AI companies taking their content to train their models without compensation or consent.
News Corp Strikes a Licensing Deal with Meta Worth £50m a Year
The media conglomerate News Corp has struck a major AI licensing deal with tech giant Meta worth $50 million a year. The deal will let Meta train its AI models on content, and retrieve up-to-date real-time information, from News Corp’s major publications such as The Sun, New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Why it matters: For Meta, the deal means its AI models are getting trained on high-quality and reliable content, which limits the possibility of it hallucinating. For News Corp, it signals a step towards having the content from its publications used with consent and payment. The news conglomerate’s own The New York Times recently sued OpenAI and Microsoft over taking its content to power ChatGPT.
Quote of the Week
Brands & Agencies
Woolworths Backtracks on AI Shopping Assistant
Australian supermarket chain Woolworths has been forced to pull back its AI shopping assistant ‘Olive’ following callers saying it started “rambling” that it was a real human. The supermarket said that many responses were created for Olive to sound more conversational, but this backfired.
IAB Report Cites AI Content Ingestion & Traffic as Concern
This week, IAB Europe released its annual State of Readiness – Sustainability in Digital Advertising Report, providing an overview of how the European digital advertising world is facing environmental and social sustainability. A leading concern for advertisers is AI, with over half (56 percent) saying content ingestion and traffic concerns because of AI are a major challenge, overtaking addressability and measurement.
Ads Could Do Well Next to AI Content, Study Finds
A study from Omnicom’s research division OM Media Trials and content classification company Zefr found that many consumers respond positively to ads shown after AI-generated content, highlighting that not all AI content is considered ‘slop’ and is received negatively by consumers.
Santander and Mastercard Complete First End-to-End Agentic Payment
Santander and Mastercard announced they have successfully completed Europe’s first end-to-end payment transaction with an AI agent. This marks the first live end-to-end payment carried out by an AI agent within a regulated banking framework, and signals a significant move towards a world where AI agents complete transactions on behalf of people.
Media
AI Reduces Costs at ITV
ITV has been implementing AI across its production workflows in recent years and reported using AI to aid its long-term cost-saving programme, as reported by VideoWeek. The broadcaster reported ITV Studios costs fell 5 percent year-on-year in 2025, with AI supporting tasks like subtitling, content curation and production planning.
Netflix Buys Ben Affleck’s AI Film Company
Famous Hollywood actor Ben Affleck’s AI film company has been bought by the streaming giant Netflix. Affleck launched the AI film production firm InterPositive in 2022 and Netflix’s full acquisition was announced on Thursday morning.
Korea Releases First Fully AI-Generated Film
Korea will be one of the first countries to release a full-length feature film that’s been created entirely with AI. The 64 minute movie, titled “I’m PoPo”, centres around a police robot. Every aspect of the film’s production – including development and design – was made using GenAI.
Tech
Amazon Rolls Out AI Dynamic Canvas
Amazon is rolling out a new AI-powered “dynamic canvas” in its main seller dashboard Seller Central, giving merchants interactive dashboards and real-time scenario planning. The tool expands Amazon’s Seller Assistant, allowing sellers to visualize performance data, test business scenarios and receive contextual recommendations.
Klarna Integrates BNPL into AI Shopping Assistants
Klarna has introduced a new integration with Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens, enabling AI shopping assistants to offer Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options during automated checkouts. The move allows AI agents to complete purchases securely without accessing sensitive payment data.
Smartly Integrates with Amazon DSP to Expand CTV Advertising
Smartly has launched a new integration with Amazon DSP, allowing advertisers to extend video campaigns to premium connected TV inventory including Prime Video, Fire TV and third-party streaming publishers. The integration enables AI-powered creative optimisation, cross-channel campaign management and real-time performance insights within existing Smartly workflows.
Meta Tests AI Shopping Research Tool
Meta is testing a new shopping research feature in its AI chatbot that provides product recommendations through image carousels, pricing details and merchant links. The tool, currently available to some US users on the Meta AI web interface, generates tailored suggestions based on user context such as location and inferred preferences.
Luma AI Launches Creative AI Agents for Enterprise Workflows
Luma AI has introduced Luma Agents, a new system designed to execute creative work across text, image, video and audio within a unified workflow. Built on the company’s Unified Intelligence architecture, the agents maintain context from initial brief to final delivery and can coordinate multiple AI tools during production.
Criteo Becomes First Ad Tech Platform to Integrate With ChatGPT
Commerce media platform Criteo is the first ad tech company to be integrated into OpenAI’s ChatGPT following the company’s announcement it would be surfacing ads for its Free and Go subscription users. The partnership will let brands buy ad placements through Criteo’s platform to be surfaced in ChatGPT.
Startup of the Week
AI-powered CRM platform Levitate achieved $16 million in funding this week. This marks their seventh funding round, bringing their total funding to $71 million. Through highly personalised messaging, Levitate users can boost their client relationships through AI-powered personalised comms.
Number of the Week
One-in-four marketers now consider large language models (LLMs) the primary audience for most of their content, according to a new report from Clutch and Conductor. As AI-generated answers replace traditional search clicks, brands are prioritising authoritative, research-driven content designed to earn citations and visibility within LLM responses.
