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, ISBA GenAI report sheds light on AI measurement, Runway launches dev tool for media orchestration layer, and retailers hold commerce power over ChatGPT.
Top Stories of the Week
ISBA’s Gen AI Survey: Effectiveness Beats Efficiency
A new survey from ISBA, based on 200 responses from advertisers, found that 65 percent of individuals are using Gen AI regularly, with 28 percent saying it has meaningfully impacted their day-to-day work. Among advertisers prioritising effectiveness as their primary objective for AI adoption, that figure rises to 55 percent — suggesting the greatest returns are being seen by organisations focused on improving marketing outcomes rather than operational efficiency.
Why it matters:
The ISBA findings suggests the organisations pulling ahead are those that have set effectiveness as the primary goal, not the ones treating AI as a cost-reduction mechanism. For CMOs still framing their AI investment in terms of headcount and time saved, this is a prompt to reframe the objective entirely.
Runway Launches AI Model Router, Betting on Infrastructure
Runway launched Runway Media Router through its developer platform Runway Dev, a tool that automatically selects the best image, video or audio generation model for a request based on whether a developer prioritises quality, speed or cost – what the company claims is the first model router built specifically for generative media, rather than large language models. Customers including Adobe, Cloudflare, ElevenLabs, Expedia, Shutterstock and Quora can build media generation directly into their own products using Runway’s API through Runway Dev.
Why it matters:
Runway’s strategy reflects how fragmented and competitive the current generative media landscape has become – its own video models no longer lead the rankings, with models from Google, ByteDance and Alibaba now occupying the top positions. Rather than racing to release another frontier model, Runway is betting that the orchestration layer – the intelligence that sits above the models and selects the best one for each task – is where durable value gets built.
Retailers Hold the AI Commerce Advantage Over ChatGPT
New Emarketer data found that agentic commerce adoption is proceeding slower than expected, with shoppers more comfortable using AI for research and discovery than for completing purchases, with AI platform-driven sales forecast to reach $19.74 billion this year — roughly 4 percent below the December 2025 projection.
Why it matters:
Retailers have spent years building the infrastructure — personalisation, product data, trust, loyalty — that makes purchasing feel safe. ChatGPT has none of that yet, and the data suggests consumers know it. The lesson for brands isn’t that agentic commerce won’t arrive, but that the retail platforms investing in AI shopping infrastructure now are building a moat that will be very difficult to close once purchasing habits solidify.
Quote of the Week
Brands & Agencies
Amazon Requires Sellers to Label AI-Generated People After New York Law
Amazon is requiring third-party sellers to label any product images or videos containing AI-generated people after New York passed a law mandating greater transparency around synthetic performers in ads, with the company informing sellers this week of the policy change, according to a copy of the announcement viewed by CNBC.
Asahi Super Dry Launches AI-Powered Piccadilly Lights Takeover
Asahi Super Dry has unveiled “The Infinite Can,” a week-long takeover of London’s Piccadilly Lights created by Havas London and Prose on Pixels, Havas’ AI-powered global content-at-scale network — a campaign combining original artwork by Japanese-born artist Hisham Akira Bharoocha with GenAI to create an outdoor ad that is never the same twice, displaying over 400 unique designs over the course of the week.
Havas Reports H1 2026 Results, Positioning Itself as AI-First Network
Havas reported Q2 2026 net revenue of €724 million, a 3.8 percent year-on-year increase, with North America delivering 6.4 percent organic net revenue growth in Q2 and 6.9 percent for the first half — its strongest regional performance. Alongside the results, Adweek reported that Havas has moved to position itself explicitly as an AI-first network, with CEO Yannick Bolloré using the results to underscore the rollout of its Converged.AI operating system, its AVA LLM portal and its Vermeer.ai content creation platform as the foundations of its competitive model going forward.
Stanley Uses AI Behind the Scenes, But Won’t Let It Touch Ad Creative
Digiday reported that lifestyle brand Stanley has implemented AI tools extensively across its internal operations – product development, supply chain, customer service – but has drawn a firm line at using AI in its advertising creative, with executives citing the brand’s emotional authenticity as too important to risk on generated content.
Media
Nine Entertainment Cuts 30 Jobs, Blaming “Extreme” AI Disruption
Australia’s largest media company Nine Entertainment confirmed it is cutting around 30 roles across its publishing division, including at the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, with managing director of publishing Tory Maguire telling staff the company is in “an extreme state of disruption because of AI.” The cuts come weeks after Nine signed an Australian-first content licensing deal with Microsoft for Copilot.
Virgin Media Adds Free Channels and AI to Prevent TV Outages
Virgin Media has expanded its TV offering with additional free-to-air channels and launched AI-powered diagnostics designed to predict and prevent service outages before they affect customers, part of a broader push to retain subscribers as competition from streaming services intensifies.
Lebanon’s Annahar Launches AI News Correspondent “Nahar”
Lebanon’s Annahar Media Group has launched Nahar, its first AI-powered news correspondent, developed in partnership with Points Information Technology. The system can read thousands of sources in seconds, monitor global developments, compare information, translate content, summarise reports and travel between news sources to collect storie as a backend productivity tool.
Tech
ChatGPT Launches Small Business Programme
OpenAI has launched a dedicated small business programme for ChatGPT, giving smaller organisations access to tools and resources previously available mainly to enterprise clients — a move designed to broaden the commercial base of ChatGPT’s paid tier as the platform accelerates its push toward advertising revenue.
Google’s Ads Business Gets a Boost From World Cup and Gemini
Google reported that its advertising business benefited from a combination of FIFA World Cup spend and continued improvements to Gemini-powered ad products, with Marketing Dive and the WSJ both reporting that the strong quarter helped address investor concerns around AI search cannibalising ad revenue. The results provided evidence that Google’s AI integration is generating incremental advertising value rather than simply displacing existing formats.
VidMob Launches 360 Creative Intelligence Platform
VidMob has launched VidMob360, a creative intelligence platform designed to bring AI-powered creative analysis and optimisation into the full advertising workflow, connecting creative performance data to media buying decisions in a single system.
Dentsu Partners With Adthena on ChatGPT Ads Intelligence
Dentsu has partnered with search intelligence company Adthena to bring competitive intelligence for ChatGPT Ads into its planning and buying capabilities – giving its clients visibility into how brands are appearing and competing in the rapidly expanding ChatGPT advertising environment.
Startup of the Week
Mumbai-based Mobavenue launched the Mobavenue Neural Engine this week, an AI intelligence layer built across its advertising technology platforms, marking the company’s shift from executing campaigns to helping marketers make decisions. Founded in 2017, Mobavenue stayed bootstrapped until listing publicly in 2025, and now serves more than 150 brands across over 10 markets has over 200 employees.
Number of the Week
Overall, more than one in three consumers who use AI in their personal lives had consulted it about purchases in the past six months, with the findings drawn from Dentsu Digital’s new “with AI Lab” internal research unit tracking consumer behaviour in the AI era. Travel has emerged as one of the highest-consideration purchase categories there is.
