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, Reddit releases AI media buying tools, Walmart tests ads in its AI shopping assistant Sparky, and WPP launches Agent Hub.
Top Stories of the Week
Reddit Releases AI Media Buying Tool
The community-driven social media platform Reddit has rolled out a new AI-driven advertising tool called Max Campaigns, which aims to simplify campaign management and give marketers stronger insights into their audience.
Why it matters: Media buying has been one of the most automated functions in the advertising supply chain. Reddit’s new tool, which is in beta, plans to reduce the manual optimisation buyers typically do. Reddit emphasises that Max Campaigns aims to be an open-box solution, offering marketers insights into their audience through a feature called “Top Audience Personas”.
Walmart Tests Ads in Sparky
Walmart is testing ads inside Sparky, its AI shopping assistant, placing sponsored prompts within product searches as it expands agent-led advertising and pushes Walmart Connect further into AI-powered commerce.
Why it matters: Walmart’s move signals a shift toward advertising inside AI-driven shopping moments. Sponsored prompts in Sparky place brands directly in high-intent, conversational decision paths. This accelerates retail media’s evolution from search and display into agent-led commerce – where marketers must optimise for AI recommendations, not just traditional ad placements.
WPP Launches Agent Hub
WPP announced it is launching Agent Hub, an AI agent library that will give employees and clients access to ready-made agents. The Hub will be used by WPP staff and clients and include initial Brand Analytics, Behavioural Science, Analogies, and Creative Brain ‘Super Agents’.
Why it matters: WPP said the ready-made agents that exist in the Agent Hub were developed from thousands of no code agents created by WPP employees. This is one of the first examples of an agency offering a suite of pre-made AI agents to its clients and workforce.
Quote of the Week
Brands & Agencies
Omnicom Introduces Updates to Omni
Marketing giant Omnicom introduced ‘next gen’ updates to its own AI operating system, Omni, following its acquisition of Interpublic Group (IPG). In a statement, Omnicom said the platform aims to reduce complexity that slows decision-making and give more time to staff through a suite of AI tools.
IBM and Wimbledon Renew AI-Powered App Features
IBM and the All England Lawn Tennis Club renewed their partnership after AI-powered features across Wimbledon’s app and website drove a 16% year-on-year increase in digital engagement, with over 20 million fans following the tournament and app engagement up 19%.
Porsche Is ‘Anti-AI’ in Latest Ad
Porsche launched its ‘Encrypted Love Letter’ animated ad, stressing no AI was used, showcasing hand-crafted animation and signaling a growing anti-AI trend promoting authenticity in advertising amid modern marketing debates.
Brands Angry at Amazon’s ‘Buy for Me’ Feature
Amazon is testing an AI “Buy for Me” feature that purchases from external webshops for products available on Amazon’s website. This has angered brands appearing in the tool, many of which have deliberately chosen to not surface in the feature.
Dentsu Introduces Dentsu.Connect
Dentsu has launched dentsu.Connect in India, introducing a unified operating system aimed at simplifying client delivery and improving collaboration by integrating data, creativity, media, and AI across teams and workflows.
Media
Disney to Launch AI Ad Planning and CTV Ads Tools
Disney will launch AI-powered ad planning and video generation tools to let advertisers develop and deploy CTV advertising much faster. The AI tools were shared during a presentation at CES in Las Vegas, alongside the news of a vertical video experience on the streaming platform.
FIFA Partners with Lenovo for World Cup
FIFA this week detailed new AI tools developed with Lenovo that will power both team performance analysis and broadcast presentation at the 2026 World Cup, including a generative AI assistant for match insights and AI-stabilised referee POV footage, opening new formats for sponsorship and fan engagement across media platforms.
Research Warns Against Falling Publisher Traffic
A new study from Lisbon-based research company OberCom warns GenAI news summaries are reducing traffic to Portuguese newspapers. The research outlined the difference between ‘voluntary’ AI news summaries, like ChatGPT, where a user must navigate to the platform to find news, and ‘less voluntary’ examples, like Google’s AI Overviews, where users don’t have control over seeing this.
Roku CEO Says AI Film Here in 3 Years
Roku CEO Anthony Wood said at CES that GenAI will dramatically lower content production costs, predicting the first fully AI-generated hit movie will emerge within the next three years.
Gaming Company Refuses to Use AI
Game publisher Hooded Horse said it’s refusing to work with developers using GenAI, and that a part of its contracts prohibit the use of the tool. Hooded Horse is known for titles such as Manor Lords, Against the Storm, Old World, Terra Invicta and 9 Kings, among others.
Reddit More Popular than TikTok in the UK
Reddit has overtaken TikTok as the UK’s fourth-largest social platform, with Ofcom data linking its rapid growth to AI-driven search changes that are pushing users toward human-led discussion forums over AI content.
NBCUniversal Introduces Media Buying Agents
NBCUniversal is testing agentic AI to automate the buying and optimisation of premium video and live sports inventory across linear TV and streaming, using AI agents to execute cross-platform media buys in seconds rather than through manual planning.
Tech
Amazon Expands Alexa+ to the Web
Amazon has expanded Alexa+ to the web, giving early access users a ChatGPT-like interface that can answer questions and take actions, including building shopping lists and managing purchases, as Amazon pushes further into agentic commerce.
ChatGPT Could Buy Pinterest
Rumours this week suggested OpenAI could be exploring a Pinterest acquisition to secure more human-generated shopping and discovery data, as it looks to strengthen ChatGPT’s commerce and advertising capabilities against rivals with proprietary platforms.
OpenAI Advances Toward AudioAI
OpenAI is reportedly going all in on building an audio-first AI device. Reports suggest the AI giant consolidated its engineering, research, and product teams in recent months, hinting at the release of a voice-first device soon.
PubMatic Launches AgenticOS
PubMatic this week unveiled AgenticOS, an AI-driven operating system designed to automate programmatic advertising through agent-led workflows, signalling a shift toward autonomous media buying across the open internet.
Yahoo DSP Introduces Agentic AI Capabilities
At CES this week, Yahoo DSP introduced new agentic AI capabilities that automate campaign setup, troubleshooting and audience discovery inside its buying platform, allowing advertisers to connect their own AI models or use Yahoo’s agents to manage media buying with greater speed and control.
Stagwell Unveils Operating System
Stagwell this week unveiled The Machine, an agentic AI operating system designed to sit inside existing marketing tools and connect fragmented workflows, using AI agents to link strategy, creative and media execution into a continuously learning system.
Start-Up of the Week
Nitro Commerce is an AI-powered growth platform for e-commerce and Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands, helping consumer brands reduce their heavy reliance on traditional ad platforms like Meta and Google. Fresh off a $5M funding round, they are expanding their AI agent capabilities to autonomously manage customer acquisition, targeting $10M annual recurring revenue (ARR) in six months.
Number of the Week
That’s the reported value of Meta’s acquisition of the AI agent startup Manus this week. The number highlights the massive capital expenditure (Meta has forecasted up to $72B in expenditure for AI infrastructure) that tech giants are investing to bring powerful, autonomous AI agents into the mainstream of business and consumer products.
