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, Snapchat introduces conversational AI ads, X revamps ad platform, and Hershey upgrades MMM.
Top Stories of the Week
Snapchat Introduces Conversational AI Ads
Snapchat is rolling out ‘AI Sponsored Snaps’, a new ad format in the app’s Chat tab that will allow users to interact directly with brands’ AI agents. Users can ask questions and get personalised recommendations from agents without leaving the conversation.
Why it matters: The new placements give brands access to Snapchat’s nearly one billion monthly active users, enabling them to drive “full funnel outcomes” on the social media app.
X Announces Ad Platform Overhaul
Elon Musk’s X is revamping its ad platform to enable more precise, relevant and dynamic ad delivery, the social media firm announced on Thursday. The business said the platform will feature “modern retrieval and ranking systems powered by state-of-the-art AI.”
Why it matters: X’s ads business has taken a beating since Musk’s takeover in 2022, and the company is calling this upgrade “the most ambitious advertising platform overhaul in the company’s 20-year history.”
Hershey Upgrades MMM with Agentic AI
Confectionary giant Hershey is using agentic AI to modernise its measurement capabilities, according to Adweek, enlisting analytics platforms Mutinex and Tracer to automate its marketing mix modelling (MMM) tools.
Why it matters: The move is designed to speed up the processing and reporting of data derived from MMM. Where the data previously took months to come through, Hershey said the update brings reporting closer to real-time.
Quote of the Week
Brands & Agencies
Stagwell Sees “Major Pivot” to Selling AI Services
Agency group Stagwell is undergoing “a major pivot to the sales of AI application services and software”, CEO Mark Penn said in the company’s earnings call on Thursday. Penn cited the company’s AI tool Search+, as well as partnerships with The Trade Desk, AppLovin and Adobe, as driving the shift in its business model.
ASOS Says AI is Transforming Business
Fashion retailer ASOS is applying AI and cloud services “throughout its whole value chain” in partnership with Microsoft, the companies said on Thursday, including building conversational shopping tool AI Stylist. “We partner with Microsoft on fine-tuning the large language models specifically for fashion,” said ASOS CTO Przemek Czarnecki.
Creo Uses Agentic AI to Automate Brand Compliance
Creo, an influencer marketing agency owned by Omnicom, has launched a new agentic AI tool designed to automatically refine creator content to meet brand standards, in efforts to automate content vetting and compliance processes.
Media
“Strict Controls” Limit Uptake of AI in UK Film and TV Sector, Says ScreenSkills Report
Some UK film and TV industry groups are imposing “strict internal controls” around AI, according to a report from training body ScreenSkills, leading to limited use of the tech in the UK industry. The report cited concerns over copyright and accuracy as restricting the uptake of AI.
News UK Launches Synthetic Audiences Product
Publishing group News UK has launched a Synthetic Audiences Product called Times ExplorAItion, to help brands and agencies drive ad effectiveness by testing strategies, creative and hypotheses against a synthetic audience before committing real marketing spend.
Evangeline Lilly Hits Out at Disney for Replacing Marvel Staff with AI
Evangeline Lilly, the actor best-known for her roles in Lost and Ant-Man, has criticised Disney for replacing Marvel Studios staffers with AI, including Marvel’s Director of Visual Development, Andy Park. “The people who invented these characters, who designed them in the first place, are now being replaced by AI,” Lilly said in an Instagram video on Wednesday.
Tech
Microsoft and OpenAI Loosen Landmark Partnership
Microsoft and OpenAI have loosened the terms of their partnership that started in 2019, ending Microsoft’s exclusivity in hosting the startup’s models, and freeing up OpenAI to sell its products more widely. The news signals growing distance in the landmark partnership, and clears a path for OpenAI’s upcoming IPO.
LiveRamp Integrates NVIDIA AI Infrastructure
LiveRamp, a data collaboration company, has introduced native support for NVIDIA AI infrastructure, upgrading its clean room architecture to handle highly compute-intensive AI workloads. The ad tech firm said the integration enables AI partners and brands to train and deploy sophisticated models using LiveRamp clean rooms or via the LiveRamp Marketplace at up to 15x speed.
Magnite Introduces AI Mediation Features and Buyer Agent
Magnite, a supply-side platform (SSP), is expanding its AI capabilities within its SpringServe video platform, introducing anomaly detection, demand path optimisation and dynamic pricing tools. Magnite is also adding a new buyer agent to help streamline activation, optimisation and performance management.
Silverside Announces UK Launch
Silverside, the AI creative studio behind Coca-Cola’s fully AI-generated ‘Holidays Are Coming’ ad, announced its UK launch last week, marking the US company’s expansion into Europe. Silverside’s AI-native model is designed to embed the technology into brand operations for marketing and creative teams.
Startup of the Week
Actively AI is a New York-based startup building AI sales agents to automatically track deals and customer data, making moves in a space dominated by US-based CRM Salesforce. According to Forbes, the company creates a custom AI agent for every account, instead of having human reps manually track each one.
Number of the Week
Under the terms of the revised deal between Microsoft and OpenAI, the software giant will keep its $135 billion stake in the startup, while taking 20 percent of what OpenAI earns from selling its products, according to the FT.
