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, Walmart, Yahoo and Magnite build AI ad tech, Debenhams launches checkout in Meta, and Klarna comes to ChatGPT.
Top Stories of the Week
Walmart, Yahoo and Magnite Push Further Into AI-Powered Ad Tech
Ad Age reported that Walmart, Yahoo and Magnite each unveiled new AI-driven advertising capabilities aimed at automating how media is packaged, bought and optimised. Walmart is expanding AI tools within its retail media business to help advertisers plan and activate campaigns more efficiently. Yahoo is incorporating AI agents and automation into its DSP and advertising platform to streamline campaign management and decision-making. Meanwhile, Magnite is enhancing its sell-side technology with AI-powered tools designed to improve inventory packaging, yield optimisation and programmatic transactions across connected TV and digital media.
Why it matters:
AI is not just changing creative or search. It is also reshaping the infrastructure of media buying itself. Retailers, publishers and ad tech platforms are all trying to own more of the decisioning layer — where data, inventory and automation meet. That makes the next competitive battleground less about who has the most inventory, and more about who can make that inventory easiest for AI systems to understand, buy and optimise.
Debenhams Group Launches AI-Driven Checkout on Meta
Debenhams Group has become the first UK retailer to enable AI-driven in-app checkout on Meta for US shoppers, allowing customers of Karen Millen, boohoo, boohooMAN and PrettyLittleThing to complete purchases directly inside Facebook and Instagram. The feature, enabled through PayPal’s Agentic Commerce Services, brings the checkout closer to social discovery.
Why it matters:
AI commerce is moving from recommendation to transaction. By enabling purchases directly inside social platforms, Debenhams is helping remove the friction between product discovery and checkout, shortening the path from intent to conversion. More importantly, it signals a shift toward agent-driven commerce, where AI doesn’t just influence buying decisions but can complete them.
Klarna Brings Real-Time Shopping Search Into ChatGPT
Klarna has officially launched its Shopping Search app inside ChatGPT, allowing users to search for products conversationally and see visual results with live pricing, availability and merchant offers. The experience is powered by Klarna’s Product Search MCP server, connecting ChatGPT to more than 100 million products and 400 million merchant listings across 13 markets.
Why it matters:
This is another step toward commerce moving inside AI interfaces rather than beginning on search engines, marketplaces or retailer websites. Klarna is positioning itself not just as a payments provider, but as a discovery layer for agentic shopping. For merchants, the prize is access to high-intent shoppers at the moment of decision; for platforms, it is another sign that product search is becoming conversational, visual and transaction-adjacent.
Quote of the Week
Brands & Agencies
Croud Says Brands Are Already Asking for Agentic AI ROI
Croud’s chief business officer Kris Tait told The Current that brands are quickly moving past experimentation and asking what agentic AI can actually deliver commercially. The implication is that the market is compressing the usual hype cycle: clients are curious, but they are also demanding proof that agentic systems can improve performance, productivity or growth.
Unilever’s D-Commerce Model Shows AI Moving Into the Operating Core
Unilever says its B2C digital commerce sales grew double digits in Q1 2026, with digital platforms already accounting for 50 percent of turnover in Wellbeing and 17 percent in Beauty and Personal Care. The company is using AI and digital technology across personalisation, demand forecasting, inventory optimisation, content production and fulfilment.
Global Firms Bring More Marketing Work In-House Through India Hubs
Reuters reports that global companies are using AI-enabled productivity gains to bring more work in-house at Indian capability centres, reducing reliance on outsourcing partners. The shift includes higher-value functions such as technology, analytics, R&D and marketing operations.
Media
PR Firms Warn of “AI Washing”
The Guardian reported that PR executives are increasingly being asked to reframe ordinary automation or low-tech services as AI, as companies try to attach themselves to the AI’s momentum. The result is a growing credibility problem, with journalists and communications teams becoming more sceptical of “AI-powered” claims.
Publishers Cut Six-Figure Deals Through Snowflake’s AI Licensing Platform
Digiday reports that publishers are starting to sign meaningful AI licensing deals through Snowflake’s Cortex Knowledge Extensions, which allow enterprises to query paywalled or proprietary publisher content inside the cloud-based data platform’s AI environment without exposing raw feeds or enabling model training. The Washington Post, Associated Press, People Inc. and USA Today Network are among the publishers involved.
IFJ Adopts Global AI Framework for Media
The International Federation of Journalists has adopted a Global Framework Agreement on AI in the media, designed to protect authors’ rights, employment, editorial standards and journalism’s role as a democratic public good. The agreement positions AI not just as a technology issue, but as a labour, ethics and rights issue for the media industry.
Publishers Brace for Google’s AI Mode
Press Gazette warned that Google’s AI Mode is blurring the line between search and conversational answer engines, raising fresh concerns for publishers already dealing with falling referral traffic. Google is moving toward a more closed search experience that answers more questions on-platform, while still needing to preserve its advertising business.
Tech
Adform and Adsquare Launch Agentic Real-Time Framework Integration
Adform and Adsquare have launched what they describe as an industry-first integration of the Agentic Real-Time Framework, designed to let external agent services operate inside programmatic advertising infrastructure in a privacy-secure way. The move points to ad tech preparing for agents to participate directly in bidstream decisioning.
Deloitte and Optimizely Build AI Blueprint for Marketing Leaders
Deloitte Digital and Optimizely have announced a strategic collaboration to help brands implement AI-led personalisation, content strategy and marketing operating model redesign. Rather than focusing on another standalone tool, the partnership is pitched around closing the gap between AI investment and measurable marketing impact.
Amadeus Launches Travel Advertising Platform
Amadeus has introduced a travel advertising platform designed to help advertisers reach travellers earlier in the journey, using travel intent and demand signals from across its ecosystem. The move reflects a broader push to turn travel infrastructure into a media and commerce opportunity.
Startup of the Week
Clouted has raised $7 million to automate social video marketing, using AI to help brands and creators produce, manage and optimise short-form video campaigns. The company sits at the intersection of two fast-growing pressures: the need for more social content, and the need to make that content measurable, repeatable and less dependent on manual production cycles.
Number of the Week
The split reflects the fact that performance marketers are ready to automate the measurable parts of the funnel, while brand teams remain cautious about handing over judgement, taste and long-term positioning to machines.
