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, YouTube reveals AI ad products, TikTok Ads launches an MCP server, and Thomson Reuters’ CEO shares AI licensing agreement struggles.
Top Stories of the Week
YouTube Pitches AI-Powered Full-Funnel Advertising at Brandcast
YouTube used its annual Brandcast Upfront at Lincoln Center in New York to announce new GenAI video creation tools. Powered by Google’s Gemini, Veo and Nano Banana models, the tools are designed to take advertisers from brief to finished ad in a single workflow. Custom Sponsorships, an AI-led product, will dynamically surface videos around a brand’s desired moment, while a new Masthead enhancement allows advertisers to pair hero creative with a custom-curated shelf of content.
Why it matters:
The Brandcast announcements reflect a broader shift in how platforms are using AI to collapse the traditional advertising funnel. Rather than selling reach and leaving conversion to the brand, YouTube is positioning AI as the mechanism that handles creative production, contextual placement and purchase in one system.
TikTok Ads Launches MCP Server
TikTok is opening its advertising platform to the next generation of AI-native workflows through a new TikTok Ads Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. Announced at TikTok World, the company’s annual advertiser showcase, the move will allow third-party AI agents to connect directly to TikTok for Business accounts to help plan, launch and optimise campaigns using natural language prompts and automated workflows.
Why it matters:
The announcement is another sign that the AI agent era is moving from experimentation into enterprise infrastructure. For marketers, MCP integrations could significantly reduce the operational friction of campaign management, allowing teams to automate reporting, budget pacing and optimisation tasks through conversational interfaces.
Thomson Reuters CEO Shares Approach to AI Licensing Deals
Thomson Reuters president and CEO Steve Hasker laid out the company’s deliberate approach to AI licensing: deals are limited to its text archive only, excluding live news feeds, images, video and audio; contracts are priced as high as possible; and terms are kept short to force renegotiation as the market evolves. Speaking to the Truth Tellers Summit in London, Hasker said Thomson Reuters has deliberately limited its AI licensing deals to archival content rather than live news feeds, images, video or audio. The company has also prioritised short-term agreements while the economics and legal frameworks around AI training remain unsettled.
Why it matters:
The business model for AI content licensing remains unresolved. While many publishers are pursuing partnerships with AI firms, there is still no consensus around a long-term value exchange. The outcome of these negotiations could shape the future economics of journalism more broadly.
Quote of the Week
Brands & Agencies
AI Changing Consumer Decisioning, Says EY Report
A new The EY State of Consumer Products report found that AI is accelerating consumer decision-making and reshaping how brands enter consideration sets, with discovery increasingly happening through AI-assisted recommendations rather than traditional search and retail browsing. The report warns that brands risk invisibility if they fail to optimise for AI-mediated commerce experiences.
L’Oréal Invests in AI Commerce in Asia and the Middle East
L’Oréal is expanding its Beauty Tech ambitions through new investments and partnerships with startups across South Asia Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa, including companies such as Halo AI, Heatseeker, Sravathi AI and Wubble AI. The programme is designed to help L’Oréal identify emerging technologies and scale new digital commerce models across its regional markets.
Kantar Report Suggests Brands Must Rethink Discovery
Kantar’s latest Decision Ready report argues that brands will increasingly compete inside AI-enabled commerce environments where recommendation systems, shopping agents and conversational interfaces shape purchase decisions. The research suggests brands must rethink discoverability and brand salience for AI-first shopping experiences.
Annalect Partners with Snowflake Across MENA
Annalect, Omnicom Media’s data and analytics division, has announced a new initiative across the Middle East and North Africa, backed by an integration with Snowflake, an AI data cloud company. Annalect says the initiative is aimed at helping brands unify fragmented customer and media data into a single AI-enabled environment.
Media
Cannes Films Could Require AI Labelling
Cannes Film Festival leadership has warned that films using AI-generated content may soon require formal disclosure labels, reflecting growing concern around transparency and authorship standards in the entertainment industry.
Demi Moore Supports Use of AI in Film
Actress Demi Moore told audiences at Cannes that the film industry “must not resist” AI, arguing the technology should be embraced as part of the future creative toolkit rather than treated solely as a threat to artistic work.
AI Press Releases Negatively Impacting Journalism
Journalists have criticised the growing use of AI-written press releases, according to new reporting from PRWeek, with many arguing that AI-generated pitches are increasing low-quality outreach and making media relations less effective rather than more efficient.
Tech
Amazon Expands Alexa Features
Amazon is continuing to expand Alexa’s role as an AI shopping assistant. The updates include more contextual product comparisons, personalised shopping suggestions based on user preferences and purchase history, real-time deal recommendations, and the ability for Alexa to proactively notify users about discounts or product availability.
Concord Launches ‘Skills’ Memory Layer
AI media buying platform Concord launched “Skills”, a new memory layer for its AI advertising agent designed to retain institutional knowledge and campaign learnings over time.
Shoplazza Unveils Ecommerce Agent
Ecommerce platform Shoplazza unveiled Athena, an AI-native operations assistant designed to automate ecommerce workflows. Athena is an AI-native “operations agent” embedded directly into Shoplazza’s ecommerce admin system. Instead of navigating through multiple backend dashboards, merchants can use natural-language prompts to complete operational tasks.
Adthena Launches ChatGPT Ads Intelligence Platform
Search marketing intelligence company Adthena has launched what it claims is the first intelligence platform designed specifically for ChatGPT Ads, giving advertisers and agencies competitive visibility into the rapidly emerging AI search advertising market.
Startup of the Week
Nectar Social is a Seattle-based AI startup focused on helping brands turn social media engagement into measurable ecommerce revenue. Founded by sisters Misbah and Farah Uraizee – former Meta employees – the company positions itself as an “agentic social commerce platform” that combines AI-powered social listening, community management, customer engagement, and sales attribution into a single system.
Number of the Week
Despite rapidly increasing investment, Gartner found that only 30 percent of marketing organisations believe they are operationally ready to scale AI effectively — highlighting the growing gap between AI ambition and enterprise readiness.
