CDP Institute

Google has released Gemini 2.0, a large language model, it says, “for the agentic era.” It features native image and audio as well as text output. It’s also supporting a series of projects to develop AI agents to assist with complex tasks, including agents for developers.

New updates to Microsoft Advertising come under three main headings: Household attribution will track engagement across devices in the same household. End-user consent management tools will bring the platform into compliance with the European Economic Area, U.K. and Switzerland. Store traffic measurement, meanwhile, is on pause.

A new study from the Association of National Advertisers has uncovered a notable shift in programmatic spending from public marketplaces (where inventory is open to all) to private marketplaces (high quality placements for select advertisers). It’s a straight reversal from 59% public in 2023 to 59% private in 2024. Ad spend efficiency has also increased with 43.9% of ads reaching consumers, a 7.9% improvement.

Customer engagement platform MessageGears will partner with content localization and translation platform Smartling to streamline email translation and localization for 450+ languages.  The workflow is automated but actual translations are still done by (machine-assisted) humans.

Utiq lets consumers manage consent on a website-by-website basis, drawing on internet connections provided by major European telcos.  This lets it provide a cookie-free, privacy-safe customer ID that covers many more people than IDs based on email address.  They just partnered with data provider All Eyes On Screens to improve addressability and provide real-time audience insights for TV advertisers in Germany.

A California judge has issued an injunction preventing WordPress and its co-founder Matt Mullenweg from blocking WP Engine’s access to WordPress resources and interfering with WP Engine plugins. The conflict arose when Mullenweg blocked WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org servers after accusing WP Engine of misusing the WordPress trademark and requesting a share of its revenue. WordPress owner Automattic blamed WP Engine for making its business dependent on WordPress services.

Martech’s portion of the marketing budget is set to rise from 19% this year to 22.7% in next year, 31.7% in five years, according to the CMO Survey. This despite 54.9% seeing less payoff from martech use than expected. While almost 80% of companies use martech, it’s surprising that around 45% of marketing activities are martech free (are spreadsheets martech?).

While the CMO survey reports expectations of modest martech budget increases, marketing executives surveyed by Merkle are bullish about overall marketing budget hikes. This is based on an optimistic economic outlook (86% think that the economy will improve over the next 6-12 months). They are also seeing increased revenues (only 13% said revenue was flat or in decline).

ABM platform Demandbase highlights the increasing importance of B2B influencers (experts rather than celebrities) in reaching B2B buyers. It also says the days of manual ads are over with programmatic increasingly capable of reaching target accounts and audiences. Cross-channel campaigns are seen as critical, especially those leveraging LinkedIn and CTV.

Quora is enhancing its B2B advertising capabilities through a strategic partnership with B2B data platform Bombora. B2B targeting parameters (e.g. industry or company size) plus ABM targeting will help sellers reach buyers in the context of Quora’s question-and-answer content. The integration is already live for Quora advertisers.

Humans are good at creating low-quality websites but genAI leaves them in the dust.  Advertisers hoping to avoid junk websites can now turn to DoubleVerify, which has launched a GenAI Website Avoidance & Detection solution. Currently it can only monitor English-language content but there are plans to expand.

Maybe the U.S. government will ban TikTok and maybe it won’t.  In the meantime, the company continues to strengthen its ad business.  Latest move is joining Nielsen ONE audience engagement monitoring, which gives advertisers one screen to compare TikTok performance with digital, linear TV, CTV and other channels.