Remember when TVs were something you watched?  Those days are long gone; not only are TVs watching back, but they’re interacting with you in a friendly yet Big Brother-ish sort of way.  The reason, of course, is to sell more valuable advertising.  Samsung Ads just upped its interactive ad game by working with Brightline to allow live and personalized ads, polls, trivia, and scrollable carousels.

Nearly one-third of major news publishers have blocked generative AI tools from reading their content.   But that’s a drastic measure which could also exclude their results from conventional search engines.  Microsoft has just given publishers the option to block access by Bing Chat without also removing their content from search results.  We’ll see if competitors do the same.

After years of thinking they were in the business of selling things to people, retailers have realized they’re actually in the business of selling people to advertisers.  Retail media networks are the most obvious result, but why stop at ads sold directly by the retailer? Walmart has hooked up with Disney Advertising to test letting advertisers on Disney+, Hulu, and other Disney outlets use Walmart audience information to improve targeting and measure results.