Data collaboration company LiveRamp is using its first connected TV brand campaign on Netflix to reposition itself around trust, governance, and AI infrastructure rather than identity alone as it seeks to reassure marketers following Publicis’ proposed acquisition.
Jessica Shapiro, LiveRamp’s CMO, tells Adweek:
“AI is only as valuable as the data that it sits upon, and only LiveRamp has the foundation in data ethics, identity, cleanroom technologies, along with our broad network, which together enable marketers to scale AI-powered workflows and business performance in a way that’s durable and defensible and secure.”
Read: “LiveRamp Launches Brand Campaign on Netflix as Publicis Deal Fuels Scrutiny of its Neutrality” (July 6) – Adweek
Even the LiveRamp home page now positions the company as “The Trusted Network for AI-Powered Marketing.”
From tipsheet: AI is changing what ad tech companies sell. Before AI, LiveRamp primarily sold interoperability: connecting data across platforms.
Now, LiveRamp is also selling confidence in autonomous decision-making as marketers question whether the platform can remain neutral under Publicis’ ownership.
As marketers delegate planning, measurement, optimization, and activation to AI systems, the value proposition shifts from moving data to ensuring the underlying intelligence is trustworthy, governed, and auditable.
Related: “I think it’s cool that LiveRamp is doing this CTV ad campaign on Netflix targeting execs w/ privacy and AI messaging. (…) More B2B on CTV!” (July 6) – Eric Franchi, Aperiam Ventures on X
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- American A.I. Companies Say Chinese Copycats Are Quickly Catching Up (July 6) – The New York Times (subscription)
- LLMs and Math Combine to Map Human Decision-Making (July 3) – Neuroscience News
- Anthropic signs a 20-year, $19B lease to use TeraWulf data center in Kentucky starting in H2 2027 (July 6) – CNBC
TECH
Ad tech expertise is migrating
Auditing tech startup firm Vaudit has included AI costs into its business model.
The Information reported recently:
“Vaudit, a 30-person startup founded in 2023, sells software that customers install in their AI “environment,” usually through a software developer kit, which captures raw data about customers’ AI usage to compare with invoices and billing records.
Michael Hahn, a former Oracle director, started Vaudit as an auditor of bills related to logistics, shipping, advertising and cloud services. It launched its AI bill auditing tool earlier this year. The startup says it charges a fee of 1% of the value of the bills it reviews and an additional 30% on refunds issued following its audits.”
Read: “Anthropic Customers Find Errant Charges, Auditing Startup Says” (June 25) – The Information (subscription)
Hahn said on LinkedIn: “The word ‘tokenmaxxing’ gets thrown around a lot, but when we find $1.7 million in mistaken overcharges in AI billing, the need for an independent audit is clear.” Read on LinkedIn. (June 30)
Back in March, Vaudit promoted its ability to recover ad spend. This month, it introduced TokenAudit for enterprise AI billing.
From tipsheet: As enterprise AI spending grows, will more ad tech companies discover that their underlying capabilities apply just as well to AI infrastructure? Vaudit could be an early example of ad tech expertise migrating to a new layer of enterprise spending.
ENTERPRISE
Google on aiming AI at growth, not just efficiency
The Wall Street Journal interviewed executives from across the advertising industry at Cannes Lions about leading in the AI era. Participants included Mercedes-Benz CMO Melody Lee, PayPal Ads SVP Dr. Mark Grether, Ulta Beauty CMO Kelly Mahoney and Google EMEA President Debbie Weinstein.
Weinstein said:
“This really is an expansionary moment. The role of leaders is to figure out where is the value created in my organization. How do I point this technology (AI) at the thing that’s actually going to create value? And for many, it has been kind of an efficiency-oriented conversation. But I think the real leaders are the ones who are going to create value at that gap we see today: between what the technology is capable of and where people and process are. That is the space where value is going to be created around growth.”
Video: “Inside Cannes: What Executives Said About Leading in the AI Era” – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
From tipsheet: Competitive advantage may shift to companies that reorganize around what AI makes possible.
BRANDS
Amazon’s Creative Agent powers Conair
Marketing Dive’s Danielle McLean reports:
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“In May, Conair Corporation’s e-commerce team ran an A/B test of Amazon’s Creative Agent, a new AI tool that produces end-to-end ad campaigns. The resulting 15-second video promoting subsidiary Cuisinart’s food processor boosted engagement among e-commerce shoppers, securing 18% higher detailed page views and a 14% reduction in cost per detail page view compared to a traditional brand-produced video, said Justin Swenson, senior vice president of e-commerce at Conair.”
Read: “Why Conair is moving fast to adopt AI-driven video ads” (July 6) – Marketing Dive
Related: “Transform campaign and asset development with Creative Agent” (November 2025) – Amazon Ads
LLMs & CHATBOTS
ChatGPT generating AI ad creative
On Search Engine Land, reporter Barry Schwartz breaks down how ChatGPT has quietly begun offering AI-generated creative to advertisers.
A screenshot was originally shared on X in late June by a ChatGPT advertiser.
Schwartz notes:
“It makes sense that OpenAI would leverage AI to help advertisers create ads. The hope is it would lead to more ads being created and submitted on ChatGPT Ads sooner. This way the AI company can earn more money on ChatGPT.
As a marketer, you should be very careful when using AI to generate ads. Make sure to review the ads that were generated for you carefully so they meet your branding and marketing criteria, including your ROI goals.”
Read more on Search Engine Land. (July 6)
SELL-SIDE
Reddit stops AI slop with AI
Reddit announced yesterday how it’s fighting spam, inauthentic behavior, and undisclosed AI-generated content.
Ironically, it’s using more AI — i.e. large language models (LLMs) — for detecting “fake behavior and artificial hype that older systems once missed.”
Reddit’s AI slop stats:
- “Blocking 23 million spam views per day before they ever reach a human user.”
- “Catching ~25K net new spammy posts and comments a day.”
- “Reducing spam exposure for our users by ~20% from January to March 2026, relative to the prior three months and an additional 10–15% drop in overall spam account exposure.”
- “Revoking nearly 2M inauthentic votes per day over the last three months.”
Read:
- How We’re Keeping Reddit Real and Safe in the AI Era (July 6) – Reddit
- “Reddit is cracking down on AI marketing slop with its own AI” (July 6) – Ad Age (subscription)
Related: “Humans welcome (bots must wear name tags)” (April) – Reddit Admin
From tipsheet: One reason creators have become such a focus across the industry is that they generate authentic human signals. Reddit’s creators are its users. Their conversations are the trust signals that underpin Reddit’s advertising business, AI licensing deals and recommendation products.
AGENCIES
Agencies are ahead of clients on AI
Digiday surveyed agency executives at Cannes Lions in June and found that, overall, agency clients are perceived to be falling behind when it comes to AI.
Good news for agencies?
Digiday’s Seb Jospeh begins:
“They said that for most of the clients they work with, they’re still stuck figuring out governance, budget, and whether they even trust what they’re being sold. Nothing new there. Agencies are, after all, meant to be early adopters, guiding clients through every technological contortion. Yet judging by how some executives reacted, it might as well have been fighting talk. Several only agreed to talk if their names were left out, as if they’d said something sacrilegious.”
Read: “Agency bosses say the AI gap with clients is only getting wider” (July 6) – Digiday (subscription)
From tipsheet: As marketers work through AI governance and organizational change, agencies have an opportunity to move beyond campaign execution into AI strategy, transformation, and operating model design. Transformation is becoming the product. This helps explain why WPP expanded WPP Enterprise last week.
Coming M&A wave? Agencies that lead AI transformation may also expand through acquisitions of consulting, AI implementation, and organizational change firms.
B2B MARKETING
AI exposes yesterday’s data debt
As B2B marketers hand more campaign decisions to AI agents, stale CRM fields, outdated taxonomies and poorly governed customer data become operational risks rather than reporting problems.
Humans could compensate for bad data. Autonomous agents can’t, says Margarita Savytska of B2B marketing consultancy Sojourn Solutions in an AdExchanger op-ed.
She concludes:
“Someone needs to own the data layer that agents depend on, a person who can answer the question, ‘What data are our agents acting on, and when was it last verified?’ On the supply side, data quality has an owner. On the buy side, it sits in a gap between marketing ops, legal and IT. This isn’t sustainable when agents are making decisions on their own.
The supply side proved that data governance scales when the industry decides it matters. The buy side needs the same decision before the agents make it for them.”
Read: “AI Agents Are Making Marketing Decisions On Data No One Has Checked In Years” (July 1) – Margarita Savytska, Sojourn Solutions on AdExchanger
From tipsheet: As AI agents delegate decision rights, customer data becomes operational infrastructure. Bad data no longer produces bad reports. It produces bad decisions.
PEOPLE MOVES
- Former Chegg VP of Advertising joins The Trade Desk as General Manager, Inventory Management – Sam Youn on LinkedIn
- “I’m joining Amazon as a Features Editor, where I’ll write in-depth articles about the company’s work across AI, cloud computing, sustainability, and more.” (July 6) – Former Modern Retail reporter Allison Smith on LinkedIn
MORE
- Spotify Ad Exchange is now directly integrated with Amazon DSP (July 6) – Spotify Advertising
- Agentic AI and the Evolution of Ad Sales (July 6) – Julian Ahrends, CTO, ADvendio on ExchangeWire
- CTV Buyers Are Getting The Show-Level Performance Optimization They’ve Always Wanted (July 6) – AdExchanger
- These Paramount leaders gained power during an ad product and tech shake-up (July 2) – Business Insider
- Threads, Meta’s ‘Twitter Killer,’ Finds Its People (July 5) – The New York Times (subscription)