After months of rumors, Walmart unveiled sponsored placements within its genAI shopping assistant/chatbot known as Sparky.
Adweek’s Lauren Johnson reported yesterday:
“Ads within Sparky appear as a sponsored prompt when shoppers ask the tool questions for product recommendations. In a survey of Walmart customers, Walmart reports that 81% of shoppers have used Sparky to look up product availability and details about a product before purchasing. Search is the most popular use case for Sparky, according to Walmart.”
Khurrum Malik, VP of business and product marketing at Walmart’s advertising arm Walmart Connect, told Johnson, “We know it’s an interesting new surface, and we want to be there and experiment in that new surface—even though it’s early days.”
Read more in Adweek. (January 6)
More: “The Next Generation of AI-Powered Retail Media” (January 6) – Khurrum Malik on Walmart Connect
Related: Walmart Connect rolled out an AI assistant for advertisers in July called “Marty” which “helps suppliers, sellers, and advertisers manage onboarding, orders and campaigns—all in one streamlined space.” AI is addressing customer service and workflow.
From tipsheet: It appears that, for now, retail media and chatbots such as Sparky and Amazon’s Rufus — which already has ads (November) — may be taking the early lead on discovering the best way to implement “ads in a chatbot.”
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- New Artificial Analysis benchmark shows OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google locked in a three-way tie at the top (January 6) – Decoder
- CES 2026: Meta Ray-Ban Display Teleprompter, EMG Handwriting, Industry & Research Collaborations, & More (January 6) – Meta
- xAI Raises $20B Series E (January 6) – xAI
CONNECTED TV
AI agents enticing TV advertisers
On LinkedIn yesterday, Comcast VP of product James Borow pointed to his colleagues Ryan McConville and David Dworin who just launched “what might be one of the most important TV ad product launches in the last 5 years.”
Mr. Borow explained:
“Until now, buying that inventory meant heavy manual workflows and a huge operational tax. What NBCUniversal and FreeWheel (both part of the TV ad tech juggernaut that is Comcast) are building together strips that friction out of the system via AI and brings modern buying and measurement to the most valuable inventory in advertising.
TLDR: TV, regardless of how it’s consumed, is becoming as easy to buy and measure as social. If you care about ROAS, you are about to become a TV advertiser.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (January 6)
More:
- “AI Agents Are Taking Over NBCU’s Linear TV Buys” (January 6) – AdExchanger
- “NBCUniversal, RPA, FreeWheel, and Newton Research Introduce Agentic AI Buying Across Linear and Digital for Premium Video” (January 6) – NBCUniversal
From tipsheet: Workflow and measurement enhancements for CTV courtesy of AI.
TECH
The ad tech agenda ahead
Ad Age reporter Garett Sloane rounded up 16 ad tech executives to get their takes on AI and CTV in 2026.
On LinkedIn yesterday, Sloane previewed his article:
“What’s on the agenda in ad tech this year? I know everyone has a prediction, but we tried to get more specific this year. Ad Age asked 16 execs about the trends to watch, and we got some good ones. (…)
Aaron Goldman tells me OpenAI will begin running ads. (…)
Tom Burke sees generative AI Super Bowl commercials.
Ashwin Navin thinks Apple or Samsung will buy a major AI platform…”
Read more on LinkedIn. (January 6)
More: What 16 ad tech leaders predict about AI and CTV signals for 2026 – Ad Age (subscription)
SELL-SIDE
Magnite announces its seller agent
Sell-side platform Magnite, a member of the early consortium of companies behind Ad Context Protocol (AdCP), announced the integration of a new seller agent within SpringServe, the company’s CTV ad platform.
Magnite said in a carefully worded statement:
“Magnite ran our first test in December with Scope3 serving as the buyer agent, with additional pilots lined up to test in early 2026. While it’s far too early to predict outcomes, the industry momentum and the potential efficiency gains make this a space worth engaging in thoughtfully.
Several leading partners are already testing Magnite’s seller agent (LG Ad Solutions, MiQ and Warner Bros. Discovery) and exploring its potential, offering early perspectives on how agent-driven workflows like AdCP could reshape how premium inventory is discovered, valued, and transacted.”
Read: “Why Magnite Built a Seller Agent — and What It Signals for AdCP” – Magnite (January 6)
Sean Buckley, Magnite’s president of revenue said on LinkedIn yesterday: “This is a meaningful step forward for AI-driven advertising, providing an additional path for media owners and advertisers to operate together.”
Related: Magnite and Cognitiv Announce Deep Learning Integration for Real-Time Curation – Magnite
From tipsheet: Magnite is upping its ante in AdCP while emphasizing that it’s early days for the protocol. It specifically did not mention revenue potential.
Also in play, Magnite may want to cover itself since competitor PubMatic has been aggressive in touting AdCP and its importance to PubMatic’s overall product offering (see: December 12, December 15, Monday).
As of yesterday, Magnite’s market cap was ~$2.4 billion and PubMatic’s was ~$400 million.
From tipsheet #2: The partnership with Cognitiv is another buy side announcement for traditionally, sell-side—focused Magnite. The buy and sell sides are merging — thank you, AI?
GOVERNANCE
IAB Tech Lab bringing governance to agents
IAB Tech Lab, the independent technical standards arm of the IAB, announced its “Agentic Roadmap for Digital Advertising” yesterday.
Promising to help extend and integrate the organization’s current standards efforts with AI protocols such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent2Agent (A2A), and gRPC, a press release emphasized building off the structure already created by the Tech Lab:
“There are already transaction, management, and delivery standards for advertising, such as OpenRTB, AdCOM, OpenDirect, VAST, and the recently released Deal API. There are measurement standards, such as the Open Measurement ID and the pending Conversion API. There are privacy and regulatory frameworks such as the Global Privacy Protocol (GPP) and Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF). There are also critical existing taxonomies, such as the ad product taxonomy, privacy taxonomy, content, and audience taxonomy. Additionally, there are agentic control-plane standards, such as the recently released Agentic RTB Framework (ARTF), which defines how large language models and autonomous agents can participate in real-time advertising transactions without sacrificing performance.”
Next up: a webinar titled “Launching the Agentic AI Roadmap” and taking place January 28 at 11 am ET. Register here.
The landing page reads:
“The use of Agentic AI in digital advertising is all everyone in the ecosystem is talking about, but how will it really scale unless existing standards are part of its evolution. IAB Tech Lab’s Anthony Katsur, Shailley Singh and Miguel Morales will discuss how the IAB Tech Lab Agentic Roadmap Protects Scale, Trust, and Investment in this critical kick off to 2026.”
From tipsheet: The development of ARTF, AdCP (which is being built outside of the IAB Tech Lab’s jurisdiction currently) and any other agentic governance for advertising will be something to watch in 2026.
MEASUREMENT
Yahoo DSP adding agentic AI capabilities
Yahoo DSP announced new agentic capabilities at CES yesterday with a promise of “more advanced agents rolling out through 2026.”
In a press release, Yahoo DSP GM Adam Roodman also explained a “bring your own AI” (BYOAI – my acronym) philosophy:
“Agentic AI changes how media buying actually gets done. By building it directly into Yahoo DSP and allowing advertisers to connect their own AI alongside ours, we’re giving teams a faster, more flexible way to plan, optimize, and act, without sacrificing transparency or control.”
Regarding BYOAI, Yahoo DSP provided several examples in the press release including:
“Campaign Activation (Yours): Advertisers and partners can use the MCP to securely connect external AI agents with Yahoo DSP. For example, the trafficking agent built by Newton and RPA streamlines campaign setup and execution while reducing manual steps, which has already executed programmatic guaranteed buys. Additional MCPs allow for other sources of data from the Yahoo DSP, including audience, performance, and campaign insights.”
Read: “Yahoo DSP Advances Its Buying Platform With New Agentic AI Capabilities” (January 6) – Yahoo
From tipsheet: Once again, workflow and analytics are a “first-mover” agent.
LLMS & CHATBOTS
Podcast: Recommendations, LLMs and context
“I think the area where recommendations can change and should change, is they should start using the wisdom available to LLMs. For example, today, we’re in November. There’s a certain temperature in San Francisco.
If you look at my past purchases, but also filter by the temperature in November, the fact that there are a bunch of trending fashions that are coming around us in the next couple of weeks… those should go into it. LLMs can take it into account. Whereas data engines that are looking for data density may be using data up to two years old because that’s where the data density is.
We need a different approach [for recommendations] that uses less data and more contextual understanding of today.”
Listen: “Rembrand CEO Omar Tawakol – why product placement works better than traditional ads” (Published January 6) – World of DaaS podcast on Apple Podcasts app
From tipsheet: There are many good nuggets in this wide-ranging interview covering Mr. Tawakol’s current AI-enabled startup Rembrand, ad tech’s evolution including his former startup BlueKai (which sold to Oracle), agents and AdCP — and even tips on running a good board meeting.
TECH
Supply path optimization coalesces
“Happy to announce that Hearst Television is a launch partner for The Trade Desk’s OpenAds alongside Hearst Magazines & other leaders. Transparency is 🔑 to the future of programmatic…”
Read: “The Trade Desk Announces First Wave of OpenAds Publishing Partners – Supporting a Healthier Digital Media Supply Chain” – press release
From tipsheet: AI aspires to direct, transparent access to data and inventory. So does The Trade Desk’s Kokai programmatic platform as it buys media across the open web.
CONNECTED TV
Podcast: GenAI for CTV channels
Analyst Eric Seufert interviewed Magnite’s head of agentic product Jonathan Moffie on an episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast published yesterday.
Here’s a snippet:
“ERIC SEUFERT: How is GenAI currently being used for ad production for CTV channels? And how does that compare to social?
JONATHAN MOFFIE: It’s used in different ways by different core personas.
I would say creative agencies and brands are incorporating it in their flow when they’re using like Veo 3 to prompt image-to-video and then pull that into Adobe Premiere Pro. More efficiencies will make it much more cost effective.
And then you have tools like ours — Meta and social really pioneered this. And this is what inspired streamer[dot]ai: build the GenAI tools into the ad tech stack so you can drive return on ad spend for advertisers.GenAI alone isn’t enough. We always believe you had to combine GenAI creative plus AI-powered media buying to drive that return on ad spend.
ERIC SEUFERT: Consider that within the context of the format.
So Social – I don’t know if you remember the the mini-scandal from a couple of weeks ago: a True Classic t-shirt ad on Facebook. Facebook had created the variant with the elderly woman wearing like a cardigan and True Classic is a men’s t-shirt brand. So, that did erupt into kind of like a minor scandal. But at the end of the day, people don’t really care about that as much.
First of all, we don’t know how well that did. I imagine that the ad may have outperformed and that’s why Meta made it and gave it delivery. But I imagine the risk there with CTV is a little bit greater because it’s a different format. It’s generally seen as higher fidelity.”
Listen: “GenAI in CTV advertising with Jonathan Moffie”(January 6) – Mobile Dev Memo
Related: Magnite’s streamr[dot]ai launches enterprise “GenAI-powered CTV ad platform” (January 5): – Jonathan Moffie, head of agentic product, Magnite, on LinkedIn
From tipsheet: This is an excellent discussion on the opportunity enabled by generative AI in service to SMB and performance marketing budgets where every penny matters.
PEOPLE MOVES
Now hiring
- Rich Astley, formerly of WPP’s data and technology company Choreograph, announced on LinkedIn yesterday that he has joined Google to “lead Data & Measurement for EMEA, based in Dublin.” Read more. (January 6)
- Lori Tavoularis is Mula’s new Chief Revenue & Commercial Officer (January 6) – Jason White, CEO, Mula on LinkedIn
MORE
- DoubleVerify Launches DV Authentic Streaming TV at CES 2026 – DoubleVerify
- Basis Partners with Mediaocean to Automate the Entire Media Lifecycle across Planning, Activation, Ordering, Trafficking, Execution, Quality, Measurement and Finance (January 6) – Basis
- Brands are upset that ‘Buy For Me’ is featuring their products on Amazon without permission (January 6) – Modern Retail (subscription)
- “I’m starting to think this agentic thing is going to be a big deal?” (January 6) – Brian O’Kelley, CEO, Scope3 on LinkedIn
- LiveRamp Expands its Marketplace to Data, Models, and Agents for AI Use Cases (January 6) – LiveRamp