Natural language has come to Zeta Global‘s AI marketing platform as the company introduced an agent called “Athena” which translates marketing data into “predictive recommendations tied directly to execution, with built-in financial accountability,” according to a release.
AdExchanger’s Joanna Gerber covered the news and unveiled a use case involving voice commands and AI:
“Hotel chain Red Roof has partnered with Zeta for four years and was part of Athena’s beta phase.
‘Modern AI tools tend to be ‘more predictive than reactive,’ said Red Roof President Zack Gharib. Predictive AI tends to provide better results without a lot of expensive trial and error, since it doesn’t rely on learnings from unsuccessful past campaigns to develop future ones. Athena allows Red Roof to guide its campaign creation, deployment timing and audience development with simple verbal commands, Gharib said.”
Zeta’s co-founder, Chairman and CEO David Steinberg emphasized, “The longer a brand works with Zeta, the larger its knowledge base grows, thanks to the increase in transaction data.”
Read AdExchanger. (March 24)
More: “Zeta Global Launches Athena by Zeta for General Availability, Ushering in the Superintelligent Marketing Era” (March 24) – press release
Related: “AI Media Is Already Here. Here’s What Marketers Need to Know” (March 24) – Debra Aho Williamson, analyst, Sonata Insights on AdExchanger
From tipsheet: Mr. Steinberg’s comment about “the longer a brand works” is interesting.
Is there “lock-in” potential with clients for AI ad platforms? Given the learnings an AI platform receives from a client’s campaigns and data over time, it seems possible.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- OpenAI CEO Shifts Responsibilities, Preps ‘Spud’ AI Model (March 24) – The Information (subscription)
- Meta Says CTO Andrew Bosworth Will Lead Push to Adopt AI Throughout Its Workforce (March 24) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
- Auto mode for Claude Code (March 24) – Anthropic
PROTOCOLS
PubMatic replacing DSP with buyer agent
PubMatic says it is removing the need for a demand-side platform (DSP) in a new partnership announcement involving its AgenticOS and the advent of buy-side agents.
Sales engineering executive Harry Tong of PubMatic unpacks the agentic idea for Adweek’s Trishla Ostwal:
“’The legacy view of a supply chain within programmatic, where there is a buyer who logs into a DSP who connects to an SSP who connects to publishers on the back end—that supply chain is collapsing,’ Tong added. ‘SSP, DSP terms are already a bit obsolete.’
The partnership lands at a moment when buyers are increasingly vocal about the complexity of programmatic workflows. ‘Buyers have become quite frustrated in the way that they have to interact with the programmatic ecosystem. There’s so much fragmentation and human-led orchestration that they have to deal with on a day to day basis,’ Tong said.”
The Partner
Helping to replace the DSP’s demand is a “media buying collective built for independent agencies and mid-market advertisers” called Untapped Growth which was co-founded by former Google agency sales executives Brandan Clifford, Ryan Ricci and Neni Pogarcic.
Clifford told Adweek his firm partnered with PubMatic to build its “own buyer agent” which uses Claude to input a media plan.
On its LinkedIn company page, Untapped Growth explains the value proposition involved, “By negotiating volume based incentive deals with top digital publishers, we allow our customers to tap into the benefits of scale without abandoning their DNA as successful independent organizations.” Read more on LinkedIn.
Read: “PubMatic Is Betting AI Agents Will Finally Fix Programmatic’s Complexity Problem” (March 24) – Adweek
Related: “IAB Tech Lab accelerates push to make agentic AI more practical” (March 24) – Digiday (subscription)
From tipsheet: There are two ledes in the Adweek story: 1) “cutting out the DSP” thanks to agents; and then 2) the somewhat stealthy “media collective” led by former Googlers who see a new opportunity in how ad demand is managed.
Google isn’t mentioned in the story, but Untapped Growth is reminiscent of many businesses which have sprung from inside a leading ad platform thanks to nimble and talented employees-turned-entrepreneurs — e.g. Pete Kim’s MightyHive (Google) and Melissa Burdick’s Pacvue (Amazon). Jim Payne and Dan Sack of CloudX (AppLovin) could be categorized similarly. The duo were entrepreneurs pre-AppLovin, too – i.e. Max and MoPub.
Having an outside agency or collective aggregating “mid-market” ad spend which can be funneled into one of the ad buying platform leaders makes sense for Google, Amazon, Meta and AppLovin. They don’t want to be in the lower margin — yet profitable — agency business.
From ChatGPT: Though it’s still early days, PubMatic’s AgenticOS is trying to “own the agent” and broaden the company’s revenue opportunity beyond taking a cut of media. Decisioning, optimization, and outcomes-based revenue are next if PubMatic can execute.
COMMERCE MEDIA
Was Instant Checkout, now Product Discovery
- Powering Product Discovery in ChatGPT with Agentic Commerce Protocol (March 24) – OpenAI
- Shopping updates in ChatGPT (March 24) – OpenAI’s ChatGPT Release Notes
- OpenAI revamps shopping experience in ChatGPT after struggling with Instant Checkout offering (March 24) – CNBC
From tipsheet: Also unspoken in OpenAI’s transition away from Instant Checkout (launched in September) is that the company is moving from affiliate marketing revenue (i.e. taking a cut of Instant Checkout transaction revenue) to advertising revenue in ChatGPT.
It still isn’t clear to me if retailers’ checkout within ChatGPT (such as Walmart, Target, etc.) can include advertising.
Easy ad revenue, no? Retailers could give a cut to OpenAI, too.
The announcement about Walmart’s Sparky inside of ChatGPT last week may be the beginning of the ‘checkout ads’ trend led by shopping assistants.
AGENCIES
Sir Martin, S4 hoping for faster AI adoption
S4 Capital Founder and Executive Chairman Sir Martin Sorrell told The Wall Street Journal he’s seeing “green shoots” for his ad agency holding company and added, “We’re very AI-focused. Our future depends on wholesale adoption of AI at scale.”
Yesterday, publicly-traded S4 reported that it expects to meet analyst expectations for the year and that profitability in 2027 was attainable for the 6,300-person company.
The company’s market cap climbed to $220 million.
The WSJ’s Adrià Calatayud reported:
“While the war in the Middle East might make clients cautious, one silver lining could be a faster adoption of AI by companies to navigate the uncertainty, Sorrell said.
Carmakers and financial-services groups are at the forefront of AI implementation at the moment because legacy businesses in those sectors are under pressure from the rise of Chinese electric-vehicle makers and fintech companies, respectively, according to Sorrell. Consumer-goods companies are starting to use AI to counter volume declines and other sectors could follow, he added.
‘The speedier that we see other verticals adopt the same approach as autos and financial services, particularly autos, the better it will be,’ he said.”
Read: Martin Sorrell Says S4 Capital’s Future Depends on AI Adoption at Scale (March 24) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
More: FY Results 2025 (March 24) – S4 Capital
In an event last week with Google, Sorrell was singing a similar tune regarding the need for adoption. He shared on LinkedIn (March 17):
“Our ‘Get Real with AI’ event with Google in NYC last week proved the power of our model in action. Concluded the agenda with a fireside chat with Sean Downey, President of Americas and Global Partners at Google. The overarching theme was a blunt reminder that AI adoption is a management challenge, not a technical one. The technology is already superb and improving weekly, yet organisational resistance remains the primary hurdle.”
From tipsheet: If Sorrell is right — that all it takes is AI adoption to get his agency holding company rolling — it’s only a matter of time.
Meanwhile, AI is likely compressing timelines even faster in the agency services world as human workflow is automated.
CONNECTED TV
Reaction: Google’s Confidential Publisher Match
Ad industry executives responded to Google’s NewFront presentation on Monday which included Confidential Publisher Match (CPM).
Google defined CPM as “the next generation of our identity model, now operating within Trusted Execution Environments. In a privacy-first way, it connects your first-party data with the streaming signals from publishers, like Roku.”
Read: Google NewFront 2026: introducing the Gemini advantage (March 23) – Google Marketing Platform blog
Noting “CPM” as an extension of Google’s attribution capabilities, New Street Research analyst Dan Salmon shared his reaction in a note to investors.
He wrote yesterday:
“Confidential Publisher Match challenges The Trade Desk and LiveRamp for frequency management
(…) The third pillar was data connectivity, and the introduction of Confidential Publisher Match, a product which is positioned to unify first-party data with publisher signals across CTV and premium inventory — with explicit messaging around ‘no hidden fees, no hidden costs.’
Google has facilitated 1P data integrations for many years through products like Customer Match and Ads Data Hub, but we see this as the next iteration, one that can be particularly impactful to managing household frequency, which remains a considerable challenge in the CTV environment.
We believe the product will compete with solutions like those from LiveRamp, as well as The Trade Desk’s suite of measurement and matching tools, including UID 2.0 and the Galileo 1st party data platform. It ostensibly competes with Amazon’s tools like the Amazon Marketing Cloud and Amazon Audiences as well, but with much greater scale across YouTube versus Prime Video.
Versus The Trade Desk and LiveRamp, the key difference is integration…”
Nick King, Global Practices Lead, Overline said on LinkedIn yesterday (March 24):
“Confidential Publisher Match (personally I’m excited for the confusion that the CPM acronym will create!) signals a shift toward privacy-safe identity that can finally connect CTV impressions to conversions. That ‘cross-device memory’ is what the industry has been chasing for years. Integrating Kroger’s first-party data and SKU-level reporting brings us closer to true closed-loop measurement on CTV and YouTube.
With AI handling the planning and optimization, measurement is no longer a downstream separate exercise anymore, it’s theoretically baked into the system in real time…”
Robert Webster, TAU Marketing Solutions said on LinkedIn (March 24):
“There is so much data in DV360. Gemini makes that so much more accessible. Fold in google ads and you have superpowers.”
More: Roku announced as a launch partner for Google’s new Confidential Publisher Match solution (March 23) – Roku
Related: Google’s Commerce Media Suite: Where retailer insights meet the power of YouTube (March 24) – Google Marketing Platform
MARKETING
Microsoft’s ‘Race to Zero UI’
Microsoft Advertising is promoting a new AI-native concept — Zero UI — which it rolled out in February and correlates to the increasing use of agents versus websites.
A Microsoft marketing website explains, “With Zero UI, the internet is no longer confined to a screen: it’s becoming integrated into everyday life in more meaningful ways.” Microsoft tells brand marketers that unlike the past, marketers now need to tap into the interconnected conversation being driven by agents.
See the consumer research on “The AI Web Race to Zero UI.” (PDF – February 2026)
SELL-SIDE
AI video gets AI directors
“Can a gig economy stalwart crack Hollywood? Fiverr thinks it figured out the model… by going all-in on generative artificial intelligence.
The freelance marketplace, which connects users to workers in all sorts of categories (think website development, resume guidance, etc) on Tuesday launched an ‘AI Video Hub,”’ which will offer services from a handful of established AI directors at ‘a fraction of the cost’ of traditional production, Fiverr CMO Matti Yahav says.”
Read: “The Freelance Platform Fiverr Wants to Sell You AI Video” (March 24) – Hollywood Reporter
More: “AI Services” – Fiverr
From tipsheet: The one-person creative agency is more powerful than ever with outsourced AI-enabled services at the ready.
CONNECTED TV
NewFronts: Amazon Ads partnerships
Tubi (owned by Fox Corporation)
- Tubi’s New Ad Push: Exclusive Access Through Amazon DSP, New Interactive Formats (March 24) – Adweek (subscription)
- Tubi Turns Passion Into Performance at IAB NewFront (March 24) – Tubi
Samsung Ads
- Samsung, Amazon Ads Form Shoppable CTV Partnership (March 24) – MediaPost
- Samsung Launches ‘Performance TV:’ Full-Funnel Performance Platform and AI-Powered Ad Products – Samsung
PEOPLE MOVES
Now hiring
-
Rilee Sellers joins Proximic by Comscore as VP, Agency & Brand Sales (March 24) – LinkedIn
MORE
- Negative keywords for PMax and other product news for March 2026 (March 17) – Microsoft Advertising
- OpenAI Set to Discontinue Sora Video Platform App (March 24) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
- Analyst Eric Seufert on AppLovin’s new AI video generation tool – Mobile Dev Memo (subscription)
- Custom algorithm builder Chalice AI releases case studies (March 24) – Ali Manning, co-founder and COO, Chalice AI on LinkedIn
- ChatGPT’s ad test is really a test of trust (March 24) – Elery Pfeffer, CEO, Nift on Inc.