WWE is attracting new sponsors. AI agents are becoming part of the shopping journey. Retail media forecasts are getting bigger. And brands are testing advertising in places consumers may not expect.

In this episode of Media Monitor, Kelly Sweeney and Sean Wright go straight into the headlines and break down what these shifts could mean for advertisers, agencies, publishers, and brand teams.

The conversation starts with WWE.

According to the coverage discussed in the episode, WWE generated roughly $160 million in brand sponsorships, with a large share coming from new brands. Kelly and Sean look at how the move of Raw to Netflix may be opening new sponsorship opportunities and changing where brands can show up inside sports and entertainment programming.

From there, Sean brings up BMW’s use of an in-car branded experience tied to Spider-Man. That leads to a broader question: just because a new surface can carry an ad, does that mean it should?

The episode then turns to what Kelly describes as the agentic shelf.
For decades, brands competed for physical shelf space. Then came the digital shelf through marketplaces such as Amazon and Walmart.

Now there is another layer.

As consumers increasingly rely on AI systems and agents to answer product questions or make recommendations, brands need to think about how they appear inside those responses.

Kelly discusses AEO—Answer Engine Optimization—and GEO—Generative Engine Optimization as new areas marketers may need to account for alongside physical retail and traditional digital commerce.

Sean raises a related concern: if AI discovery requires increasingly sophisticated optimization, could smaller brands have a harder time competing with companies that have larger teams and budgets?

The conversation continues into retail media, where Sean questions a forecast suggesting the global market could reach $200 billion.

His concern isn’t that retail media is small—it clearly matters. The issue is definition.

If dollars flowing through a company such as Amazon include DSP activity, Prime Video, commerce media, and other advertising products, grouping all of that under “retail media” can make it harder for marketers to understand what the market actually looks like.

Finally, Kelly and Sean discuss Omnicom’s reported move to transfer hundreds of employees who helped build its AI platform to an outside contractor.

That story brings the episode back to one of Media Monitor’s recurring AI themes: companies may be using AI to make people faster and more productive, but that does not necessarily mean the technology can replace the work those people do.

In this episode:

• WWE’s sponsorship growth
• How Raw’s move to Netflix may be changing sponsorship opportunities
• New ways brands can appear inside sports and entertainment
• BMW’s in-car advertising experiment
• Why more ad inventory is not always better
• What the “agentic shelf” means for brands
• Physical shelf vs. digital shelf vs. agentic shelf
• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
• Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
• How AI agents may change product discovery
• What smaller brands could face in an AI-driven commerce environment
• Bot traffic and the changing internet
• Why retail media forecasts require closer inspection
• The difference between retail media, DSP spend, and streaming advertising
• Omnicom’s AI staffing changes
• Why AI may be a work partner rather than a replacement

Resources mentioned in the episode:

https://www.mmm-online.com/news/warc-report-predicts-retail-ad-market-to-hit-200bn-in-2026/

https://www.motor1.com/news/805679/bmw-owners-upset-over-surprise/

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/417367/well-fight-for-your-brand-wwe-records-160m-in-b.html

https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2026/08/18/how-brands-can-optimize-for-the-agentic-shelf-and-why-it-matters/

https://www.adweek.com/agencies/exclusive-omnicom-offloads-hundreds-of-staffers-who-built-its-ai-platform-to-third-party-contractor/

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

The NBA had a very strong advertising year.

In this episode of Media Monitor, Kelly Sweeney and Sean Wright break down Guideline’s latest NBA advertising report and explain how the league grew ad revenue from roughly $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion in a single season.

A big part of the story starts with distribution.

After Warner Bros. stepped back from its previous role, the NBA expanded across NBC, Peacock, Amazon, ABC, ESPN, Hulu, and other platforms. That created more places for audiences to watch and more inventory for advertisers to buy.

The result was a major increase in streaming revenue.

Sean explains that streaming ad revenue climbed from roughly $10 million to $874 million, driven by a combination of simulcasts, exclusive games, and broader digital access.

Pricing also moved higher. Regular-season unit rates increased substantially, meaning the league would have generated more revenue even if the number of ads sold had stayed flat.

But more changed than pricing.

The NBA also reached an estimated 170 million people during the season, its highest reach in roughly 25 years. That broader audience helped create stronger demand across the regular season, playoffs, and Finals.

Kelly and Sean also unpack why Finals comparisons require care.

A seven-game series naturally creates more advertising inventory than a five-game series. Looking only at total Finals revenue can make performance appear flat. Comparing the first five games of each series tells a very different story and shows much stronger year-over-year growth.

The episode closes with another encouraging signal: advertiser participation was more diversified across product categories, meaning the NBA’s growth was not dependent on just one or two areas of the market.

In this episode:

• Why NBA ad revenue rose from roughly $1.5B to $2.1B
• How streaming changed the league’s advertising economics
• The effect of NBC, Peacock, Amazon, ABC, ESPN, and Hulu distribution
• Why regular-season unit rates increased
• How the NBA reached roughly 170 million people
• Why streaming revenue jumped so sharply
• How exclusive streaming games contributed to growth
• Why the NBA now compares differently with the NFL on streaming revenue
• How playoff demand performed
• Why Finals revenue needs to be adjusted for series length
• The difference between total Finals revenue and game-for-game comparisons
• Why broader advertiser participation matters
• What the next NBA season will have to do to match this year’s performance

Media Monitor breaks down what’s happening across media and advertising and explains what the data actually means.

Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday.

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

Advertising spend can be growing while the market underneath it is becoming more fragile.

In this episode of Media Monitor, Kelly Sweeney gives Sean Wright a new goal: create an index important enough to have his name attached to it.

Sean may already have a starting point.

Inspired by a discussion of market concentration and monopoly measurement, Sean applies similar mathematical thinking to Guideline’s advertising data to ask a different question:

How much of advertising growth is being driven by only a small number of categories?

Guideline tracks 89 advertising subcategories. Rather than looking only at the headline growth rate for the market, Sean examines how widely that growth is distributed.

If many categories are contributing, the market appears more balanced.

If one or two categories account for a disproportionate share of incremental spending, the headline number may hide more risk than it reveals.

Sean explains that early analysis suggests the concentration of advertising growth may be strongly associated with what happens in the market roughly 11 to 12 months later.

That creates potential applications for agencies, publishers, advertisers, and anyone trying to assess the health of advertising demand.

The current picture provides an interesting example: advertising growth is concentrated among relatively few categories, while spending declines are spread across a broader group.

For Sean, that combination suggests more risk beneath the headline growth number than the topline figure alone would indicate.

Kelly and Sean discuss how a concentration index could help agencies think about negotiations, publishers assess revenue exposure, and industry leaders get a faster read on market conditions without having to interpret dozens of category trends individually.

The conversation also introduces the idea of publishing the new indicator as a recurring Guideline market measure—with the final name still very much up for debate.

And, naturally, Jimothy the raccoon makes another appearance.

In this episode:

• How market concentration can reveal risk that topline ad growth misses
• The economic index that inspired Sean’s advertising analysis
• Why growth concentrated in a few categories can make the market less stable
• Why diversified advertising growth can indicate healthier conditions
• What concentrated gains and broad-based declines may signal today
• How the model could help agencies, publishers, and advertisers
• Using advertising category data for strategic decision-making
• Why a single index could simplify dozens of category trends
• The potential predictive relationship between concentration and future ad spend
• How publishers can assess dependence on a limited set of advertisers
• Why diversification matters for advertising revenue
• The early plans for a recurring Guideline advertising concentration index
• The debate over what the index should actually be called

Media Monitor breaks down what’s happening across media and advertising and explains what the data actually means.

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

AI agents may automate more of media buying, but WPP’s Devon DeBlasio believes people still need to remain at the helm.

In this installment of Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes, Guideline Chief Product Officer Steve Silvers sits down with Devon DeBlasio of WPP to discuss how agentic systems could change advertising—from buying media and building audiences to influencing how brands appear inside AI-generated recommendations.

WPP has committed to helping develop standards for agentic buying, working with organizations including IAB Tech Lab and Prebid. Devon explains why common protocols and guardrails matter as buyer agents, seller agents, and MCP-enabled systems begin interacting across the advertising ecosystem.

A central question runs through the discussion:
Which decisions should an AI agent be allowed to make, and which should still require human approval?
Devon describes WPP’s “human at the helm” approach, particularly when actual media dollars are being committed. AI can identify signals, generate potential audiences, surface insights, and automate parts of a workflow, while experienced people remain responsible for decisions with financial consequences.

The conversation then turns to audience strategy. With large pools of historical performance data and increasingly capable models, agencies may be able to create more tailored growth audiences instead of relying as heavily on standardized audience segments.

Steve and Devon also look at a newer question for marketers: What happens when the entity you need to influence is an AI agent?

Consumers are increasingly asking systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude for product recommendations. That creates a new brand challenge around how a company appears inside AI-generated responses, which signals shape those recommendations, and how marketers might influence brand perception in an agentic environment.

The discussion closes with data literacy. Natural-language interfaces may make sophisticated analytics accessible to more marketers, but easier access to data does not remove the need for consistent measurement, shared definitions, sound governance, and human judgment.

In this episode:

• What agentic media buying means for advertisers
• Why WPP is helping develop standards for agentic buying
• WPP’s “human at the helm” philosophy
• Where AI automation ends and human approval begins
• Why WPP is beginning its agentic buying work with CTV
• How buyer and seller agents could interact
• How AI could create more tailored growth audiences
• The role of historical performance data
• Moving beyond standardized audience segments
• What “influencing algorithms” could mean for marketers
• How brands appear inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other LLMs
• The emerging relationship between AI discovery and brand perception
• AI agents as a new layer between brands and consumers
• How natural-language interfaces change data analysis
• Why common definitions and standards still matter
• Why human judgment remains part of automated media buying

Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes is a special summer series featuring conversations with leaders across media, advertising, data, and technology.

Also subscribe to the regular Media Monitor podcast, released Wednesdays, for analysis of the data and trends shaping the media market.

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

Advertising has more data, targeting, platforms and measurement than ever. Yet one question keeps surfacing: Are those capabilities actually helping marketers build stronger businesses?

In this installment of Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes, Guideline Chief Product Officer Steve Silvers sits down with Justin Lebbon for a candid discussion about where media investment is flowing—and what those shifts could mean for advertisers, publishers and the wider media ecosystem.

The conversation begins with the growing concentration of media spend among a small number of global platforms.

Justin argues that this concentration has consequences beyond advertising efficiency. As more money moves away from local publishers, less funding remains for journalism, locally produced entertainment and the businesses supporting content production. Canada, New Zealand and other markets provide examples of what can happen when large portions of digital advertising revenue leave the local media economy.

That leads Steve and Justin into a broader conversation about social platforms.
Social media remains valuable for communication, discovery and community, yet concerns around transparency, content quality, younger users and advertiser accountability continue to grow. They discuss emerging regulation, restrictions on social media access for children, and a question advertisers may increasingly face:
Do you actually know what your media investment is accomplishing—and where your advertising is appearing?

From there, the conversation turns toward effectiveness.

Years of increasingly granular attribution and performance measurement have encouraged marketers to optimize around clicks, CPMs, conversions and other immediately measurable outcomes. Justin argues that this can create a short-term feedback loop in which marketers optimize what is easiest to measure rather than what creates future demand.

Advertising, in his view, should help businesses and categories grow.
The economic environment adds another dimension. Higher capital costs and greater pressure on profitability mean marketing investments face closer examination from finance teams. If marketers cannot demonstrate how advertising contributes to business growth, the risk is bigger than a reduced media budget: leadership may begin questioning the investment itself.

Steve and Justin close by discussing a possible shift back toward fundamentals—better marketing education, stronger measurement, quality media, demand generation and creative work that connects with people.

The tools have changed. The fundamental business question has not:

What is the advertising supposed to accomplish?

In this episode:

• Why media spend is increasingly concentrated among major platforms
• What that concentration means for local publishers
• The economic role of local media
• Why locally produced journalism and entertainment need sustainable funding
• Transparency across digital and social advertising
• Growing scrutiny of social platforms
• Social media and younger audiences
• Why advertisers should test the incremental impact of platforms
• The limitations of bottom-of-funnel measurement
• How cheap CPMs can distort media decisions
• Brand building versus performance marketing
• Why attribution can create false confidence
• The economic pressures changing marketing decisions
• AI-generated content and declining content quality
• Why advertising effectiveness matters beyond individual platforms
• The role of marketing education
• Why demand creation is returning to the conversation
• The relationship between media quality, creative quality and business growth

Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes is a special summer series featuring conversations with leaders across media and advertising.

Also subscribe to the regular Media Monitor podcast, released Wednesdays, for data-driven discussions about where the media market is heading.

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

YouTube, AI search, data centers, and women’s sports may look like separate stories. Together, they reveal how quickly media distribution and advertising access are changing.

In this episode of Media Monitor, Kelly Sweeney and Sean Wright begin with NBCUniversal’s decision to bring more Peacock programming into YouTube Premium.

The partnership gives Peacock access to YouTube’s large global subscriber base while helping YouTube strengthen its premium content offering. Kelly and Sean discuss what the deal may mean for streaming bundles, subscriber growth, and the increasingly blurred line between traditional television and user-generated video.

The conversation then moves to the open web.

Digital publishers are reporting weaker referral traffic as AI-generated search summaries answer more questions without sending users to the original source. Sean compares those reports with Guideline’s UK advertising data and considers why major publishers with strong brands and original reporting may be holding up better than smaller sites built around search traffic.

They also discuss what could be lost if niche websites can no longer support themselves through advertising.

Next, Kelly and Sean turn to Meta’s Hyperion data center in Louisiana, a project reportedly valued at roughly $50 billion. They discuss how technology companies are financing large AI infrastructure projects, why those investments can be difficult to track, and how rising capital expenditures are influencing investor reactions.

The episode closes with a different kind of inventory problem: brands want to advertise around women’s sports, but there may not be enough programming available.

Live games are gaining attention, yet the surrounding content—documentaries, studio shows, interviews, and other lower-cost inventory—has not grown at the same pace. That creates an opening for publishers and media companies able to build quality programming around women’s leagues and athletes.

In this episode:

• What the Peacock and YouTube Premium partnership could mean for streaming
• Why premium platforms are leaning on bundles and distribution partnerships
• The difference between YouTube Premium and YouTube TV
• How AI search summaries are reducing publisher referral traffic
• Why branded publishers may be more resilient than smaller search-driven sites
• What declining traffic could mean for niche websites and the open web
• Meta’s Hyperion data center in Louisiana
• How large AI infrastructure projects are being financed
• Why AI spending is drawing closer investor attention
• Growing advertiser demand around women’s sports
• Why the shortage is bigger than live-game inventory
• The opportunity in documentaries, shoulder programming, and studio coverage

Media Monitor breaks down what is happening across media and advertising and explains what it means for brands, agencies, publishers, and technology companies.

Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday.

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

AI may be reshaping media planning and buying, but not every business problem requires an AI solution.

In this episode of Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes, Guideline Chief Product Officer Steve Silvers speaks with Drew Kane, Chief Product Officer for Prisma at Mediaocean, about media workflow automation, agentic buying, and why trusted systems of record become even more valuable as machines make more decisions.

The conversation begins with Prisma’s role as a financial, contractual, and workflow system supporting the media industry from planning through payment. Drew explains how Mediaocean’s wider portfolio—including Prisma, Innovid, and Protected Media—helps agencies and advertisers manage creative workflows, buying, verification, and financial accountability.

Steve and Drew then discuss the new integration between Guideline’s MediaTools and Prisma.

While information has moved between the two platforms for years, the new API integration reduces manual work and helps keep planning and execution data synchronised. Objectives and budgets can flow more directly from MediaTools into Prisma, with actualised results moving back through the workflow.

The result is less friction, fewer manual errors, and more time for teams to focus on business outcomes.

Their discussion then turns to AI.

At Cannes, many companies are trying to apply AI to nearly every workflow. Drew argues for a more disciplined approach: begin with the business outcome, then choose the appropriate technology. Sometimes that means an AI agent. Sometimes it means an MCP-enabled workflow. And sometimes a deterministic API is still the better answer.

Steve and Drew also examine the emerging world of buyer and seller agents, where systems could identify inventory, exchange campaign requirements, and accelerate media transactions. But as the number and speed of automated decisions increase, so does the need for governance.

Someone still has to track what was approved, where the money went, what changed, and whether the advertiser received the expected value.

That is where systems of record become essential.

In this conversation:

• What Prisma does across the media planning-to-payment workflow
• The partnership between Guideline and Prisma
• How the MediaTools and Prisma API integration reduces manual work
• Why business outcomes should determine the technology used
• Why not every form of automation needs AI
• The difference between APIs, MCP connections, and AI agents
• How buying and selling agents could change media transactions
• Why agent orchestration may matter more than individual agents
• The continued role of human approval in automated workflows
• Why auditability becomes more important as AI scales decision-making
• How systems of record track media spend, approvals, and outcomes
• The convergence of linear television, digital video, and broader video investment
• Why media efficiency must ultimately translate into effectiveness

Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes is a special series featuring leaders across advertising, media, measurement, and technology discussing the ideas shaping the future of the industry.

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

Jonathan Anastas, Chief Marketing Officer, at Rumble, joins Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes to discuss why AI won't replace human creativity—but instead make it even more valuable.

Following Rumble's acquisition of Northern Data and the launch of Quake AI, Jonathan explains how creators can use AI to build businesses, why video is becoming the next frontier for AI training, and why human ideas remain the competitive advantage in an AI-powered world.

Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes brings together leaders from across media, advertising, technology and AI to discuss where the industry is heading.

In this episode, Steve Silvers, Chief Product Officer at Guideline, sits down with Jonathan Anastas, Chief Marketing Officer at Rumble, to discuss one of the biggest questions facing the industry:
Will AI replace human creativity—or make it more valuable than ever?

The conversation follows Rumble's acquisition of Northern Data and the launch of Quake AI, exploring how the company sees AI becoming a platform that helps creators build businesses rather than replacing the people behind them.

Jonathan explains why the future belongs to creators who combine original thinking with AI-powered execution, why video is becoming the next major training asset for AI models, and why authentic human ideas remain the ingredient AI cannot generate on its own.

They also discuss:
• Why Rumble acquired Northern Data and launched Quake AI
• The vision of creators becoming AI-powered businesses
• Why human creativity becomes more valuable as AI advances
• AI as an accelerator—not a replacement—for creative work
• Why video is becoming the next major AI training resource
• The decline of text as the primary source for training large language models
• AI-generated content versus human-led storytelling
• What marketers can learn from previous technology disruptions
• Why businesses that ignore AI risk falling behind
• The importance of authentic human connection in an AI-first world
• Why face-to-face relationships become even more valuable as automation increases

Whether you're a marketer, publisher, creator, media executive or technology leader, this conversation offers a thoughtful perspective on how AI is reshaping creativity, advertising and digital business.

Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes features conversations with industry leaders recorded during Cannes Lions, exploring the ideas shaping the future of media and advertising.

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

When should advertisers lock in Q4 media—and where could waiting actually pay off?

In Episode 28 of Media Monitor, Kelly Sweeney and Sean Wright use Guideline’s forward-booking, ad spend, and pricing data to look ahead at the Q4 advertising market and assess where demand is building, where prices are rising, and where buyers may still have room to wait.

Sean frames the discussion as a media version of buy, sell, or hold.

Retail media is one area where the data points toward buying earlier. After six consecutive quarters of price growth, demand remains strong heading toward the holiday period, when retailers face some of their heaviest advertising activity of the year.

Programmatic CTV is showing similar pressure, with demand and pricing moving higher. Direct-buy CTV, however, tells a somewhat different story, with flatter conditions and some indications that buyers could find opportunities later.

Traditional television presents another contrast. Scatter pricing is declining, spend is softening heading into Q4, and—with the exception of major properties such as the NFL—advertisers may have more flexibility around when they commit.

Then there’s social. Spend continues to grow while pricing has been declining, creating a different buying dynamic in a channel where inventory is far less constrained.

Kelly and Sean also discuss digital out-of-home, the potential effect of U.S. midterm election spending on local media and CTV inventory, and what these shifts could mean for planners building Q4 media strategies now.

Before getting into the data, they cover several media and technology headlines, including OpenAI’s agreement with Yelp, the decline in referral traffic as AI increasingly answers searches directly, machine-readable web content, Google’s regulatory pressure in Europe—and Jimothy, the unusually round raccoon that somehow made its way into the conversation.

In this episode:

• What Guideline’s forward-booking data indicates about Q4 advertising
• Why retail media may become more expensive as the holidays approach
• Rising demand and pricing for programmatic CTV
• Why direct-buy CTV is showing a different pattern
• Falling TV scatter pricing and what it could mean for buyers
• How U.S. midterm election spending could affect local advertising inventory
• Why social ad spend can rise while pricing falls
• Continued momentum in out-of-home advertising
• OpenAI’s agreement with Yelp and the changing economics of web traffic
• How AI-generated search answers are affecting publisher referral traffic
• Google, European regulation, and the growing pressure on big tech
• What the rise of bot traffic could mean for the future of the open web

Media Monitor breaks down what’s happening across media and advertising and explains what the data may mean for brands, agencies, publishers, and the wider industry.

Form to be filled: 

https://forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=lw2afVEDz0GH7zXijD1lOQJDmVFO33JHi7Vy8ZqFLdxUOFo0QVZYNjlTSTgwSlUxMDVUV1VRQUkwNS4u&route=shorturl

Referenced articles:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/bot-web-traffic-overtaken-human-web-traffic-data-shows-rcna348522

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/416762/openai-licenses-content-from-yelp-seems-to-be-bui.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/style/jimothy-raccoon-seattle-videos.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/google-hit-with-1-billion-eu-fine-first-under-landmark-rules-2026-07-23/

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.

AI is giving marketers faster access to data and insights. But having more data doesn’t automatically lead to better decisions.

In this episode of Media Monitor's Conversations at Cannes, Guideline Chief Product Officer Steve Silvers sits down with Preeti Croke of Analytic Partners to discuss how AI is changing marketing measurement, why ROI requires more context than a single number, and what happens when marketing, finance, and analytics aren’t working from the same definition of success.

Preeti shares how Analytic Partners is using AI through tools such as Ask Genome to make insights more accessible and decisioning AI to support scenario planning in an increasingly uncertain market.

The conversation then turns to a bigger measurement challenge: despite the amount of data available to marketers, marketing investment can still be perceived as less data-driven than other business decisions.

The issue may not be a lack of data. It may be a lack of shared language.

Steve and Preeti discuss why CMOs, CFOs, finance teams, and analytics leaders need to agree on the business outcomes they are trying to influence before deciding which metrics matter. They also discuss why measurement should account for far more than advertising alone, from competitive conditions and pricing to broader economic and market forces.

In this conversation:

• How Analytic Partners is applying AI to marketing intelligence
• What Ask Genome brings to ROI benchmarking and decision-making
• Why scenario planning is becoming more useful in uncertain markets
• The disconnect between having data and making data-driven marketing decisions
• Why marketing and finance need a shared definition of success
• Moving beyond KPIs that don’t connect to business outcomes
• Why Analytic Partners uses “commercial analytics” rather than simply marketing mix modelling
• How non-marketing factors can influence business performance
• Why finance should be part of the measurement conversation from the beginning

Media Monitor: Conversations at Cannes is a special summer series featuring conversations with media and advertising leaders about the ideas shaping the future of the industry.

If you’d like access to the benchmark report or want to suggest a topic for the next part of the programmatic series, reach out to [email protected].

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow or subscribe so you don’t miss future conversations on advertising, media strategy, and cultural marketing moments.

And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a quick rating or review helps more people discover the show.