Interview

Zefr Awarded New U.S. Patent for AI-Powered Content Classification Process

marketing 24 Dec 2025

What makes this patented approach different from traditional content classification or brand-safety models already in the market?

Unlike traditional annotation systems that depend heavily on large teams of human reviewers, Zefr’s patented AI-driven approach enables agents to query extensive video datasets, identify ambiguous cases, and escalate only the most complex instances for targeted human review. Zefr does this at scale by breaking down complex human policy into a set of targeted binary questions that enable a level of explainability required to understand social media content. This innovative hybrid method enhances efficiency while maintaining the nuance, cultural understanding, and contextual judgment that only humans can provide.

By combining automated discovery with human policy guidance, Zefr’s system can intelligently distinguish between seemingly similar scenarios: for example, differentiating depictions of crime in entertainment content from real-world criminal activity. With our new patent, we are continuing our mission to help advertisers to make better-informed, context-sensitive decisions about where their brands appear online.

Why was it important for Zefr to formalize this technology through a patent at this stage of AI evolution?

There has never been more attention to AI and decision-making in sensitive areas like brand safety and content moderation than now. For Zefr, this patent represents another significant step forward in its mission to bring transparency and trust to the digital ecosystem. Zefr’s technology bridges the best of human reasoning and machine intelligence, helping advertisers navigate complex online environments with confidence and accountability.

In an environment flooded with short-form, creator-led, and AI-generated content, how does this patent help future-proof Zefr’s technology?

This patent helps to ‘future-proof’ Zefr’s technology by protecting its core architecture and process, rather than transient models, ensuring durability. Zefr has always lived in the weeds when understanding social media, and this patent formalizes the processes we’ve found most effective for applying complex policy at scale.

From an advertiser’s perspective, what tangible benefits will they see as a result of this patented technology? (Better targeting, stronger brand safety, or both?)

The patent recognizes Zefr’s breakthrough use of large language models (LLMs) and AI agents to dramatically improve the precision, scalability, and transparency of digital content analysis, while reducing the need for extensive manual review. It offers stronger brand safety and better targeting without sacrificing reach.

AI decisions around content suitability require a high level of trust. How does this patented process improve transparency and explainability for brands and partners?

The patented process improves transparency and explainability for brands and partners by combining automated content discovery,targeted human insight, and a simple set of questions, giving brands clearer, context-sensitive content classifications and a more understandable decision-making process.

As regulation and platform accountability show more scrutiny, how does this innovation help Zefr stay ahead of compliance and industry standards?

This patent and our technology already support auditability and defensibility. We are ahead of current and emerging compliance regulations and standards; therefore, we do not need to retrofit compliance now or in the future.

Do you see content annotation and model distillation becoming foundational infrastructure for the next generation of digital advertising?

Content annotation and model distillation are keys to future digital advertising, supporting more intelligent targeting and stronger brand safety with greater efficiency and nuance, inspiring confidence in industry evolution.

Silent Partner’s Contactter.ai Platform Counters the Auto Industry’s Lead Follow-Up Crisis

marketing 24 Dec 2025

By David Marod, CEO of Silent Partner LLC

The automotive industry is in a lead-follow-up crisis. For a decade, U.S. auto dealerships have poured money into digital platforms and AI, yet a recent McKinsey report shows that productivity has barely moved, with vehicle sales per employee stuck in neutral. While big tech sold complex, costly software, the customer experience gap widened. Today, 63% of car buyers are ready to purchase online, but a staggering 56% of after-hours leads still go unanswered. This failure to adapt isn’t just frustrating customers—it’s killing revenue.

Silent Partner, a specialized AI provider built for the automotive frontline, is proving that smarter, targeted AI is the key to unlocking dealership potential. By automating the most critical and often-neglected parts of the sales process, Silent Partner is helping dealerships meet modern consumer demands for instant, personalized communication.

Why has lead follow-up become the automotive industry’s most overlooked threat to revenue growth?

Because it doesn’t fail loudly—it fails quietly. Most dealerships believe they’re following up, but the reality is that speed, consistency, and persistence break down under day-to-day pressure. Leads go stale not because people don’t care, but because humans are juggling too many systems, priorities, and interruptions. The longer a lead waits, the colder it gets, and that lost opportunity rarely shows up clearly on a report—it just disappears.

How does fragmented communication across SMS, email, and phone impact dealership sales performance?

Fragmentation creates friction. When conversations are spread across different tools and inboxes, context gets lost, messages get missed, and accountability breaks down. Customers experience this as inconsistency—different messages, delayed responses, or having to repeat themselves. Internally, it makes it nearly impossible to know who followed up, how well, and when. That confusion directly impacts close rates and customer trust.

How can unifying communication channels into a single platform enhance consistency and solve the inefficiencies that multiple disconnected tools create?

When communication lives in one place, everything improves. Teams have full visibility into the customer journey, messaging becomes consistent, and follow-up becomes systematic instead of reactive. A single platform removes duplicate work, reduces human error, and creates a shared source of truth. Most importantly, it allows dealerships to respond faster and more confidently because nothing falls through the cracks.

How does Silent Partner’s Contactter.ai platform provide instant, dealership-specific communication while improving response time?

Contactter.ai is built to respond immediately using each dealership’s voice, rules, and priorities. It doesn’t send generic messages—it operates within guardrails defined by the store, the brand, and the workflow. That allows leads to be engaged in seconds, not hours, while still feeling relevant and personal. Speed matters, but relevance matters just as much, and that combination is where performance improves.

How does Contactter.ai perform as an “AI Closer” to reshape the customer journey from first contact to final sale?

We don’t think of it as replacing people—we think of it as removing friction. Contactter.ai handles the early and middle stages of engagement relentlessly and consistently, qualifying interest, answering questions, and keeping momentum alive. By the time a human steps in, the conversation is warm, informed, and ready to move forward. That changes the customer experience from reactive to intentional.

How can AI-driven engagement rebuild trust and consistency with customers in a way humans alone cannot?

Humans are great at relationships, but we’re inconsistent under load. AI doesn’t get distracted, tired, or overwhelmed, and that consistency builds trust over time. Customers get timely responses, clear answers, and predictable follow-up—every time. When AI handles the discipline of communication, humans are freed up to do what they do best: build rapport, solve problems, and close deals with confidence.

How Great Customer Service Is the Best Marketing Tool

marketing 22 Dec 2025

Any great business needs a great customer service model that will help create a thriving base. Each industry brings its own unique sets of challenges, but there are several aspects of customer service that are still universal. The piece below discusses five tips to follow when building a successful customer service model.

Connecting to Customers

The point of customer service is to properly connect to your target customer base, and directly reaching out to them is the best way to initially accrue interest in whatever service or product you are offering. Look at what other successful businesses are doing in your industry to meet their customers, and follow that success to ensure customer connection.

The best way to improve customer outreach is to teach your employees about basic leadership skills and then to conduct rigorous research on the vertical you are attempting to enter so that you know what gap in the market you are filling. Utilize whatever methods seem most effective in your industry (e.g. social media, newsletters, blogging, webinars) with a focus on what sets your business apart.

Personalizing Customer Service

An easy way to optimize your customer service model is to focus on personalization. If you go into any company’s complaints folder, you will likely see many users angry about their feeling that their questions were not answered by a real human being or that their concerns were diverted to a foreign call center that is barely connected to the parent company. This provides an opportunity for your newer business to stand out by offering a human and deeply personalized model.

The simplest way to personalize your business’ customer experience is to make sure that any customer with a problem can talk to a knowledgeable human employee. Massive companies will often use AI chat bots and other machines or software to conduct basic customer service, but you can instead focus on clear and direct communication.

For example, a tent rental business with a personalized customer service model will likely offer a nice variety of tents that meet their customer’s needs and have human employees on the other end that can answer any relevant questions related to choosing the right tent. If customers feel that they have been heard and helped to make the best choice for them, they are much more likely to come back.

Keeping Employees Happy

Excellent customer service tends to come from happy employees, so you should build worker satisfaction into your own model. Studies have demonstrated repeatedly in the past that employees that feel happy and appreciated at work will engage more effectively with customers and commit to a higher standard of work.

After you have completed your market research and understand the exact angle at which you are cornering your share of the vertical in question, you can convert your employees into a thriving company culture. Focus on forms of praise and positive feedback so that the very best workers are rewarded. Continuous but always constructive feedback is also key to maintaining clear expectations. This combined feedback model will help your business deliver the best customer service.

To ensure employee satisfaction, you should build into your model other ways to support your staff. Provide ample PTO, promote employees that go above and beyond, use fun and collaborative team events to build teamwork, and provide holiday bonuses whenever possible.

Using New Technology

New technology can be pivotal in connecting to customers in a real and authentic way. Even though a personalized and human-forward model will help you corner your piece of the market, there is always room to integrate new forms of software and other emerging tech. Focus on both customer-facing devices as well as internal technologies as you build out your client base and employee base in equal measure.

Some simple technologies, such as new business softwares, can be used to build customer databases, surveys, and user portals while more advanced AI-enhanced models also have their place in meeting your customer’s needs. Add whatever tech you need in order to keep your customers happy and your employees satisfied.

Maintaining Brand Recognition

While you are focusing on all of these other basic facets of excellent customer service, you should always maintain a strong sense of branding. Brand familiarity makes loyal customers feel comfortable, so do some market research on trends specific to your company’s industry and use those to guide your customer service model as well as other parts of the business.

The basic concept that guides good brand maintenance is establishing an idea that is immediately recognizable but also seen as constantly developing to meet a customer’s current needs. Focus on what sets your brand apart within the current market and how your employees are actively filling specific needs. For example, a newer tent rental business can create great brand recognition by having a clean signature look with a simple form for direct info about pricing, contact, and available service locations.

Conclusion

Excellent customer service is key to the success of any business regardless of industry, and it is the easiest way to market your company. Customers will naturally spread the word about businesses that satisfy their needs, and a great customer service model will also ensure that customers keep coming back for the product or service that your company offers.

Beyond Clicks and Conversions: Why Full-Funnel Visibility Is the Next Frontier in Ad Automation

marketing 19 Dec 2025

By Mitsunaga Kikuchi, Founder and CEO of Shirofune

Digital advertising has been dominated by short-term metrics for years, with a heavy focus on clicks, conversions, and other lower-funnel indicators that neatly tie spend to sales. While these numbers are clear and tangible, they only tell a small part of the story.

Much like the rest of the digital world, advertising formats continue to evolve. Particularly, the rise of video and rich display media has led to the re-emergence of brand-building activity as a critical growth driver. Yet many advertisers still lack the tools to measure and optimize upper-funnel performance with the same precision as their conversion campaigns.

That’s quickly changing.

The Rise of the Upper Funnel in Digital Advertising

Upper-funnel (or “TOFU”) marketing is where demand is created. Elements like awareness campaigns, video ads, and brand storytelling all help introduce a brand to new audiences, build familiarity, and shape perception long before someone clicks “Buy now.”

Quantifying this area has historically been difficult. While clicks and conversions are straightforward, measuring mental availability is more complex. How do you even track the likelihood that your brand comes to mind when a customer faces a relevant need? Fortunately, as media channels mature and attribution tools improve, marketers are finally able to bridge the gap connecting awareness efforts to tangible outcomes further down the funnel.

We’ve had a front row seat and watched this shift accelerate in recent years. Advertisers are asking for automation tools that don’t just chase the last click, but help manage the entire customer journey from initial awareness to final conversion and loyalty.

Why Reach and Frequency Matter More Than Ever

Reach and Frequency, two foundational brand metrics, are experiencing a digital renaissance. They’ve long been cornerstones of traditional media planning, but in the performance-driven world of digital, they were often sidelined in favor of direct response KPIs.

Now, as platforms like YouTube, connected TV, and programmatic video mature, advertisers are beginning to rediscover their value. Managing Reach and Frequency effectively means ensuring your brand stays top of mind without overspending or overexposing audiences. This is a balance that’s increasingly achievable through automation and intelligent optimization.

Complementing this revival are attention metrics, which have been championed through industry efforts led by IAB and the MRC/IAB Tech Lab. Attention metrics are becoming a critical new layer of measurement, as they capture the quality of exposure by measuring signals such as viewable time, screen share, and user interactions, providing a clearer sense of whether an ad actually engaged the viewer, unlike raw impressions or simple viewability.

As highlighted in Nielsen’s research on brand building, awareness remains a key driver of long-term performance, and attention serves as the bridge between awareness and actual brand impact. Attention-based approaches are being adopted to qualify inventory, inform bidding decisions, and identify placements that deliver meaningful engagement, particularly in CTV and long-form video environments.

More importantly, attention scoring is evolving to align with modern privacy standards through signal-based estimation and first-party data models. It’s being integrated into automated optimization tools more than ever before so campaigns can prioritize not only reach, but attention-weighted reach, to more accurate reflection of true impact.

These metrics provide the missing context around performance data. Rather than siloing upper and lower funnel campaigns, marketers can now use them to see how awareness efforts influence downstream conversions.

The New Standard: Full-Funnel Optimization

A true full-funnel approach combines awareness, consideration, and purchase stages under one cohesive strategy. Each stage supports the next: top-of-funnel activity builds mental availability, mid-funnel engagement nurtures interest, and lower-funnel campaigns convert demand into measurable outcomes.

Automation plays a key role in making this practical. Advertisers need tools that simplify and optimize digital advertising, ultimately balancing direct response with sustainable brand growth. The right technology will allow them to dynamically allocate budgets, optimize for different objectives across channels, and generate unified reporting that captures both immediate performance and long-term brand impact.

The most successful advertisers will be those who see the bigger picture. Clicks and conversions still matter, but they’re just milestones in a long journey. Brand familiarity, perception, and trust are what sustain growth over time, and they can now be managed and measured with the same rigor as sales metrics.

It’s time to stop treating awareness as a luxury and start seeing it as a performance driver. When automation extends beyond the bottom of the funnel, advertisers are finally able to move beyond simply generating transactions to building lasting brands.

How to stand out among millions of products.

marketing 17 Dec 2025

1. You’ve carved out a niche supporting beauty, health, and wellness brands. What drew you to this space and what keeps you passionate about it?

I’ve always been drawn to beauty, health, and wellness because it’s such an accessible and relevant space. Everyone interacts with it in some way. Beyond that, it offers incredible breadth for storytelling. There are so many angles to explore, whether it is product innovation, ingredients, problem-solving, influencer collaborations, or experiential moments. Each touchpoint, whether media, influencers, KOLs, or consumers, offers a unique way to connect and create meaningful engagement. What keeps me passionate is seeing how strategic storytelling can turn these touchpoints into authentic connections that resonate and build brand loyalty over time.

2. What’s a common mistake emerging beauty or wellness brands make when trying to differentiate themselves in a crowded space?

A common misstep is lacking a clear mission and unique differentiator. Without that, brands risk creating a product portfolio that is too broad, which can dilute the story and confuse consumers. Emerging brands often try to be everything to everyone rather than focusing on what truly sets them apart. Clarity around mission and messaging is critical. It becomes the foundation for every campaign, every launch, and every interaction with your audience.

3. Beauty and wellness brands need to secure emotional connections with their consumers. What role does storytelling play in building brand loyalty in these industries?

Storytelling is absolutely essential. Consumers today are not just buying products. They are buying into a brand’s mission, values, and narrative. That thread needs to be consistent across every touchpoint, from product packaging to social media, influencer collaborations, and beyond. If your goal is to create loyalty that goes beyond a one-time sale, consistent storytelling is the bridge that transforms a consumer from a buyer into a devoted advocate.

4. With consumers wanting transparency, how can brands use PR to build trust, especially in health and wellness, where credibility is everything?

Transparency is key to building credibility. Brands can leverage PR to tell the story of their mission, share founder insights, and highlight what goes into their products, including ingredients, sourcing, and clinical validations. Introducing the people behind the brand, along with authentic reviews and testimonials, further reinforces trust. Layering these elements creates a multidimensional narrative that signals both integrity and expertise, which is critical in health and wellness.

5. Health and wellness consumers do a lot of research. How do you advise brands to maintain an authoritative voice while avoiding sounding preachy?

The key is to be authentic and focused. Brands should be clear about what their product or service solves and how they arrived at it, whether that is through research, clinicals, or ingredient sourcing. You cannot, and should not try to solve every problem for every consumer. People respect honesty and specificity. Attempting to cover too much risks sounding insincere and inauthentic.

Prezzee Launches its AI-Powered Magical Moments for the Holiday

marketing 17 Dec 2025

How do these AI features transform gifting from a simple transaction into an emotional, interactive moment?

For years, digital gifting has been synonymous with convenience. It is quick, useful, and practical. But practicality alone doesn’t create memories and, for many, it can seem cold and generic. However, our AI-powered Magical Moments were designed to close that gap by bringing emotion and personalization back into digital gifting.

With Magical Moments, what comes forward is pure emotion. A child hearing Santa say their name for the first time, a family or group of co-workers laughing together in the personalized carolers video, or a friend feeling genuinely seen in a video made just for them. These are the moments people replay, share, and talk about long after the holiday.

AI enables the speed and scale, but the magic comes from how personal the experience feels. It turns gifting from “I sent you something” into “I made something special for you”. That emotional elevation is what transforms a transaction into a memory.

Many people think of gifting as seasonal. Why is personalization becoming a 365-day expectation?

The shift we’re seeing is much more about human behavior. Consumers now live in an ecosystem where everything is personalized – their playlists, shopping recommendations, workouts, entertainment, and even news. When personalization becomes the default everywhere else, gifting can’t remain static or generic.

People want to feel seen all year long, not just in December and during the holiday season. A birthday in March, a promotion in July, a new baby in October -- these are equally meaningful touchpoints. Personalization turns these everyday moments into opportunities to build connection.

And that’s why we’re seeing the rise of “micro-gifting.” It’s less about the size of the gift and more about the thought behind it. AI helps to create those personalized expressions instantly, so sending something meaningful no longer requires planning weeks ahead.

How do you balance speed with personalization so gifting still feels thoughtful?

Consumers don’t want to choose between convenience and meaning. They really want both, seamlessly.

With Magical Moments, the sender gives us a few details, and our system builds a beautifully produced, personalized video in moments. On the gifting side, travelers, last-minute shoppers, and busy parents can send a digital experience, and optionally a gift card, that looks like it took much longer than it did. The recipient sees something custom and heartfelt. The giver feels proud of what they created. We think the future of digital gifting sits in this sweet spot -- high empathy, lower effort.

From a technology standpoint, what were the biggest challenges in building AI experiences that feel warm and human rather than robotic?

Our biggest focus was tone. AI can be technically impressive but emotionally flat, and we wanted Magical Moments to feel like it came from someone who knows you, not from a system that generates a script.

That required a lot of intentional design:
• Crafting character voices that sound gentle, joyful, and reassuring
• Ensuring visual elements feel playful rather than synthetic
• Training the models to interpret inputs in context rather than literally
• Building guardrails so the experience always feels safe for children and families

We also had to engineer for global scale without sacrificing intimacy. Millions of people may use Magical Moments, but each one should feel like it was made only for them. That balance between mass personalization and emotional authenticity is where the real innovation happened.

How will AI support more meaningful “micro-occasions” throughout the year?

We think AI will unlock a new category of gifting -- the spontaneous, heartfelt, everyday gestures that strengthen relationships.

Imagine congratulating a teammate on a promotion with a personalized message paired with a digital gift card they can use anywhere. Or thanking a teacher, welcoming a new neighbor, or celebrating a small win with something meaningful that took 30 seconds to send but feels far more intentional.

Those micro-occasions are often when people want to express appreciation but don’t have the time or energy to make it feel special. AI does the heavy lifting creating the message, designing the experience, while the sender remains the heart behind it.

These small touches of humanity matter more than ever these days, and we know that.

How do you ensure AI experiences remain culturally sensitive across diverse audiences?

This is an area we invest heavily in. Gifting is deeply emotional, and traditions vary widely across families, cultures, and regions. That means the experiences we build must feel inclusive and respectful.

We put a cultural lens and language sensitivity at the forefront of our development process. We test with diverse user groups, rely on inclusive creative direction, and build guardrails that ensure content remains positive, warm, and universally appropriate.

Magical Moments should feel magical for everyone, not just a specific demographic or culture.

As AI becomes more advanced, how do you maintain the human touch that makes gifting feel special?

For us, AI is not the storyteller - the human is. AI is just the helper that makes expressing a feeling easier, faster, and more beautiful.

The human element comes through in the choices the sender makes, the message they write, the moment they choose to recognize, the design they select, the thought that prompted the gift in the first place. AI never replaces that intention; it amplifies it.

The future of gifting won’t be about making AI louder, but instead it will be about making human connection clearer. And as long as we focus on designing experiences that celebrate emotions and people, not automation and technology, the heart of gifting remains exactly where it should be.

Influence Mapping: The Secret to Higher Conversion

marketing 15 Dec 2025

Prospecting often feels like a frustrating game of hide-and-seek. In today's B2B world, the idea of a lone buyer is a myth, and deals now involve a diverse group of stakeholders from various departments, each with their own priorities.

This challenging task is made worse by frequent collaboration breakdowns across go-to-market (GTM) teams. A Mural survey found that 85% of GTM teams frequently experience misalignment, with 89% seeing the impact on revenue. Simply put, GTM teams need a better way to engage a complex web of stakeholders.

Enter: influence mapping. This powerful, data-driven capability provides a clear visual guide that goes beyond a traditional org chart - helping teams quickly identify key players, uncover hidden connections, and reach the right people faster.

Accounts Are Ecosystems, Not Individuals

The idea that one person can single-handedly approve a major purchase is a thing of the past. Nowadays, companies bring together an integrated GTM team to evaluate and approve new solutions. This shift means the sales strategy has to evolve as well. Now, teams need to engage an entire ecosystem, which can be done with influence mapping.

For example, a software company was close to finalizing a deal with a new customer. The Head of IT was enthusiastic about the product and ready to move forward, but at the last minute, the legal team raised data privacy concerns that derailed the deal. Without using influence mapping, the sales team missed the opportunity to identify and engage this critical stakeholder early in the process.

On the other hand, influence mapping can also reveal unexpected champions, such as frontline employees or business sponsors, who can become powerful internal advocates. The key to success is viewing every account as a connected network of individuals, each with their own priorities, needs, and influence.

Moving from Contacts to Influence Networks

The most effective sales teams go beyond simply collecting contacts - they create detailed influence maps that clearly visualize key players and the relationships that drive decisions within an account. They want to understand who ultimately influences decisions, whether that's through formal authority or informal trust. Today, marketing and sales teams are increasingly relying on sales intelligence and marketing automation platforms that integrate influence mapping to manage this complexity.

The best way to navigate this complex network is through a visual influence map - it clearly illustrates how people are connected and where influence flows. For example, it might reveal a finance contact with a strong relationship to the Head of IT.

Ultimately, influence mapping enables GTM teams to pinpoint who to engage, anticipate potential resistance, and tailor their approach to each stakeholder’s priorities and pain points.

Creating a Tailored Message

When a decision is shared across an organization, a one-size-fits-all pitch doesn’t work. Each stakeholder has their own agenda: the finance team cares about ROI, the IT department is focused on integration and security, and end-users want to know if the product will make their lives easier.

To secure a deal, teams can use influence mapping to create tailored messages for each group. By understanding each stakeholder's unique motivations, teams can build customized pitches that address each person’s specific needs and concerns.

For example, a pitch to the IT team could focus on seamless integration and reliable support. A conversation with the finance team would highlight cost savings and long-term value. By speaking their language, teams build credibility and trust across the whole organization, shifting your company from being seen as a vendor to being seen as a strategic partner that can solve their problems.

Three Steps To Get Started

Effective influence mapping depends on consistent habits and the right tools to help teams stay focused on the full customer ecosystem, following three key steps:

Identify all contacts early: Don’t rely solely on a primary contact. Use influence mapping proactively to uncover all decision-makers and influencers who could impact the deal before it closes.
Keep maps current: Roles and priorities evolve. Make it a regular practice - during weekly or monthly account reviews to update your influence map to reflect the latest dynamics.
Maintain ongoing engagement: Don’t wait until renewal or an upsell opportunity to connect. Build relationships across multiple people and departments over time. Consistent communication uncovers new opportunities and resolves small issues before they grow.

Building Stronger Customer Relationships

Influence mapping empowers GTM teams to close more deals and build a stronger, more resilient business. By cultivating connections across the organization, teams reduce the risk of losing momentum, or even an account, when a key contact departs or roles shift.

It's time to dismantle outdated strategies and embrace a new way of thinking: holistic, network-driven, and built for the future.

The Five Data and AI Trends Reshaping Marketing in 2026

customer identity management 15 Dec 2025

By: Kimberly Gilberti, General Manager, Experian

1. Your trends outlook says 2026 will be defined by connection. What does that mean for marketers?

For years, marketing systems have grown more fragmented. In 2026, that changes. 2026 will be the year that we see tighter alignment between activation and measurement, more interoperable identity frameworks, and stronger data foundations that support AI at scale. According to our 2026 trends report, the most successful organizations will be the ones that unify their systems so insight moves directly into action and outcomes can be validated across every channel.

2. AI has moved past the hype cycle. What will determine whether marketers actually see value from it this year?

Data quality is what will shape AI outcomes. Our report emphasizes that AI is only as good as the data it learns from, which means accuracy, freshness, consent, and interoperability are essential requirements that marketers must prioritize. Marketers who invest in high-integrity data will see AI unlock more personalization, stronger predictive modeling, and more efficient workflows. Those who rely on incomplete or outdated signals risk automating poor decisions faster.

3. Measurement seems to be changing rapidly in 2026. How are marketers rethinking it?

Measurement is shifting from a retrospective exercise to a real-time capability. Instead of waiting until a campaign ends, marketers now expect live feedback on how audiences are responding, where value is being created, and which channels are driving true incrementality. Our report notes that the walls between activation and analytics are falling, allowing teams to optimize creative, targeting, and spend mid-flight rather than reacting after the fact. This is a foundational change, and it will reshape planning, budgeting, and cross-team collaboration in 2026

4. First-party data remains a big priority. What is different about how companies will use it in 2026?

2026 is the year first-party data becomes operational rather than aspirational. Collecting data is no longer the challenge. Activating it across channels is. Our report highlights that marketers want to unify CRM, digital, and TV data to create full-funnel addressability, as well as use enrichment and modeling to expand their reach intelligently. Marketers are realizing that first-party data is only powerful when it can move securely and consistently across platforms.

5. Commerce media has grown incredibly fast. What does the next phase look like?

Commerce media is evolving from a retail-only phenomenon into a multi-industry movement. Auto, CPG, travel, financial services, and entertainment brands are now building or partnering on media networks. This expansion reflects a broader shift toward connecting exposure with transactions, whether they happen online or offline. Our report notes that identity is the engine powering this evolution because it allows marketers to tie media to real-world results and measure the value of their audiences with greater accuracy.

6. Curation is becoming a bigger part of programmatic. Why now?

Curation is emerging as a structural shift rather than a trend. With signal fragmentation, privacy reform, and concerns about efficiency, curated private marketplaces (PMPs) give marketers more control over who they reach and how. According to our report, curated supply paths now account for a significant share of programmatic spend and offer stronger transparency, real-time optimization, and access to high-quality audiences that can be activated consistently across CTV, audio, and the open web. In other words, curation is becoming the standard path to performance.

7. When you look across all five trends, what unifies them and what should marketers prioritize first?

Identity and data quality unify every trend. Every trend in our outlook depends on them. AI can only perform at the level of the data fueling it. First-party activation depends on consistent identity matching. Commerce media requires clear connections between exposure and conversion. Curation relies on accurate and privacy-forward signals. Measurement is only meaningful when marketers can trace outcomes back to real people and real actions. Our report emphasizes that the leaders in 2026 will be the companies that establish a clean, connected, privacy-first data foundation and apply it consistently across teams and channels.

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