As advertisers rethink how to reach multicultural audiences in a post-cookie world, premium context—not personal data—is becoming the new currency. Mundial Media is betting big on that shift.

The AI-powered advertising platform has announced an exclusive U.S. publisher partnership with Grupo Reforma, one of the most influential media organizations in Mexico and Latin America. Under the agreement, Mundial Media will represent Grupo Reforma’s U.S. digital advertising inventory, giving American advertisers brand-safe access to Spanish-language and bicultural audiences through some of the region’s most trusted journalism brands.

The deal brings Grupo Reforma’s premium editorial environments into Mundial Media’s curated publisher ecosystem, strengthening the platform’s position as a go-to partner for advertisers seeking culturally relevant reach without relying on identity-based targeting.

Why Grupo Reforma matters to U.S. advertisers

Grupo Reforma is not a niche publisher. Its flagship titles—Reforma (Mexico City), El Norte (Monterrey), and Mural (Guadalajara)—are among the most respected news brands in Spanish-language media. Importantly for U.S. marketers, these publications attract consistent engagement from U.S. Hispanic audiences who actively seek high-quality news and analysis tied to Mexico and broader Latin American affairs.

That audience is both valuable and difficult to reach. U.S. Hispanic and bicultural consumers are digitally savvy, media-fragmented, and increasingly resistant to intrusive targeting tactics. Many brands struggle to reach them at scale without sacrificing brand safety or relying on outdated demographic proxies.

By acting as Grupo Reforma’s exclusive U.S. digital advertising partner, Mundial Media positions itself as a bridge between premium Spanish-language journalism and U.S. brands looking for trusted environments.

A privacy-first alternative to identity-based targeting

At the heart of the partnership is a shared rejection of traditional identity-driven advertising models.

Rather than targeting users based on inferred demographics, device IDs, or third-party cookies, Mundial Media focuses on cultural context—what people are reading, watching, and engaging with in real time.

Tony Gonzalez, CEO and co-founder of Mundial Media, framed the partnership as a move away from guesswork.

“Grupo Reforma represents a benchmark for trusted journalism in Mexico,” Gonzalez said. “By partnering exclusively, we’re enabling brands to engage audiences in premium environments that are informed by real cultural context rather than inferred identity signals.”

That distinction is increasingly important as privacy regulations tighten and browser-level tracking continues to disappear. For advertisers, the appeal lies in relevance without regulatory risk.

Editorial integrity stays intact

One of the long-standing tensions in premium publishing is balancing monetization with editorial independence. Both companies are keen to stress that this partnership is designed to preserve journalistic standards rather than compromise them.

“Grupo Reforma has long been committed to independence, credibility, and journalistic rigor,” said Javier Andrade, Deputy Director of Digital Media at Grupo Reforma. “This partnership with Mundial Media reflects a shared focus on quality and thoughtful audience engagement, while allowing our journalism to reach U.S. advertisers in a manner consistent with our editorial standards.”

For Grupo Reforma, the deal offers a way to expand U.S. advertising demand without opening the door to low-quality or misaligned ads. For Mundial Media, it reinforces its positioning as a selective partner that prioritizes trust over sheer scale.

The technology behind the deal: Cadmus AI

Powering the partnership is Mundial Media’s proprietary technology platform, Cadmus AI. Unlike traditional contextual tools that rely on basic keyword matching, Cadmus AI is designed to interpret cultural signals at scale.

The system analyzes millions of pages daily across sports, news, entertainment, lifestyle, and emerging multicultural trends. It classifies content in real time, identifying moments of high cultural relevance without using cookies or device identifiers.

These signals feed into dynamic contextual segments that advertisers can activate across display, video, high-impact formats, and custom executions. Contextual intelligence is applied at the page and moment level, helping ensure alignment with brand values and campaign objectives.

In practical terms, this allows advertisers to appear next to content that resonates culturally with Hispanic and bicultural audiences—without needing to know who the individual reader is.

Meeting advertiser demand for clarity and control

The partnership also reflects changing expectations on the buy side.

“Advertisers today want more than reach,” said Alex Haluska, VP of Business Development at Mundial Media. “They are looking for clarity, control, and confidence in where their messages appear.”

Premium publishers like Grupo Reforma offer exactly that: high-quality environments, strong editorial oversight, and predictable audience engagement. Mundial Media’s role is to make that inventory accessible in a way that fits modern media buying requirements, including transparency, brand safety, and privacy compliance.

This approach contrasts sharply with open-web programmatic buying, where ads can easily end up in low-quality or misaligned environments despite brand safety filters.

A selective publisher strategy

Unlike platforms that prioritize scale above all else, Mundial Media works with a limited roster of publishers across news, sports, entertainment, and lifestyle. Each partnership is structured for long-term alignment, with an emphasis on accountability and editorial standards.

Grupo Reforma now joins that growing list, adding significant weight in Spanish-language news and strengthening Mundial Media’s multicultural offering in the U.S. market.

The strategy is deliberate: fewer publishers, higher quality, and clearer value for advertisers. As brands become more selective about where their ads appear, this kind of curated approach is gaining traction.

The bigger picture: cultural context as the new signal

Zooming out, the Mundial Media–Grupo Reforma deal reflects a broader shift underway in digital advertising.

As third-party cookies fade and regulators scrutinize identity-based targeting, cultural and contextual signals are emerging as a scalable alternative—especially for reaching diverse audiences. Rather than asking “Who is this user?”, advertisers are increasingly asking “What is the moment, and why does it matter?”

For Hispanic and bicultural marketing, that shift may be particularly powerful. Cultural relevance is often situational, language-driven, and content-specific—factors that traditional demographic targeting struggles to capture.

By combining premium journalism with AI-driven cultural intelligence, Mundial Media is positioning itself at the intersection of privacy, relevance, and trust.

What to watch next

The immediate impact of the partnership will be felt in the U.S. Hispanic advertising market, where demand for premium, brand-safe Spanish-language inventory continues to outpace supply. Longer term, the model could influence how other international publishers approach U.S. monetization—favoring exclusive, context-first partnerships over broad, commoditized distribution.

For advertisers navigating an increasingly complex media landscape, the message is clear: quality environments and cultural understanding are becoming just as important as reach.

And for publishers like Grupo Reforma, the deal shows that protecting editorial integrity doesn’t have to come at the expense of commercial growth—if the right partner is involved.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

Independent insurance agencies have spent years modernizing back-office systems, yet the front office—where calls are answered, requests triaged, and service experiences formed—has largely remained manual. HawkSoft and Sonant are betting that voice AI is finally ready to change that.

HawkSoft, a widely used agency management system (AMS) for independent insurance agencies, has announced a new integration with Sonant, a voice AI platform built specifically for the insurance industry. The partnership brings 24/7 conversational AI directly into HawkSoft, automatically logging calls, creating tasks, and writing notes back into the system of record.

The promise is straightforward but significant: fewer missed calls, faster service, less manual data entry, and measurable productivity gains—without forcing agencies to overhaul their existing workflows.

Turning phone calls into structured work

For most independent agencies, phone calls remain the primary entry point for customer interactions. Policy changes, billing questions, certificate requests, and quote inquiries still arrive by phone—often in bursts that overwhelm staff.

Sonant’s voice AI acts as a virtual receptionist designed specifically around property and casualty (P&C) insurance workflows. Unlike generic call bots, Sonant’s agents are trained to understand insurance terminology and intent out of the box. Calls are answered around the clock, triaged in real time, and converted into structured tasks inside HawkSoft.

That means no more scribbled notes, copy-pasting between systems, or delayed follow-ups when staff are busy or unavailable. Each call becomes an actionable item tied to the correct client and policy record.

For agencies already standardized on HawkSoft, the integration keeps everything in one place—arguably the most important factor for adoption.

Why this matters for independent agencies

The insurance labor market remains tight, particularly for service and customer support roles that see high turnover. At the same time, customer expectations are rising, shaped by always-on digital experiences in banking, retail, and healthcare.

This integration directly targets that pressure point.

According to the companies, agencies using Sonant within HawkSoft can reduce hold times, eliminate missed calls, and free staff to focus on higher-value work such as advising clients, handling complex cases, and driving retention.

The efficiency gains are not just about speed. Manual call logging and note-taking are error-prone, often leading to dropped context and inconsistent service. Automating those steps improves accuracy while creating a cleaner audit trail—an increasingly important consideration in regulated industries.

What Sonant brings to the table

Sonant positions itself as insurance-native voice AI, rather than a general-purpose conversational platform. Its feature set reflects that focus:

• Insurance-trained AI agents capable of understanding common P&C service requests

• Warm transfers that route complex or sensitive calls to human staff

• VIP bypass for priority clients

• Past-call memory that preserves context across interactions

• Real-time lookups that connect callers to the correct client and policy records

• Automatic task routing directly into HawkSoft

From an operational standpoint, the key differentiator is that Sonant writes everything back into HawkSoft. Agencies don’t have to manage a separate inbox, dashboard, or CRM just to see what the AI handled.

Practical AI, not experimental tech

One of the most notable aspects of this announcement is its positioning. HawkSoft and Sonant are not framing the integration as a futuristic experiment or innovation lab project. Instead, they emphasize time-to-value.

The solution is designed to show measurable results in weeks rather than months, with governance guardrails and SOC 2 Type II compliance built in. That focus reflects a broader trend in enterprise AI adoption: buyers are increasingly skeptical of abstract “AI transformation” promises and want practical, operational improvements.

For agencies, the value proposition is easy to quantify. Fewer missed calls translate directly into better service and revenue protection. Reduced manual work lowers staffing pressure. Faster resolution improves customer satisfaction.

Keeping humans in the loop

Despite the automation, the system is not designed to replace agency staff. Simple, repetitive requests can be handled end to end by the AI, while more complex scenarios are routed to humans with full context attached.

Rushang Shah, CMO of HawkSoft, framed the integration as a way to balance automation with service quality.

“When Sonant’s virtual receptionist answers calls, it can handle simple tasks while routing more difficult ones to a person, all while documenting the client and policy in HawkSoft,” Shah said.

That hybrid approach mirrors how AI is being deployed across other professional services sectors: machines handle volume and structure, while humans handle judgment and relationship-building.

A signal of where insurtech is headed

The HawkSoft–Sonant partnership also reflects a broader shift in insurance technology. Rather than standalone AI tools, the market is moving toward embedded intelligence within core systems.

Agency management systems like HawkSoft sit at the center of daily operations. Integrating AI directly into those platforms reduces friction and increases trust—two major barriers to adoption in insurance.

Voice AI, in particular, is gaining traction as speech recognition and natural language understanding improve. What once felt unreliable or gimmicky is now being deployed in high-stakes customer interactions, provided it’s trained on domain-specific data.

Competitors across the AMS and insurtech landscape are watching closely. Expect more integrations that bring AI directly into systems of record, rather than forcing agencies to bolt on separate tools.

The bigger takeaway

At a time when “AI” is often overused and under-delivered, this announcement stands out for its specificity. It addresses a real operational bottleneck, integrates into an existing workflow, and targets measurable outcomes.

For independent insurance agencies, the front office has long been a productivity sink. HawkSoft and Sonant are making the case that voice AI—when designed for the industry and embedded correctly—can finally turn phone calls from interruptions into structured, actionable work.

If adoption follows, this may mark a quiet but meaningful shift in how agencies handle customer service in an always-on world.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

For decades, buying premium video—especially live sports—has been one of advertising’s most manual, time-intensive, and human-dependent processes. It’s also one of the most valuable. Now, NBCUniversal and a group of technology and agency partners are making a bold case that artificial intelligence is finally ready to take on the hardest job in media buying.

NBCUniversal, independent agency RPA, FreeWheel, and Newton Research have announced a new partnership that introduces agentic AI into premium video buying across both linear television and digital platforms. In a first-of-its-kind proof of concept, AI agents can execute and optimize a single premium video investment across NBCUniversal’s linear TV and streaming inventory in seconds—without removing humans from the loop.

The demo may look futuristic, but the implications are immediate: faster execution, fewer manual handoffs, and a fundamentally new way to transact high-value video advertising at scale.

And notably, this isn’t happening in long-tail inventory or test environments. The first real-world execution will include live football playoff games in Q1 2026—marking the first time AI agents have automated live sports inventory on linear television.

From fragmented buying to agent-led orchestration

At the center of the announcement is a shift away from siloed buying workflows. Traditionally, advertisers and agencies plan, negotiate, activate, and optimize linear TV and streaming video through separate systems, teams, and timelines. Even as “converged TV” has become a buzzword, execution has remained stubbornly fragmented.

The new model flips that dynamic.

Using agentic AI, buy-side and sell-side agents communicate directly with one another to orchestrate cross-platform video buying and optimization in real time. These agents span NBCUniversal’s linear networks and streaming properties, with FreeWheel and NBCUniversal deploying AI sales agents on the sell side, while Newton Research—working with RPA—has designed and implemented buy-side agents.

The result is a single, unified investment that can be planned, executed, and optimized across platforms almost instantly.

This is not simply automation of existing steps. It’s a reengineering of the workflow itself—one that replaces sequential, manual processes with parallel, machine-driven intelligence that still defers to human judgment on strategy and nuance.

Why “agentic AI” matters here

The term “agentic AI” is quickly becoming one of the most important—and misunderstood—concepts in enterprise technology. Unlike traditional AI tools that respond to prompts or automate narrow tasks, agentic AI systems can act independently within defined constraints, coordinating with other agents to achieve specific goals.

In this case, those goals include:

• Translating campaign objectives into actionable media decisions

• Negotiating and allocating inventory across linear and streaming

• Optimizing delivery in real time based on performance signals

• Preserving brand, pricing, and placement guardrails set by humans

The agents operate using Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling agent-to-agent collaboration across different organizations’ systems—a critical requirement for media transactions that involve buyers, sellers, data providers, and measurement partners.

What makes this noteworthy is not just the speed, but the interoperability. Historically, media buying technology has struggled to connect across vendors and platforms. Agent-based systems, if widely adopted, could finally provide a common intelligence layer across the ecosystem.

Live sports: the ultimate stress test

If there’s one category that exposes the limits of automation, it’s live sports.

Live sports inventory is scarce, expensive, time-sensitive, and operationally complex. Ads must be delivered flawlessly, at scale, often during unpredictable moments. That complexity is precisely why sports have remained one of the last strongholds of manual media buying.

By applying agentic AI to live football playoff inventory, NBCUniversal and its partners are signaling confidence that AI can handle the most demanding use cases—not just remnant or digital-only placements.

Mark Marshall, Chairman of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCUniversal, framed the move as both symbolic and strategic.

“NBCUniversal is proud to introduce agentic AI into the future of media buying alongside our partners,” Marshall said. “This step forward will redefine how inventory is bought and sold, and what better place to start than within our live sports inventory.”

It’s a calculated bet: if AI can work here, it can work anywhere.

Preserving human expertise, not replacing it

One of the recurring concerns around AI in advertising is the fear of removing human judgment from decisions that require creativity, context, and brand sensitivity. The partners behind this initiative are eager to emphasize that this is not a “hands-off” system.

Instead, agentic AI is positioned as an operational layer—handling executional complexity so humans can focus on strategy.

RPA CEO Jim Helberg described the approach as a way to “hyper-streamline strategic media intelligence and transactions in service of business outcomes,” while freeing teams to focus on higher-value work.

By reengineering manual processes, Helberg said, agencies can redirect human expertise toward strategic planning, marketplace dynamics, and client-specific nuance—areas where AI still struggles.

This framing mirrors a broader trend across marketing technology: AI as a multiplier of human capability rather than a replacement.

What this means for agencies

For agencies, the promise is clear: fewer bottlenecks, faster activation, and greater control over cross-platform investments.

Today, executing a premium video campaign across linear TV and streaming often involves multiple teams, systems, and reconciliations—each introducing delays and inefficiencies. Agentic buying compresses that timeline dramatically.

Newton Research CEO John Hoctor highlighted how intelligent agents can support the full campaign lifecycle, from planning through measurement.

“Alongside humans, Newton’s agents interoperate and collaborate with other agents, data and technology companies to create a cohesive intelligence standard,” Hoctor said—one that could eventually power end-to-end campaign execution and optimization.

If that vision holds, agencies could see meaningful productivity gains at a time when margins are under pressure and clients are demanding more transparency and accountability.

Implications for publishers and broadcasters

For publishers like NBCUniversal, agentic AI represents more than operational efficiency—it’s a competitive differentiator.

As buyers push for faster, more flexible transactions across screens, publishers that can offer unified, intelligent access to premium inventory stand to gain. Automating sales-side workflows could also improve yield management, reduce friction in negotiations, and enable more dynamic pricing strategies over time.

FreeWheel General Manager Mark McKee pointed to the broader impact on connected TV, calling agentic buying a milestone in CTV’s evolution toward automation and outcomes.

“Historically, delivering ads live isn’t easy, especially with large-scale events like sports,” McKee said. “Now…something that seemed unimaginable just a short time ago is real.”

That statement underscores a key industry tension: as CTV grows, expectations around automation and measurement increasingly resemble digital—but premium content still demands TV-grade reliability. Agentic AI could be the bridge between those worlds.

How this compares to existing automation efforts

Automation in media buying is not new. Programmatic advertising has been around for more than a decade, and broadcasters have steadily introduced automation into linear TV through addressable ads and advanced planning tools.

What’s different here is scope and autonomy.

Programmatic systems typically automate bidding within predefined marketplaces. Agentic AI, by contrast, operates across systems, negotiating and optimizing holistically rather than transaction by transaction.

In that sense, this initiative aligns more closely with emerging trends in AI-driven enterprise software than with traditional ad tech. It’s less about auctions and more about orchestration.

Competitors are watching closely. Other major broadcasters and platforms are experimenting with AI-powered planning and optimization, but few have publicly demonstrated agent-to-agent transactions spanning linear and streaming—let alone live sports.

The road ahead: opportunity and caution

As groundbreaking as this announcement is, it’s still an early step.

The current implementation is described as a proof of concept, with a limited number of executions planned. Scaling agentic buying across more advertisers, inventory types, and publishers will raise new challenges around governance, transparency, and trust.

Questions remain about:

• How pricing controls and brand safety guardrails are enforced

• How agencies audit and explain AI-driven decisions to clients

• How measurement and attribution adapt to real-time agent optimization

There’s also the matter of standardization. For agentic AI to truly reshape the industry, more participants will need to adopt compatible protocols and data frameworks—a nontrivial task in a fragmented ecosystem.

Still, the direction is clear. As media operations grow more complex, manual workflows are becoming unsustainable. Agentic AI offers a plausible—and increasingly compelling—alternative.

Why this matters now

This announcement arrives at a moment when the advertising industry is searching for its next operational leap. Linear TV and streaming continue to converge, live sports remain the crown jewel of premium video, and marketers are demanding both speed and accountability.

By applying agentic AI to the hardest problem first, NBCUniversal and its partners are making a statement about where media buying is headed.

If successful, this approach could redefine not just how premium video is bought, but how agencies, publishers, and platforms collaborate in an AI-driven future.

For an industry long weighed down by complexity, that’s a future many are eager to test.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

For years, marketers have been promised a future where data collaboration doesn’t mean data exposure. This week, Adstra, Stagwell’s The Marketing Cloud (TMC), and Databricks took a meaningful step toward making that promise real.

Adstra, a long-standing player in identity resolution, has announced a collaboration with TMC and Databricks that brings its Conexa Identity Network directly into Databricks Clean Rooms. The result: marketers can resolve and enrich first-party data, build high-fidelity audiences, and activate campaigns—without moving, copying, or directly sharing sensitive customer data.

In an era defined by privacy regulation, signal loss, and mounting pressure to prove ROI, the partnership speaks directly to one of MarTech’s biggest challenges: how to make identity useful again without crossing compliance lines.

Why This Matters Now

Clean rooms have quickly become table stakes for large brands, but many implementations still feel more theoretical than practical. Data collaboration is technically possible, yet often slow, rigid, and limited in scale.

This collaboration aims to remove those friction points. By making Adstra’s identity graph available inside Databricks Clean Rooms, TMC clients can “meet” their first-party data with Adstra’s insights in a governed environment—no file transfers, no brittle integrations, and no raw data leakage.

For marketers, that means identity resolution and enrichment can finally happen at the speed campaigns demand, not the pace legal reviews tolerate.

Inside the Integration: Identity Without Data Movement

At the core of the partnership is a zero-copy approach to data enrichment. Instead of exporting customer files or onboarding data to external platforms, brands can run identity matching, overlap analysis, and attribution modeling directly within Databricks.

This is powered by Delta Sharing, Databricks’ open-source framework for securely sharing live data across platforms and clouds. Combined with Databricks Clean Rooms, it enables privacy-centric collaboration that keeps all data governed, permissioned, and auditable.

Adstra contributes its Conexa Identity Network, which brings privacy-compliant attributes such as health and wellness indicators, caregiver status, wealth propensity, and other high-value demographic and lifestyle signals. According to Andy Johnson, Adstra’s Chief Data and Product Officer, these attributes are designed to give marketers more precision without introducing regulatory risk.

The Marketing Cloud adds its AI-driven marketing infrastructure and Stagwell’s proprietary, privacy-first IDGraph, effectively turning identity resolution into an activation-ready capability rather than a back-office process.

From Infrastructure to Addressable Audiences

The most tangible outcome so far: scale.

Through this collaboration, The Marketing Cloud has unlocked more than 365 new addressable audiences. These include high-value segments such as high net-worth individuals and healthcare decision-makers—audiences that are notoriously difficult to reach accurately in a post-cookie world.

Early pilots point to meaningful gains: stronger match rates, faster activation windows, and broader audience reach, all while maintaining strict privacy controls. That combination—performance lift without compliance tradeoffs—is exactly what enterprises have been asking for.

Akram Chetibi, Director of Product Management at Databricks, framed it simply: enterprises want to leverage their own data at scale without compromising privacy. Connecting clean rooms with identity intelligence and AI infrastructure is how that happens in practice.

A Broader Signal for the MarTech Stack

Zooming out, the partnership reflects a broader shift in MarTech architecture. Identity is no longer a standalone product; it’s becoming a shared service layer embedded directly into data and AI platforms.

Instead of marketers stitching together CDPs, clean rooms, and identity graphs through custom integrations, the industry is moving toward native collaboration inside data environments where analytics, modeling, and activation already live.

For Stagwell’s The Marketing Cloud, this reinforces its positioning as an operating system rather than a collection of tools. For Adstra, it’s a strategic move that places identity intelligence closer to where decisions are made. And for Databricks, it further cements clean rooms as a foundation for marketing, not just analytics.

As Mansoor Basha, CTO of The Marketing Cloud, put it, the challenge isn’t access to data—it’s turning that data into revenue without slowing down campaigns or risking compliance. The promise here is reduced media waste, better customer identification, and more precise measurement, all delivered through infrastructure rather than workarounds.

What Marketers Can Do Today

Unlike many clean room announcements that remain aspirational, this integration is available immediately. Brands using Databricks Clean Rooms can already leverage the Adstra–TMC connection to enrich first-party data, generate high-fidelity audiences, and activate campaigns across the programmatic ecosystem.

The practical benefits are clear: faster time to insight, broader audience visibility across identity clusters, zero data exposure, and improved campaign performance. Just as importantly, it offers a blueprint for how identity, privacy, and AI can coexist without forcing marketers to choose between scale and safety.

In a market crowded with identity claims, this collaboration stands out not for introducing something entirely new, but for making something long promised finally usable.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

As home service marketers continue to demand clearer ROI and higher-quality leads, VIIRL is betting that tighter integration—not more channels—is the answer.

VIIRL, an all-in-one Marketing as a Service (MaaS) platform focused on lead-driven growth, has announced a strategic partnership with eLocal, a long-established leader in pay-per-call advertising. The collaboration brings eLocal’s high-intent consumer leads directly into VIIRL’s unified marketing and analytics platform, giving contractors a clearer line of sight from lead to revenue.

At a time when many home service businesses struggle to connect fragmented lead sources with actual business outcomes, the partnership aims to close that gap—operationally and analytically.

Turning High-Intent Calls Into Measurable Revenue

Pay-per-call has long been attractive for home services, where phone calls often signal strong purchase intent. But tracking what happens after the call—conversion quality, close rates, and revenue attribution—has remained a weak spot.

By integrating eLocal’s leads directly into VIIRL, contractors can now route, manage, and optimize those calls inside a centralized platform. More importantly, they can attribute real revenue back to specific lead sources using VIIRL’s real-time reporting and analytics.

“We have long admired the quality of leads eLocal delivers,” said Jed Winkler, President of VIIRL. “When high-intent leads meet our marketing platform, contractors gain a more predictable and measurable path to growth.”

The combined solution is designed to reduce wasted ad spend, improve close rates, and eliminate the guesswork that often surrounds customer acquisition in the home services sector.

A Practical Response to Fragmented Local Marketing

The partnership reflects a broader MarTech trend: moving away from disconnected point solutions toward integrated systems that tie marketing activity directly to business performance.

Home service companies typically juggle multiple vendors for lead generation, call tracking, CRM, and reporting. VIIRL and eLocal are positioning their integration as a way to simplify that stack—without sacrificing lead quality or data transparency.

Jeff Paradise, CEO of eLocal, framed the partnership as a complementary pairing of strengths. “eLocal’s leadership in driving high-quality, high-intent demand is the fuel, and VIIRL’s intelligent platform is the engine,” he said. “Together, we’re providing service businesses with a sophisticated, data-backed path to scale that simply didn’t exist before.”

What’s Coming—and When

The rollout begins in early 2026, with Phase 1 focused on core capabilities including lead routing, conversion tracking, and performance reporting for home service businesses. Additional functionality is expected to follow as the integration deepens.

For contractors navigating rising acquisition costs and increasing pressure to prove ROI, the partnership signals a more accountable model for local digital marketing—one where leads, calls, and revenue finally live in the same system.

As pay-per-call advertising and Marketing as a Service models continue to converge, deals like this highlight where the category is headed: fewer tools, better data, and outcomes that can actually be measured.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

2X, a global leader in subscription-based go-to-market (GTM) services, has acquired The Kiln, a top-performing Clay partner known for its deep expertise in GTM Engineering Services. The move significantly expands 2X’s capabilities beyond marketing execution into full go-to-market orchestration, positioning the company among the first Marketing-as-a-Service providers to deliver integrated strategy and execution across the entire revenue technology stack at enterprise scale.

The acquisition combines The Kiln’s specialized GTM Engineering expertise with 2X’s enterprise-grade delivery infrastructure, which spans nearly 1,300 professionals across the U.S., Malaysia, and the Philippines. Together, the companies aim to address a growing market gap as enterprise organizations look to adopt GTM Engineering at scale without sacrificing reliability, governance, and operational maturity.

Bridging the Gap Between Innovation and Enterprise Scale

Clay’s ecosystem of more than 100 boutique agencies has demonstrated the effectiveness of GTM Engineering across thousands of SMB customers. However, enterprise clients often require more than innovation alone—they need proven frameworks, delivery consistency, and long-term organizational stability.

By bringing The Kiln into its platform, 2X is positioning itself to meet those enterprise demands, offering a unified approach that blends advanced GTM engineering with large-scale managed services delivery.

Backed by private equity firms Recognize Partners and Insight Partners, 2X now orchestrates the full GTM system for enterprise clients. This includes identifying in-market accounts, enriching and activating contact data, automating personalized outreach, and executing campaigns at scale across marketing, sales, and revenue operations.

Deepening Expertise Across the Revenue Tech Stack

The acquisition builds on 2X’s recent expansion into Revenue Operations and GTM Technology through prior acquisitions, including Intelligent Demand and Outbound Funnel. As a result, the company now brings hands-on expertise across a broad range of leading revenue platforms, including 6sense, Salesforce, Adobe, HubSpot, Clay, Gong, Bombora, WordPress, Google, Meta, and others.

“Traditional marketing providers deliver demand generation and content,” said Domenic Colasante, CEO and Co-Founder of 2X. “We now orchestrate the complete GTM system—across marketing functions, the full GTM tech stack, and into sales and revenue operations. The Kiln brings exceptional talent and proven Clay expertise that, combined with our global delivery infrastructure, enables predictable revenue growth for enterprises.”

Scaling GTM Engineering Without Losing Its Edge

Founded in New York City by Patrick Spychalski and Mathias Powell, The Kiln has built its reputation helping companies unlock revenue through GTM Engineering. The acquisition allows the firm to scale its impact to enterprise clients without compromising the agility and effectiveness that defined its success.

“We’ve built our business helping clients unlock revenue through GTM Engineering, but scaling that expertise to serve enterprise clients requires infrastructure we couldn’t build alone,” said Spychalski. “2X gives us the resources, enterprise relationships, and delivery capability to take our work to companies that need it most—without losing what makes us effective.”

Varun Anand, Co-Founder of Clay, also welcomed the deal, highlighting The Kiln’s leadership within the Clay ecosystem and the strategic fit with 2X as GTM Engineering adoption accelerates globally.

A Single Partner for Strategy, Technology, and Execution

For 2X clients, the acquisition means access to a single partner that can deliver both GTM strategy and execution, spanning services and technology. This integrated model reduces reliance on multiple vendors, accelerates time to value, and helps GTM leaders drive greater impact while lowering operational costs.

As enterprises continue to modernize their revenue engines, the combination of 2X and The Kiln reflects a broader shift in the market—from fragmented marketing services toward fully managed, technology-enabled GTM orchestration designed for scale and measurable growth.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

PMG, the global independent marketing services and technology company, has acquired London- and New York-based influencer marketing agency Digital Voices, marking a strategic move to deepen its creator marketing capabilities as the influencer economy enters a rapid growth phase.

The acquisition comes as influencer marketing is projected to grow nearly tenfold over the next eight years, evolving from a brand awareness channel into a full-funnel driver of performance, commerce, and customer loyalty. While financial terms were not disclosed, the deal signals PMG’s continued investment in customer-centric, technology-enabled marketing at a global scale.

Founded with a focus on blending data, creativity, and technology, Digital Voices has built a strong reputation for delivering influencer campaigns that generate measurable business outcomes. The agency employs around 70 people across London, New York, and Costa Rica and has worked with major global brands including General Mills, Adobe, DoorDash, and Unilever.

Strengthening PMG’s Influencer and Full-Funnel Capabilities

With the addition of Digital Voices, PMG significantly expands its influencer marketing practice, positioning creators as a core component of integrated media and commerce strategies rather than a standalone tactic.

Digital Voices brings proprietary technology to PMG’s ecosystem, including its tools Chord and Composer. These platforms provide AI-led insights, centralized campaign management, benchmarking, and predictive analytics—capabilities designed to improve efficiency and strategic clarity for global influencer programs.

As part of the integration, PMG plans to layer these tools into its proprietary operating system, Alli, further enhancing its ability to unify data, media execution, and performance measurement across channels.

“This is another exciting step forward in PMG’s global growth and our commitment to giving customers an edge in a rapidly evolving landscape,” said George Popstefanov, Founder and CEO of PMG. He noted that the creator economy has matured into a strategic lever for performance marketing, brand storytelling, and commerce, making Digital Voices a strong cultural and technological fit.

Data-Backed Creativity Meets Scalable Technology

Digital Voices has differentiated itself in the crowded influencer marketing space by combining talent strategy with deep channel expertise. Rather than focusing solely on reach or creator popularity, the agency emphasizes authenticity, scalability, and measurable impact across platforms.

Its work spans multiple industries, including technology, CPG, beauty, education, and health and wellness—sectors where trust, storytelling, and creator alignment play a critical role in influencing purchase decisions.

“Joining PMG means multiplying the value we create for both creators and brands,” said Jennifer Quigley-Jones, Founder and CEO of Digital Voices. She emphasized that PMG’s scale and technology platform will allow Digital Voices to expand its media capabilities, accelerate innovation, and help clients unlock stronger commercial outcomes.

Part of a Broader Growth Strategy

The Digital Voices acquisition marks the fourth in PMG’s 15-year history and follows the company’s purchase of Momentum Commerce in summer 2025. Over the past year, PMG has accelerated its expansion across EMEA, launched Alli Marketplace, and added new capabilities in retail media, commerce, and marketing measurement.

Together, these moves reflect PMG’s strategy to position itself as a future-forward partner that helps brands navigate fragmented media environments by unifying technology, storytelling, and performance under a single operating framework.

Influencer marketing, in particular, has become increasingly intertwined with retail media, paid social, and commerce platforms. By bringing Digital Voices in-house, PMG aims to help brands better connect creator-led storytelling with measurable business impact across the customer journey.

Integration Begins Immediately

PMG confirmed that the integration of Digital Voices will begin immediately, with a focus on maintaining service quality and continuity for existing clients. Both organizations will prioritize collaboration, talent retention, and innovation as they scale influencer marketing programs globally.

As brands continue to seek authentic connections with audiences in an increasingly competitive digital landscape, the acquisition positions PMG to play a larger role in shaping how influencer marketing evolves—from awareness-driven campaigns to performance-oriented, technology-enabled growth engines.

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Programmatic advertising may power most of today’s digital media buying, but its biggest criticism hasn’t gone away: too much happens in the dark. Advertisers struggle to understand what they’re buying, publishers struggle to see where value leaks out of the supply chain, and everyone pays the price in trust.

The Trade Desk thinks the fix starts at the auction itself.

The ad tech giant today announced broad publisher support for OpenAds, a new auction environment designed to give publishers and buyers a more direct, transparent, and high-integrity way to transact. Early supporters include AccuWeather, The Arena Group, BuzzFeed, the Guardian, Hearst Magazines, Hearst TV, Newsweek, People Inc., and Ziff Davis—a lineup that spans premium journalism, entertainment, and large-scale digital audiences.

The message from both sides is clear: the industry wants cleaner auctions, clearer signals, and fewer hidden fees.

Why OpenAds Matters in a Programmatic-First World

Programmatic advertising is no longer the future—it’s the default. As brands push more budgets into automated buying, expectations have shifted. Advertisers want visibility into fees, reseller paths, and audience quality. Publishers want auctions that properly value premium inventory instead of commoditizing it.

OpenAds is The Trade Desk’s latest attempt to address those tensions.

The company positions OpenAds as a high-integrity auction environment that prioritizes transparency and signal quality. In practical terms, that means advertisers can better understand what they’re buying and who they’re reaching, while publishers gain clearer insight into how their inventory is being sold.

“OpenAds represents a major advance in how our industry thinks about a clean and transparent supply chain, starting with the auction,” said Will Doherty, SVP of Inventory Development at The Trade Desk. “This technology benefits buyers and publishers by helping advertisers understand what they are buying and the audience they are reaching with the best signal possible.”

That emphasis on signal is key. As third-party cookies fade and identity becomes more fragmented, the quality of auction signals increasingly determines campaign performance—and publisher revenue.

Building on OpenPath, Not Starting From Scratch

OpenAds doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It builds on The Trade Desk’s OpenPath, which focuses on creating more direct connections between advertisers and publishers by reducing intermediaries.

Where OpenPath tackled access, OpenAds tackles auction mechanics.

By offering a transparent, auditable auction environment, OpenAds aims to ensure that the highest bid truly wins—and that publishers can independently verify how auctions are run. That’s a direct response to long-standing complaints about opaque fee structures and unclear reseller activity in programmatic supply chains.

For publishers, that transparency isn’t theoretical. It directly impacts yield, forecasting, and trust.

Publishers See Transparency as Revenue Protection

The early publisher quotes underscore a shared frustration: value often disappears somewhere between buyer and seller.

“One of the biggest challenges in programmatic is understanding where value is lost between buyers and publishers,” said Megan Hong, Senior Director of Partner and Yield Management at The Arena Group. “OpenAds brings much-needed transparency to the auction, especially around fees and reseller activity.”

That sentiment is echoed across the publishing ecosystem. With ad revenues under pressure and newsroom economics under constant strain, publishers are increasingly vocal about wanting auction environments that reward quality rather than arbitrage.

At the Guardian, the appeal is verification.

“It means the highest bid wins in a transparent, auditable auction environment that publishers can independently verify,” said Dave Strauss, VP of Revenue Operations and Strategy. “The Guardian is excited to be a part of that strategy.”

Verification matters because it shifts power back toward publishers—especially premium ones—by giving them confidence that their inventory is being fairly valued.

Premium Publishers See Strategic Alignment

For Hearst, early support for OpenAds aligns with a broader push toward transparent monetization models.

“Hearst Magazines’ early support for OpenAds underscores our commitment to transparent, high-integrity auction mechanics,” said Scott Both, VP of Programmatic Monetization & Operations at Hearst Magazines. He noted that OpenAds advances buyer transparency while reinforcing the value of premium publisher inventory.

Hearst Newspapers and TV echoed that view, framing transparency as essential to the future of programmatic monetization and fair representation of high-quality journalism.

This is an important signal. Large media groups don’t back new auction environments lightly. Their participation suggests OpenAds addresses real operational and commercial pain points—not just theoretical ones.

Advertisers Want ROI, Publishers Want Proof

From the advertiser side, the value proposition is efficiency with accountability.

“At People, we have proven over time that better ads, on the best brands, drive better outcomes for advertisers,” said Patrick McCarthy, SVP of Programmatic Monetization at People Inc. “We believe having a more transparent advertising supply chain benefits everyone.”

That’s a subtle but important point. OpenAds isn’t positioned as charity for publishers—it’s pitched as a way to deliver efficient premium outcomes. In an era where marketers are scrutinizing every dollar, transparency isn’t just ethical; it’s economical.

Ziff Davis, long known for its digital publishing scale and experimentation, framed OpenAds as an industry step forward.

“OpenAds represents a step forward for advertising online, helping ensure more efficiency and accountability in programmatic,” said Mark Obermoller, VP of Programmatic Strategy and Yield.

The Broader Industry Context: Clean Supply Chains Are Back in Focus

The launch of OpenAds lands at a moment when the ad tech industry is once again grappling with supply chain reform.

Initiatives like ads.txt, sellers.json, and supplychain object helped expose bad actors, but they didn’t fundamentally change how auctions operate. Meanwhile, concerns around MFA sites, arbitrage, and signal dilution persist.

OpenAds is part of a newer wave of efforts that focus less on blocking problems and more on restructuring incentives. By making auctions transparent and auditable, the theory goes, healthier dynamics emerge naturally—publishers with quality inventory win more often, and advertisers get clearer value.

It’s also a strategic move for The Trade Desk. As one of the most vocal advocates for the open internet, the company has consistently positioned itself against opaque “black box” buying environments. OpenAds reinforces that stance while giving publishers a concrete reason to align more closely with its platform.

What Happens Next Will Matter

Support from major publishers gives OpenAds credibility out of the gate, but adoption will determine its impact. Advertisers will want to see measurable improvements in performance and clarity. Publishers will look for proof that transparency translates into better yield, not just better reporting.

If OpenAds gains scale, it could pressure other auction environments to match its level of openness—or risk being viewed as part of the problem.

At minimum, it raises the bar for what “transparent programmatic” is supposed to mean.

In a market where trust is fragile and budgets are scrutinized, that may be exactly the conversation the industry needs to have again—this time, with the auction at the center.

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