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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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.

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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.

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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.

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After a surprisingly resilient 2025, the global consumer technology and durable goods market is heading into a holding pattern. According to NielsenIQ’s (NIQ) 2026 Consumer Tech & Durable Goods (T&D) Outlook, released in collaboration with the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), worldwide sales are expected to level off in 2026, signaling a transition from post-inflation recovery to a more selective, value-driven growth phase.

The headline numbers tell a story of moderation. The sector is on track to close 2025 at roughly $1.3 trillion, up 3% year over year, but 2026 sales are projected to dip slightly by 0.4%. Yet beneath that near-flat global average lies a far more uneven—and strategically important—set of regional and category dynamics.

For brands, retailers, and manufacturers, the message is clear: growth isn’t disappearing, but it’s fragmenting.

A stable global market with sharply different regional outcomes

While global sales appear flat on paper, NIQ’s data shows that regional performance in 2026 will vary widely.

• Eastern Europe is projected to lead growth at +5%, followed by Western Europe and the Middle East & Africa at +3%, and Latin America at +2%.

• North America is expected to remain largely stable, reflecting a mature market where replacement cycles—not expansion—drive demand.

• Asia-Pacific, however, is forecast to decline 3% overall, weighed down by China’s projected -5% contraction.

China’s slowdown is particularly notable given its recent strength. NIQ attributes much of the decline to elevated baselines created by government trade-in incentives, which pulled forward demand in prior years. As those programs normalize, growth comparisons become tougher—even as underlying consumer demand remains intact.

“In 2025, global Consumer Tech & Durable Goods purchases grew by a solid 3%,” said Julian Baldwin, President of Tech & Durables at NIQ. “Growth is expected to slow in 2026, but most regions should remain stable or see modest gains. The exception is China, where elevated baselines from recent trade-in policies will weigh on performance.”

Value over volume defines the next phase

Across regions, one theme cuts through the data: consumers remain cautious and value-driven.

Even as inflation eases in many markets, shoppers are prioritizing products that clearly justify their price—whether through better performance, convenience, energy efficiency, durability, or long-term cost savings. Incremental upgrades or vague “smart” features are no longer enough.

This shift puts pressure on brands to make product benefits highly visible and immediately relevant at the point of decision, especially as discretionary budgets remain constrained.

The implication for marketers is significant. Positioning around price alone isn’t sufficient, but neither is premiumization without proof. The winners in 2026 will be those that align pricing, innovation, and experience with local expectations and category-specific needs.

Category outlook: small appliances and IT show resilience

From a sector perspective, NIQ expects uneven performance across product categories:

• Small Domestic Appliances (SDA) are forecast to continue growing, supported by demand for convenience, efficiency, and lifestyle upgrades.

• IT & Office equipment should see modest gains, helped by delayed replacement cycles and renewed interest in higher-performance devices.

• Major Domestic Appliances are expected to remain broadly stable, reflecting saturation in mature markets.

• Telecom and Consumer Electronics are projected to experience slight declines, as smartphone and TV markets remain highly competitive and replacement-driven.

That said, stability doesn’t mean stagnation. Even in slower categories, specific innovation-led subsegments are outperforming, particularly where clear use cases exist.

Replacement cycles and premium features fuel selective demand

NIQ’s outlook suggests that replacement demand—rather than first-time purchases—will be a key growth lever in 2026. PCs and smartphones, in particular, are entering refresh cycles after years of delayed upgrades.

What’s different this time is the nature of the upgrade. Consumers are showing willingness to pay more for features they can clearly understand and use. Examples include:

• AI-native PCs, positioned around productivity, battery optimization, and on-device intelligence

• Mini LED and OLED TVs, benefiting from better picture quality and energy efficiency

• Built-in and smart home appliances, which promise long-term convenience rather than novelty

Televisions, in particular, are expected to get a demand lift from the 2026 World Cup, a familiar but still powerful catalyst for premium TV upgrades. Meanwhile, open-ear headsets continue to gain traction, carving out a differentiated position in the crowded audio market.

Across categories, NIQ notes that AI-enabled features offer real premiumization potential—but only when the benefits are explicit. Abstract promises of “AI-powered” performance are less persuasive than tangible improvements tied to everyday use.

AI as a differentiator, not a default

The report reinforces a growing industry reality: AI alone doesn’t sell products—use cases do.

“Consumers remain value-driven but are prepared to spend where they see compelling product features,” said Steve Koenig, Vice President of Research at CTA. “Built-in Artificial Intelligence continues to present strong opportunity as a product differentiator, but adoption will depend on clear use cases that illustrate direct benefits and ROI.”

This distinction matters as AI becomes more ubiquitous across consumer tech. As more devices include some form of AI by default, differentiation will shift from presence to performance—and from marketing claims to measurable outcomes.

Trade, policy, and competitive pressure loom large

Beyond consumer behavior, NIQ highlights external risks that could reshape the market trajectory in 2026.

Tariffs and trade policy remain key variables, particularly in the U.S., while China’s evolving trade-in programs continue to influence demand patterns. At the same time, Chinese brands are expanding aggressively into new markets, intensifying competition on price and accelerating global AI adoption through more affordable devices.

For established players, this raises strategic questions around positioning, margin protection, and local relevance—especially in emerging markets where accessibility often outweighs brand legacy.

What this means for brands and retailers

The 2026 outlook suggests a market that rewards precision over scale. Broad-based recovery is no longer the primary growth driver. Instead, success will hinge on:

• Targeting high-potential regions by both volume and value

• Aligning innovation with local consumer expectations

• Making product benefits clear, visible, and defensible

• Preparing for continued volatility from policy and supply chain shifts

In a flat global market, share gains will come at someone else’s expense. The brands that adapt fastest to regional nuance—and communicate value most effectively—are likely to be the ones still growing.

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Connected TV keeps attracting more ad dollars—and more scrutiny. As programmatic CTV scales, advertisers are increasingly uneasy about opaque supply chains, inconsistent inventory quality, and limited insight into where ads actually run. Marketing Architects says it has a fix.

The all-inclusive TV agency has announced a partnership with Jounce Media aimed squarely at one of CTV’s most persistent pain points: supply-side transparency. The collaboration integrates Jounce’s programmatic supply chain intelligence directly into Annika®, Marketing Architects’ proprietary media-buying AI, giving advertisers clearer visibility into inventory quality and supply paths—and more control over where their budgets land.

In an ecosystem often criticized for black boxes and guesswork, the move signals a push toward more accountable, outcome-driven CTV buying.

Why CTV transparency is suddenly mission-critical

Programmatic CTV has matured quickly, but not always cleanly. Advertisers routinely struggle to answer basic questions: Which apps carried their ads? Were impressions sourced directly or through multiple intermediaries? And how much performance was lost to inefficient or low-quality supply paths?

Those concerns have grown louder as CTV budgets expand. Unlike linear TV, programmatic CTV’s complexity makes it easy for inefficiencies to hide in plain sight. Verification tools help, but they often operate after the fact—and don’t always reveal how supply decisions affect outcomes.

Marketing Architects’ partnership with Jounce Media is designed to address those gaps earlier in the process, before dollars are spent.

What Jounce Media brings to the table

Jounce Media has built a reputation as one of the industry’s most detailed observers of the programmatic supply chain. By aggregating and analyzing bidstream data at scale, the company classifies inventory quality, maps direct and indirect supply paths, and evaluates seller behavior across CTV and digital video.

Rather than focusing solely on impressions or domains, Jounce applies a seller-oriented lens—helping advertisers understand who they are buying from and how inventory reaches them.

By integrating Jounce’s data into Annika, Marketing Architects is embedding that intelligence directly into campaign planning and execution, not layering it on as a post-buy diagnostic.

“Partnering with Jounce Media lets us apply a data-enriched lens to every campaign,” said Marrika Zapiler, Director of Advanced TV at Marketing Architects. “We're building a foundation for more effective, transparent CTV buys that better serve our clients’ goals.”

How Annika’s update changes CTV buying

Annika already plays a central role in how Marketing Architects identifies and buys high-performing media. The Jounce integration significantly expands that capability by reshaping how supply is evaluated in the first place.

With access to Jounce’s taxonomy and app-level supply data, Annika can now:

• Unify premium inventory across the supply ecosystem

• Identify and deprioritize opaque or inefficient supply paths

• Favor high-quality, direct inventory across CTV environments

• Reduce reliance on manual research or assumptions about inventory quality

The result is a more intentional planning process—one that treats supply path decisioning as a performance lever, not an afterthought.

Instead of relying on black-box verification tools to flag issues later, Annika uses supply intelligence upfront to guide smarter campaign setup.

A shift toward seller-aware planning

The partnership also reflects a broader shift in how sophisticated advertisers approach programmatic buying. Rather than optimizing solely around CPMs or reach, there’s growing emphasis on seller transparency and accountability.

“Jounce exists to help advertisers understand what they’re buying and where it comes from,” said Chris Kane, founder of Jounce Media. “By taking a seller-oriented approach to media planning, execution, and measurement, Marketing Architects is embracing the industry’s movement toward a more trusted and accountable programmatic supply chain.”

This seller-aware mindset aligns with ongoing efforts across the ad tech ecosystem to reduce arbitrage, minimize redundant intermediaries, and improve working media efficiency—especially in CTV, where margins can erode quickly.

Why this matters for advertisers

For advertisers, the implications are practical rather than theoretical. Better supply intelligence means:

• More confidence that ads appear in premium, brand-safe environments

• Fewer wasted impressions tied to indirect or low-quality supply paths

• Stronger alignment between media quality and business outcomes

As CTV increasingly competes with retail media, paid social, and search for performance budgets, transparency becomes a competitive differentiator—not just a hygiene factor.

Marketing Architects argues that enriching Annika with supply-level data allows its AI to focus on what actually drives results, rather than optimizing around noisy or incomplete signals.

Raising the bar for outcome-driven CTV

The company positions the partnership as more than a feature update. Combined with Annika’s existing performance modeling, the integration represents what Marketing Architects calls a new standard for optimized, outcome-driven CTV campaigns—one less dependent on trust-me claims and more grounded in verifiable supply data.

In a market where advertisers are demanding clearer answers about where their money goes, this move puts pressure on the rest of the CTV ecosystem to follow suit.

As programmatic CTV continues its rapid growth, transparency is no longer optional. Marketing Architects’ collaboration with Jounce Media suggests that the next phase of CTV buying won’t be defined just by scale or automation—but by how intelligently, and transparently, that automation operates.

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CES has never been short on spectacle. What it has often lacked—especially in recent AI-heavy years—is clarity on execution. Monks believes CES 2026 is the moment the industry finally grows up.

The global, digital-first operating brand of S4 Capital plc is arriving in Las Vegas with a deliberately split presence and a pointed message: the era of “AI demos” is over. What matters now is how AI actually runs inside the enterprise. To make that case, Monks is anchoring itself at the newly launched CES Foundry, while maintaining its creative foothold at C Space—a dual-track strategy designed to connect futurism with function.

The goal is not to showcase shiny tools, but to position Monks as the operating partner for a converging C-suite, where CMOs, CIOs, and CTOs are increasingly accountable to the same outcome: profitable growth.

From AI novelty to AI maturity

Monks’ leadership is explicit about why CES 2026 matters. The company sees the industry moving beyond fascination with AI-generated outputs and toward something far more consequential: agentic workflows that rewire how organizations operate.

“The industry is moving out of the phase where ‘made with AI’ is enough to drive interest,” said Wesley ter Haar, Chief AI Officer at Monks. “2026 is about the maturity of the agentic workflow and the replacement of novelty with discernment.”

That framing cuts against much of the AI marketing still dominating trade shows. Rather than spotlighting isolated use cases, Monks is emphasizing systems—how data, automation, creativity, and infrastructure work together continuously, not experimentally.

Why CES Foundry is central to Monks’ strategy

The newly launched CES Foundry has quickly become a magnet for enterprise technology leaders focused on orchestration rather than gadgets. For Monks, it’s the right stage to explain the mechanics of an AI-native enterprise, not just its outputs.

By situating its primary demonstration hub at the Foundry—steps away from partners like NVIDIA—Monks is signaling that marketing transformation is now inseparable from core technology decisions. AI, in this framing, isn’t a layer added to marketing. It’s the operating system underneath it.

This is where Monks.Flow, the company’s AI-native operating layer, takes center stage. According to Monks, Flow applies AI to compress operational costs while expanding returns—effectively reframing marketing from a budget line item into a margin lever.

Marketing, redefined as a growth engine

Across CES, Monks’ message is consistent: the traditional separation between marketing creativity and technology execution no longer holds. That’s why the company is intentionally uniting its Marketing Services and Technology Services teams across every CES touchpoint.

“In 2026, we are rallying around three core pillars: Intelligence, Creation, and Orchestration,” said James Stephens, EVP and Head of Global Brand at Monks. “We’re moving from static demographics to real-time ‘culture graphics’ that align with how media platforms actually target today.”

That shift reflects a deeper change in how Monks views content itself. Every creative output becomes a data signal. Every interaction feeds the system. The result, Monks argues, is a brand engine that improves with use—rather than campaigns that decay the moment spend stops.

The converged C-suite problem Monks is solving

One of the most interesting subtexts of Monks’ CES presence is its focus on organizational design. As AI collapses the distance between marketing, IT, and data, executive roles are converging around shared KPIs.

“Monks is here to provide the steering wheel for the industry’s most powerful engines,” said Rick Eiserman, President and Global Executive Lead at Monks. “We’re showing how Monks.Flow moves marketing beyond pilot mode and into a high-velocity growth engine.”

This language reflects a reality many enterprises are facing: experimentation is no longer enough. Boards want scalable systems, not proofs of concept. Monks is betting that its operating-model-first approach resonates with leaders under pressure to deliver both efficiency and innovation.

Real-world AI, not CES theater

While the CES show floor leans toward futurism, Monks is intentionally positioning its presence as a counterweight—focused on application rather than aspiration.

“Through LiveVision and Monks.Flow, we’re taking intelligent automation to the edge of the broadcast pipeline,” said Nikki Gifford, Chief Operating Officer of Monks Technology Services. “We aren’t just showing what’s possible; we’re providing the blueprint for how brands can win in real time.”

That distinction matters. Many AI platforms promise automation. Far fewer demonstrate how it works under real-world constraints like latency, infrastructure cost, and labor efficiency—especially in high-volume media environments.

LiveVision and Flow: AI at operational scale

At the CES Foundry, Monks is consolidating its story into a single demonstration hub (Booth #FT-11), bringing together its technology and marketing capabilities.

A centerpiece is Monks LiveVision, a near real-time AI video understanding pipeline. Designed to operate at the edge of the broadcast workflow, LiveVision analyzes video content as it’s created and distributed—enabling faster creative decisioning, more efficient scaling, and reduced infrastructure overhead.

Alongside it is an interactive Monks.Flow demo, focused on how live cultural signals inform content creation. Rather than relying on historical insights, Flow uses real-time data to guide creative output dynamically—an approach that aligns more closely with how modern platforms and audiences behave.

On stage: cutting through AI noise

Monks’ thought leadership push is just as deliberate as its demos. Company leaders will appear on stage throughout CES, framing AI not as a creative threat, but as an economic and operational unlock.

Highlights include:

• AI Unleashed: Creativity That Inspires and Stays Human – A C Space session featuring Sir Martin Sorrell alongside leaders from Amazon Ads and Leonardo.Ai, focused on how technical infrastructure enables better storytelling.

• How to Transform the Economics of Advertising with AI – A deep-dive with executives from Adobe, T-Mobile, and Meta, outlining what Monks calls the “definitive playbook” for modern marketing economics.

• Inside the AI-Native Enterprise – A Foundry session with leaders from NVIDIA, AWS, and Leonardo.Ai, mapping the shift from AI pilots to fully operational creative systems.

• 25 Minutes of AI: Live from Las Vegas – The first live edition of Monks’ digital series, offering a grounded, case-driven take on AI developments, translated into more than 150 languages in real time.

Why Monks’ CES bet matters

CES 2026 arrives at a moment when AI fatigue is real—and skepticism is rising. Enterprises are no longer impressed by generative tricks; they want evidence of durable advantage.

Monks is betting that the next competitive divide won’t be about who uses AI, but who operationalizes it best. By centering its CES presence on systems, workflows, and economics, the company is making a broader claim: that AI’s real value lies not in creativity alone, but in how organizations are structured to deploy it at scale.

In a year where discernment may finally replace novelty, that message could resonate far beyond Las Vegas.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

In a beauty market where authenticity matters as much as performance, KISS Colors & Care is betting on earned media and cultural storytelling to fuel its next phase of growth. The textured hair care brand has named 5WPR—one of the largest independently owned PR firms in the U.S.—as its Agency of Record, tasking the firm with elevating brand visibility, cultural relevance, and retail momentum.

The move reflects a broader shift in beauty and consumer brands toward PR strategies that do more than launch products. Increasingly, brands are using earned media to build trust, sustain community engagement, and reinforce category leadership—especially in culturally rooted segments like textured hair.

Why this partnership matters now

Textured hair care is one of the most competitive and culturally nuanced categories in beauty. While the market continues to grow, consumers are quick to spot brands that treat texture as a trend rather than a lived experience. That reality puts pressure on marketing teams to align messaging, media presence, and community engagement with real credibility.

For KISS Colors & Care, which has more than 30 years of heritage serving coily, curly, and wavy hair consumers, the partnership with 5WPR is designed to ensure its story keeps pace with its expanding footprint.

Rather than focusing solely on product launches, the engagement emphasizes strategic storytelling, high-impact earned media, and media-driven brand moments—all aimed at supporting long-term growth across hair care, color, and accessories.

A PR-led approach to brand and retail growth

As Agency of Record, 5WPR will lead KISS Colors & Care’s earned media strategy across beauty, lifestyle, and trade outlets, with a mandate that extends beyond visibility.

According to the companies, the agency will focus on:

• Driving product discovery through earned media

• Building stylist advocacy and spokesperson visibility

• Developing media-forward events and strategic partnerships

• Supporting awards initiatives that highlight category leadership

Critically, these efforts will be aligned with retail priorities and timelines, reflecting how PR is increasingly expected to support sell-through, not just awareness. In today’s omnichannel beauty environment, earned media often plays a key role in shaping retailer confidence and influencing purchase decisions before a consumer ever reaches the shelf.

From launches to lived experience

For KISS Colors & Care, the partnership is as much about narrative as it is about scale. The brand has consistently positioned itself around accessible, high-performing solutions for textured hair—but leadership says the next chapter requires deeper cultural resonance.

“As KISS Colors & Care continues to evolve, we’re excited to partner with 5WPR to help bring our brand story to life in new and meaningful ways,” said Karonda Cook, Head of Global Marketing at KISS Colors & Care. “This partnership allows us to engage consumers with greater intention and authenticity, extending beyond product launches to honor textured hair not as a trend, but as a lived experience and powerful form of self-expression.”

That distinction matters in a category where consumers expect brands to reflect their realities—not simply market to them. It also raises the bar for PR execution, shifting the focus from coverage volume to cultural impact.

The growing role of earned media in beauty marketing

The appointment comes at a time when beauty brands are re-evaluating how they allocate marketing budgets. With paid social becoming more expensive and less predictable, earned media is regaining strategic importance—particularly for brands seeking credibility and longevity.

For textured hair brands, earned media plays an outsized role. Coverage in trusted beauty, lifestyle, and trade publications often serves as third-party validation, influencing not just consumers but also stylists, retailers, and industry gatekeepers.

By integrating PR tightly into its go-to-market strategy, KISS Colors & Care is aligning with a growing industry trend: treating communications as a growth engine, not a support function.

What 5WPR brings to the table

5WPR’s scale and experience across consumer, lifestyle, and retail-focused brands position it well for this type of mandate. The firm’s role will include shaping media narratives that balance innovation, performance, and cultural relevance, while ensuring consistent visibility across key moments throughout the year.

In practice, that means fewer one-off announcements and more sustained storytelling—an approach increasingly favored by brands looking to build equity over time rather than chase short-term buzz.

The partnership also underscores the continued relevance of independent agencies in a landscape dominated by holding companies. For brands like KISS Colors & Care, independence can translate into closer collaboration, faster decision-making, and a more tailored approach to category-specific challenges.

Implications for the textured hair category

Beyond the two companies involved, the deal highlights how competitive the textured hair space has become. As more brands enter the market, differentiation hinges less on claims and more on credibility, consistency, and cultural fluency.

PR strategies that connect innovation to real consumer experiences—and do so across earned channels—are increasingly central to that differentiation. For established brands, the challenge is staying relevant without losing authenticity. For newer entrants, it’s proving they belong.

KISS Colors & Care’s decision to invest in a comprehensive earned media strategy suggests that even heritage brands see PR as essential to staying competitive in a fast-evolving beauty landscape.

The bigger picture

At its core, the 5WPR–KISS Colors & Care partnership reflects a simple truth: in culturally driven categories, growth depends on trust as much as reach. Earned media, when done well, sits at the intersection of both.

As beauty brands continue to navigate shifting consumer expectations, retailer dynamics, and rising acquisition costs, partnerships like this point to a future where PR is fully embedded in brand strategy—not layered on after the fact.

For KISS Colors & Care, the next phase isn’t just about expanding distribution or launching new products. It’s about reinforcing leadership in textured hair by showing up consistently, authentically, and with intention—everywhere the conversation happens.

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