The Digiday Podcast

Apple has reminded ad tech how much power the browser holds. Ad tech’s reaction: Get out of the browser.

With iOS 27, Apple’s Safari browser has begun blocking domains tied to identity resolution providers, such as The Trade Desk and ID5, that link people’s browsing to their email addresses. In response, ad tech firms and IAB Tech Lab are pushing to move ad calls server-side, including through the latter organization’s Trusted Server technology, which would limit the browser’s control over ad tech firms’ actions.

Meanwhile, the remedies ruling in Google’s ad tech antitrust trial has given Prebid an opening to flip the programmatic auction. Instead of Google’s ad server getting final say on the winning bid, Google’s ad exchange would have to bid into Prebid’s server.

But is the server-side shift a long-term solution? And is it the right one? Digiday’s executive editor of news Seb Joseph and senior ad tech reporter Ronan Shields joined the Digiday Podcast to hash out ad tech’s Game of Thrones amid the server-side shift.

Indie agencies have client ad dollars to spend, but demand side platforms don’t seem eager to take said dollars. At least, that’s the sentiment coming from indie agencies as of late. Indies say they're fed up with DSP fees, barriers to direct access and are starting to question the value of the platforms. At the same time, AI agents promise to automate media buying and negotiations. The question is whether DSPs could lose their grip on the market. Digiday's senior marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio, unpack the agency backlash and what comes next for ad tech.

Publishers’ hemming and hawing over the Google Zero post-search era has reached a fever pitch. Now, they’re finally doing something about it. The publishing industry has been forced to reckon with declining referral traffic from Google as the tech behemoth prioritizes its AI-powered search, or AI Overviews. Companies like Axios, The Verge and Time have starting sprouting greenshoots, turning gripes into game plans to survive in what could best be described as a search-pocalypse. Senior media reporter at Digiday Sara Guaglione and senior media editor Jessica Davies joined a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast to discuss the greenshoots that seem the most promising.

Gone are the days of the one-size-fits all influencer deal. On one hand, creators are being treated like programmatic buys, measured on performance and scale. On the other hand, mega creators are locking down Hollywood-style brand integrations and long term equity deals. In this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Portal A co-founder and president Zach Blume breaks down what's behind the creator economy bifurcation.

Is Omnicom to the ad industry what The Brooklyn Nets are to basketball? Or maybe Omnicom is more like Blanche Devereaux of The Golden Girls. Depends on who you ask. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, executive editor of news Seb Joseph and senior editor, media buying and planning Michael Burgi took a look at the current ad agency landscape, including Omnicom's IPG takeover, WPP's attempted comeback, Publicis dominance and Dentsu's comeup, through the lens of sports analogies and The Golden Girls.

OpenAI has billion-dollar goals for its ChatGPT ads by the end of this year. Just seven months after its initial launch, OpenAI’s ad business is running at a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate. By the end of the year, the tech company projects its ads business will rake in $.25 billion in ad revenue. That projection surges to $100 billion by 2030. The question is: Can OpenAI woo advertisers enough to make good on those ambitions?

Semafor technically had had a head of video before Adam Banicki stepped into the role this summer. But the role has changed with Banicki’s appointment. Instead of being strictly a newsroom role, Banicki’s position spans the editorial and business sides of Semafor.
“I feel like I have like a really fun job where I get to talk to Ben [Smith, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor] every day about all the things that are going on in the newsroom, but then taking back a lot of that almost like programming to the commercial side and saying like, ’What can we do with this? How do we build out a revenue model?’” Banicki said during a live recording of the Digiday Podcast on Sept. 16 at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Key Biscayne, Florida.
As Semafor’s head of video, Banicki reports directly to Smith but “with a dotted line to Rachel Oppenheim, our chief commercial officer,” he said. In addition to developing video programming ideas with Semafor’s newsroom, he collaborates with its commercial staff.
“My first three months, I think, was really getting involved in the commercial side, helping shaping go-to-market decks, thinking about pricing strategy, joining kickoff calls to help close deals that were tied to video,” said Banicki.
Soon his day-to-day duties will likely skew more toward video production. In October, Semafor will launch a new show focused on technology and hosted by its tech editor Reed Albergotti. That will bring Semafor’s portfolio to four shows, with plans to develop a daily news show “very soon,” said Banicki.

Ads are coming for smart refrigerator screens, car dashboards and AI search results. So what happens when everything becomes ad inventory? On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, hosts Tim Peterson and Kimeko McCoy dig into how far advertising can expand before the business of selling attention starts to break down.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against Amazon’s on-platform search advertising business appears to be a tempest in a teapot. Amazon’s alleged opaque ad auction dynamics aren’t exactly beyond the pale when it comes to what ad buyers experience across platforms and the programmatic ad marketplace today. In this week’s episode, Digiday executive editor of news Seb Joseph joined the show to break down how ad buyers are reacting the Amazon-FTC case, what the situation reveals about modern ad auctions and how AI-powered ad platforms stand to remove even more transparency and control from ad buyers.

A lot can happen in a few months. A few months ago, NBCUniversal was secure within Comcast, LiveRamp was an independent ad tech company, Hank Green was unbesmirched, and publishers’ complaints about Google were simply that.

Then this summer happened.

In this week’s Digiday Podcast episode, hosts Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson recap the season’s biggest developments in the media and marketing industries and the questions they raise for the final stretch of 2026.

Google’s AI crawlers are eating away at publisher traffic by serving answers directly in search, but blocking them comes with risks. Digiday media reporter Sara Guaglione and executive editor of news Seb Joseph join this episode of the Digiday Podcast to break down what publishers actually stand to lose in the zero-click era—a core theme at the upcoming Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami this September.

Agencies are pushing AI deeper into everyday work while still figuring out what should and shouldn't be automated. Digiday caught up with agency leaders and early-career marketers about AI, automation and where they're drawing the line.

Butler/Till is quickly moving its AI agent media buying work from experimentation to implementation across more clients, platforms and channels. Controls, however, look different from client-to-client and channel to channel. In this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Scott Ensign, chief strategy officer at Butler/Till, joins the Digiday Podcast to discuss how the agency is putting agentic media buying into practice.

Inventory access has become a tug-of-war between agencies and ad tech companies. In this episode, Matt Adams, global CEO of Stagwell Media Platform, joins the Digiday Podcast to talk about why Stagwell is building its own inventory marketplace and what agencies hope to gain by moving closer to supply.

The IAB has a new acronym—the RMT, short for Redefining Media Types Standard. But this acronym could actually matter. In this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Jamie Finstein, vp of media center at the IAB, unpacks what the proposed framework means for advertisers, agencies and media buying.

As AI takes on more repetitive marketing tasks, agencies are being forced to rethink what they’re selling. Omnicom Media Group North America CEO Ralph Pardo joins Digiday from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to talk about the future of agency talent, the rise of “capability companies” and why human judgment still matters.

For a channel expected to rake in $5.3 billion between 2026 and 2030, a logo on a jersey isn't enough anymore. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Ally Bank CMO Andrea Brimmer breaks down the anatomy of a sports marketing deal and why emerging media is Ally's next bet.

Is there a difference between a creator and an influencer. If so, what’s the difference and why does it matter to marketers? On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Digiday staffers debate the topic.

Creators are no longer a media channel or transaction. It’s an entirely new marketing model, at least that’s what the infrastructure behind Unilever’s creator strategy indicates. In this episode, Digiday catches up with Selina Sykes, global vp of digital, social and Al transformation at Unilever’s Beauty and Wellbeing, to learn about its scale and automation.

At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week, Meta announced a slew of even more automated marketing tools, further lowering the barrier to entry for advertisers to manage campaigns directly. Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s head of global business group, joins this episode of the Digiday podcast to talk about how that does and doesn't change the agency-platform relationship.