Food Fight: A tasty snack of the latest ad and marketing news.

by | Feb 19, 2026 | Daily Traffic

Finger getting ready to push a computer key that reads enter to win

New tricks for dance videos, Winter Olympics sell-out (besides the curling team), Gemini learns how to sing, and much more in today's BCS food fight.

Agency Moves & Holding Company Restructuring

Acadia Returns Media Rebates to Clients — Independent agency Acadia paid 53 clients their share of six-figure publisher rebates, launching a campaign against the industry's "Silent Rebate Economy" it pegs at $40B annually. Sources: LBBOnline

WPP Consolidating Creative Agencies — WPP will merge Ogilvy, VML, and AKQA under a single "WPP Creative" brand, with job cuts expected. New CEO Cindy Rose details the plan Feb. 26. Sources: MediaPost 

McCann Wins Kroger Creative AOR — Kroger picked McCann as its new creative agency of record, replacing DDB New York and keeping ~$391M in ad spend under the Omnicom umbrella. Sources: Archyde

Media, Measurement & Audiences

Nielsen: TV Viewing Hits 12-Month High in January — U.S. TV viewing rose 3.7% over December, fueled by a 49% cable sports surge (ESPN up 82% from CFP coverage), returning dramas, and cold weather. Streaming held a 47% share. Sources: Media Play News · Hollywood Reporter

Roku Hires Snap/Meta Vet Patrick Harris — Roku named Patrick Harris (ex-Snap, ex-Meta) as SVP Global Media Revenue as its ad-driven platform revenue hit a record $4.15B in 2025. Sources: Deadline · Campaign Live

Only 8% of Americans Think They Should Pay for News — Pew Research found 45% believe advertisers should fund journalism, while keyword blocking now affects 30% of U.S. news inventory. Two-thirds of Americans have stopped getting news from a specific source. Sources: WARC

Milano Cortina 2026 Ad Sales Set Records — NBCU sold out Winter Olympics inventory early, with 70–75% of Super Bowl advertisers also running in the Games. Luxury brands like Moncler, Ralph Lauren, and Armani are treating the slopes as a brand runway. Sources: Creative Bloq · iSpot

Regulation & Industry Policy

Media Matters Fights FTC Advertiser Boycott Probe — Media Matters filed appellate briefs arguing the FTC's investigation into alleged coordinated advertiser boycotts of right-wing media is a retaliatory First Amendment violation. The FTC is probing 16+ organizations including IAS, IAB, and WFA. Sources: MediaPost Columbia Global Freedom of Expression

DEI Investment Declining Across Advertising — Ad Age reports diversity spending is quietly being walked back, with Black agency leaders flagging a "quiet phase" of commitment reversals and continued representation gaps in Super Bowl advertising.

AI & Technology in Marketing

Google Adds AI Music Generation to Gemini — Google launched Lyria 3 in the Gemini app, letting 750M+ users create 30-second songs from text or photos with SynthID watermarking. The move pressures AI music startups like Suno. Sources: TechCrunch · Music Ally

Taboola Hires Amazon/NBCU Exec as CBO — Taboola tapped Krishan Bhatia (ex-Amazon, ex-NBCU) as Chief Business Officer to lead its AI, CTV, and performance advertising push. Sources: Globe Newswire via Manila Times

B2B Buyers Now Expect B2C-Style Digital Experiences — EMARKETER reports millennials and Gen Z now make up 71% of B2B buyers; AI tools are the top investment priority for 2026, while video and display gain share at the expense of search. Sources: EMARKETER

Brand Strategy & Marketing Trends

Brand Marketing Is the #1 Budget Priority — A Digiday survey found 73% of marketers are increasing brand marketing spend in 2026, making it the top priority even as revenue optimism has cooled from last year. Sources: Digiday via Spicy Creator Tips

America250 Driving Brand Campaigns — With the U.S. semiquincentennial building toward July 4, brands from Chevrolet to Brand USA are launching themed campaigns, plus a Gen Z startup competition with $25K prizes. Sources: Brand USA · American Legion

Content Loyalty Programs: The Next UGC — Ogilvy says brands are rewarding customers with perks for posting brand content on social. A Nestlé Milo pilot in Vietnam recruited 2,600 creators and generated 78M video views. Sources: WARC

2026 Brand Identity Trends — Analysts highlight adaptive minimalist visual systems, employer branding as a core strategy, and authenticity-through-action as the defining identity themes for 2026. Sources:  The Branding Journal

Content Creation & PR Tactics

Press Releases Evolve as Local SEO & AI Visibility Tools — Structured, keyword-aligned press releases now function as multi-channel digital assets for local brand authority, search indexing, and AI discoverability. Sources: EIN Presswire

Dance-Style Video & Animation Edits Gain Brand Traction — Short-form dance- and animation-inspired video formats continue to grow as a storytelling tool that blends entertainment with marketing. Sources: EIN Presswire

About Mike Bawden
Mike is a marketing and branding professional with over 40 years of experience. Beginning in his family's advertising agency, he later purchased the company and became its CEO.

Today, he serves as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Brand Strategy for TAG, a leading Midwest agency specializing in advertising, marketing,  branding, and digital promotion. He has also taught marketing and advertising at area universities and lectured around the world on branding, marketing, and public relations.

Food Fight: Our wrap-up of current ad and marketing news.

by | Feb 18, 2026 | Daily Traffic

Finger getting ready to push a computer key that reads enter to win

Ads in AI, the Warner Bros. tug-o-war, Super Bowl ad hangover, nostalgia in marketing, social media's decline, and a 9 year-old pens a spy story. All in today's "food fight."

Here's your quick-hit rundown, grouped by theme, with links to dig deeper.

AI Comes to the Ad Platform: ChatGPT, Meta & Manus

OpenAI officially launches ads in ChatGPT. The company began testing sponsored content on Feb. 9 for free-tier and Go users in the U.S., charging a premium $60 CPM with a $200K minimum buy — paid tiers remain ad-free. (TechCrunch)

Albertsons, Target, and Williams-Sonoma join the ChatGPT ad pilot. The retailers are among the first brands testing conversational ad placements inside ChatGPT alongside earlier participants Adobe, Audible, and HelloFresh. (Digital Commerce 360)

Meta integrates Manus AI into Ads Manager. Following its $2B acquisition, Meta is rolling out Manus as an in-platform AI assistant that automates reporting, audience research, and campaign analysis for advertisers. (MediaPost)

Manus AI agents launch on Telegram, WhatsApp next. Beyond Ads Manager, Meta is pushing Manus into messaging apps — signaling a broader consumer-facing AI agent strategy. (Silicon Republic)

China pushes back on the Meta-Manus deal. While U.S. regulators approved the acquisition, Chinese authorities raised objections, adding geopolitical complexity for brands working within Meta's AI ecosystem. (Global Finance Magazine)

Microsoft Advertising ships February product updates. New features include an enhanced Audience Ads preview hub and general availability of customer acquisition goals for Performance Max campaigns. (Microsoft Advertising Blog)

Media M&A: The Warner Bros. Bidding War

WBD reopens deal talks with Paramount after Netflix grants a 7-day waiver. Warner Bros. Discovery will hear Paramount Skydance's "best and final" offer while its board continues to unanimously recommend the $83B Netflix deal — a shareholder vote is set for March 20. (CNBC)

eMarketer: A Netflix-WBD deal could reshape the ad market. Analysts forecast that combining Netflix and HBO Max would grow Netflix's CTV ad revenue 29% to $3.41B by 2027, pulling dollars primarily from linear TV. (TheWrap)

Super Bowl LX: The Ad Industry's Biggest Night, Still Reverberating

Post-game ad reviews continue to dominate the trade press. Google Gemini's "New Home" spot earned the top grade from Kellogg's annual panel, Levi's "Backstory" (a parade of iconic backsides set to James Brown) was the fan favorite, and Anthropic's anti-ad Claude campaign was called the boldest challenger play. (CBS News)

AI brands outnumbered beer and auto ads combined. Seven AI platform ads aired during the game — more than traditional Super Bowl staples — with ai.com generating 9.1x the engagement of the median spot. (EDO)

Nostalgia: Marketing's Most Powerful (and Underused) Emotion

Reddit identifies nostalgia-driven storytelling as a top brand engagement trend for 2026. The platform highlighted nostalgia, UGC social proof, niche-inspired campaigns, and "unfolding" campaigns as the four key patterns driving results. (Social Media Today)

Kantar data shows nostalgic ads see a +15 point increase in enjoyment and a +13 point higher likelihood of going viral — yet fewer than 3% of ads in Kantar's 250,000+ database use nostalgia at all. (Kantar)

The neuroscience behind nostalgia in marketing. Research from iMotions explores how nostalgic cues trigger emotional engagement at a physiological level, making them a uniquely effective creative tool. (iMotions)

Academic research confirms the effect. A Portland State University honors thesis provides a rigorous literature review supporting nostalgia's measurable impact on brand recall, purchase intent, and emotional connection. (PDX Scholar)

Social Media & Platform Shifts

Social media ad spend declines despite improving ROI. A Keen Decision Systems analysis of $42B in media investment found social's share dropped from 18% to 17% in 2025, even as returns improved — suggesting brands are consolidating around fewer, better-performing platforms. (Portada)

Apple launches a video podcasting push to rival YouTube and Spotify. Apple Podcasts will add integrated video this spring with seamless audio-video switching, offline downloads, and dynamic ad insertion — a major bid to recapture creators as video now accounts for 40%+ of podcast consumption. (CNBC)

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Spotlight: Young Voices in Publishing

Nine-year-old Alexandru Palamariu launches Spy at the Airport. The Singapore-based author began writing his SPY adventure series at age 7; the book is now available on Amazon and other major platforms, with a school launch event scheduled for World Book Day in March. (EIN Presswire | YouTube trailer)

About Mike Bawden
Mike is a marketing and branding professional with over 40 years of experience. Beginning in his family's advertising agency, he later purchased the company and became its CEO.

Today, he serves as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Brand Strategy for TAG, a leading Midwest agency specializing in advertising, marketing,  branding, and digital promotion. He has also taught marketing and advertising at area universities and lectured around the world on branding, marketing, and public relations.

Food Fight: A wrap-up of current news from the worlds of marketing and advertising

by | Feb 16, 2026 | Daily Traffic

Finger getting ready to push a computer key that reads enter to win

It's been a wild stretch in the marketing and advertising world.

From billion-dollar corporate shakeups to AI tools that can't stop generating controversy, the last few days have served up no shortage of stories demanding your attention.

Here's your quick-hit rundown, grouped by theme, with links to dig deeper.

AI, Copyright, and the Fight Over Intellectual Property

ByteDance's new AI video generator, Seedance 2.0, launched on February 12 and immediately ignited a firestorm. Disney and Paramount both fired off cease-and-desist letters accusing ByteDance of enabling mass copyright infringement across franchises from Star Wars and Marvel to South Park and SpongeBob.

The Motion Picture Association, SAG-AFTRA, and the Human Artistry Campaign piled on, and ByteDance has now pledged to strengthen its safeguards. Read more at Variety

In a parallel move that's reshaping the ad landscape, OpenAI officially began testing ads inside ChatGPT on February 9 for users on its free and Go tiers. Ads appear at the bottom of responses at a premium $60 CPM, with early partners including Adobe, WPP, and Omnicom.

The rollout was immediately lampooned in Anthropic's Super Bowl ads, which satirized ad-supported chatbots with the tagline "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude." Read more at TechCrunch

Super Bowl LX Ad Fallout

Industry analysts are still dissecting Super Bowl LX's commercial breaks a week later, and the data tells a clear story: AI brands outspent traditional beer and auto advertisers for the first time, nostalgia-driven creative surged, and a record 102 celebrity appearances appeared across 39 ads.

Google's Gemini spot earned the top grade from the Kellogg panel, while Dunkin's star-studded throwback generated five times the median engagement. Read more at Marketing Dive

The biggest post-game story, however, belongs to Amazon's Ring.

Its Super Bowl ad showcasing an AI-powered "Search Party" feature for finding lost dogs was meant to be heartwarming, but it triggered a massive privacy backlash.

Within days, Ring terminated its planned partnership with police surveillance firm Flock Safety, the EFF called the feature a "surveillance nightmare," and Senator Ed Markey sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy demanding answers. Read more at Fortune

Agency Shakeups and Industry Forecasts

Dentsu dropped a bombshell last week: a record $2.18 billion net loss for fiscal 2025, driven by a massive goodwill impairment on its international operations.

CEO Hiroshi Igarashi is being replaced by Japan chief Takeshi Sano, dividends have been suspended for the first time in the company's history, and efforts to sell the international business have collapsed. Analysts say the result reflects the growing gap between Publicis's dominance and the rest of the holding company field. Read more at The Drum

Meanwhile, WPP Media's year-end forecast projects global ad revenue hit $1.14 trillion in 2025 (up 8.8%), with 7.1% growth expected in 2026.

The headline stat: commerce media has now surpassed total TV ad revenue for the first time, while TV's share of global spend continues its slow decline from 15.8% to a projected 13.9%. Read more at The Hollywood Reporter

Big Brand Earnings: A Cautious Look

L'Oréal reported 6% fourth-quarter sales growth, but the figure masked trouble in North Asia, where growth came in at just 0.6% versus a forecast of 5.6%.

U.S.-traded shares dropped nearly 8%, even as haircare and fragrance performed well in Europe and North America. CEO Nicolas Hieronimus said the company needs to be "cautious and humble" heading into 2026. Read more at FashionNetwork

Unilever told a similar story of cautious optimism. Profits edged up 4.6% in 2025, but the company warned that 2026 growth would land at the bottom of its target range. The cosmetics and packaged goods giant blamed their skepticism on their expectation that consumers will trade down to unbranded alternatives this year.

The update comes as CEO Fernando Fernandez works to reshape the company following the demerger of its Magnum Ice Cream division. Read more at Premium Beauty News

Platform Turbulence

X (formerly Twitter) went down again on Monday morning in a massive global outage, with over 40,000 error reports flooding Downdetector.

Users saw blank timelines and "Something went wrong" messages across both app and web. It's the platform's second major outage of 2026, coming just a month after a January disruption.

The problem underscores ongoing concerns about the stability of infrastructure under Elon Musk's ownership. Read more at Variety

Google quietly rolled out its February 2026 Discover Core Update on February 5, and the ripple effects are being felt across the publishing world.

The update prioritizes locally relevant content and penalizes clickbait, with some publishers reporting traffic swings of 20–35% in either direction. For marketers relying on organic discovery, this is a signal that topical depth and geographic relevance now carry serious weight. Read more at Ignite Visibility

Strategies and Tactics Worth Your Time

Pierre Herubel's latest newsletter identifies seven common marketing mistakes dragging down B2B growth in 2026. From relying solely on company LinkedIn pages (instead of personal brands) to the "publish and pray" trap of single-use content, Herubel contends that B2B marketers can do better.

Each mistake comes paired with a specific workflow to fix it. Read more at Pierre's Content Guides

Jonathan Martinez walks through how he built a ten-skill marketing team inside Claude using the platform's Skills feature. Martinez claims he turned the AI into a system that chains together campaign briefs, competitive intel, landing pages, and ad copy generation - all in a single prompt.

It's a practical blueprint for anyone looking to augment a lean marketing operation with AI. Read more at AI Marketing by jon4growth

Rachel Karten's Link in Bio newsletter profiles More Perfect Union's social strategy, exploring how a nonprofit newsroom became one of YouTube's fastest-growing channels. Their secret: prioritizing substance over trend-chasing.

The interview with Director of Audience Engagement, Georgia Parke, covers their carousel-driven Instagram growth, Shorts strategy, and the principle that relevance and substance beat polish every time. Read more at Link in Bio

And finally, Gabrielle Dubois makes a compelling case for replacing rigid SMART goals with DUMB goals — dream-driven, uplifting, method-friendly, and behavior-triggered.

The framework, originally from Brendon Burchard, prioritizes belief and directional alignment over rigid timelines. Dubois argues it's a more human way to approach both personal and professional ambitions in an over-optimized world. Read more at Le Secret Club

About Mike Bawden
Mike is a marketing and branding professional with over 40 years of experience. Beginning in his family's advertising agency, he later purchased the company and became its CEO.

Today, he serves as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Brand Strategy for TAG, a leading Midwest agency specializing in advertising, marketing,  branding, and digital promotion. He has also taught marketing and advertising at area universities and lectured around the world on branding, marketing, and public relations.