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Happy October, people. This is AI, Tech & Money. I’m Kendra Barnett, writing this week from Miami.
I’m in the Magic City for the inaugural Jupiter Festival, a media-slash-entertainment-slash-advertising-slash-sports conference started by Cannes Lions alum William Mellis and former CMO of Fox Sports Media Group Eric Markgraf, with backing from Art Basel parent MCH Group, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Boston Consulting Group.
On the ground, the event feels like a flashy, well-funded—if overly ambitious—push to assert its rightful place in the increasingly crowded conference circuit. Find a braindump with some of my initial impressions in the Deep Learning section below, and expect a more comprehensive recap from ADWEEK in the days to come after I chat with Mellis and Markgraf about how the three-and-a-half day event fared in its first iteration.
Back in New York, ADWEEK hosted some of the most influential leaders from every corner of the industry at ADWEEK House: Advertising HQ this week. My newsroom colleagues also covered Advertising Week, which descended on The Penn District for the fourth consecutive year.
While some years are sleepier than others, adland heavyweights this time round used the event as a launchpad for major announcements: TikTok said it’s extending its advertising reach off-platform in the U.S. and unveiled a new AI shopping agent, while Meta said it’s testing an AI assistant that can plan and create campaigns, change targeting and budgets, and remember past campaigns.
Keep scrolling for some unfiltered thoughts on the conversations defining both Jupiter Festival and Advertising Week New York this year.
Outside of the conference halls this week, Paramount’s highly anticipated $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery closed Tuesday. Now come the layoffs, as my colleague Mark Mwachiro reported. Plus, OpenAI is introducing visual ads to ChatGPT, Disney agreed to license Disney+ titles to Netflix, and Google sparred with the DOJ over the terms of a final judgment in the historic antitrust case over its adtech dominance.
What a week!
The Top Line
- One Walmart exec spells out the retailer’s vision for taking over TV advertising.
- OpenAI is testing brand suitability controls with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science.
- TikTok’s new AI shopping assistant lets users automate purchases directly from brands; meanwhile, TikTok’s off-platform ads biz comes to the U.S.
The Quant
Google still owns the first click in searches about local businesses, but rarely the last one. Among U.S. consumers surveyed, 52% began their most recent local business search on Google Search, and another 9% on Google Maps, according to recent BrightLocal data. For searches that follow, however, Google Search dips to 19%, behind Google Maps (24%) and social media (22%). Some three-quarters of consumers used more than one channel. Over the full journey, 30% turned to social, 23% to AI tools, and 19% to review sites.
Deep Learning: Across Jupiter Festival and Advertising Week, Agentic Ads and the Health of the Open Web Grabbed the Spotlight
The crowded marketing and media conference circuit has a new kid on the block: Jupiter Festival Miami, which this week made its entrance at the Miami Beach Convention Center.
The event, looking for its footing, feels in many ways like an ambitious push to win some of the mindshare—and big money—that Possible has secured for itself under the oversight of Beyond Ordinary Events and Christian Muche.
I arrived in Miami midday Tuesday and checked into my hotel room to discover what can only be called an abundance of Jupiter-branded welcome swag: a canvas tote bag, a flat-brimmed hat, an Owala water bottle, and even a cookie (yes, a cookie with an icing-emblazoned logo). Signs in the hotel lobby advertised a YouTube-sponsored Jupiter Festival rooftop happy hour.
Programming kicked off Tuesday evening with a performance by Third Eye Blind, who, three decades after signing their first contract with Elektra Records in 1996, are miraculously still touring. Fun! I opted instead for a flyby at the rooftop of the 1 Hotel to talk shop with the co-founders of audience discovery upstart Chronicle Media, and a late-night pitstop for froyo (yes, the TikTokification of New York’s froyo resurgence has gotten to me).
After a coffee chat with two execs from The New York Times advertising team, I made my way over to the convention center Wednesday mid-morning, where the scene was, well, not a scene. The event entrance was subtly marked, and I spent about 10 minutes traversing the building’s perimeter and sweating through my makeup to find it.
Once inside, the branding was much bolder, but there was no crowd to match. An emcee in the cavernous, windowless convention hall welcomed a sparse handful of coffee-sippers who mulled about aimlessly. A jazz duet played to an empty seating area.
Luckily, a few hours later, the crowd was fuller, though, as one attendee told me, the event would have felt buzzier had the venue been “half the size.” A podcasting setup in the heart of the action was busy recording, attendees admired a pop-up exhibition of athlete portraits from artist Justyn Farano, and I saw a smattering of street-style interviews with creators on the conference floor.
Meanwhile, across three stages, people gathered to see execs from top entertainment, media, sports, and advertising companies opine on creators’ impact on brands’ visibility in LLMs, ad innovation in live sports, the AI-ification of creative, and building fandoms sans sports rights ownership. In the end, some sessions were standing-room only.
A rooftop happy hour at the Unframed Hotel across the street on Wednesday was bustling and boisterous. Over cocktails and cilantro-sprinkled oysters, attendees reflected on the changing dynamics of agency-brand relationships and the evolving shape of media. Michael Kassan’s name came up. A drone captured the whole thing from above, and one attendee sported a baseball cap emblazoned with the tagline “Bitcoin to the moon.” Miami, baby.
The event’s not over yet, but in conversations I’ve had so far at Jupiter Festival Miami, a few themes have asserted themselves:
- As AI systems continue to gobble up publisher traffic, the open web is at a critical juncture. Off-platform ad extension and subscription strategies are becoming more important. Meanwhile, the value of advertising on the open web—rather than playing solely within the walled gardens—is coming under increasing scrutiny.
- We are still in the early innings of mastering AI visibility. Execs I spoke to expressed varying opinions about where in the stack GEO tools should plug in, and what kinds of signals they should consider reliable; to what extent, for example, can synthetic data about user prompts capture true intent? Nonetheless, they agreed that discovery is an evolved beast; the funnel is dead, and clicks don’t really matter. What matters is getting recommended in AI answers.
- Agentic media buying is real but not yet scaled. The leader of one adtech company told me that their platform will allow advertisers to buy in any way they like, including with agents via an MCP plug-in—but that they are not observing many requests coming through those pipes today.
- The challenge of cross-platform measurement has yet to be solved. Deduplication remains a challenge, and the industry wants a true apples-to-apples measuring stick. Fragmentation across media environments and the adoption of new kinds of marketing, like creator collaborations, are only compounding the picture. As one ad industry insider put it to me, “How do you value a 20-minute YouTube integration compared to a 30-second Super Bowl ad?”
- The hype around sports, and the growing investment in women’s sports, shows no signs of slowing. (In fact, Deloitte projects the category will top $3 billion in revenue this year, up 25% from 2025.)
- Personal agents are officially mainstream. Yes, people—and even people’s moms—are using Meta’s Muse.
About 1,200 miles north, the chatter at Advertising Week New York hit some similar notes. I touched base with ADWEEK editor in chief Ryan Joe, senior media reporter Mark Stenberg, and AI reporter Trishla Ostwal for their quick and dirty downloads of what they heard on the ground this week. Here’s what they told me:
- Demand-side platforms may be facing an existential reality: If an advertiser can now simply tap an AI agent to find suitable inventory and buy media on their behalf, what’s the purpose of a middleman?
- On the other side of transaction dynamics, supply-side platforms are reasserting their relevance as inventory curation vehicles.
- Retail media is still booming; in September, both McDonald’s and Delta unveiled plans to launch their own media networks, following giants like Walmart, Amazon, Target, United, PayPal, and The Home Depot. The resounding idea? It’s not enough to control one piece of the puzzle—today, retail and commerce businesses feel the need to own both the data and the inventory to succeed.
- Brand safety tools will need to adapt to AI answer engines. Industry leaders DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science are already working with OpenAI to figure it out.
- The value of synthetic data is a theme that popped at both Jupiter Festival and Advertising Week New York. One industry insider told Ryan that synthetic audiences in particular can prove valuable for informing some activations, but shouldn’t be counted on to inform the centerpieces of any big campaign.
- The resurgence continues for physical formats like in-person and out-of-home in light of sliding publisher traffic and declining user trust. Digital out-of-home is a particular bright spot.
- Places where advertisers can secure guaranteed attention, like in-game ads and pre-theatrical ads, are in high demand.
- There’s a push to get connected TV to look more like mobile, with personalization all the way through to the operating system itself.
What People Are Saying
Across two cities and two very distinct vibes this week, one shared anxiety made itself known. As AI reconfigures how media gets found, bought, and measured, nearly every player in the ecosystem is scrambling to prove they still deserve a seat at the table.
Deals, Deals, Deals
- Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery closed; the combined company is now called Skydance. It’s a $110 billion deal carrying about $82 billion in debt.
- Morning Brew snapped up Express Checkout, a creator-centric media property covering the consumer packaged goods space; terms were undisclosed.
- Social media agency Samy bought Get Engaged, a U.S. social and influencer marketing agency in a deal valued in the “low nine figures.”
- Zeta Global picked up identity and data firm Digital Audience for an undisclosed sum.
- Agentic advertising startup PubX bought media quality company Compliant and announced a $5 million Series A.
- OpenAI is reportedly in talks with BlackRock and investors from the United Arab Emirates to anchor its $30 billion round at about a $1.4 trillion valuation.
Revolving Door
- Paramount CEO David Ellison named Ynon Kreiz co-CEO as part of the entertainment giant’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
- The head of Albertsons’ retail media network, Brian Monahan, exited the company abruptly.
- Jon Cook is stepping down as global CEO of VML and WPP Creative after 30-plus years; he’ll be succeeded by North America CEO Eric Campbell.
- Stephan Loerke will step down as CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers next year after 23 years.
- The newly formed Stagwell Media, replacing the Assembly brand, will be run by Liz Rutgersson.
- Pinterest’s new CFO is former Amazon finance chief for entertainment and advertising James Dibbo. He replaces Julia Brau Donnelly.
- Spotify appointed LinkedIn alum Heidi Andersen as its new SVP of advertising.
- Microsoft EVP and former LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky will leave the tech company at the end of this year.
- John Rogers left Roku to run global publisher development at the supply-side platform OpenX.
- New York Post CEO and publisher Sean Giancola is set to depart.
- Search tech company Ad.net hired Vincent Meyer as CEO; he was most recently Taboola’s global head of data and partnerships. Current CEO and founder Jon Waterman will transition to vice chairman.
- Smartly hired former Tala CTO and Netflix tech alum Kelly Uphoff as CTO.
