The self-serve beta for ChatGPT ads is available for advertisers in the US. The options available are basic, but it's still interesting.

Inspired Taste surveyed 2,008 Americans: home cooks are 300% more likely to use food blogs than AI for recipes, and 125% more likely to reach for a cookbook.

Sales, marketing and CRM startups raised $3.7 billion globally in early 2026, with AI deals dominating as venture funding holds near the $8 billion annual mark.

Rakuten Rewards releases a TypeScript SDK on GitHub for browser extensions to detect affiliate sessions and stand down, as Honey quietly returns to its network.

Spotify launched a beta tool on May 7 that lets AI agents like Claude Code generate and save private personal podcasts to user libraries across 2,000 devices.

After two U.S. jury verdicts fining Meta $379.2M for child harm, Andy Stone issued a statement that senators and legal critics called defiant and misleading.

IAB Spain's 2026 CTV study finds 34.3 million users, 175 million euros in ad spend, and measurement gaps that are still slowing advertiser confidence in Spain.

Stater Bros. partners with In-Store Marketplace and Mood Media to launch programmatic audio across 165 stores, with digital screens planned for later in 2026.

Rakuten and impact.com on April 28 merged affiliate tech, shopper data and managed services in one performance marketing ecosystem via a new strategic alliance.

Urban VPN's in-house WireGuard protocol Urban LinkX claims 5x faster connections in lab tests while Protocol Control lets users switch VPN protocols in-app.

The Trade Desk posted $689 million in Q1 2026 revenue on May 7, beating estimates but missing Q2 guidance and triggering a William Blair downgrade on Friday.

A May 2026 study finds Global Privacy Control can partly reduce EU cookie consent banners, but regulators must first clarify how the GPC signal maps to GDPR.

A CTV publisher passed invalid UID2 tokens for three months. The Trade Desk never flagged the errors, raising questions about UID2 oversight and governance.

Amazon brought Alexa+ to Bose speakers on May 5, expanding its AI assistant beyond Echo devices and offering the feature free for Prime members in the U.S.

JCDecaux Q1 2026 revenue rose 2.6% to 880.6 million euros as programmatic DOOH grew 27.2%, reaching 10.5% of digital revenue despite Middle East headwinds.

Chrome for Android adds approximate location sharing, giving users a middle-ground privacy option between full location access and denial for website requests.

Google launched Partial SDF Upload for Display & Video 360, letting advertisers update line items with far fewer than the standard 120-plus columns required.

Magnite earned $4.4M net income in Q1 2026 as CTV crossed 51% of contribution ex-TAC for first time, with 30% year-over-year growth in streaming advertising.

LinkedIn this month launched a global agency certification requiring Business Manager, invoicing, and Marketing Academy completions to validate B2B ads expertise.

Google sales reps send unsolicited commercial emails to advertisers without a CAN-SPAM-compliant opt-out, a specialist publicly alleges on LinkedIn in 2026.