1 Creator Authority joins the LinkedIn Marketing Partner Program
The B2B-focused influencer agency — already running campaigns for SAP, Notion, Dropbox, HubSpot, Webflow, Upwork, Amazon, and Canva — is now an official LinkedIn partner. The context: B2B creator spend is up 171% YoY, and 87% of B2B buyers say they reference thought leaders before purchase. LinkedIn just turned creator marketing into infrastructure for B2B brands.
For mid-market B2B companies, this means a new distribution channel is opening up. Creator Authority's visibility in the LinkedIn ecosystem signals that individual creator partnerships are now a native feature of the platform, not an afterthought. If you're in B2B sales or marketing, your competitive set just expanded beyond agencies and in-house teams to include distributed creator networks.
2 OpenAI's ChatGPT ads pilot hits $100M ARR in 6 weeks
600+ advertisers in. Minimum spend dropped from ~$200K to ~$50K. Self-serve tools rolling out April. Only ~20% of eligible users see ads on a given day — meaning the ceiling here is enormous, and Google's $200B search-ads moat is getting its first real challenger.
This is the first credible threat to Google's search dominance in nearly two decades. ChatGPT already owns a significant slice of where people go to find information — and now it's monetizing that behavior directly. For agencies and brands, the question isn't whether to test ChatGPT ads; it's whether you can afford not to as search budgets flatten.
3 HubSpot Spring Spotlight: AEO + Prospecting Agent + 100 updates
HubSpot AEO surfaces the prompts your CRM customers actually use in ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity — and is being sold standalone at $50/month, no HubSpot subscription required. Prospecting Agent is hitting 2x industry-benchmark response rates in early customer data. SEO is now a CRM feature.
HubSpot just weaponized AI search data. By connecting ChatGPT/Gemini/Perplexity queries directly to your CRM, they're closing the loop between brand discovery (what people search for) and sales execution (what your reps pitch). The standalone AEO pricing is the tell — HubSpot knows this is a standalone moat, not just a feature bundled into their core product.
4 The Trade Desk + Pacvue + Skai unify 250+ commerce media partners
TTD's DSP becomes available inside Pacvue and Skai in Q3, merging upper-funnel CTV/audio with retail and search. After taking heat from buyers all year, TTD is leaning into open-web partnerships instead of fighting walled gardens head-on. Translation: the DSP is moving toward marketing OS.
For years, The Trade Desk positioned itself as the alternative to walled gardens. Now they're inside the walled gardens. This isn't defeat — it's evolution. By embedding their DSP in retail-first platforms like Pacvue and Skai, TTD becomes the invisible layer that powers omnichannel campaigns. It's a smarter moat: owning the infrastructure layer instead of fighting for the user relationship.
5 FTC settles with WPP, Publicis, and Dentsu over "brand safety" collusion
The agencies — alongside Omnicom and IPG — allegedly used trade associations to enforce common "Brand Safety Floor" standards starting in 2018. No fines. But sweeping behavioral restrictions on how they place digital ads going forward. The ad-buying playbook just got rewritten by regulators.
This isn't just a settlement; it's a regulatory redline. Agencies coordinated buyer behavior through trade bodies to standardize how they buy ads — locking smaller competitors out of the conversation. The FTC's willingness to settle without fines but with behavioral restrictions suggests they see the anti-competitive threat as structural, not criminal. Holding companies will be under constant scrutiny on ad-buying practices going forward.
6 IAB Tech Lab launches Programmatic Governance Council
$200B of US digital ad spend now trades programmatically. The council — Dentsu, Omnicom Media Group, WPP, Disney, Magnite, PubMatic, Amazon Ads, The Trade Desk, and more — will publish a transparency framework over 6-12 months. Self-regulation arrives right as the FTC is suing the same companies.
The Programmatic Governance Council is self-regulation arriving just in time to preempt aggressive government action. The same companies that just got dinged for collusion are now coordinating on transparency standards. This is either the industry getting ahead of regulation or the same players coordinating through different mechanisms. Watch the transparency framework closely — it will reveal whether the industry learned or just rebranded.
7 Netflix Playground rolls out globally
The kids gaming app — ad-free, offline, included with all Netflix subscriptions — launches worldwide today after a regional soft-launch on Apr 6. Eight launch titles (Peppa Pig, Sesame Street, Dr. Seuss, StoryBots). Netflix is positioning subscription as a multi-format moat: stream + game + soon, more.
Netflix Playground is the clearest signal yet that streaming is dead as a standalone business. Gaming, interactive content, and live programming are all in the roadmap. For Netflix, the subscription price stays the same while the product expands — which is how you build a $50B+ media business. For competitors like Disney and Apple, this is a wake-up call: streaming bundles are only defensible if you own multiple content formats.
8 Pomo raises $4.5M seed for agentic marketing intelligence
Led by Kindred Ventures, with Databricks Ventures, SV Angel, 645 Ventures, and angels from Adobe, Google DeepMind, and Google AI. Founders are ex-DeepMind/Databricks. The pitch: a closed-loop intelligence-and-execution system that surfaces a marketing team's daily priorities and acts on them within guardrails. AI agents for marketers — funded.
Pomo is building what happens when you let an AI agent handle your marketing operations. It's not just insights or recommendations — it's autonomous execution within guardrails. This is the next wave after BI tools and marketing automation platforms: AI that thinks and acts on behalf of the team. The funding pedigree (DeepMind, Databricks, Google AI) signals that serious AI talent is building for marketing operations.
9 Walmart Connect launches Connect Select + adds Pacvue, Skai
A curated CTV marketplace inside Walmart DSP plus expanded tech-partner integrations. Walmart Connect grew 33% last quarter; ad income + memberships were nearly a third of Walmart's Q4 operating profit. The Vizio acquisition is paying off — and Walmart is now an ad-tech vendor, not just a retailer.
Walmart Connect is the most underrated advertising growth story in the industry. Retail media is no longer a feature of e-commerce platforms — it's become a primary profit center. When a retailer's ad business is worth 30%+ of operating profit, it changes how they think about their entire business model. Pacvue and Skai integrations aren't partnerships; they're admissions that Walmart now owns critical advertising infrastructure.
10 Google AI Max becomes universally available; shopping ads land in AI Mode
Every US Search advertiser can now use AI Max; Dynamic Search Ads sunset starting September. Inside AI Mode: Direct Offers, brand promos, and the new Universal Commerce Protocol — buy directly inside AI conversations from Etsy, Wayfair, with Shopify/Target/Walmart joining soon. The search-to-purchase loop just got eliminated.
Google just made the leap from search results to commerce within AI. Universal Commerce Protocol is the infrastructure layer that makes it possible to buy directly inside LLM conversations without leaving the chat. This is the endgame of AI-powered search: no more links, no more clicks, just conversations that turn into transactions. For brands and retailers, it means the playbook for driving traffic and conversion is about to change fundamentally.